Chris K. Taylor

OK so 4 posts a week was a little ambitious, maybe 4 posts a month at this rate. I’ve uploaded some more photos and I’m going to try (I think a little of the old ‘planning ahead’ is needed for this) to get more up this week.

The first three are from Kyoto and the rest were taken in Ohara - Musashi Village (Okayama)

While we didn’t get to see as much of Kyoto as I wanted (a tendon injury meant that I was in the hotel room for the whole day on our free morning) we were able to return for a few hours after visiting Ohara where Mark managed to get some photos of the Heian Shrine - my camera batteries were dead. We did manage to spend some time around the Musashi Dojo where we trained and spent the night (Many thanks to Hanshi for arranging this and the sensei who gave thir time to watch and instruct) before heading to Kyoto to pick up the bags and head for Izumisano, near Kansai Airport in Osaka. The countryside was a nice change. As much as I enjoyed Kyoto, it was so much more peaceful.

I’ll upload some more pictures from Ohara this week, as I said before. I also have a disposable camera that needs developing, when I get around to using the last of the film.

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We had been waiting for for over 2 years to travel to Kyoto to attend the World Butoku Sai. Looking back we had so little time for sightseeing as a lot of our time was spent at the events and formal dinners, but I wouldn’t change that for the world. The event was amazing; participants from the Honbu and Internation Division of Dai Nippon Butoku Kai attended to demonstrate their skill, a humbling experience to say the least.

I, and those I travelled with, managed to get some great photos though so I’ll be posting these over the next week. There are a lot of them to sort through but I should hit my target of at least 4 posts per week. I proabably won’t be writing as much as I had hoped to but I will try to get at least some commentry. For now, here are some of the early pictures from Kyoto. I think all of these were taken on the first day of the event (the day after we arrived).

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That’s it, if anything is missing I’m buying it in Japan; my bags are just within the weight alloted to me so I can’t fit anything else in them if I needed to. I think I have everything bar that one item I forgot (spare pair of glasses or some contacts - yes, I remembered) so I’m not too worried. The last few days have been so hectic that there has barely been time for me to get excited and tomorrow I’ll probably be too tired.
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Today I’ve been running through everything I need to take with me to Kyoto. After realising that I had forgotten the power adaptors, voltage convertor and new bag for the laptop among other things (yes, pretty much all stuff for the laptop) I set out to the shops hit Google looking for the best prices. Three hours later and I’m done, I think.
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First of all, welcome to anyone who reads this. My name is Chris, I’m 31 and the rest will be added to an ‘About’ page soon enough.

So, why blog? I thought about starting up again about a year ago but I couldn’t think of a reason to start, now I can. On the 23rd April I will be flying to Japan to attend the DNBK 2008 World Butoku Sai in Kyoto where I will be studying and demonstrating Iaido, more about that later though. While I’m there I will, hopefully, be using this as a travel journal and will include photo’s whenever the opportunity arises.

The problem with writing, for myself anyway, is getting over the first few months and into a steady habit. With any luck the blogging I do on this trip will be enough of a trigger to keep me going.

So there we are, a good enough reason to start. Hopefully I’ll get hooked.

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