Sayonara Japan

Thanks very much for reading my blog! I've been home for about two weeks now, so this will be my last post. I'll leave you with three of my favorite pictures of Japanese English. The flying pan cover came from a big discount store near my house and the green content of crab head is from a sushi place in Kyoto. The menu notice about horidays was in a curry shop in Kurashiki.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, I really enjoyed writing it!
Catie

Onomichi

Onomichi is a little port town about an hour from Hiroshima. It's famous for having a very, very high concentration of temples, and there's a big loop walk that takes you to see most of them. Our guidebook warned that the temple walk takes most of a day and that you'll be sick of temples by the end, so we opted to walk to the beginning of the ropeway (seeing a few temples along the way) and take the little cable car to the top of the hill for a view of the sea. We saw plenty of temples on the way to the ropeway and it was nice to see the pretty, pink plum blossoms which are blooming at the moment. The views from the top of the hill (the third picture) were really spectacular and I've heard they're even more extraordinary when the cherry trees are blooming, but cherry blossom season hasn't started yet.

Thanks for reading! I'll write one more post about Japan and then I'll have to stop because I'm home in America now.
Catie

Kobe

After Himeji we spent a night in Kobe, a city famous for its beef. We saw the beef advertised all over, with lots of pictures showing heavily marbled steaks, but we didn't try it, so I can't tell you if the freshest steaks of the best beef in the world are really worth the price (the lowest price we saw was about 50 dollars). Kobe doesn't have too many attractions, so I don't think it's too popular with tourists from outside Japan, but people who live in other Japanese cities like to visit for the shopping, sea views, and nightlife. Apparently a few foreign teachers who lived in the city where I lived visited Kobe and immediately applied for transfers to the Kobe branch of their school.

The first picture I posted shows Kobe's Harborland, which is a tiny amusement park. Next is the Kobe earthquake memorial, which I found very poignant. Instead of creating a memorial, the city preserved a small section of the harbor as it was just after the quake so you can see the devastation firsthand. It's an idea that I think they must have gotten from Hiroshima's famous (and also very poignant) A-Bomb Dome, which is the shell of a government building from very near the epicenter of the bomb, preserved just as it was. The third picture is a view of the Maritime Museum and some of the harbor from our hotel balcony.

Thanks for reading!
Catie

Himeji Castle and Kokoen Garden

These are a few shots of Himeji Castle and the garden next to it, Kokoen. We went on a rainy Tuesday morning and it only took us about two hours to tour the castle and the garden. Himeji Castle is the most famous castle in Japan because it's very well-preserved and very beautiful. Many of the famous castles you can visit in Japan are reconstructions, but Himeji is an actual feudal castle, so it was nice to see it and walk around inside. There are some interesting ghost stories associated with the castle and my favorite was about a servant girl named Kiku who was framed for stealing a dish after she foiled an assassination plot. The would-be assassin framed her and she was tortured to death and then thrown in a well, and apparently you could hear her crying from the well until she was honored as a goddess, which appeased her spirit. The first picture is a view of the city taken from the top of the castle, and the second picture is the castle taken from the grounds.

We also went to the lovely garden next to the castle. We probably wouldn't have bothered with it because it was such a rainy day but we bought the combined ticket for the castle and the garden (admission to the garden was only about a dollar when combined with castle admission) when we went in the castle, so we thought we might as well take a look and I'm glad we did. The garden was divided into small sections, unlike any of the others I've seen in Japan, but the sections were about the same with streams and ponds filled with koi, stone bridges, and trees. The third picture shows my favorite stone bridge and the biggest pond in the garden which was filled with huge koi.

Enjoy the pictures, I'll update soon with pictures of Kobe, where we stayed the night after seeing Himeji. I'm back home in America now, so I'll do two more posts to finish up my pictures and then finish the blog. Thanks for reading!
Catie