Rooftop hookah with Suraj&Nicky, dinner at Will’s… Making the best
of SF’s never-ending Indian Summer…

Near my house…

My home for the month to come…

Like the other Lehman, this one can also make you go blind and ruin
your life.

Making up for last month’s rather poor health regimen by going all-bike this month.
According to Velib’s website, I currently got a 17.4km daily average going on.

Windy but still nice…

… at the top of Kyoto station…

The japanese version is a [rather weak] pun on the kanji for grass (葉 = Ha = grass).

1. Cicadas
2. Cat

The most common specimen of the area (Homo Sapiens Alcoholicus Imbibus) is conspicuously missing from this study…

One of Kyoto’s less famous sightseeing destination. This former daimyo residence is filled with secret caches (to hide assassins), hidden folding stairways (to escape), “nightingale floors” (made to creak when walked on by potentially nefarious individuals) and uncannily low ceilings (to make it impossible for samurai to draw their katanas)…

Unfortunately didn’t have a chance to snap a shot inside (our tour asked us to refrain from taking pictures and felt conspicuous enough being the only gaijin amidst a dozen locals).

For a good English description, I just found this blog entry that describes pretty much the same tour I had. I can also confirm that the tour is exclusively in Japanese (in my case, spoken insanely fast by some little obāchan) and they seem pretty serious about not letting in unaccompanied non-Japanese speakers (luckily my crappy language phone skills miraculously managed to fool them… mwahahaha).