Happy Canada Day!

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Today was the day of my annual physical examination. A day preceded by weeks of tall tales from co-workers consisting of stool samples, vast quantities of blood being extracted, barium ingestion, prostate examinations, and other equally nerve-wracking procedures. Yet, less than an hour in the clinic, I had emerged unscathed with the distinct pleasure of not feeling violated by medical instruments. In fact, the most difficult part of the whole process was finding the clinic!

Aside: The map that I was given was horrendously incomplete and had the direction of North facing opposite of where it was supposed to be, which led me to a 15 minute walk in the wrong direction before asking an officer at the local 小判 [koban] where I might find the darn place … but I’ll my rant about “maps” in Japan for another day.

The exam was scheduled to start at 10:30, and I had arrived 15 minutes early. They had me change into their preferred clothes from the waist up and, less than 5 minutes after sitting down in the waiting room, I was already being examined by one of the legions of doctors on call at this clinic. マリーンクリニク in Nagoya specializes in annual checkups, so everything was run incredibly efficiently. There were at least 40 people waiting with me to be called, and every doctor had their own area of specialty. I managed to see five of them in 45 minutes before hearing those wonderful words that let me escape from the incredibly clean confines of the building: 終わった [edit].

Because I’m under 35, my exam was relatively simple. It consisted of a urine check, eye exam, BMI check, blood pressure check, height and weight check, health and lifestyle consultation, and chest X-Ray. Had I been 35 or older, I would have needed to drink some barium to check circulation, be subject to a prostate exam, and submit a stool sample. Suffice to say, I’m not looking forward to 2014.

All in all, the exam was not nearly as painful or humiliating as my co-workers had made it out to believe, which means that you shouldn’t always listen to people when walking into the unknown. As far as I can tell, aside from a terribly poor vision score, I am relatively healthy. The 6 kg weight gain in the last 12 months wasn’t quite what I wanted to see, but this will be motivation enough for me to start exercising again. If I truly want to get back into programming full time, I can’t let my waistline grow too much. A few hours of cycling up and down the hills near my home will do a world of good.

Have you had an exam in Japan? Was it everything you expected?

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The Auto Industry

The auto industry would probably shut down completely if they were responsible for the actions of their customers. Companies would need to monitor their customers at all times to make sure that they weren’t speeding through school zones or drinking too much before getting behind the wheel. Offenders would need to get a strongly worded letter from the company asking them to consider the consequences and also let them know what kind of punishments might occur in the future if they didn’t heed the warning. Cars like Toyota’s Prius would need to communicate with a central database to see if it’s allowed to start up, or whether the vehicle should be restricted to a certain speed on city roads. The number of restrictions that would likely occur due to the nature of most city drivers would undoubtedly result in a lot of angry people taking public transit, car pooling, or just not going to work. The roads would be less crowded, there would be less air pollution, our traffic police would have an easier time of identifying the worst offenders, the advocates at MADD would be ecstatic, and the world would be an altogether better place because drivers would pay much more attention to how they used their vehicle.

Everybody would win … except the customer.

The Energy Industry

Similar to the auto industry, the oil industry would need to make sure that people were not breaking any laws while using their fuel. Just imagine a world where Shell is hit with a lawsuit because they sold gasoline to terrorists who used it as an incendiary device in some random suicide bombing. Not only would the oil industry pull out of every 3rd world country, but it would likely start limiting the amount of fuel each person was permitted to buy just to prevent such atrocities from happening. Insight and Prius owners wouldn’t mind much, but anyone with more than 4 cylinders under the hood would run into serious commuting problems pretty quick. Lord help you if you’re a service technician or taxi driver who spends several hours a day on the road.

But think of the benefits! Again, because people would not have access to as much fuel (whether it’s gasoline, natural gas, kerosene, or any other flammable fuel) there would be fewer people driving on the road. On top of this, there would be a surplus of oil in storage which would drive the cost of a barrel down to some ridiculously low value. The corporate kings that run these multi-billion dollar profit-earning mega-corporations would have less money to throw around which, potentially, could reduce the amount of money that terrorist organizations receive (since people seem to think that Arabian oil companies are directly financing terrorism).

The Weapons Industry

Here’s a market segment that would shut down and go underground faster than the owners of a spamming botnet. What company would want to be held legally responsible for every person that was killed by their products for reasons other than self defense?

Enough said.

