Sayonara to Japan

May 28, 2009

Last day in Japan :(

After packing everything up, we left Nara and went to Osaka. Tamas was staying at a hotel there, so we were able to leave our luggage in his room. This is by far the smallest hotel room I've ever seen. His "room" is just big enough for a person to sleep. Very minimalistic - just tatami mats, and sheets and a mat for sleeping (well, and a tv - every hotel room in Japan seems has a tv).

(picture from Tamas)

We took the train one stop over to see the arcade in Osaka. This was one of the bigger and busier arcades I've been to. There were some funny restaurants and advertisements.


Soon it was time for me to go to the airport and say bye to Tamas and Japan. Tamas will be staying a few extra days to stay in a temple in Mount Koya and hike in Wakayama. On the flight back, I had no problem sleeping and I soon woke up in San Francisco. My parents are awesome and visited me at SFO, even though I only got to see them for about an hour. It was funny because I had bought mochi for them, but my mom also brought me mochi - so we traded :) One more flight, and I was back in Baltimore.

Overall, this Japan trip was amazing. It was a great professional and personal experience. I loved playing with the robots, sampling the food (especially the mochi!), staying in Japanese-style rooms, seeing everything from beautiful moutain temples to the crazy crowds of Tokyo. And of course, there's so much more that I haven't done or seen yet...but that's for next time :)

Nara

May 27, 2009

We started off the day with a cute Japanese-style breakfast at our ryokan. There were a bunch of little dishes, rice, miso soup, and tea. It was interesting to try so many different flavors - from sweet to salty to whatever taste pickled veggies have - so early in the morning (8:30am was on the later end of when breakfast was served!)


We walked around Nara and visited many temples today. The first was Kofukuji Temple, and here we began to see deer everywhere. The deer in Nara are considered to be national treasures. These deer seemed to be well-behaved, content with eating the grass surrounding the temple - unlike the little beggars in Miyajima. Every shop and stand was selling stacks of senbei (deer crackers), so we decided to buy some. Turns out our first impression of the Nara deer was very very wrong. They were even worse! Some would nudge us with their antlers and others even bit our shirts!


The coolest temple was Todaiji Temple, which has a huge Buddha statue sitting in the world's largest woodest structure. In the gate in front of this temple, there are two huge wooden guardians - they're probably the most impressive wooden statues I've ever seen. In the back of the temple, there's a column with a hole cut out in the bottom, the same size as the Buddha's nostril. If you can crawl through it, you'll supposedly reach enlightenment (we made it!)


We saw many other temples as we hiked through the hills and side streets. Another impressive one was Kasuga-Taisha Shrine, which had pathways through the forest that were lined with thousands of lanterns. Nara Park was also nice, especially with the gazebo on the lake. Another thing about bathrooms (I know I've made lots of comments about this already), but I really can't stress enough how nice Japanese bathrooms are. The one in the park, for example, even had a little garden in it!

Tonight we moved to a hostel since our ryokan only had availability for one night. This hostel has a great, quirky atmosphere. It's funny because we had a private Japanese-style room, but it was really just an enclosed area of one of the bunkbed dormatory-style rooms.

Himeji

May 26, 2009

This morning we boarded the train to Himeji to see the castle. It's actually really big - 6 stories tall - and each floor is very spacious. After touring the castle, we walked through the arcade (here, arcade means a covered street of shops and restaurants). We tried a local favorite – okonomiyaki – at a restaurant in the basement of a department store. It’s like a pancake with noodles, egg and cabbage.


Our visit to Himeji was pretty short, and we were soon on our way to Nara. In Nara, we're staying in a ryokan which used to be a geisha house. You can tell it's old, but I really like the atmosphere of the place. In our room, there was hot tea waiting for us. We have a room on the second floor facing the cute garden in the center of the ryokan. They have Japanese-style baths, with mini shower stations for washing with shampoo and soap, and a hot bath for soaking.

Miyajima

May 25, 2009

In the morning, we took a boat to the island of Miyajima, famous for its “floating” red torii. This was probably one of my favorite places. The island is beautiful, with amazing temples and hungry deer that follow you around, begging for food (we found out that they also eat paper…). In the morning, we walked around Itsukushima-jinja Shrine (which is also surrounded by water during high tide) and watched the water recede from around the torii. Once it was low tide, we were able to walk under the torii. I also had fun watching all the little hermit crabs – I saw one crab drag another crab away and shake it out from its shell.


