Tuesday, August 5, 2008

That's all Folks!

This is going to be a summary post so it will revisit the stuff from Kyoto.

Kyoto:
Stayed at Backpacker's Hostel K's House

Places I went:
Kiyomizu-dera - Kiyomizu-dera has an amazing view of Kyoto since it's situated on a hill on the east side of Kyoto. The walk up the hill to Kiyomizu is full of shops that cater to tourists going to visit the temple complex. The famous stage at Kiyomizu that gives you a great view of the surrounding area and allows you to see the waterfall where you can go and get yourself a drink of some holy water. You can also go visit the "love stones" that you are supposed to navigate between to give yourself luck in the matters of love. There is also a nice trail to follow if you're up for a mountain hike that I never managed to go on. If it's raining on your visit there like it did on my first trip, it's definitely worth a another trip on a sunny day. I would have say it was my favorite spot in Kyoto.

Kinkakuji - Ryoan-ji Temple is right by Kinkakuji so you might want to drop by before you visit the Golden Pavillion. It contains a famous Zen Rock Garden but I found it too full of tourists. Kinkakuji was a rebuild since the original was burned down. It's also full of tourists snapping pictures of the famous villa.

Fushimi Inari Shrine
- This place is full of bright red gates that cover most the trail that you walk along. If you take a look back as you walk through the gates, you'll notice that almost every single one of them has writing carved into their backsides. It was a shame that I didn't get around to walking through the entire trail.

Nijo-jinya
- Nijo-Jinya was converted into an inn for daimyo visiting Nijo Castle. Tours are only in Japanese and visitors are asked to bring along someone who can translate for them if they want to get the full experience. We just asked the people working the front desk at the hostel to see if they could find us one and they did! The place is full of hiding places, alarms and fireproofing measures to ensure the safety of the visiting daimyo. Definitely a place to check out for a change of pace from the shrines and temples.

Heian Shrine
- We went to Heian Shrine to see a Noh play festival that was going on so I'm not really sure what else there is to this shrine.

Traditional Crafts Museum
- The museum is close to Heian Shrine and its worth checking out to see the exhibits on traditional Japanese crafts that include: dying of kimonos, tassels, wood block prints, fans, bamboo goods, wine madking stuff, dolls, lacquer-ware, lacquered mini shrine cabinets (obviously not the proper term), and bows and arrows. I rather liked the museum as it had just enough stuff to keep me interested and wasn't overly large. Just try not to get too close to the exhibits in case you start pointing things out to your friends and accidentally set off the infrared alarms.

Kyoto International Manga Museum - The museum is an old school that was basically converted into a massive manga library with manga donated from Go Matoba. Almost all of the walls ares shelves lines with manga except for the spaces with exhibits.

Teramachi
- A sweet shopping area that's full of mostly tiny shops full of all sorts of cool stuff. We ran across a massive manga shop and a sweet shop full of retro stuff. It's a worthwhile trip for neat souvenirs from Japan.

Kyoto Station - The central hub for most of the buses in the city and the first place you'll enter when you'll arrive by train. There's a Nippon Travel Agency right by the central exit that has a foreign exchange office right inside. Further inside you'll also find stores with expensive brand name merchandise if you really want to.

Places I missed:
Sanjusangendo - It's right by the hostel but I never got around to visiting it.

Kyoto Tower - Right outside Kyoto Station. It wasn't as big as a priority to visit but I might check it out next time around.

Mibu Temple - I didn't find out about this place until we had left Kyoto. Related to the Shinsengumi and was more of a personal geeky thing that I wanted to visit.

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Nara:

Took the train from Kyoto or Osaka. It's a tiny city and about half of it is a massive park full of temples, shrines and deer. Around the park area, there a quite a few stands where you can buy some crackers to feed the deer with.

Places I went:
Todaiji Buddhist Temple - A massive temple with a massive Buddha statue flanked by smaller Buddha statues and those are flanked by statues of some kind of guardian god statues.

Kasuga Grand Shrine - A Shinto shrine full of lanterns and a small horde of kindergardeners that almost stampeded us, although it was much quieter than Todaiji.

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Osaka:
Stayed at J-Hoppers Osaka Central. There's a pretty good sushi restaurant that just opened up across the street as well.
For me personally, I found that there's not actually that much to do in Osaka as a tourist. There's a couple of things around the area worth seeing though. Osaka, Kyoto and Nara are all pretty close to each other and are about a half a hour from each other. Kobe is just west of Osaka and Himeji is a further down the line.

Places I went:
Osaka Aquarium - It was an amazing experience and was the first aquarium I've ever been to. Full of all manner of interesting sea life, it's definitely something to check out.

Umeda Sky Building - You can get a great night view of the city from the roof of the building.

Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka - A neat little museum about an hour away from Osaka by train about the life of famous manga artist, Osamu Tezuka. It's full of his works from when he was a child to his more famous later works. You can also watch a biographical film and mess around in a small animation lab that they have.

Himeji Castle in Himeji - We decided to go visit Himeji Castle instead of Osaka Castle because the original Osaka Castle was burned down. It was rebuilt but as a museum with the castle exterior, so we opted for the real thing in Himeji.

Kobe - For the beef. And it was delicious. I have never been to a restaurant with such a high class atmosphere in my life. They even politely asked me to remove my hat. How touristy of me.

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Tokyo:
Stayed at Sakura Hostel in Asakusa. Behind it is what appears to be a love hotel.

Places I went:
Akihabara - This is where I spent most of my time in Tokyo. Full of enough electronics to probably build a couple of Gundams, if you want it, they probably have it. Curiously enough most of their electronics were more expensive than at home. Also full of arcades, bookstores, figurine shops, Gundam models and maid cafes to bring out the otaku in you. Yodobashi shopping mall is right by Akihabara Station and the "go to" place for all of your gundam modelling needs. I stepped into the gundam section and looked down and it felt like that one scene in the Matrix where Neo and Trinity go to stock up on guns, except with Gundam models if you can imagine that.

Ginza - Full of department stores. Not really my cup of tea.

Shibuya
- Went through Meiji Shrine with a couple of people we met at the hostel.

Shinjuku - Walked around a bit and had all you can eat hotpot.

Mt. Nantai
in Nikko - About 2 hours north of Tokyo if I remember correctly. Woke up early and took a double decker Shinkansen (bullet train) to Utsunomiya and transfered from there to a local line that took me up to Nikko. Took a half hour bus ride from the station up to the Chuzenji-Onsen stop. Asked around about Mt. Nantai and was directed to Futara Shrine, a 1 km down the road. Went through the shrine, paid for lucky charm and hiked up the mountain. The hike is about a 6 hour round trip and I hung around the summit for a while to let my shirts dry out from the sweat that had soaked through my back. I'd definitely like to try the hike again and maybe stay a couple of days in Nikko to see the other sites.

Places I missed:
Yokohama - I heard that there was an area of the city that was all crazy futuristic but at that point, I was all travelled out and we spent the last couple of days mostly in Akihabara.

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Final Notes:

-You have an automatic 90 day travel visa if you're visiting from the U.S. or Canada
-A JR Rail Pass is a pretty handy purchase and they're only sold outside of Japan. You can usually get them through your travel agency, but in our case they were butt heads and we ended up having to drive out to Banff to get ours. Strange that there isn't a place in Calgary where you can get a rail pass. You probably won't break even on it unless you travel between a ton of cities, but it's extremely convenient not to have to figure how much fare you have to pay.
-Always have your passport on you. You'll need it when/if you get money exchanged.
-I'm sure there are tons of things I've already forgotten about as well. Meh.

Japan was an awesome time and I hope to go again when I've got money. :D