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The latest news from the Riley household

Nikko, Kamakura and Hakone and Lots of Rain - 30 May to 1 June 2008

A tiring and wet three days. We took a 6:10am subway from our house, then a shinkansen to Tokyo, then another and then a switch to another local train, getting into Nikko at 11:00. It started to pour rain. Things were not looking good, but Nikko was pretty amazing. One of the most interesting places I have seen in Japan.

From Nikko we went back to Tokyo and then on to Kamakura for a weekend planned by a friend. The rain continued but the day was fun. One the final day the rain cleared and everyone flocked to the beach. A strange experience to watch and enjoy...Please check out the photos




Website Layout changes- 5 Jun 2008

With the impending return to Australia I have redesigned the website. All the Japan pages now fet into their own section which has been reworked. I have recetly added my Expat tips and put more photos into the oddities sections so please have a look. You will also note that I am starting to convert the site to php, to allow for the comment section at the bottom of pages.



The Imperial Palace in Kyoto (in the rain)- 29 May 2008

Our final trip to Kyoto.

We booked ahead and went on the Imperial Palace tour and to the museum. Neither were great but we had to go to the palace just to make sure.




Who are you, the reader of this website - 27 May 2008


My website provides a number of statistics on who visits and where people go. As it has been pretty quiet, I thought I might share some of the stats with you.

The website is divided into two parts. The family history/genealogy section gets about 30-40% of all visitors . The non genealogy stuff is my main site and I use Google Analytics to track it's usage.

From Google Analytics, I have had over 5,000 visits by 2,250 unique people to my website in the last 10 months. The number has consistently increased since I started and now averages about 20 people per day. 44% of people who visit my website never return, and 71% stay less than 10 seconds.

What was good to know is the others do give the site some attention; 3.8% or 198 people have visited over 100 times and many people stay on the site more than 10 minutes.

Most visits are from people in Japan, but many others from Australia, Belgium, America and many other places.

Map

Most people come to visit the reference material. The Hard to Find in Nagoya, useful Links and photo galleries are the most popular pages. The most popular individual page is our visit to the Toki Outlet Mall. I am glad that the reference material is being used, it would have been awful to put it up an have no-one come.

The most common keywords are a good indicator. They show what words people type into google to get to my website. You can see that the top search is for weather, but that the average time spent on the site is three seconds. The website seems more useful for those interested in Expat information as on average, they stay on the site the longest.

Rank Keyword visits Average Time on Site (Minutes)
1.nagoya winter + weather 110 00:03
2.expat nagoya85 02:38
3.toki outlet59 01:25
4.nagashima outlet51 01:14
5.nagoya expat51 07:09
6.michael riley nagoya48 01:53
7.jan moesen toyota42 01:28
8.toyota ekiden37 00:51




Manhole Covers around Japan

One thing that I notice as I travel around Japan is that the manhole covers in the street are quite varied and often have pictures of some item of regional importance. It is odd what you notice as you wander around. I probably could have made quite a study, but I went for kitkat's instead.

Manhole Cover
Manhole cover outside my house


Manhole cover at Shirakawago, Grasso Hut village


Manhole Cover from Takayama


Manhole Cover from Kamakura

See JapanVisitorBlog for more photos from all over the country. If you are travelling around Japan, always remember to look down.



Odd story from the web - May 2008

Portable subway strap shows you’re no groper- pinktentacle.com
Another odd invention from Japan.



Photos of Our neighborhood - 18 May 2008

Not really a holiday, but something maybe of interest to those who have not been to Japan. We live in the suburbs and it is actually pretty rare to find photos of what suburbia looks like over here. There are always photos of temples and cool inner city stuff, but not much about what everyday life looks like..
Please have a look at our neighborhood





Cormorant Fishing at Gifu- 12 May 2008

Cormorant
A strange experience. Fun and interesting but sometimes hard to see what was happening.

Black birds in a dark river at night can be tricky. I would still recommend going to see the fishing as it was a quirky experience.





