Kyoto and Nara

Last weekend I went to Kyoto and Nara with my parents and Mark. We left Monday morning and that evening we visited the Golden Temple, kinkaku-ji, which is in the bottom picture. It was originally a retirement villa for a shogun, but now I guess it's a Zen temple (thank you, wikipedia). It's covered in gold leaf, so it's a really striking structure, and I enjoyed seeing it again (I also visited it last time I was in Japan, three years ago).

The next day we went to Nara, which is famous for its big Buddha statue and herds of tame deer. The deer are actually pretty pushy and as soon as they saw me going to buy food they surrounded me and put their pushy little faces in my bag. One of them even bit me, which surprised the heck out of me, but I guess they know an easy target when they see one. They are all trained to bow their heads for food though I didn't know that at the time so I didn't get to try it out. The picture above the Golden Temple is of the building that houses the big Buddha and that's me lighting incense before going in.

That afternoon Mark and I went to Kiyomizu Temple, one of the most popular temples in Kyoto. It's on a hillside supported by big stilts (you can kinda see them in the top picture) and it gives you a really nice view of the city. The second picture shows three waterfalls coming from the hill that you can drink from. You can get one of three things, depending on which fall you drink from: money, beauty, or wisdom. We didn't know which was which but found out later that I drank from money and Mark drank from wisdom.

Thanks for reading! Next week we leave for Vietnam and I can't wait for that! I'll post pictures when we get back.

Cate

Tokyo

Here are a few pictures from Tokyo, which I visited with my parents the weekend before last. They arrived in Japan on Saturday and I took the train to meet them on Sunday. That day we went to dinner with my old host family in Tokyo and met their two current students, which was a lot of fun. The next day we mostly just walked around a few of my old favorite neighborhoods and enjoyed people-watching and window-shopping. The first two pictures are from Harajuku, a neighborhood that is popular with young people for great shopping (and is now very famous thanks to Gwen Stefani, I guess). The bottom picture is Shinjuku at night, which I like because it's got all the neon that people expect of Tokyo. That picture was taken in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku's red-light district, though it doesn't feel as sketchy as other red-light districts I've seen (still, I wouldn't walk there along late at night)

After Tokyo my parents came back to my town, Fukuyama, and they did some sightseeing in the afternoons while I was at work. Then Monday we went to Kyoto along with my boyfriend, Mark, and I plan to post pictures from that little trip soon.

But that's it for now, thanks for reading!
Cate

Osaka

Last weekend Mark and I had to go to Osaka to get our tourist visas for our trip to Vietnam, and we decided to see the sights while we were in the big city. We went up Sunday morning and spent most of Sunday afternoon wandering around an area called American town, which is the hip, young shopping area. It reminded me of being back in Tokyo and shopping in Harajuku, actually, so that was neat. There wasn't actually anything very American, unless you count lots of t-shirts that say USA or have random states or confederate flags on them, and you see those everywhere, but there was a statue of liberty on top of a building (the second one I've seen in Japan; there's one on Odaiba, too). We had some beer tastes and edamame at a Kirin restaurant when we got tired of walking (the first picture at the top). That evening we had okonomiyaki, which is like a big pancake with cabbage and seafood. Osaka is famous for food, so I wish we'd had more chances to eat out, but we didn't have a lot of time.

Monday morning we checked out of our hostel (nothing stinks like very old tatami mats, but you can't beat 3000 yen - about 25 dollars - for a night in Osaka) and went to find the consulate. That was a fun adventure because addresses in Japan are not sequential. Every city is divided into wards and then each ward is divided into numbered boxes and then the boxes are divided once more, so you find the ward, then use the zipcode to find the area, which gives you a square block and you just have to find your place. After that we went to Osaka's famous aquarium, Kaiyukan, which is one of the world's largest. That was fun, though it actually wasn't the best aquarium because the displays didn't look very natural and a lot of the tanks seemed too small, especially for the dolphins and penguins. We had a good time discussing which would be the worst tank to be dropped into - the giant crabs with huge skinny legs or the creepy, crawly jellyfish.

Finally we stopped by Namba, Osaka's entertainment district. I've heard it's also the place with the highest concentration of love hotels anywhere in the world. We had fun looking at those, though I've read that love hotels are in the process of going up-market and are therefore getting less interesting (it's getting more difficult to find a hotel shaped like a whale or a spaceship, for example). Anyway, the picture at the top is the sign at one called Bali, which I took because it shows the options - you can go for a "rest" (from one to three hours) or stay longer. The next picture was a hotel called Mickey Cookies which had an all-pink room. Surprisingly the area is not too seedy, though I imagine it changes a bit at night.

Thanks for reading!
Cate