Friday, Mar. 31th, Kyoto/Tokyo

Weather in Kyoto was still cold and cloudy today so we decided to return to Tokyo earlier to try our luck at some more cherry blossom viewing. We strolled around Kyoto station after breakfast and visited the nearby Higashi Honganji before checking out of our hotel. We took an earlier Shinkansen then originally planned and got back in Tokyo just before noon. It seems that we got back just in time for the peak of cherry blossom in Tokyo. We visited three popular cherry blossom viewing locations: Shinjiku Gyoen, Inokashira Park and Ueno Park and we enjoyed the views enormously.
Continue Reading March 23rd, 2007
Thursday, Mar. 30th, Kyoto

We checked with a tourist information center last night at Kyoto JR station of the places that may have cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, it seems that most locations in Kyoto were still too early for hanami (flower watching). It was raining lightly this morning but we still decided to embark on a tour to find cherry blossoms. We visited Kyoto Imperial Palace Garden first early morning. There were a few sakura trees that blossomed but it was few and far between. We then embark on a tour of Kyoto temples that took us through Chionin, Kodaiji, Kiyomizudera. After lunching in the famous geisha district of Gion, we went to visit Kyoto Botanical Garden and Kinkakuji - Golden Pavilion Temple.
Continue Reading March 22nd, 2007
Last night I emerged mplayer-bin to play some wmv files on my C2D machine. After emerging it successfully, I found that fonts in my file open dialog in Firefox-bin are all messed up. After some digging around, I found that the latest emul-linux-x86-xlibs is the cause of the problem. Solutions for this can be found in this thread.
March 21st, 2007

At the end of October last year, my parents and I drove all the way from Berkeley to visit several national and tribal parks in Utah and Arizona. I’d like to share some of the happenings and photos of that trip on this blog after I wrap up the Spring Break in Japan series. Keep tuned!
March 20th, 2007
It’s almost a year since this trip to Japan in 2006 and I haven’t completed this blog series. I really need to get off my butt and wrap it up soon. 2 more places to visit: Kyoto and cherry blossom watching in Tokyo…
March 20th, 2007
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