Japan.
|
Japan is a country we keep finding ourselves returning to time and time again. There is something about Japan that is intriguing and inviting. I don't think we can really pin-point exactly what it is, but whatever it is, its hooked us. There is just something about the culture, the people, the language, the energy, the cleanliness, the way people embrace society, and the feeling that Japan has a clear identity as a country, that keeps tempting us to return over and over. It was our first time taking Japan Airlines, and I can say we were not disappointed. They recently started flying non-stop from Seattle to Narita so they had some really good ticket deals. And, of course, when there is a deal on tickets, we buy them! There was a surprising amount of leg room in economy. We could easily stretch our legs and had room to put our carry-on items we needed for the flight under the seat. The food was pretty good and the service was awesome. Also, we got to fly on a the new 787 Dreamliner. The Dreamliner is the plane where the windows tint by themselves and the circulated air contains more moisture so you don't get as dehydrated from the flight. We really could feel a difference in the air quality! Plus, this has nothing to do with the airline, but there was barley any turbulence on the flight, which was the best part for me (Brittany). We landed on time in Narita (about 4PM local time), and headed straight to the Skyliner Express. This train is awesome because it takes you straight into Ueno, Tokyo. In our opinion, Ueno is a good central area to stay since Ueno Station is one of the main stations bullet trains leave from. As a jet-lagged zombie, finding the easiest route to your destination for the first night is a must (less room for error and you avoid sleep deprived arguments about directions. Not like this has ever happened to us or anything, just….you know..advice we have heard ;) ). Anyway, we got on the train, giddy about the ramen we would be devouring in a few hours and excited to try our new, basic, Japanese language skills. After about a 30-minute train ride, we made it to Ueno Station and we grabbed our backpacks and disembarked. Now, the last 3 times we had been to Japan, we have stayed in the Ueno area, so we have a pretty good feel for the layout of the neighborhood. We opened the screenshots of the directions to our Airbnb, calmly discussed the best route to get there (we didn’t have internet at that moment, but our Airbnb host had a wifi egg we were able to use for our time in Tokyo), and started the 10-minute walk to the little apartment we’d be staying at. We found it fairly easily, and headed up to our unit to drop the bags off. We then immediately turned around to go get ramen before we passed out. We made a short walk to the Ameyoko Market and found a little ramen shop we had eaten at in the past. The ramen is made quickly, is yummy, and other than probably being crazy high in sodium, is pretty healthy. We ordered our ramen and gyoza (in Japanese!) and waited for our first real meal in about 20 hours. When the ramen came, we quickly took pictures (yes, we are THOSE people) and ate our ramen, in what I would bet, was close to a world record pace. Since we got to sleep around 9PM, and jet lag rears its ugly head the first day or two, we were up and ready to go at 6AM. Not a lot is open at 6AM other than the world famous Tsukiji Market. It only made sense that we head to the market to get our sushi on. After settling on a restaurant, we went in and had an awesome sushi breakfast (and a little strawberry dessert :P ). Since we had been so immobile the previous day (long flight) we decided to head over to the Todoroki Valley, and do a walk through the little gorge. We had never been to this area of Tokyo before, and we ended up staying there a good chunk of the morning. The vegetation was really green for late October, and the pathways were well maintained. We came across some temples in the area, and since a lot of people weren’t there, we set up our tri-pod and took some pictures :) We were getting hungry, (it haaaad been at least 4 hours since our last meal) and decided to head back closer to a station to find some food for lunch. After a nice stroll along a river (which was crazy to see, since there was debris everywhere from the typhoon that had just wrecked havoc on Japan a few days earlier), we came across a tsukemen restaurant (dipping noodles). The menu was completely in Japanese, so we were a bit nervous to go in. But we took a big breath, put on our big kid pants, and entered the restaurant. We were greeted with startled looks. We quickly ordered our food in Japanese, and we could see the tension just melt from the chef’s face. He was probably relieved he didn't have to speak English and we were relieved to be getting our dipping noodles. Win, win for everybody! That afternoon we ventured over to an area called Nakano Broadway. It has all the old school anime shows and figurines