Day Twenty Two: Horyouji

and I wake up.

its probably about 11am.

the official check out time at the Nara Tree is 11am. my plan is to head out of there and look for somewhere to stay for the night. I have someone in a city called Kanonji that will let me stay the night, but in the end they back out.


so i'm just hanging out for a while with Bob and Mayumi--putting on a sick mask fashion show, and then they take me out to eat some Indian-style curry--no no, not the Indians that will scalp you and have names like Sitting Duck and Brother Bear, we mean the Indians that live in the slums of Mumbai and win game shows.


yeah, those Indians. it had been a couple years since I had the stuff, and it was just as good as I remember it being.

so what do I do? I reckon I oughtta spend some more time in Nara, or at least the surrounding areas.

I head towards a city called Horyoji known for its temples and more old school Japanese stuff, and I make it there and get a good look at many of the goodies they have to offer.

on the way back to Nara I decide to take some shots of some of the more interesting signs i've been seeing around.

anybody with the internet knows something extra special about the Japanese, they like to put crazy stuff on signs and they love English. whether or not the words make sense at all makes no difference.

this delight reminded me of Kanye West before his head got too big.


i'm not sure how appropriate this one would be for a young girl to wear around, but it is made for someone measuring 120cm, however big that is-- heck if I know.


this was an aesthetic salon down the road.


this one here has a saying on it that looks strangely familiar…


oh that’s right, it's the slogan for my own beloved BYU. this just goes to show you that even on the opposite side of the world, you can't escape the Provo scenesters, as has already been proven by my one night stay with my friend Joseph in Shinyurigaoka

let's hope the honor code office doesn’t find out another school has plagiarized byu’s slogan or else it could mean certain probation, or even worse, someone might have to shave their beard to take a test.

and last, but not least. was my favorite one of all I saw.


this strange gem has a father sitting in a bathtub with a naked child standing next to him holding a shower nozzle in his left hand, and definitely a gun in his right. even though he is facing certain death at the hand of his naked son, dad is still cool as a cucumber.

and just for kicks we'll throw in this sumo character wearing his swine flu mask.


when I got back that night, me and this Australian man staying at the guest house went to a Japanese music show that Mayumi had talked to us about earlier in the day. it was this old timey temple music put on by three different people.

the show was scheduled to last an hour, but halfway during the set, the old man started convulsing and apparently had just suffered a set of seizures.

I really do hope he is all right.

so I went back to the house, hoping to do some laundry--which I didn't get to, watched Spirited Away on the guest house tv, and tried to figure out what was gonna come next.

and as always there is more havoc to come.