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On June 6, we traveled from Kyoto to Ulaanbataar Mongolia.  We have been having lectures both on the plane and at each stop.  Our lecturers are very interesting and the information quite expansive.

We thought that this would be just a “travel” day, but it turned out to be much more.

Our tour leader arranged for Bob to meet with 2 officials from the Mongolian basketball association.  We met with them for about an hour in the lobby of the hotel.  Fortunately they had arranged for an interpreter or it would have been a bust.  The men we met were Etugen Irves, the coach of the National League team, and Mr. Orgil, secretary of the Mongolian Basketball Association.  The country has 6 professional men’s teams and the same number of women’s teams.  A very unique experience.

We then went to a group dinner and met our speaker, Oyungerel Tsedevdamba and her American husband, Jeff (did not get his last name).  She is a former member of parliament, former Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism and is an advisor to the current president of Mongolia.  She is a founder and director of the Liberty Center, a non-profit organization fighting for human rights.  Her talk, which continued through the entire 2 hour dinner was fascinating.  She gave us historical information on Mongolia, current happenings in the county and where she thinks the country is going.  At the end of the evening we all decided that she could be the president of the country in a few years. Amazing evening.

During our time in Japan we learned some interesting things from our chatty guide, Meg.

1.  The Japanese are not very demonstrative in showing their affection for each other.  She said that she had only seen her parents kiss or embrace each other a few times in her life.  She said that the Japanese show their affection by buying expensive and elaborate gifts.  

2.  90% of Japanese people are considered middle class.  They earn enough to have their own home, own a car, send their children to “cram” schools – after school school to help the child get into a good college or university – and travel.  There are very few homeless people because of the high work ethics of the culture.  

3.  The streets were clean.  There was no grafiti.  The people were exceptionally polite.

4.  Golf – wow!  There are 2,500 golf courses in Japan.  Meg’s husband is a golfer.  He leaves home around 6AM to drive to the course.  After every 3 holes there is a stop for drinks.  Lunch is eaten after 9 holes.  After 18, you take a bath and then have dinner and drinks with your foursome.  If you get a hole in one, you pay for your groups round of golf, all the drinks and dinner. Then you have to throw an elaborate party.  Her husband takes out “hole-in-one” insurance for about $100 a year.  This covers the cost of the celebration expenses which can run to $4,500!

Japan was a wonderful stop.

We began our second day in Kyoto by traveling to the town of Nara which was the capital of Japan in the 8th century.  We visited the Todaiji Temple which is the world’s largest wooden building – I think I posted yesterday that the building then was the world’s largest.  Maybe that one is by length and this one by volume (?).  It is surrounded by a large deer park and the deer come begging for food and bow when you give them some.  One of the men in our group had a deer try to eat his package of gifts looking for food.  Inside the building is an enormous Buddha statue, the Daibutsu Buddha – 87 feet tall and made of bronze covered in gold weighing 550 tons.  It was made in 752 AD at a current cost of 4 billion dollars.  When a Buddhas right hand is raised it means “fear not” and when his left hand is raised it mean “I will grant your prayers”.  There were other beautiful statues in the Temple as well.


We had some free time to walk around the grounds before going to Japan’s most celebrated shrine, the Kasuga-Takisha.  This Shrine dates back to the 1st century, and traditionally has been torn down and rebuilt every 20 years because it is made of wood.  This happened until 1863.  The shrine is set in a beautiful forest, but the main draw is the 1,000’s of stone lanterns that line all the paths.  

We returned to Kyoto for lunch at the Fortune Garden Restaurant, with some Japanese food and some American food too.

In the afternoon we went to the Nijo Castle, a remnant from the feudal era.  It was built in 1603 by the Edo period’s first Shogun as his residence.  It was later used as an Imperial Palace after the fall of the Shogunate.  The building was huge, built in a zig zag design.  The floors when you first entered were nightingale one, they chirped as you walked on them.  That was part of the defense system in place.  There were beautiful paintings on the wall and intricate bronze decorations on the doors and lintels to each room.

