Japan Day 4: Kyoto some more

Day 4 was also spent in Kyoto. We had a little more time this day as we were taking an evening train back to Tokyo, so there are a lot of pictures in this post. Our first stop was a zen garden along the Philosophers Path (a walk of zen gardens, shrines and other iconic Japanese stops).

The rows above I understand... but I don't know how you get rocks to do this:

We made our way to a large shrine at the end of the path where they have a large gate and aquaducts! You could actually walk along the top of the aquaduct to where they control the water flow. Funnily enough, we could also basically see our hotel from the top of this.

We also made our way to the Nijo Castle, which is in the center of basically city and surrounded by two walls and moats. This is the outer wall and just behind it were several gardens and trees in blossom.

And this is the front of the palace itself. The walkways inside (and sometimes on the outside) of the palace were built so that the floorboards would "chirp" light nightingales. It would warn the guards and the emperor when ninjas or assassins were in the building.

After the palace, we went to "the golden pavilion" which is literally covered in golf leaf and weighs something ridiculous. It is surrounded by gardens as well and walks through the trees. We managed to give away one of our umbrellas here to a group of girls as it was pouring and the 6 of them only had 2 umbrellas (doesn't everyone in Japan carry an umbrella?). In return, they gave us some mochi snacks. =)

Andrew's goal the whole trip to Kyoto was to see a geisha, so we went back to the older district when they would be leaving for appointments. I think this was the most studying he did for any portion of the trip. ;) But we managed to see 3! And I snagged a photo...

We were on our way to a cultural show, which basically did 10 min short sequences of several different Japanese art forms, so you had an introduction to them all, rather than having to pick something. It was great for us as my parents and Andrew had never seen any of the cultural shows before. On our way in, we saw this crazy colored dog playing fetch.

At the show, we saw a tea ceremony, flower arranging (ikebana), instrument demo, traditional dance (pic1), part of a Noh play (pic 2), maiko or apprentice geisha (pic 3) and part of a bunraku play (pic 4). I've actually seen that whole bunraku play before, so it was interesting for me to see a part of it again since I knew the story.

After that, we went back to Tokyo to continue the rest of our adventure!

Japan Day 3: Kyoto

For day 3 we traveled south to Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. We took a train in the morning and had the afternoon to go visit one of the shrines which was influenced by Chinese and Tibetan styles.

There's even one of us, just for you all who don't like that I don't post pictures of myself on this:

 

The walk to get there was decently long and uphill, so there were rickshaws at both the top and the bottom (mostly the top) willing to take you in one direction or the other. And taxis of course.

That night we also walked through the "old section" of Kyoto, which is a street that still has many traditional style homes and restaurants. We were eating with a STeLA friend that night, so we didn't stop to eat there, but it was interesting to walk through

After dinner we walked past Kyoto Tower, but it was closed so we couldn't go in. But from the Kyoto train station, you could take several escalators to the roof and see some great views of Kyoto, so we did that and got this picture from about 1/3 of the way up. 

 Also on the way back from the station, there was a water/laser light show on top of a convenience store. Yes, just randomly on top of these little shops. It was pretty cool. 

More to come!

Japan Day 2: Kamakura

So for day two we went to Kamakura, a shrine about an hour south of Tokyo. It is full of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.


At one of stops along the way to Kamakura, we walked through Engaku-ji with some interesting buildings and gardens. One of the nice parts of the walk though was at the top of the hill was a tea house where we got traditional green tea (maccha) and tried to wait out a rain storm. Unfortunately, the rain didn't really stop. Fortunately, the tea house had extra umbrellas and insisted that we use them to get to the bottom of the hill again.



We stopped at the Great Buddha as well. History lesson from wikipedia: Kōtoku-in, with its monumental outdoor bronze statue of Amida Buddha, is the most famous. A 15th century tsunami destroyed the temple that once housed the Great Buddha, but the statue survived and has remained outdoors ever since.

 Then we continued on to our final destination (arriving just before it closed) at Hase-dera. More from wikipedia on the statues in the picture below that was taken at Hase-dera: The grounds of the temple are home to hundreds of small Jizō statues, placed by parents mourning offspring lost to miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. These statues remain in place for about a year, before being removed to make way for more statues; it is estimated that some 50,000 Jizō statues have been placed at Hase-dera since WWII^[2].

The temple is built on two levels and also includes an underground cave. The cave, called benten kutsu cave, contains a long winding tunnel with a low ceiling and various statues and devotionals to Benzaiten, the sea goddess and the only female of the Seven Lucky Gods in Japanese mythology. This is the entrance to the cave.

Our journey ended that day with walking around Shinjuku and admiring all of the neon lights and activity going on. We found a tempura (天ぷら) restaurant for dinner and feasted on deliciousness. Tempura is lightly battered vegetable, seafood and sometimes chicken and is served with a dipping sauce. Or sometimes they are served in bowls of ramen or udon soups.

 That was day two! We were getting tired already and the journey was just beginning!

Japan Day 1: Tokyo

Day one started with a trip to the Meiji Shrine (one of the largest shrines in Tokyo, and it's right in the heart of the city!), Shibuya (where the large crosswalk is) and Harajuku, which has interesting clothing styles and shopping.

We started the trip with okonomiyaki the evening we landed, one of my absolute favorite dishes from Japan. It's egg, cabbage, other vegetables, and a meat/seafood of some sort. It comes in a bowl and you mix it all together and then cook it yourself! Delicious! If you ever go to Japan and have never been, I highly recommend finding a restaurant that has it and trying it. It's something that, for the most part, you just don't see in the US. Don't be afraid to ask for directions!

The Meiji Shrine is a shinto shrine dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and his wife. The shrine was opened in the early 1900s and is often visited by traveling officials and diplomats. Emperor Meiji did much to open Japan to the rest of the world and presided over a dynamic time as the country transformed from a feudal society to a world power.

Barrels of sake donated to the Meiji shrine. On the other side of the walkway were barrels of wine. They represent a gift of peace and many of them have been at the shrine for over 50 years.

Weddings often take place at the shrine. We saw at least three brides and grooms while we were there. The white gown and headdress the bride is wearing is very common for weddings in Japan at the shrines.

This is the iconic, very large and very busy walkway in Shibuya, Tokyo. Although it's not as impressive at this angle as it is from above. This district is known for having many, many stores and excellent shopping.

This was the ramen cart near our hotel! This man had this little cart on wheels, some stools, a counter and made ramen late at night. We didn't actually get a chance to eat there, but we thought it was pretty awesome. In Japan, people don't tend to "eat on the go". So if you buy food in a convenience store, you're still supposed to sit somewhere (that would have trash cans) and eat it, rather than eat while walking, like many Americans do (just picturing hot dog stands in New York!). However, there isn't a lot of trash on the streets in the city and also very few trash cans.

That's it for Day 1. I'm still planning to reserve facebook for all of the pictures and the blog for the explanations of some of my more favorite things. So if you're on facebook, you'll generally see the same pictures, but these will have more explanation. 

Up next, Day 2: Kamakura Shrine!

I know I promise posts, but this time I'll follow through...

I have some down time, so I'm going to catch up on some very late photos. I'll post a few blogs about Japan, a few about Chicago, a few about Sweden, and we'll see where it goes from there. I'm doing this in preparation for an upcoming trip to Sri Lanka and Thailand this fall, during which I hope to put up pictures more regularly so that people can actually follow.  Full albums of pictures will still be posted on facebook, but this will have more context and story with it.