The Entertainment Industry

Hmm … here’s an interesting thought. What if music companies were held responsible for all the crimes supposedly instigated by violent lyrics in the songs they promoted? What if movie and studios were held responsible for every person that said “I learned how to build this IED (Improvised Explosive Device) on CSI.” Naturally, neither the music or movie industries are suggesting we go out and murder people, employ acts of unspeakable violence, or pass the time with other illegal activities … but they sure make it look like fun!

In my mind, this is little different than ISPs allowing people to share data amongst each other … legal and otherwise. Our ISP doesn’t suggest we rent CDs, DVDs, or other media only to rip them to some digital format and share that data with hundreds or thousands of others … but they sure make it easy!

The Police Exist for a Reason

At the end of the day, it’s not the job of a provider to police their services so long as those services do not put people in harm’s way. Yes, I’ll admit that downloading content that is not under some sort of public license or in the public domain is illegal and can harm people financially, but the grossly exaggerated examples that I have listed above show that many industries let people do far worse to each other than downloading intellectual property. If people use their vehicles in an unsafe manner, a nation’s law enforcement agencies will step in to take action. If people abuse different forms of energy for purposes other than those intended, a nation’s law enforcement agencies will step in to take action. If people buy weapons and proceed to decrease the planet’s surplus human population, again, law enforcement agencies will step in to take action.

The police exist for a reason. Use them.

If a torrent site exists and it’s allowing people to distribute incredible sums of material illegally, the infringed upon company needs to inform the police and have them either shut down the website, or use the website to collect the IP addresses of several thousand pirates and take them all down. It’s not the fastest way to prevent the illegal distribution of material, but it’s the most viable option available. Is it bad for PR? Oh, yes. But so is drinking and driving and Toyota’s doing just fine.

Companies have the right to protect their work from theft, just like I have the right to protect the code I write for my employer from being illegally distributed. That said, I would never expect an ISP (or flash disk manufacturer) to help me protect that intellectual property from falling into the wrong hands.

The entertainment industry needs to calm down a little and employ some smart people to find a solution to this problem. It won’t be easy, but there are always options.

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Let me first start by stating that I’ve enjoyed your programs for several years, and have even used your language training programs to help me with the Japanese language. My wife has watched your programs and enjoyed your radio programs for years as well. Not a day goes by where we don’t both sit down and watch at least one hour of your programming. However, it seems that we have a bit of a problem that must be resolved when it comes to the shady practice often referred to as The NHK Tax.  I understand that you use the NHK Tax, also known as a “Receiving Fee”, to “provide views and opinions that are not swayed by any government or organization”, but must you do it in such an underhanded fashion?

A collector on your behalf came to my home today after 8:30 PM and insisted on being heard while my wife an I ate our dinner.  I should mention that this particular individual should be commended for his diligence, as he’s been stopping by at least once a week for the last six months.  But I cannot accept how the man presents himself.  First off, he doesn’t wear a uniform or look like a representative of NHK.  Second, related to the first issue, he has been scaring my wife by persistently ringing the bell for ten to fifteen minutes whenever he’s come by.  If I’m gone to work, she doesn’t answer the door.  There have been too many attacks on women in their own homes for my wife to trust any male that she does not know.  Third, this guy looks scary.  Seriously.  When I opened the door, I thought he was going to either stab me, or begin cursing me out for being an “unwelcome invader to Japan”.  Fourth, he didn’t properly introduce himself.  As an introduction, he pulled out an ID card from his pocket that was so obscured by the unnecessary neck strap that I couldn’t read it at all.  This is hardly the professional manners that I’ve come to know and love in Japan.  Finally, he has way too much personal information stored on his Toshiba PDA.  During our brief conversation he took out his little computer to show me proof that he knew I had a TV in the house and, while he was navigating through the software to get my name, I could read the names, phone numbers, addresses, and other details of quite a few of my neighbours.  Considering how much press there has been all over the world with data confidentiality, one would have hoped that a company as large and respected as yours would ensure that third-party collectors would abide by certian rules.

Let me reiterate that I do watch NHK and, because of this, I would agree to pay for the content as it’s a legal requirement.  But there is something that I would like to see first, and it’s really quite simple: a monthly, semi-annual, or annual statement.  Let me pay on my own terms, without some guy showing up at my door.  Better yet, why not make it part of the monthly cable bill?  Not only would this save you lots of hassle, but it would get rid of that little problem you have of people refusing to pay because of your scandalous history and receiptless transactions.  On top of this, it would solve the five problems that I previously outlined.

