Well this morning had to be one of the most depressing times of our trip. We visited the Hiroshima A-Bomb dome and peace memorial. One of the more sobering places was the children’s peace monument. There were lots of school children around a statue of Sadako, who was a little girl who died from poisoning from the bomb and folded over 1,000 cranes out of medicine wrappers. It is believed that if someone folds 1,000 cranes that they will be granted a wish. Her wish was to live, but sadly she passes away at only 12. There were thousands and thousands [View Full Entry]

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This morning Robert decided to try his hand at making Japanese french toast. It was very delicious, the bread here is sooo soft and sliced very thick. We then headed out for Hiroshima via the shinkansen (bullet train) but our first train out from Kyoto to Shin-Osaka was delayed almost 40 minutes. We finally arrived in Hiroshima in the late afternoon. We stayed in Hotel Flex, which was an actual hotel with private bathrooms and all that, so that was a nice change of pace. We ventured out to Okonomi-mura, which is 3 stories of about 30 mini-restaurants, all cooking their [View Full Entry]

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Today was the day that I finally got Robert to go bicycling with me!! It was soooo great, and a much quicker mode of transportation. Our first stop was a temple which was the flea market at Toji temple which they have every first Sunday of the month. There were a lot of interesting things there, and some queer American junk as well. From there we rode to a temple which a monk who spoke fairly good English directed us to. Then we sped through the streets of Kyoto to Nijo Castle where there were a fair amount of foreigners and [View Full Entry]

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Today was certainly an interesting day. We were served a Japanese breakfast, cooked for us by the ryokan owner in her cozy kitchen. Grilled mackerel, egg miso soup, an unidentifiable spinach dish, pickles and rice. It was hot and a nice change to convenience store food. There was a pair of Americans at the inn as well, Debbie & Robert, mother and son from Michigan. They spoke no Japanese whatsoever and of course could not read any at all. At this point we were in a rather rural part of Japan, Ise-shi, so no one at the ryokan could speak [View Full Entry]

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Today was our first full day in Kyoto. We started out the day walking to a few temples nearby. It was pretty neat, but I think I would have to learn how to read Kanji before I could fully appreciate them. From there we went downtown, where the streets were lined with all sort of boutiques, like Louis Vuitton and Armani, it kind of reminded me of South Coast Plaza. We stopped at a toy store where Robert was able to get his hands on a miniature set of his favorite Naruto characters. At this point we realized that Robert’s [View Full Entry]

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We left Kappa Tangoku and headed for Nagoya on our way to Ise. Nothing really exciting happened here. The bullet train was cool those things go 300KMH, about 180 mph. That was neat, and it gave us a chance to write some post cards. When we were sitting at one of the many train stations we have seen there was this little girl who was probably about 4 or 5 walking with her family. She must have never really seen white people or we looked really interesting. She was staring at us as she was walking; she walked right into a [View Full Entry]

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We haven’t had internet access for the past few days, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do! This is the day that we left Asakusa, heading for Hakone. We left our hostel pretty early, around 7 am and got on the subway to Tokyo Central Station. This was right during rush hour and we certainly learned not to do that again. We were literally packed in like sardines into the subway and I felt rather bad taking up so much space with my backpack on. Once arriving in Tokyo we decided to have breakfast at where else, another [View Full Entry]

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We don’t seem to bet getting used to the time change. We up at 4am and for some reason need to take a nap at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. So we get up and take a quick subway ride to this fish market. We get to see the first catches have come in (since were there at 5:30 am) and the shops just starting to open. These people do everything possible with a fish. They dry it and shave it, roast it, pickle it, and cut it up 1000 different ways. They transport the stuff with these [View Full Entry]

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Here are some photos we took on our first morning in Tokyo of the fish market. The sushi was sooo incredibly good, even Robert wants to go back and have some. You know if Robert is begging for raw fish, then it must be good!! [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone! Well we’ve landed safely now and our first evening in Tokyo has been somewhat of an adventure. The plane ride was actually very nice and went by quicker than I thought. There was more legroom than we knew what to do with and the flight attendants actually knew our names and try to cater to our every needs. I love first class! The food was the best plane food I have ever had. Once boarding we had our choice of champagne or an orange juice cocktail, we both chose the orange juice. Then came hot and cold canapés, I’m [View Full Entry]

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