There were also beautiful gardens around the castle.  It was never used as a fort but only as a residence for the Shogun.  He could only have one wife but as many concubines as he wanted.

We had dinner at the Kaiseki Mizuki restaurant in the hotel for a top of the line dinner.  Many courses again.  Bob had sushi and sashimi for the first time!

Big bags were out by 9:15 and we were sleeping by 9:17!

Fitbit – 9847 steps, 9 floors, 4.66 miles

Let the marathon begin!  After a semi restful night – the time change was quite dramatic, we started our city touring.  The first stop was the Fushimi Imari Shrine.  Shrine = Shinto.  We went through the various rituals necessary when entering a Shinto shrine.  There was the entrance Torii gate at which we bowed.  You had to go to either the right or left but could not enter in the center, that was for the Shinto god.  We then went to the next ritual station where we purified ourselves by washing our hands – left, right, left again with that water brought up to your mouth and then tipping the ladle so the handle was clean for the next person.  We then went to the entrance of the Shrine and asked for a blessing.  Toss a coin, bow twice, clap your hands twice, make your request, then clap your hands again.  Our guide Meg, did a blessing on our group’s behalf, asking for safe travels, retail therapy options for the women, patience for the men, no earthquakes and no attacks by North Korea!

Then we went into the Shrine and were blessed in a traditional ceremony.  It was similar to the one I (Bette) had attended in Tokyo in January.  We all received boards that represented our being blessed.

We have no actual photos from the ceremony since it is not allowed.

Then we toured the rest of the Shrine area seeing thousands of torii gates.  The have been donated over hundreds of years by believers.  The gates actually follow a path to the top of a mountain, but because of timing, we could not walk through all of them.  We probably walked through 500 or more of the gates.

We then went to the Sanju-Sangendo, a Buddhist temple.  At this place we had to remove our shoes to go in.  This once was the largest wooden building in the world, 400 feet in length.  It is no longer, but it is very impressive.  The main attraction were the 1,001 Buddha statues.  The original building burned down and was rebuilt in the 13th century.  Most of the Buddhas were replicas but there are approximately 200 original ones.  They are made of cypress wood and are gilded.  Each one had 42 arms with each arm holding some different object.  There were 28 guardians for the Buddhas.  Each Buddha stands or sits on a lotus flower which represents wisdom.  Again, we could not take photos inside.

Then we were off to a shabu shabu lunch at Hyoto restaurant.  We had to remove our shoes here too. This involved cooking our meat in a hot pot of boiling soup along with vegetables.  We had a small box with sashimi and pickled vegetables and a bowl of sticky rice to accompany the meat and vegetables.  It was very good.

Then we were told our driver had arrived and off we went on our own.  Shozo was his name and he took us about 40 kilometers outside of Kyoto to the Miho Museum.  The day was beautiful and the drive took us out into the countryside.  The final part of the road reminded us of North Carolina mountain roads.  This museum was founded by a Buddhist sect.  The building was designed by I. M. Pei.  It is set into the side of a mountain and the building is as much a part of the experience as is the art.  The displays were beautiful and the art quite extraordinary.  No paintings, but beautiful Japanese glass from 400 years ago when glass was first being made in Japan.  There was also sculpture and artifacts from Egypt, Persia, China, Iran and other Asian places.  Unfortunately no photos of the inside of the building but some of the outside.  You get to the museum by walking through a tunnel, over a bridge and then up a grand staircase.

We took the expressway back to Kyoto.  Then we cleaned up and were off to our group dinner.  We had cocktails at Geshi-in Temple followed by dinner at Sodoh Higashiyama restaurant.  The dinner was 6 courses, first salad, then a hot appetizer of conger eel, then a pasta course with cuttlefish, then a fish course of Pomfret, then the main course of grilled sirloin and vegetables and finally dessert a mango “Baba”.  Bette gave up after the fish course!  While we were eating we had entertainment, geishas singing and dancing.  They then came around the room for photos.  

