Friday, March 23, 2007

Dad's Birthday Party at Kyoto


Miyako-Douri in Kyoto

22nd of March is my father's birthday. Since 21st of March is a holiday because of Vernal Equinox Day. As the calender says like that, it was much warmer on that day than before. I drove about one hour and a half to get to Kyoto. Then we found a reasonable parking and parked our awesome car, Estima. We walked to JR Kyoto Isetan which is connected to JR Kyoto station. They have many stores that were entertaining, we walked around to find a restaurant for lunch. What we liked the most is 10th floor, there are 4 or 5 Ramen stores from cities in Japan. All of those ramens looked and smelled delicious but we could not get in any of them because it was too crowded. We had to leave there at latest at 12:30 in order to see the play "Crazy For You" so we ended up getting a lunch boxes of Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki. There is a square where you can enjoy those food , so we ate them there. After that, we went to see the play by Gekidan Shiki. The play was about 3 hours, we enjoyed it a lot though we liked "Mamma Mia" better.



Then we took a subway to get to where you can enjoy more traditional Japanese scenery. From the beginning of March to this day 21 of March, they held an event that you can enjoy the lightings , Maiko dance etc. We all really liked that. There are some photos from it.


Maiko Dance



Goju-no-To



Tanukis (racoon dogs) at a souvenir store


After walking around these places, we went to a Chinese restaurant and celebrated my father's birthday. We gave him a CD of "Furinkazan" which is a history drama on NHK. He loves the show and its mucis.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Seminar Assistant in Nagoya


Kintetsu train(Outside)


Kintetsu train (Inside)

Last weekend ( 2 March - 5 March ) I was in Nagoya to assist Mr Yamasaki's NLP Practitioner seminar. The seminar is given for 10 days, 5 weekends (Sat + Sun) but I am one of the assistants there, called Resource Person so I had to go to the meeting a night before the seminar. At 15:30 I took a Express train at Namba station on Kintetsu line. I hardly take Kintetsu because that doesn't run near my house. This time I took Kintetsu because it is cheaper than JR. It just costs 3,200 yen between Osaka ( Namba ) and Nagoya. It takes as twice long as JR does, but I was not busy on Friday. After more than 2 hours, I arrived at Nagoya station. The meeting was held a couple of stations away from there, I lost my way for a little, but managed to be there.

After the meeting I again came to Nagoya station because a hotel I stayed was closed to that. I like the building of Nagoya station so I took a picture of it. Around that , there are several buildings that look nice, I hope Louana will like them.


Nagoya Station

Next day, the seminar got started. That was my new experience , anyway I had a great time.

After the seminar I went out dinner with another Resource Person who lives just 30-minute away from Nagoya station. We went to the 12nd floor but all restaurants were full because it was Saturday night. We found an Indian restaurant where we found an empty room. We had a big Indian meal, talking about how-you-got-to-know-NLP or NLP. He is a student in an acupuncture school, studying Eastern Medicine. I found some similarities between Eastern Medicine and NLP, so I enjoyed the talking.

Because we took long to find a restaurant that had a room, we walked a lot in the building. There are many stores and the looks are great, so I thought that should have been one of the places I would like to come with Louana.

I am going to come to Nagoya 4 more times, so I hope I will find more of nice places so I can come there with Louana.