that we know. After getting lost for hours in this labyrinth, we made our way over to Coco Curry for dinner. The next morning we enjoyed coffee in a small coffee shop while we plotted out the area we would hang out in that day. Casey and I both work for Getty Images, and our company has a Tokyo office. We work remotely with some of the people in that office, so we reached out to them before we left to see if they wanted to do a lunch or dinner. We were stoked when they said yes, so we wanted to make sure we could easily get to the Tokyo office around 6PM. We wanted to take a tour of the office and head to the restaurant with the Tokyo locals :). After a bit of planning, we started out our morning at Atago Shrine. This shrine has “lucky” steps to climb up, so, knowing we always need luck, we happily climb the steps, and then contemplated climbing them 10 more times. When we made it to the top there was literally nobody there other than the temple cat and dog. We spent a good ten minutes petting the little guys, before we decided to move on. We took our time walking around the temple grounds sipping coffee and setting up our tri-pod to take pictures. After taking too many pictures to count, and being out of coffee, we left the temple and took a nice morning walk to our next destination, Tokyo Tower! We quickly arrived at Tokyo Tower, which we had never been to on any of our visits to Tokyo. The line was short, and the price was right (about $12 USD), so up we went. I cringed on the elevator ride up and enjoyed the morning views of Tokyo. From the top of the tower, we could see a really large shrine that we had never been to. This was absurd, and quickly needed to be resolved ASAP. After exiting the Tokyo Tower, we made a sprint to the temple we could see from above (ok, it wasn’t a sprint, it was a brisk walk ;) ). The temple was huge, and I couldn’t believe we had never been there. It was called Zojoji Temple and there were quite a bit of people there. As we were setting up our tripod to take pictures an elderly man from a Japanese social outing group came over to practice his English skills with us. After our short stent of conversation, he offered to take our photo and then EVERYBODY waved goodbye! One thing we really like about Japan is seeing how outgoing and active the elderly community is. The elderly community in Japan is one of the healthiest in the world, and we can easily see why. They are very social, eat healthy, and are very active. It was lunchtime, and since we never skip meals in Japan (we probably actually eat more meals in Japan) we decided to go to a soup restaurant that served curry soup. OH MY GOD! Literally some of the best soup we have ever had. The restaurant was really hard to find (it’s in the basement of a business building), but totally worth the search. After indulging in such a delicious meal, we decided we needed to walk a bit. It was starting to get later into the afternoon, and we wanted to make sure we were in the Shinjuku area since that was where the Getty Images Tokyo office was. The Shinjuku area is an easy place to spend some time in and one of the biggest parks in Tokyo is located here. Yoyogi Park is 133 acres and one can easily spend a few hours just walking around enjoying the temples and wooded areas. After our walk through Yoyogi park, it was getting a bit dark, so we decided to head to the Harajuku area to spend the remainder of the afternoon before our dinner. Here is where we came acoss a COOKIE AND MILK BAR!!! Yes, you read that right, cookie and milk bar. It was awesome! We each ordered a bottle and gladly ate a late afternoon snack :) Before we knew it, it was 6PM and time to head to the Getty Tokyo office! It was so cool to meet our fellow colleagues face-to-face. They picked an awesome Shabu Shabu restaurant (where you cook the soup at your table), where we spent a couple hours hanging out and talking. We had a great time and hope to see them on our future trips there. We also stopped by Shibuya on the way back to Ueno. It was raining a bit, so it added bit of shine to the pictures :) It was now our third day in Japan and time to head down south to Osaka. We had never been to Osaka, and we were really excited to spend some time in the second largest city in Japan. It is a three-hour train ride from Tokyo, but on a bullet train, that time goes by fast! It was a clear day and we got a glimpse of Fuji-San as we rode by! Side note, we had done the Fuji Marathon a few years back and got an amazing view of Fuji during a good portion of our run! We have talked to people who have been to Japan numerous times and still have never had the opportunity to see it! The weather just never cooperates with them. I guess they need to go climb those lucky stairs ;) We got Osaka around 4PM. Like I said before, we had never been there, so it took us a little longer to get our bearings and make the walk to our Airbnb. After a few wrong turns, and one or two U-turns, we found our