Monet Exhibit at , Nagoya Boston Museum of Fine Arts - 12 May 2008

Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts is the Nagoya outpost of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA).It has no permanent collection but rather has various shows put on by the MFA. The current exhibition is called "The World of Claude Monet" and has over 20 works of art by Monet and another 20 or so by other impressionist artists such as Degas, Renoir and Cézanne.

The show was ok, there were a couple of great pieces and a number of ho-hum pieces. We were there less than an hour but we enjoyed it. It is always a rare opportunity to get access to see such works and always worth taking. My favorite piece was a sketch of a group of Ballerinas by Degas.

I have included copies of some of Monet's paintings at the exhibition below.

Charing Cross Bridge (overcast day), 1900 - Claude Monet


Water Lilies, 1905 - Claude Monet


Shirakawa-Go, Takayama and the Shinhotaka Ropeway- 1/2 May 2008


Ropeway at
Shinhotaka
You may have noticed a bit of traveling, but this is primarily due to the existence of the Golden Week holidays, our last holiday week in Japan. We have tried to get to see a few sights and to do a few things that we wanted to do but had not yet done.

We had a big trip to Koyasan at the start of the week and ended the week with another overnight trip. THis time into the mountains around Takayama to see the world heritage town of Ogimachi, to stay overnight in a Ryokan and to go up a mountain on a ropeway recommended by Jan who had recently been on it. .



Iga-Nara-Koyasan-Osaka-Kyoto - 25-28 Apr 2008

A big trip for us. We had a few nights away. This trip grew a bit as we went along. We decided to stay in Nara for the night to break up an otherwise long drive to Koyasan. We then spent the night on Koyasan at a temple. We next met Jan and others in Osaka where we again had dinner at a friends families Izakaya. The next morning we decided to come home via Kyoto as Stephen (who was traveling with us) had not seen Kinkakuji. It was a fun trip, the highlight being the night in Koyasan.

Ninja Nara Koyasan Kyoto
IgaUeno
b-grade Ninja show		 Nara Temples A night at a temple
on Koyasan		 More sights in
Kyoto



Matsumoto Castle - 20 Apr 2008


Another day trip. This time into Nagano Prefecture and to the town of Matsumoto to see the famous Matsumoto castle. A good day. Nice weather, stunning mountain scenery and a few odd things to do. Yes we went to a Wasabi farm and to the strangest slide show at the Ukiyo-e museum.






Hiroshige (at the Money Museum) - 21 April 2008

Today I met Tim ( Porcelain Monkey blog) and we went to see a collection of Tokaido prints by Hiroshige . You can see an example of Hiroshige's work just down below in the Arimatsu section of this page. And having just been to Arimatsu the week before I felt quite a close connection to the prints on display. The display was set so that you virtually walked from Tokyo to Kyoto following the travelers as they walked the road. The pictures are quite evocative.

The money museum itself is ok, if you want to look at old money or see have coins were made then it does the job.

Money Museum
A collection of Money boxes at the (MUFG) Money Museum




Arimatsu (Tie Dying) - 13 April 2008

We drove to the nearby suburb of Arimatsu, famous for it's shibori (Tie-Dying). The town buildings are protected and the town was a stop on the famous Tokaido road that connected Edo (tokyo) and Kyoto during the Shogunate. of the 53 stations this was station 41 - Narumi. The next along was Miya ( Atsuta Shine).

We did not go to the museum, nor did we go on a festival day, we just walked along the street and looked at the shops, and I have to say unless you are really into tie-dye it is pretty average.


A wood block print of Arimatsu by Hiroshige. You can see the Tie-dye shops.


The historical street today. Not a great shot, but pretty representative of the historical street.



Inuyama .spring Festival - 6 April 2008

Innuyama
One of the best festivals we have been to in Japan. We were lucky to get a good spot but well...it was intense, dangerous and for us, a lot of fun. There are lost of photos and some video as well.







Okazaki ."Ieyasu Gyoretsu" - 6 April 2008

Okazaki
A parade at Okazaki filled the fain part of the afternoon. Relaxed, casual and local we enjoyed our time. Probably not the best festival we have been too, but worth a visit and good for photos.








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