10 Dec: Kyoto

Hmm… lets see… where did I go today??

Oh yeah, in the morning, I left around 9am and saw Kinkakuji which is the Golden Pavilion. It’s a temple covered in gold leaf. It’s really beautiful. If you are going to Kyoto, this is a must see…oh yeah and Kiyomizudera which I went to yesterday is also a must-see. At the exit of the temple, as always there are shops where you can buy Omiyage and Japanese traiditional food… you can try them too before you buy.. so that’s what I did. I bought only 1 pack since the other stuff I want to buy is food that expires before I go back to Australia..I forgot what they’re called.

Next was Nijo-jo or Nijo Castle. Nijo castle was nice..but inside you couldn’t take pictures. but the garden outside was really nice too.

Last, I went to Toei Uzumasa EigaMura. The entrance fee for this place was a bit expensive I thought…it costed me ￥2200 – so nearly AU$40. I didn’ t get to explore the whole place though since I got a bit lost trying to find it…and there was quite a bit to see and I had to stop for a bit since my legs/feet were hurting so much. Eiga mura is cool..it’s a film set and i guess a bit of a theme park as well but there’s not much rides. There are streets in Eigamura which shows Japan in Edo period. Apparently they shoot movies here occassionally but I don’t remember seeing any shooting while I was there…

Oh yea.. I got to ride a Segway. There was a company trying to advertise the Segway as a way of transportation. It was scary…I thought I was gonna fall..but it was cool too.

At Eiga mura I actually made some friends. I met this Malaysian girl who is studying Japanese and living in Kyoto for 3 months. She was with a group of friends and after Eiga mura, she showed me around Kyoto near the hotel where I was staying. We had Okonomiyaki for dinner. That was so delicious and filling – おいしですね.

9 Dec: Osaka & Kyoto

Today is my last day in Osaka. Before leaving for Kyoto, I went to Shinsai Bashi just to go a bit further to look at more stores.. I didn’t end up buying anything though since everything was quite expensive, esp with the xchange rate.

Anyway, I then went to Tokyo around lunch time. Kyoto was very different from Osaka. It’s more peaceful I think.

After checking in to the hotel, I went to Kiyomizudera temple. It’s an amazing temple, but it’s about 15-20 minutes walk up a pretty steep hill then stairs. Along the hills there are small shops selling food and おみやげ (omiyage) which means souvenirs. Unfortunately, it was raining. So it was wet and humid. I still went up to the temple. It was really beautiful up there. There was also this thing called the Love stone. Where you  have to walk from one stone to another stone with your eyes closed. If you reach the other stone successfully with your eyes closed, means that you will find your love. I tried it, and I reached the other end successfully…so hopefully that means I will find my love…LOL

After kiyomizudera it was already quite dark, but I went to a shrine which was kinda next to Kiyomizudera. I think it was called Yasaka shrine. It was still beautiful at night and the colours of the shrine was bright orange.

I ended my day by eating udon for dinner. Unfortunately this udon I had wasn’ t as nice as the one I had in Osaka and it was more expensive too… Oh well.

8 Dec: Nara & Osaka

Today I went to Nara to see the Deers and temples.. My legs still hurt from the previous day. Anyway, I stopped for coffee at Starbucks at Nara station. And there I met this girl from America. She was in Nara to see the deers and temples as well…so we talked and we went to see the deers and temples together.

On the way to find Todaiji temple, there were a lot of deers around the street and the park. It was interesting… well..that’s what Nara is famous for..the deers.

I wanted to get photos with the deers and one of them headbutted me…it was scary… after that I went to buy some deer food and immediately, dozens of deers came up to me for the food…but there were so many  of it and when I wanted to give some food to them, some of them started biting me. It hurt so much…about 5 of them bit me on the legs…so I ended up just throwing the food and ran away from them.

Next I saw Todaiji temple. It was amazing. It had the big buddha statue.  (more to be continued later).

After Todaiji, I went to see Tofukuji temple. This one isn’t as big as Todaiji. People go here to pray. You put some coin in, shake this big string to strike the gong and pray.

After the temples I went to see Isuien and Yoshikien garden. It’s very beautiful here. Even though Autumn has ended, you can still see red and orange maple leaves around, but I think it would be really nice to visit during Spring time.

In the afternoon, I went back to Osaka and visited the Umeda Sky Building. It’s a spectacular building that is 173m tall that has a “Floating garden observatory” which connects 2 towers. It’s amazing, you can see the city from up high. I wanted to go and see the sunset but unfortunately that night it was very cloudy. Maybe another time..I hope.

I think that’s all I did that day. I just went back to Namba and had udon for dinner and had an early night.

Dec 7: Day trip to Himeji…cancelled

Well…today I thought i would go to himeji. So I found out the train to go there and it took nearly 2 hours to get there…so I got to the train station at Himeji.. it was crowded and to exit I went down the stairs….somehow I think I trip and I fell down and rolled down the steep flight of stairs. My legs hurt so much…and my right leg was hurting.. the train staff were coming to help me and they brought me to their office. They called the emergency staff and i got brought to the hospital.. i didn`t really know wat was happening until I realised I was brought in to an ambulance… So my trip to Himeji castle didn`t end up happening. I was at the hospital for quite a bit, they took some x rays and thankfully there was no fracture..but my right leg was hurting a lot so for the rest of the day I did not do anything.

6 Dec – Osaka

My gosh…today was so tiring. Well…to start with, the day didn`t go like I had planned. I was supposed to get to Osaka early in the morning and then go to Himeji and Kobe for a day trip. I was really upset at first because this day trip didn`t happen. But my lil` sister convinced me to not worry about it as I would probably be visiting lots more places than she would have and she has been in Japan for nearly 2 years.

So, I arrived at Osaka Namba. It was a bit of a walk to the Inn I was staying at and it was a bit confusing finding at first. The annoying thing was the exit from the subway station was stairs going up and my suitcase was so heavy. But someone was really nice and helped me carry the suitcase up the stairs.

After dropping off my suitcase to the Inn, I went for a walk to Osaka Shinsai Bashi which is a huge and long shopping street. I went there specifically to look for the Hello Kitty shop…it took me several hours to find it because I kept getting lost. But when I eventually found it, it was really nice… I think there are 3 or 4 floors full of hello kitty stuff. It was great. There was also a Disney store and several floors of it too… There were so much stuff I wanted to buy but because of the stupid bad exchange rate I didn`t buy anything.  That night I went to eat Udon at a noodle place…it was good.

First day in Japan – Tokyo

Ok…so this is my 2nd day in Japan.

I`m going to start with my first day yesterday.

 

5 Dec: Arrived at Narita Airport at 6:30am. My leg was so dead from the 9.5 hours trip. My suitcase was also heavy and I was confused as to where to go. But thankfully a nice Japanese man who I  sat next to on the plane helped me out. Then I took the airport limousine bus to tokyo so that was a 90 min trip which I had to sit for the entire time.

I had to find my way from Tokyo station to my sister`s house since she had school that day… she gave me instructions with images which was really helpful. I got there and had a nap. Then when she came back from school we went to dinner. But before dinner we past Shinjuku Illumination 2008. It was beautiful. The city was illuminated by lights and it was just amazing. We then headed to dinner and had Yakiniku. It was really good and we ate heaps…i was so full at the end of it that I could hardly walk.

That was my first day in Tokyo. I went off to bed to get ready for the next day where I had to go to Osaka.