The geisha with Bob is 18 years old and has 2 more years of training.  It costs about $300,000 for her to complete her training.  

We crashed immediately after dinner.

Fitbit: 12,245 steps, 5.8 miles and 10 flights.

The real start for our trip was Friday, June 2.  Our welcome dinner and briefing were nice.  Started to meet our fellow travelers and had a lecture from the National Geographic “host” traveling with us, David Harrison, a world famous linguist.

We were scheduled for the first bus on Friday morning, 7:45 AM.  When we arrived to board we were told that the jet had some problems and to go back to our rooms to wait, coming back at 9.  At 9 we were given the go ahead to board the buses for Boeing Airfield where our plane was waiting.  Security was done on the tarmac with hand held scanners and visual checks of our hand luggage.  Then we were allowed on board.

After take off we were served champagne and caviar.  We had to have a technical stop in Anchorage for fuel and to pick up our regular crew.  Because of the distance we had to fly this first day the crew could not work the necessary hours, so we had a crew for the first leg (4.5 hours of flight time).

Alaska from 35,000 feet

We were supposed to make a second stop in Sapporo Japan, but our pilots were able to get clearance to fly over Kamchatka Russia and so we flew directly to Osaka.  That flight was 7.5 hours.  We had lectures on both legs of the flights.  Bob thinks they are trying to convert us to Buddhism.

After waiting over 40 minutes for our luggage we were finally on our way to Kyoto and the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Our room here is amazing with everything being run from electronic control centers.  The shades go up when you enter the room, the closet lights come on as you approach the closet, there are various “scenarios” for the lighting and the decor is simple but elegant.

After dinner we were in bed by 8:30 Kyoto time which was about 22 hours since we were up in the morning.

And, by the way it was Saturday night, June 3!!

Today (May 31) starts the beginning of our second adventure traveling with National Geographic around the world.  Have we mastered packing (finally)?  Each of our big bags weighed in at 45 pounds.  Our “wheelies” only have our toilet articles, iPads and medications, plus the odds and ends needed in our electronic world.

The flights that took us from Fort Myers to Seattle were uneventful.  Getting our luggage on arrival was semi-eventful.  Even though we had sky priority tags on the bags they were the last to come down the conveyor belt.  But they did arrive and we were off to the Westin hotel.  We cleaned up and did some walking around.  We had dinner at a lovely restaurant, Wild Ginger.  We tried to stay up until 9 PM (we had to get up at 4:15 Eastcoast time), but succumbed to sleep around 8:30.

We moved to the Four Seasons hotel in the morning (June 1).  This is the trip starting point, checked in, got our room right away and then checked in with the tour group.  We saw several staff from our last trip, saw our wonderful tour leader Susan and met a fellow traveler from our last trip.

Then it was off on the Seattle monorail to the Seattle Center where we went to the Chihuly Museum and Gardens and up to the top of the Space Needle.

We are now back to rest before our welcome dinner and briefing this evening.

Big bags at 9:30 tonight and small bags at 6:30 in the morning tomorrow.  

The adventure is about to begin!

Source: About

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 20 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Some facts about our trip

Fitbit for Bette

           190061 steps, 89.59 miles, 909 floors!!!!

Nautical miles flown:  28402

Statute miles flown: 32662 (and no frequent flyer credit)

Fuel used: 231.7 tons (big carbon footprint)

Hours flown: 68 hours 14 minutes

Weight lost: 0

Weight gained: 0 (best stat!)
THE END

It has been a wonderful trip…fabulous places, wonderful hotels and meals, interesting and friendly traveling companions.

Our suitcases are packed for the last time, no more big bags at 10 PM, wheelies (rollaboards) at 6:30 AM.

Thank you for following us around the world.  Although I have tried to give you an idea of what we did and some of the experiences we had, the computer screen is flat and my words are inadequate to fully describe our experience.

Bob and Bette

PS  I am hoping to get some of the videos up 😉