Advertisement
Published: March 12th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Its been a while since I was last a traveller or tourist of any kind so when Mel suggested meeting in Japan I jumped at the idea. What better than catching up in the middle! The last time we saw each other was a couple of years ago when Mel joined me in Aus for a trip up the east coast so a catch up was well overdue.
We arrived within a couple of hours of each other at Japans Narita Airport, we were instantly impressed at how helpful the locals were when we got put on the right train through 2 transfers and then were almost shown to the door by a number of people we accosted for directions. Free of bags we of course went in search of the essentials straight up, food & tea! Our hotel was based in the flashy Ginza district so we did a bit of window shopping in the afternoon, strictly not buying when the cheapest shop was prada!
Our first full day as tourist was raining, and in the Japanese sense of the word, it rained constantly all day. We walked up to the imperial palace but the grounds where shut.
We passed through the Tokyo International Forum which is an amazing space, the architecture is incredible. We spent the rest of the day walking the city streets and checking out the location of the fish market. We had a nice dinner, a couple of glasses of wine to finish the day.
The next morning we were up at 3.30am, impressive after 3 hours kip and headed to the Tsukji Fish Market to see the morning tuna auction. It was well worth the early morning, the auctioneer sounded almost musical in the selling of the massive quantities of huge fish. After a bit of a walk & some breakie we hit Roppongi Hill’s and went up the Tokyo city view. The views over Tokyo were amazing and gave you an appreciation of how massive the city really is. From there we went onto the trendy Harajuku district which was packed with shoppers and after some lunch headed to Ueno and walked round the Ameya yokocho market. The contrast been the different types of shopping was great and was fantastic to see the different foods for sale in the market. In the evening we hit the entertainment district of Shinjuku for
dinner & a couple of drinks before the last metro.
Funnily enough the next day started with a much deserved lie in. Once up we hit the imperial palace which we were lucky enough to see some of the plum trees in bloom. It gave us an idea of how impressive the cherry blossoms would be. From there we hit the stunning Hama-rikyu teien gardens before heading back to the hotel to pack. It’s amazing how far 2 girls can spread their stuff over the space of a couple of days!
Monday morning and we hit Tokyo station to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Shin-Kobe to spend a night with a very old friend, Rieko. Mel & I went to primary school with Rieko and hadn’t seen her for 20 years so we were excited to catch up with her after too long. Rieko met us at the station with her youngest son Minoru. We were joined soon after by her oldest Taichi home from pre-school and Rieko’s mum. It was great to spend some time with Rieko’s gorgeous boys who came out of their shells pretty quickly. That night we had a few beers and met
her husband Toshio. In the morning we also got to catch up with Rieko’s mum & dad. It was awesome to see everyone again and to meet Rieko’s family. Thank you again for all your hospitality and I wish we could have spent more time with you.
From Kobe we headed up to Kyoto. We started by hitting the Kiyomizudera Temple which is a world heritage site. I instantly like Kyoto, and its older buildings and masses of temples, shines and just general character! That evening we tried a Yakinaku restaurant, which is Japanese BBQ. We sat in the floor with a table complete with grill in the middle. The food was awesome, but I am still not sure if that was their preparation or Mel’s BBQing skills!
The next day we headed to Arashiyama and went round the Tenryu-ju temple, the bamboo grove and okochi sanso villa gardens. The bamboo was amazing and the gardens where stunning. From there we headed Fushimi-Inari Taishi which was a highlight for me. It is hard to put into words how impressive it was, it was millions of orange gates, one behind the other which looped themselves up 4.5km into the
mountain and then back round. We estimate we walked through them for about 8-9km. It was stunning and very atmospheric as you got further in and further away from the massive crowds at the start. The atmosphere changed as well as we where there late in the afternoon and the sun began to set.
The next day we headed to Nara, here we saw the Todai-ji giant Buddha, Nigatsu-do temple and the Kasuga Taishi temple as well as a couple of others. The giant Buddha was impressive but my favourite spot by far was Kasuga Tasishi, this was nowhere near as crowded and very pretty. It had masses of lanterns, hundreds inside and outside the temple which made it very different to anywhere else we’d seen. That night we headed out in Gion for a couple (or more) glasses of wine and vodkas. We had a great night after we found our spot in a nice little bar. We met a Japanese politics student who wanted to practice his English. I am not sure if we helped, we taught him about putting hair on you chest when you drink & needing hair of the dog in the morning, followed
up by the aussie classic, suck it up! We also met a group of other students so settled in til after 2am!
The next day was our last day in Kyoto and for me my last day in Japan. We headed round 3 temples in the gion district before heading to the station and dropping our bags. We then headed out to the Nishi Hongan-ji, where we got a great talk about the temple, its history, the building and the religion by one of the priests. We didn’t have long to look round but I definitely learnt alot and wished I could have spent longer looking at everything the priest explained.
I had an awesome trip in Japan and would defiantly like to go back. The people where fantastic, I have never been anywhere where people go so far out of their way to make sure you know where you’re going, one day a couple walked us a good km to make sure we got to where we needed to be. The other thing that struck me was how amazingly clean everything was and how safe we felt walking around despite being in big cities.
It was
also great to catch up with Mel and Rieko. Thanks to both of you (and of course the bank of Mel’s parents) for a great holiday xxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.207s; Tpl: 0.023s; cc: 8; qc: 44; dbt: 0.1184s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb