Japan Day 2 - Out and About

I woke up early again around 6:30 with the sun and worked on blog posts in my room and then I headed down stairs to hop on the internet to upload pictures. As a group we are meeting at 9am each day to go over what we are doing for the day. i didn't get all of my pictures uploaded before then. At the meeting, we had a nice discussion of the our project and our first assignment. Our project is to design a mixed use building with retail, commercial, and about 100 residential units. Our fist assignment is to pick a site for it that is within walking distance of Nishioji train station. and then we have to analyze it which is our first assignment which is due next Monday. For site the analysis we are in groups of three and we have to diagram all sorts of existing conditions like vehicular and pedestrian traffic, where the best views are, where restaurants and popular spots are in relation to the site and a whole lot more.

After the meeting we headed out to go see the site. it not far but it's not within walking distance of our hotel. we took the subway to Kyoto Station and the took a JR train west one station to our site. We had a nice walk around.

One of the first thing we came upon was the local Shinto shrine. Stan started talking to a local lady about our group and as soon as Stan said we were from America, she pulled a mask out of her pocket and put it on and kept on talking. The Japanese are very paranoid about Swine Flu.

We walked around some more and in back alleys we got to see some of the older traditional style homes.

For lunch we went to a typical Japanese fast food place which served rice bowls with all sorts of toppings. I ordered a simple one with beef as the topping. It was very good and was cheap at 330yen.

After lunch, we had a tour of the Kyoto Concert Hall by Arata Isozaki, which is one of the best examples of his work in the area. In the pictures, the pipe organ is purposefully off center because it aligned with the building's chi better there. (somethings I still don't understand yet)

I got back to the hotel in the late afternoon and was exhausted. I now know why the Japanese are thin, Most of the subway stations here don't have escalators, so it's a lot of steps up and down. I was exhausted so I laid down for a nap that turned into 12 hours of sleep.

I recorded a lot of video today, but I don't have time today to get anything posted.

Pictures Day 2