I believe that organizations and people should be paid for goods and services rendered, unless of course they’re part of GPL or the public domain.  However, with such a shady system in place, I can’t help but feel like this NHK Tax is little more than a legalized 俺俺 (Ore-Ore) scam.

If you’d like to get your money from me, send me a proper bill and I’ll be sure to stop by Circle-K on my way to work.

Thank you,

Jason F. Irwin
June 8, 2009

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It’s a pretty good question, and the solution is one that I’ve had to employ several times over the last few years.

Disclaimer: As with any other solution you would find on the internet, this is not a “one size fits all” answer.  The code that I am going to show has been overly simplified and should be used as a starting point to your solution.  That said, if you have any questions about the code, I’ll do my best to answer them.

How It Works

The idea behind this solution is rather simple.  Pass some information to a PHP file on a server using a WebRequest in VB, and build a DataTable dynamically using the XML data returned from the web.  There are no security checks built into any of this code, but that can be added later.

So, with all that stuff said, let’s take a look at the PHP code that we’ll be using.

<?php$rptID = $_POST['reportid'];
$toDate = $_POST['todate'];//Connect to the database
$db = mysql_connect("localhost","your_username","your_password");
mysql_select_db("your_database");

//If information exists, write it out as XML
If($rs = mysql_fetch_row($res)) {
do {
echo "<Detail>";
echo "<id>".$rs[0]."</Code>";
echo "<LastName>".$rs[1]."</LastName>";
echo "<FirstName>".$rs[2]."</FirstName>";
echo "<Whatever>".$rs[3]."</Whatever>";
echo "</Detail>";
} while($rs = mysql_fetch_row($res));
mysql_close();
}
echo "</Report>";
?>

As you can see, this code is as plain as it gets.  We have two variables, a MySQL Query, and the result set is returned in XML format.  Of course you’ll probably want to change the MySQL query to something that’ll work on your own database….

The VB Code

The next thing we’ll look at is the code in VB.net.  The example here is using VS2005 with the .NET 2.0 Framework.  It’s nothing fancy, and it should be forward compatible right up to the 4.0 Framework due out with VS2010.

The first thing we’ll do is create a super simple class that will access the PHP file.

Imports System
Imports System.Net
Imports System.Text
Imports System.XmlPublic Class clsAPI#Region " Class Variables "
Private xURL As String ' URL to Call
Private xPostData As Object ' Post Data to send to API
Private xResp As String ' Response from PHP API
#End Region#Region " Properties "
Friend Property URL() As String
'Target URL
Get
Return xURL
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As String)
xURL = NoNull(Value)
End Set
End PropertyFriend Property PostData() As Object
Get
Return xPostData
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As Object)
xPostData = Value
End Set
End PropertyFriend ReadOnly Property XMLResponse() As String
Get
Return xResp
End Get
End Property
#End Region

There’s not a whole heck of a lot to this class, so feel free to add all the properties, methods, and everything else that should be in here with a proper application.

The Other Functions…

From here, we need to add two simple functions to a form (or anywhere else) to access the class.

Friend Function doAPIQuery(ByVal tProcName As String, ByVal tPostQuery As String, ByVal ResultName As String) As DataTable
'Function Queries the Online Database and Returns a DataTable
Dim ds As New DataSet("ds")Try
Dim wbg As New clsAPI
With wbg
.PostData = tPostQuery
.URL = "http://www.whateveryoursiteis.com/" & tProcName
.Connect()'Construct the Columns from the XML Nodes
Dim dt As New DataTable
ds = CreateDataSetFromXML(.XMLResponse, ResultName)'Create a StringReader and Pass the XML Response through it
Dim sr As New StringReader(.XMLResponse)

And that’s that. To have data returned from the PHP file that we created earlier we would need only to create a DataTable and populate it like so:

Dim dt as new DataTable("Result")
dt = doAPIQuery("whatever.php", "reportid=99&todate=2009-05-24", "Result")

The doAPIQuery function sends and receives data through the API class, and the CreateDataSetFromXML function reads that XML response and converts it into a DataTable that can be used anywhere in the application. Heck, the way this code is presented, there would be little problem adapting this if you wanted to create 100 different PHP files to do different functions and return different result sets.

Is this the best way to have a VB-based application communicate with an online MySQL database?  Like everything else in the world, it depends.  Some would argue that this method is the lazy man’s way out of doing the job right, while others would argue this method would be sufficient for small custom applications built for a small business.  At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what the best solution is while designing an application.

That said, if you believe you have a better way of getting VB and MySQL to communicate without granting direct access to the database server over the web, I’d love to hear it.