I liked walking through the small streets of Miyajima because the buildings are more traditional and there are no tall, modern buildings around. We also found the giant rice paddle!


The remainder of the day was spent hiking up Mount Misen. We passed many shrines and little statues with offerings along the way. My favorite shrine was Daisho-in. This shrine was gorgeous and there were tons of different statues scattered around the different buildings, in the grass, and among the rocks. I thought all the little Buddha statues were especially cute.


At the top of the mountain, we got a great view of Miyajima. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any monkeys at the top because it was too late in the day.


After hiking back down the mountain, we decided to wait for the tide to come back in to see the torii against the night sky. The little lanterns lining the shore added to the beautiful scenery.

Hiroshima

May 24, 2009

After dropping our luggage off at our hostel, we set off to explore the city. We walked around the Peace Memorial Park. There were different monuments for the victims of the atomic bombing, many of which had tons of colorful origami cranes strung on a string. At the Children’s Peace Memorial, children from all over the world have folded paper cranes to be added to the memorial.

We also went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The museum had personal belongings from people in Hiroshima during the bombing, firsthand accounts of what had happened that day, information about why Hiroshima was chosen as the first target, and models and pictures of what the city looked like before and after. I thought it was a really sad, but good museum. After the museum, we also saw the A-Dome.

Afterwards, we went to the Hiroshima-jo Castle. The original castle had of course been destroyed during the war, so this was just a reconstruction. We got a great view of the city from the top.

More craziness in Tokyo

May 23, 2009

It was nice to get away to some quiet towns in the mountains for a few days, but now we were ready to face the crowds of Tokyo again. We started off the morning with some shopping in Ginza at Uniqlo. We also played with some of the new gadgets in the Sony Building. My favorite was a camera that allowed you to take panoramic pictures just by panning the camera over the desired area, rather than taking multiple pictures.

Then we went to the East Imperial Garden and caught a glimpse of the Imperial Palace.

The rest of the day was sensory overload, beginning with Shibuya. Shibuya Station and the surrounding area seemed even more crowded than Tokyo Station. Also, you don’t see as many businesspeople in suits anymore, but all different types of fashion. When we first exited the station, the area didn’t seem as lively as I expected it to be – Shibuya is supposed to be a huge shopping area. After turning a few corners, we found ourselves right in the middle of all the excitement – shoppers walking everywhere, people yelling out advertisements for their stores in the streets (even two ladies dressed up in kimonos playing drums), and tons of lights and signs. To get back to the train station, we had to cross the main intersection in front of the station. There were gigantic herds of people at each corner, and when the cars stopped, literally thousands of people filled the intersection.

Next stop was Harajuku, where I saw even crazier clothing and hairstyles. I enjoyed walking through the crowds and people watching. We also went to a huge 100 yen store, where they sell pretty much anything you can think of (for about one dollar).

Once the sun started to set, we went to Shinjuku to try and get a view of Tokyo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Unfortunately it was pretty overcast, so we couldn’t see any mountains in the background – just building after building after building.

Back at the house, we packed up and said goodbye to everyone, then we were on our way to Hiroshima by an overnight train. Unfortunately, we were misdirected and boarded a bullet train instead of our slower overnight train. We were able to get off at a later stop and catch our original train, but we had to wait 2 hours at the station. Turns out our overnight train beds were super uncomfortable too – pretty much just a hard, narrow cubicle for you to sleep in, with a little blanket. After another transfer, we finally arrived in Hiroshima.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil

May 22, 2009

Tamas' cousin's daughter took a day off from school today to come with us to Nikko. Nikko is a bit farther away from Tokyo than Hakone and Kamakura, but there are some amazing temples there. The temples are up in the mountains, surrounded by tall cedar trees. First we walked around in a pretty Japanese-style garden.



The main temple that we visited was Tosho-gu, which was built as a memorial to a Japanese warlord. These buildings were unlike any of the other temples and shrines I had previously visited. There was lots of intricate detail, and everything was very colorful with lots of gold.


We saw the famous "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" monkeys carved into Shinkyusha.


In Honji-do, there was a huge dragon painted on the ceiling. A monk hit two sticks together, which made a high-pitched echoing noise. Supposedly, the accoustics of the building are supposed to make it sound like the roaring of a dragon, but I didn't think it sounded like one.

Again, there were lots of schoolkids here. A group of them approached Tamas and asked him some basic questions about his background in English (his name, where he's from, etc.). Afterwards, they all thanked him and one even shook his hand. They completely ignored me though. I noticed that they only go up to people who are not Asian.