little apartment! We took about an hour to unpack, and decided we would head to the famous Kuromon Market. We connected our phones to our new internet egg and headed out. On our way to the train station, we passed a curry chicken restaurant that looked too good to pass up. We decided right then and there it was dinnertime. After our unplanned dinner stop, we continued onward. We made it to the Kuromon Market where it was sensory overload! There were lights, food, and people everywhere! We weaved in and out of the masses, while enjoying being a part of such a large area of energy! Ohhh, and we did try the Takoyaki (octopus balls) and they WERE NOT our thing. Way way too much sauce for us! The next day we made the hour commute to Nara. I can’t describe how excited we were for this! A huge area filled with temples and DEER! YES DEER! Deer we could feed and pet and love! OMG! When we got to the first entrance there were deer everywhere! We bought a million deer biscuits and started feeding them! Some of thee deer will literally chase you for these biscuits. Also, some of the deer will bow if you bow to them! Like, how cool is that!? I was over the moon to be so close to these guys! We started our walk through the 1,240 acre park. The first large temple we came across was Todaiji Temple (there were still deer everywhere) and we wandered through the huge temple with everybody else. When we were coming out of the temple, we ran into a group of students on a field trip. They waved to us, we waved to them, and the ice was broken! They all took out their English notebooks and asked us questions they were supposed to be practicing during their trip. After we realized how many students there were, we asked to go to the shade and we spent a good half hour answer “Where are you from?”, “Why do you come to Japan?”, What is you favorite Japanese food?” and so on. After making sure everybody’s books got signed, we continued on our way up the hill ahead. From our time in Korea, we learned to always climb the hill! So up we went, and when we got to the top we were rewarded with a view of Nara. We continued our walk down the mountain/hill and were amazed at how gorgeous the area was. Deer were still everywhere and everything was just so clean. The temples were gorgeous and the trails were pretty well marked. We just kept walking and walking and kept coming across more deer and more temples, and more deer and more temples, which for us, was totally our jive! It was sadly getting dark, and we decided it was time to take the most direct route back to the station. We passed by a pond and a deer with huge antlers and finished our walk just as the sun was disappearing : ) The next day was supposed to be a bit rainy. Since we live in Seattle, this didn't bother us much, so we decided to do a city day in Osaka. We had some time before the rain was supposed to come in, so we started our morning at Osaka Castle. The castle was way larger than I thought it would be. It took about two hours to make it through the castle and surrounding area. Definitely a must see in Osaka! After lunch, we made our way over to Shitennoji Temple. We passed lots of shrines and temples on the way there and stopped if they looked worthwhile. One little temple we came across was called Ganzandaishido Temple. There was a graveyard and small human-like statues sporting knitted shawls and hats. I don’t know what the statues signified or meant, but it was something unique we had never seen. After wandering around the graveyard for a while, we entered the main temple site of the area, Shitennoji. It was raining pretty good at this point, but that didn’t stop us from making mad dashes to each of the temple sites. There was almost nobody else there so we had all the time and room in the world to wander through. It was really starting to rain, so we decided to try to find something indoors to do. We pulled out our phones, and saw there was a pier with a Ferris Wheel and an observation deck about 30-45 minutes outside of central Osaka. We hadn’t been on a Ferris wheel in ages, and we always love observation decks. So we covered our backpacks and started toward the train station. We quickly got diverted when we came across a dessert cafe. You can't not go into a dessert cafe, so....we stopped. Then, we got diverted yet again when we passed the Namba Yasaka Shrine, which is a shrine shaped like a lion. We couldn’t pass up seeing this shrine, so we ducked in real fast, took a picture, and continued on our way. We made it to the Tempozan Giant Ferris Wheel and came to find there was absolutely no line. We bought our tickets and got onto the scary enclosed cart that would take us 100 meters up. They gave us the option of a see through bottom, but I was like, uhh no, no way, sorry, I don’t want to see straight down the entire time, and settled with a solid, boring car. It was dark by the time we got off the Ferris Wheel but we saw there was a government building nearby that had an