Sliding Sideways Across the Globe

OK, OK ... I know its been a while on the updates. What can I say, I'm lazy.

I've been doing lots of things, seeing lots of things and eating lots of things. Wow, thats Champagne quality English there. And to think I'm getting paid to impart this high quality vocabulary.

Oh well. Since this is a travel blog I guess I should blog about my travels. *Sigh* More quality there as well.

It was a mildly warm day when K and I headed to Kyoto. I had been watching the nightly news of late, the small Cherry Blossom pictographs marching up across the map of Japan as the weather warmed into mid-20s.

K and I opted for a mild Tuesday to journey back to Arashiyama and Kyoto to soak up the short-live Sakura, the Cherry-blossoms.

Arashiyama was first up. Along the river sat a small gravel park, it's grounds sprinkled with blue tarp and grassy patches between neatly lined up Sakura trees marking it feel like a giant Connect-Four
game. Children played Hide-and-Seek around the trunks while laughs and clanging glasses rang out from between.

Trees lined the streets, erupted in home gardens and along the river bank.

Fallen leaves of white and pink lay like dead snow in the gutters and blew silently across the bridges, before floating away beyond sight.

As the day drifted on, we headed to the Kyoto Botanical gardens and wandered through bamboo forests, red tulip fields and ponds filled with lilies.

We travel back to Gion by bus, a long and slow meandering method which seemed to highlight each and every corner of Kyoto as it weaved through the entire grid of the city.

Eventually dusk befell the landscape around, the red glow called out from beyond the mountains before melting away into greys and blacks.

Kiyomizu Temple stood tall above a Sakura landscape, a large spotlight highlighting the pagodas and soft gentle light illumiating the flowers for their final few days.