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This post is the second in a short series outlining how anyone can take measures to simplify WordPress installations on shared or private hosting solutions, improving security and reducing maintenance time.

Yesterday I showed one possible way to host multiple WordPress blogs with a single installation and today I will show you an easy way to merge WordPress databases, further simplifying any administration we may perform or giving us the opportunity to create some more databases on a restrictive web host plan.  Regardless of what reasons we might have for merging several WordPress databases, this is something that can easily be accomplished in the same amount of time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

In my case, I had over 20 MySQL databases for the various blogs I had set up for friends and family that I no longer wanted to see.  Why I had 20 databases for sites that would see maybe 10 updates a year, I don’t know, but I’ve recently taken the track of keeping personal servers running as clean and efficiently as the production-level servers I had once maintained.

WordPress Export/Import vs. SQL Dumps

One of the most common ways for people to go about merging databases would be to start with a new one, assign some different table prefixes, have WordPress export existing data, and then re-import it into the new database.  While this is certainly one way to attack the situation, the WordPress export will ignore some of the datatables used by various plugins.  So, in an effort to reduce data loss and site reconfiguration, I would suggest using something like phpMyAdmin or MySQL Administrator to first export all the data from the different databases you want to merge. From here we can create a new database and begin to import the data.  We can gave this new database a generic name like ‘general’ or ‘family’, and then import the previous databases one at a time.

Ah, but each database has the same tables, you say?  And each table is prefixed with the same “wp_” you say?  This is really easy to change.  After each SQL import, you can rename the tables in phpMyAdmin or MySQL Query Browser with the following code:

RENAME TABLE orig_name TO new_name;

In my case, I wrote this once for the ten main WordPress tables, and then executed the query against the database after uploading the .sql file.  If there were other tables, from plugins and whatnot, I would issue a few more RENAME statements.

With yesterday’s post I had shown how, if we’re using just a single installation of WordPress, we can change the database name and prefix based on the $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] value.  So if you want to merge installations and databases at the same time, you just need to make sure that the table prefix in config.php matches the prefix that you’re changing the imported tables to. For example:

case “sub1.YourDomain”:
$pre = “wp1_”;
$db = “SharedDatabase”;
break;

… would mean we’d type something like …

RENAME TABLE wp_comments TO wp1_comments;

Because WordPress does not use DRI by any stretch of the imagination, we will have no trouble assigning different prefixes to different installations.

Error: You Do Not Have Sufficient Permissions To Access This Page

If you try to access the blog now, you’ll probably find that you can load it just fine.  But you’re not done with the SQL work just yet because the moment you try to access the Admin screens you’ll be faced with a happy little error reading “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page“.

To solve this problem, you need to change some settings in both the options and usermeta tables.  Luckily, we can use these quick SQL statements:

UPDATE wp1_options
SET option_name = REPLACE(option_name, 'wp_', 'wp1_')
WHERE option_name LIKE 'wp_%';

UPDATE wp1_usermeta
SET meta_key = REPLACE(meta_key, 'wp_', 'wp1_')
WHERE meta_key LIKE 'wp_';

Be sure to replace the prefixes accordingly, and you’ll have no trouble logging in to the Admin screens.

Done and Done?

Believe it or not, this is all there is to it.  By following these simple steps, you can quickly merge as many WordPress databases into one big one.  Naturally, you would want to consider whether everyone should have their own separate login and what table permissions they should have, but if you’re just looking for simplicity and not too concerned about security, every blog can have the same username and password. Just remember that if every blog is using the same database and credentials, then you could be begging for trouble if you happen to fall prey to an exploit.

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This post is going to be the first in a short series outlining how anyone can take measures to simplify WordPress installations on shared or private hosting solutions, improving security and reducing maintenance time.

It’s a common problem: We have dozens of WordPress installations on our web server(s), and updating each and every site when a plugin is updated or a new release of WordPress becomes available is a huge time sink.  WordPress MU looks nice but installation is pretty complicated for most people and it’s outright forbidden on most shared hosting accounts.  So what can we do to simplify software management?

Why not run each WordPress site from the very same source?

Madness, you say?  I disagree.  As of this post, I am running 9 web sites with a single installation of WordPress, and there will be another 8 added (a.k.a. rebuilt from backups) over the next week.

Here’s how you do it.

Multi-Site, Multi-Domain, or Both?