observation deck. Since we were so close to it, we couldn’t pass it up. We took the train two stops, and arrived at the Sakishima Building Observatory. It was dead silent. The only people on the observation deck were us two and three Korean students. I have never been on an observation deck that was so quiet in my entire life! When we were done taking pictures, we caught the train back to Osaka, and passed by an Indian restaurant that smelled delicious! Found our dinner spot! It tasted as good as it smelled. For it being a raining day in Osaka, I have to say we made the best of it! The weather cleared the next day, and we caught an early morning bullet train to Hiroshima. Hiroshima is about an hour and a half ride from Osaka, so it goes by relatively quickly. Our first stop in Hiroshima was the Hiroshima Castle. This castle wasn’t as big as the Osaka Castle, but still is worth the visit if you are there. We didn’t have much else planned for Hiroshima other than to see the Atomic Dome, so we found an amazing little ramen shop, and made a plan. Not too far outside the city we found a little “walking path” in a temple area called Mitaki-dera Temple. This place was amazing! We walked through a small Japanese neighborhood to get to the walking path, and just that walk was great in itself. Mitaki-dera is a MUST SEE in Hiroshima. I can’t believe this place isn’t advertised more! We walked around for at least 3 hours and could have spent even more time there. There were so many things to see. So many little gardens to walk through! Finally, we decided we should head back in so we could make sure we had time and light to see the Atomic Dome. This was quite a powerful building to see. When we saw the actual radius of the explosion, it made us sick to our stomach. Since we were already feeling down and sad, we decided to go see the museum. It was a rough visit to the museum. Seeing all the pictures and videos of the effects of radiation poisoning was not very up-lifting. I would suggest going to this museum at the end of your day so you won't think about it all day during your visit to Hiroshima. The following day we took a half hour bullet train ride to the city of Kobe. We wanted to compare the hiking in Japan to the hiking in Korea. Can’t saw we were disappointed. We hiked all day, and we were getting a bit nervous about daylight around 3. We could see the trail on the map, but we weren’t as familiar with what the trails were like (like we were in Korea) and didn't want to get stuck outside in the dark. Luckily, we came across a large animal habitat area where there was a bus to take us back to a cable car that would take us down the mountain. A day of hiking never disappoints! Our final day in Japan was spent in Kyoto. Kyoto is only a 15-20 minute bullet train ride from Osaka and easy to get to. We decided to start out at the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Now, this place does get busy, but it is totally worth braving the crowds. So, if you don't like crowds, get there early. Anyway, the coolest thing about this temple are the tori gates line the whole mountain / large hill. Not everybody wants to climb the entire mountain/large hill so there are little turn off points along the way up. So, if you can stick it out, as you get higher up, the less people you will see. The walk up really isn’t that bad. You get to walk through a bamboo forest and see the mountain cats! I mean, who wants to miss that!? After our morning walk through the temple (and a quick stop for lunch where we had to sit on the floor and had our legs fall asleep), we decided to go check out the train museum. Now, Japan definitely has some history with its trains, so if you are a train fanatic, you could probably spend the whole day here. We walked through in about two hours, and we were glad we stopped by. Next on the list was Toji Pagoda. This is the tallest wooden pagoda in Japan. This was super cool to see. We had about an hour and a half before the area shut down, which was plenty of time to walk around and see the sites. As we were leaving Toji, we came across a bakery that made the world's best mochi and the prettiest cookies ever. The cookie was almost too pretty to eat, notice how I saw ALMOST. It was getting dark, but we did not want our time in Kyoto to come to an end just yet. We decided to take a bus to a street where you can get a famous picture of the Hokanji Temple. We knew the area it was in, but not the exact street. So, we walked along the shop filled streets until we saw the exact scene that is depicted in every add for Kyoto. Sadly, the next day we had to go. We hoped the bullet train to Tokyo, arrived in Narita and caught our flight home. We know we will be back though. Maybe next time we will head north to the island of Hokkaido, or all the way south and take the ferry to go visit Busan, South Korea. It's far too early to plan, I guess we will just have to see where we end up!
0 Comments
|
ArchivesCategories |