The world from the air

Been seeing far too many aeroplane views recently, but even supposedly dull countries can look quite interesting from the air.

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Temples

We did a fair bit of templing while on unicorn safari, but weren't lucky enough to spot any more.
Here's ye olde village church.

And although it would be poetic if this was taken inside the same church, unfortunately that church was locked. Instead this is just one of Bath Abbey's many windows. Don't see much stained glass in Japan. In fact our temples don't contain much glass at all. I suppose this explains how the dragons get in.

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"summer" ?

It isn't just the Unicorns. Like Werewolves and the moon, British people become insane as soon as they see sunshine. Oblivious to the fact it is still actually rather cold, as soon as that pale yellow watery thing shines in their palid blue sky they switch off the heating and open all the windows. This must surely be a contributing factor to why we are presently not merely working from home, but working from bed. With 'flu. Still, it's not all bad. It is actually truly sunny and warm in Kamakura, and it is surely a good idea to get 'flu every decade or so to keep one's immunity up.

Here's some of that dangerous so called "sunshine".

River

Inner city housing If you prefer postcardism to buddhism, you might prefer this one.

Temple

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Ringfencing the Unicorn

It's golden week, a very busy time for travel and tourism in Japan. So we felt quite lucky to get the last two places on the West of England Unicorn Safari. It turns out that unicorns in the UK aren't much more rare than dragons in Kamakura.

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Kamakura colour

While we were away, Kamakura sprung into green and other bright colours.

Meanwhile, Hachimangu pond has been having a bit of a 'mare. It is making glugging noises and is full of men getting trenchfoot. I wonder if it sprung a leak, and what they did with all the carp before it was drained. The other question is whether it take two decades to get fixed, as happened with Yokohama railway station refurbishments. In protest, the pond-side wisteria have refused to flower properly this year.

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IIASA

Finally the big day came and we jumped into a taxi and headed for IIASA. It is located in a palace in a village a bit outside Vienna, called Laxenburg. At IIASA they do all sorts of things like global energy and population as well as working out the effects of climate change. They asked us lots of challenging questions during our seminars, which were a lot of fun to try and answer.

They have all mod cons onsite to help them achieve their lofty goals.

1. Church

2. Restaurant

3. Palace Rather excitingly, the palace doesn't have or need air conditioning despite very hot summers (38C). James' theory was that (unlike Japan) it cools down at night, so the massive thick walls never really heat up all summer. There were also high ceilings which might have helped airflow in some mysterious way.

4. Pretty offices!
Clearly some effort is required to make JAMSTEC as habitable. Perhaps we could start by painting mountains on the grey walls.

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Sunday running

Last Sunday James went for a run in the rain around a concrete military base. Having done the AGU "fun run" in torrential rain I had no inclination to repeat the experience, so stayed at home. The previous Sunday, however, we both got to enjoy seeing some real runners in the sunshine, with the backdrop of Viennese architecture. They passed very near our hotel at about 8km.

And again just after halfway, by which time Haile Gebrselassie, who won the half marathon would have already collected his medal. For the marathon itself, the man with number 1 on his chest (Henry Sugut) eventually did the decent thing and came in 1st place.



Here are the fastest wimmin just after halfway. By the end F10 (Flomena Cheyech) was quite a long way in the lead.

The marathon was cleverly arranged to go around the town centre making it easy to cut across and get to any bit of the course before the runners. ...although some might argue that this made all that running rather futile.

We hung around in the sun until the funny shaped white men started stumbling past

However, as James pointed out, about 10 percent of them didn't seem to be in too much pain. He claims that he will be one of them one day. At 2km to go their legs weren't getting very far off the ground.

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Day 1 EGU

Day 1 is of course Sunday and mostly involves recovery from travel.

First we visited the Albertina art gallery which, like SFMOMA, made me want to give it all up and become a penniless artist.

Inspired by the extensive exhibition of shit photography, my photography took an artistic nose-dive, at least until we got to the opera house.

Where we saw the ballet La Sylphide.

And then it was up to the EGU to register and enjoy the ice breaker party.

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Vienna

Japanese travel rules do not allow scientists like us to stay in foreign longer than the length of a business trip, even at their own expense. A few weeks ago, however, we drank a great deal of sake with a man from IIASA, which is near Vienna, and he accidentally invited us to extend our trip and visit him on the Monday after the EGU. This meant that we got to spend last weekend recovering from the EGU in Vienna. We had seminars to prepare for Monday, so Saturday morning was spent with a laptop in a Viennese cafe. These cafes boast of the geniuses who have thought deep thoughts within, so I suppose this is the way they are meant to be enjoyed, rather than at a hectic tourist pace. Our change in attitude had a miraculous effect on the impression of the waiter service, which had previously seemed offensively slow. It now seemed discreet and considerate.

My first coffee was a latte:

Work done, the rest of Saturday we wandered South as far as the botantical gardens, which had nice trees and a bit of bamboo and a few flowers growing in the grass.

We strolled back through the adjoining Belvedere palacey thingie place. Weather had become a magnificent stormy-bright.

The olde Viennese may have been artistic deep thinking geniuses, but it seems they were quite zoologically confused. Here's a typical titty man lion horsey woman and its naked love child.

There were others too with wings, hooves, paws and/or fishy tails, although most also had tits. Many of the tits were burnished by the many hands that have felt them up. This probably explains the breakdown of Western civilisation. We Japanese also stroke our stone statues, but on their ears, noses or tummies. 

If one could drag one's eyes away from the titties, there was also an impressive view across Vienna, with Stephansdom spire in the middle.

We wandered back to the hotel... the following sights are on the way, but actually the first 2 photos were taken on the following Tuesday evening, when we revisited a restaurant near the Belvedere, and the third picture was from after dinner earlier in the week.

I suppose this is a war memorial behind the fountain...

And this is the famous Karlskirche...
And this is a probably very cliched new-and-old Vienna combi sunset photo

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