Crown of Gold

So a three month long saga of dentistry came to an end today.

Just before my trip to Japan last year, I cracked a filling. This unfortunately seemed to happen every year or two. I like to think my jaw has superhuman strength, but really there was probably just some weird Tacoma bridge thing going on.

Anyway, my dentist decided enough was enough with that tooth, and it was time to put a crown on it once and for all. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time before my travels, so I left with a hole in the tooth and the hope of getting in fixed when I could.

There being just one week between my Japan trip and my Christmas trip, that wasn't going to happen, so I still tried to be careful with it for another few weeks.

Then job interview season began. I thought I had a one week window of opportunity. So I had my dentist drill out the tooth where the crown would go, and put on a temporary.

Then I got an interview the week I was supposed to get the permanent crown put in. Time to be careful, and hope the temporary crown lasted. One week went by, and then two. And finally last week, the temporary cracked.

That was bad. Since the hole had been drilled, I could not put any pressure at all on that tooth without it giving me pain. So I went on the job interview, and tried not to seem a complete lunatic chewing on one side of my mouth and occasionally wincing as a stray chunk of food managed to escape and land on my poor tooth.

Today, however, all that came to an end! My dentist put on the permanent crown, and I have to say, it feels great. For the first time in three months, I don't feel a hole in my tooth when I run my tongue across it, and that's a nice feeling. It's a gold crown, and it slipped twice while he was sanding it down to size, so I got to feel how heavy it is. Now to crunch something!

Some guys homes really are their castles

The next day I joined another Sunrise tour--this one a 1-day tour of Kyoto. The itinerary was a history buffs dream--first Nijo Castle which the Shogun had built to occasionally keep an eye on the Emperor.

This was followed by a trip to the Golden Pavilion, and yes, that is pretty much a gold covered pavilion surrounded by lovely gardens and a lake that was essentially a mirror the day we were there.



Next off to the Imperial Palace, still the official residence of the Emperor while in Kyoto.
All this in the morning! Then we had two hours at the Kyoto Handicraft Center (essentially an outlet mall for all the souvenirs from the cheap knick-knacks up to the month's salary jewelry.) This was also were we had lunch--a forgettable buffet. I suppose if I hadn't spent two weeks in Japan the idea of all I could drink Coke might have appealed to me, but I had, so it didn't.

The afternoon began with the Heian shrine, followed by a visit to a temple that contained 1000 statues of Kannon. Finally, we hit the biggest draw in town--Kiyamizu-dera, the Buddhist temple built it seemed on the side of a cliff. It was a great day!