The first thing we need to identify is whether you’ll be hosting multiple sites (sub1.example.com, sub2.example.com, etc.) , multiple domains (www.domain1.com, www.domain2.com, etc.), or both configurations.  The reason this is important is because it will play a role in how we set up WordPress’ config.php file and where the installation files are put.  For the sake of this example, I’ll show you how to handle both multi-site and multi-domain.

First, you’ll need to install WordPress to some public-facing directory on your server.  For example, www.YourDomain.com/wp/.  From there, install WordPress normally.  We’ll be making the super-easy changes in a few minutes.

Note: If your main site (www.YourDomain.com) will be using the very same installation of WordPress, be sure to copy the index.php file in /wp/ to your website, making sure that you’re pointing to the WordPress installation folder.  Here’s an example:

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require('./wp/wp-blog-header.php');

Be sure not delete index.php from the /wp/ folder. The original file will be used for every other site.

We’re almost done the hard stuff!  Now it’s time for the sweet stuff.  But, before getting too far ahead of ourselves, we need to answer a question:

Single Database or Multi-Database?

The nice little trick I’m about to show you will allow you to put every blog into a single database, or into multiple databases.  It’s really up to you how you proceed.  For the sake of this example, I’m going to show you how to handle multiple databases, including shared databases.

Add the following code just before the line that reads define ('DB_NAME', 'YourDatabaseName'); :

$host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$parts = explode('.',$host);
if ($parts[3] = "") {
$domain = "www." . $parts[0];
} else {
$domain = $parts[0] . "." . $parts[1];
}switch ($domain) {
case "www.YourDomain":
$pre = "wp0_";
$db = "DatabaseOne";
break;
case "sub1.YourDomain":
$pre = "wp1_";
$db = "SharedDatabase";
break;
case "sub2.YourDomain":
$pre = "wp2_";
$db = "SharedDatabase";
break;
case "www.DomainTwo":
$pre = "wp_";
$db = "DatabaseTwo";
break;
case "sub1.DomainTwo":
$pre = "sub1_";
$db = "DatabaseTwo";
break;
}

From here, we need to  put the variable names into the declaration lines like so:

define('DB_NAME', $db);
$table_prefix = $pre;

We’re almost done!  But, before going further, you have probably noticed that each one of these three databases would need to have the same username and password.  If you want to have different User/Pass credentials for different databases, you can add more variables to the case statement.

Now the magic …

Adding Domains and Sub-Domains

When adding a WordPress-powered domain or sub-domain, simply point the home address to your WordPress installation folder.  For example:

www.YourDomain.com -> /
sub1.YourDomain.com -> /wp/
sub2.YourDomain.com -> /wp/
www.DomainTwo.com -> /wp/
sub1.DomainTwo.com -> /wp/

You’re probably noticing that each of these domains will be using the very same wp-content/uploads directory for media.  If this is a problem, it can be changed in WordPress to something more your liking.  In my case, I created yet another sub-domain called “uploads” and pointed it to /wp/uploads/.  From there, each domain has their own subdirectory.  The advantage here is that all uploads are in their own little corner of the server and can be easily backed up or restored in the future.

Done and Done?

So, that’s all there is to it.  This is not incredibly difficult to implement and comes with advantages such as being able to update every blog’s core files and plugins simultaneously.  That said, there are some plugins that will not work well under this configuration.

If your sites experience high traffic volumes and you want to use WP Super Cache, it will only work on one site.  This is because the cache directory is set in wp-content/cache.  Unfortunately, this means that if two pages were to use WP Super Cache, they would write and access conflicting files.  I have also noticed some /tmp accessing problems while using an older version of FireStats, but I’ll be testing the more current releases to see if they’re more friendly to this configuration.

Of course, the biggst disadvantage to this setup would come if you are sharing sites with friends or family.  The newer versions of WordPress allow people to install plugins directly from the admin panel, and this can be a problem if one of these plugins contains a hidden exploit.  Rather than damange just one blog, it could damage many.  However, with proper education, you can make sure that other people do not cause trouble for everyone else.

So there you have it.  A quick and simple way to share one WordPress installation across multiple sites.  In the next installment of this series, I’ll show you how to take multiple WordPress databases and merge them into one big database without doing several Import/Export functions through the WordPress admin screens.

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But I’ll write more about that in the next few days.

I’d like to give a big thank you to Marc Bollinger at MidPhase who hopped on my complaints quickly, and to the rest of the people at MidPhase who isolated the issue and gave me enough time to pull all my data off the server before shutting down the compromised account.

