Here are a few pictures from a crazy summer.

Here's the now customary balcony shot, this one from Megumi's apartment in Nagoya. Note the omnipresent golden arches.	Megumi wore a yukata for my 25th birthday. We had homemade pizza and birthday cake in the Japanese style (topped with lots of whipped cream).
We rushed to take this picture before the cake was incinerated.	Here's a picture we took with the old black and white quickcam I attached to Megumi's computer. Thanks to that camera, we started video conferencing twice a week (sure beats international phone calls!). Although we've now moved on to newer color cameras, I still think this one takes the clearest still photos.
This is a view of Nagoya from Nagoya castle.	Here are Megumi and her friend Asako outside of Nagoya castle. Megumi jumped so I could get the whole castle in the picture. The castle is famous for the golden fish figure at the top.
Megumi and I explored the temple Rogenji near her apartment. This is the arch outside.	The temple
A beautiful garden in front of the temple	Also a bamboo forest-- pretty cool.
Here are some snaps of Atsuta shrine. You must purify yourself with water before entering the shrine.	This gate is the ancient entrance to the shrine. It's no longer used today.
I like these lamps along the modern entrance pathway. I didn't get to see them at night, unfortunately.	The great wall of sake. It's actually a Shinto offering.
We saw two wedding parties pass by.	I guess it's a popular place to get married.
Here are several pictures from a local festival in which people carried a shrine housing mechanical dolls throughout the streets of the town.	The festival dates from the Edo period, when it was performed before summer to ward off disease. This particular shrine was built in 1658, making it the oldest of its kind in Nagoya.
The festival is now performed yearly in June.	We met a nice lady selling rice cakes at the festival. She was happy to chat with a foreigner, and gave us a rice cake for free.
There were many booths at one spot in the town, like at a carnival in the States.	Everyone helps tug the shrine through the streets.
The sign reads "tradition: the road of life". There is a long silk ribbon, demonstrating the fine dyed silks made in the this town, which has been famous for its "shibori" dyed clothing since the Edo period. On the sides of the road there were many small shops selling Kimono, Yukata, dresses and other wares.	We took a hiking trip to the mountains at Kamikochi with our good friend Kazumi, who took this picture.
Kazumi likes to shoot and edit videos. She made a nice video of the trip for us.
The beautiful mountains and streams of Kamikochi... this one from Megumi's camera.	This is one we got from Kazumi.
This one from my camera.	This is a picture from Megumi's 25th birthday. I dressed up in formal western clothing for her.
My housemate Stacy put the candles on Megumi's birthday cake. We were smart enough to get the camera ready before lighting the candles this time.	We took a trip to Niagara Falls. I think everyone remembers what they were doing on September 11, 2001. Megumi and I drove from Princeton to Niagara, Canada on that day, crossing over at this bridge.
It's aptly named Rainbow Bridge.	I don't think anyone can go to Niagara Falls without taking lots of pictures. I've included eight here. This one is of American Falls, on the American side of the river.
Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side.	a closer view
The closest view, taken from a boat ride. Everyone wore raincoats to avoid getting completely drenched.
	a view from the tower nearby
Megumi at Niagara	The flower clock near Niagara
We toured a winery near Niagara. These vineyards are famous for their ice wines.	This is Casa Loma, the middle age style home of Sir Henry Mill Pellat, a businessman from Toronto in the early 20th century and one of the cities most famous residents. It was built over three years starting in 1911 and converted into a museum in the 1920s after Pellat's business went bankrupt.
The day we went there was a wedding there. The bride and groom were posing for pictures in this nice garden. I guess it's also a popular place to get married!	We did go inside, but it seems that I forgot to scan any of those pictures. The castle has 98 rooms, cool secret passages, nice tapestries and furniture imported from Europe.
A couple views of downtown Toronto from Casa Loma.	In this one you can see CN tower in the center, which is where we headed next.
Megumi about to enter CN tower. I think she hates this picture.	A view of the tower from the base. CN tower is supposedly the tallest man-made structure in the world.
They have this cool glass floor in the observation deck.	This is looking back toward Toronto from a pier on Center Island. The wooden railings had graffiti written by people from around the world, in many languages.
A view of the Toronto skyline from the island.	This is Queen's Park, behind the Ontario Parliament building.
This place came highly recommended by Megumi's guidebook. (That should tell you something about the Japanese.) We happened upon it on our way back from the Parliament, and snapped this photo.	Back in New York now, the day before Megumi returned to Japan. On September 21, we took a visit to the World Trade Center site.
You can see a glimpse of the destroyed towers in these pictures, but no photo can accurately convey the sense of being there. We were among hordes of people trying to get a closer look. There were police officers there to keep people moving.	The walls of nearby buildings were plastered with dust. A stench permeated everywhere throughout the area, and many people wore masks. We sat down for lunch in a nearby cafe, but couldn't stay long; the smell really gets to you after a while.
	There were lots of missing person photos. At first I didn't think much about it, but after a few hours of walking around seeing them everywhere, it hit me that those were real people who had just recently been alive, but were not anymore. It became hard to look at them.
However, I don't wish to end this set on a negative note. On Wall St., where we had seen some of the same photos, the New York stock exchange building, still surrounded by security (it was not open to the public for a few months), was adorned with an American flag, a symbol of hope and patriotism. The same symbol could be found in the windows of shops and restaurants throughout the city.

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