So, on that note, there are still many sites that need to be restored, and several rather large databases that need to be sent back over.

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I don’t believe that the stars guide our lives, but I do believe that we make decisions today without fully realizing just what the consequences will be a decade from  now.

It was more than fifteen years ago when I first told my parents that I would move to Japan.  I also mentioned at the same time that I would be married to an intelligent Japanese woman who would love the fact that I could design houses.  While I may have given up on becoming an architect like my grandfather, the Asia-related decisions were not so easily passed by.

Reiko and I have been legally married for almost a year and a half, but our ceremony was one year ago today.  To mark the occasion, we’ll be visiting the place of our first date, and later walking the 100 meters to the place where we got married.  Yes, they are that close together. And no, we didn’t have our first date at a wedding planners’

We’ve had many good times, and even a few bad.  We’ve overcome obstacles, barriers, and sicknesses.  There were times when we were incredibly angry with each other, but this is rarely the case.  And, if I had a chance to go back in time and do everything all over again …

… I would still get married to my wonderful Reiko-chan.

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So, with Golden Week in Japan fast approaching, it was only right for the Mrs. and I to plan another trip to Japan’s Ancient Capital as the weather warmed up to something a little more comfortable.  However, unlike the super stressful first visit, we wanted to take things a little slower and enjoy the time spent together.  Luckily, there are many great things that couples can do when visiting the nation’s second largest city.

For day one of our trip, we planned to do just three things.  Visit 嵐山(Arashiyama), ride on the トロッコ (Romantic Train), and see 二条城 (Nijō Castle).

Taking a 人力車 (Rickshaw) To Arashiyama

The first place we wanted to visit was Arashiyama.  According to what we had heard, as well as the many maps we had available, it was supposed to be really close to 嵯峨駅 (Saga Station).  They weren’t kidding.  Just outside of the station, a Rickshaw runner told us that it would be about a 10 minute walk, or 3000円 if we were to take the more scenic route.  Naturally, we opted for the scenic route.

True to her word, ten minutes later we were at Arasiyama and enjoying the incredible spectacle of green mountains, a wide river, and relatively few tourists.  It was truly a place worthy of keeping reserved for only the noble lords of old.

Riding the トロッコ (Romantic Train)

Next on our list was the Romantic Train.  This is something that we’ve seen in every Kyoto travel book and have always wanted to try.  Sure, the train doesn’t really go anywhere in particular, but it’s a really nice ride through the mountains with some spectacular scenery.  Even though many of the 130 pictures we snapped from the train were great, I can’t help but wonder just how much more amazing it would have been had the Mrs. and I gone during Cherry Blossom season, or in the midst of autumn.

Well … this is something that we’ll keep in mind when we have the opportunity to visit Kyoto again.

If you do have the chance to take the Romantic Train, I would definately recommend it.  For only 600円 you get to ride for 20 minutes through some of the most natural scenery one expects from a country like Japan.  Incredible mountains, powerful rivers, and the occasional 狸 … what more could you ask for while spending some quality time with someone you love?

二条城 (Nijō Castle)

I have never been, nor will ever be, incredibly powerful and wealthy.  That said, I do enjoy touring places that the incredibly powerful and wealthy once enjoyed.  Nijō Castle is best known for the 鴬張り (Nightingale Floors) in Ninomaru Palace and, despite my best attempts to walk without making a sound, there were a few boards that could not resist broadcasting my presence to all within earshot.  One is forced to wonder just how ninjas got around this little problem with ease….

Although the inside of Ninomaru Palace was nice, the gardens out the back were incredible.  One of the many things that I appreciate about gardens in Japan is the simple beauty that many of them portray.  Not only is everything nicely balanced on a small scale, but each one is an oasis from the hassles of everyday life.  I can’t tell you how many times the Mrs. and I said how much we wanted to have our own little oasis after building a home … mostly because we didn’t count.  If you do have a chance to visit this symbol of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s power, be sure to take some extra time to tour the gardens.

Crashing at the Hotel

After all is said and done, the Mrs. and I must have traversed well over 10 kilometers by foot, which left us itching for some sleep before heading out to find dinner.  We’re staying at the New Miyako Hotel near Kyoto Station in the newly built South Wing and, I must admit, it has to be the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed at in Japan.  The hotels in Osaka and Tokyo were nice, but none were quite as comfortable as this one.  We have a big room, fast internet, and a relatively large bathroom.  Aside from not having breakfast or an onsen included with the ridiculously low hotel rate, it’s everything we could have asked for.

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