Day Three and Four

Osaka Day Three

 This is the Osaka Aquarium of Kaiyukan. Right next to it was a large shopping mall that we wandered through after and had lunch at. The aquarium featured such things as Japan's forest with otters, salamanders and more. It had animals from the Aleutian Islands, Monterey Bay sea lions, Gulf of Panama ringed tailed coatis, Ecuador rain forests, Antarctica penguins(with real ice!) Tasman sea dolphins, and animals from the Great Barrier reef, Seto Sea, Chile, and jellies.

 Here we are about to get eaten. 

 The coolest part was seeing the Tasman Sea dolphins because we got to see this lady feeding them. I also spent some time watching a mother and baby swimming together.

These two were pretty cool.

 

 This is a hammer head shark. He was notable because he was so fast it took me forever before I could get a picture. I finally got one right before we left.

 The aquarium is set up so that you circle one giant tank that contains this whale shark. Most of the fish are in this tank and there are a few smaller ones that loop around it like the otters and dolphins and jellies.

Here is another angle on the whale shark. I know the other is a little hard to see.

 At the Monterey Bay (CA) aquarium my favorite attraction is the jelly fish. While they are cool in Japan too, I must say I enjoyed the dolphins best here. In the Chicago aquarium I really like the beluga whales. Okay, I love the beluga whales. I went back to see their tank three times!

The next six hours of the day we spent walking around shopping malls. The insides of which look just as you would expect so here are a few of the outside pictures. 

 Just so you know Pachinko is a really loud arcade type game here where you play arcade games. We saw lots of them and their games while on our trip. We also thought this sign was pretty interesting....

 Here is one outside shot of a crab store/vending style restaurant and what the outside shopping areas look like. Cars and people just pile along. 

 This is a famous shopping center known as the canyon because it looks like that on the outside. 

 

Here is the canal that ran through one of the streets. Isn't it pretty?

It seemed that Osaka was full of shopping centers especially since we spent the whole day wandering four or five of them. 

 The evening got really crowded as you can tell. 

We discovered this little tucked away spot between buildings. Japan sure has small areas that are rather interesting to find.

Day Four

 Here was the day in my journal where I mentioned noticing that cars and buses turn their engines off at every stop light. We rode a few buses and it was always strange to hear the engine shut off in the middle of the road and then start back up. Chris pointed out that it would it be a bad thing for him to do in his car that has a habit of turning the "safety" on when he tries to start it and then he has to wait ten minutes before his car will actually start. It does not believe he is not a burglar. That would be bad to be stuck for ten minutes in the middle of the road. 

We visited the Tofukuji Temple and its surrounding gardens. 

 Here is the front entrance.

 A walk way through the gardens. 

 A typical set of stairs.

 One of the rock gardens. There was another larger one too. 

 Chris is looking through at the Buddha in there.

 This temple was known for it's Buddha statue and for this part of the garden. It is a large checkerboard in the ground. 

 I found this dragon painting above Buddha's head to be rather neat. 

And I just had to throw this in here. Here is a typical small street in Japan. If you look close you can see the motorcycle tail lights on the left hand side that just passed us. So...cars in the middle, motorcycles on the left, bike on the right, walkers on the side where they can fit. It also features a typical side walk as well. Sometimes the sidewalks actually bump up and are separate from the road, but they are all low because cars use them to park on when they want to reach a store. 

Millions of Torii Gates

 It was fun to walk through all the torii gates, but it was slow. Every now and then a couple of people would stop so they could clear the path before them and take a picture without the crowd of people in the background. Here we are waiting for these two to get their perfect shot. 

 Here is where I bought my own yukata to wear. Unfortunately I did not wear it that long since I insisted I take it off when Chris announced we were going back to the train station. He such long legs that even not in leg constricting clothes I have to speed walk to keep up with him. There was no way a train station was going to be manageable if I had to scooty scoot scoot. Plus we would miss all the trains. 

 This is the entrance and exit for the torii gates. 

 Amanda strikes a pose. My arms can't get up much higher. I love the colors of this one though.

 A side view of the gates complete with students heads.

 Here is the back of the yukata. I hope when I put it on myself I can do justice to this perfectly tied bow.

 Gates. Each one was donated by some individual and they stretch all the way up the mountain.

Here is the map showing how far they go. We only walked through the first two sections and did not hike this mountain. 

We next took a scenic train ride through the countryside. It was really called "Romantic Train" because it is romantic.

We went through a tunnel and saw some stuff like this.

Here is a shot of the actual train.

Coming back was one of the most crowded subway rides we had been on. It was standing room only with people shoved up against each other. I noticed one man miss his exit because he just couldn't get out. He had to shove past people at the next station and I assume take another train back to reach his destination. Chris and I were squished up against an edge and I had no room to even wiggle my feet due to rush hour.

We had one other super super crowded subway ride in another spot on a different day where I tried to not fall over on students around me since I had nothing to hold on to.

Japan Day One and Two

Day One

(Day one and two we spent walking all of Kyoto)

As noted before with over 1200 pictures taken on the trip, I will be trying to keep the picture posting here brief or nothing will ever upload. :)

 

 The first place we visited was the Kinkakuji Golden Pavilion. The top is made out of real gold with a phoenix on the top and no one was allowed inside. This was as close as you could get to it really since there was a fence in the way. It was build during three different time periods: 11th century shinden style, buke style and zenshu-butsuden. It houses relics of Buddha.

 There are lots of these stone statues all over Japan. Some of them even have aprons tied around them. You can read about jizo statues to find out why. This one had a money container (also seen all over the place) and we tried our luck at tossing in "pennies." I missed by a lot. Chris got close. 

 They were selling prayer candles here that you could burn like in the picture below. 

There was also a large burning container of incense to the right that people would stand by and pull the vapors towards themselves. 

Amanda blows an interview:

This is the spot that I got interviewed by a group of junior high students. They all took turns reading questions in English off to me, but I got confused. One time I thought they asked me what I had seen so far so I said I had only seen this, it being our first stop ever, and then they got confused. Chris told me they really asked me what I thought of Japan. Um. Oh. Sorry junior high kids! The last question they asked was, "Would you like to take a picture with us?" So we did. I noticed later on a different day how an older woman used the exact same phrase when she wanted to us to take a picture for/of her and her group, and I was thinking "Hey you learned how to say that in junior high!"

Rock Garden (Day One)

 Here is a really famous rock garden. There are fifteen rocks and you have sit near the edge and contemplate. It's impossible to see all fifteen rocks at the same time. We only counted fourteen. To get into this place we first had to take our shoes off. In Japan they always take their street shoes off outside and that held true for visiting places that had mats or wooden flooring. Since it was hot, it was nice to remove our shoes for a while. We left them in a shelf next to other shoes and walked around in our socks. 

 Directly behind the rock garden was this opened up house that we circled before heading out. I was interested in all the pictures painted on the walls and screens. 

 Here is what the full rock garden looks like. 

These are the gardens we walked through after collecting our shoes and exiting.

Ninniji Goten Palace (Day One)

 This palace is five stories high. We were given free tea when we entered which we politely drank. It tasted like warm broth actually and I thought it a little too warm given the already hot temperature. (It was 83 and above the whole two weeks we were there). 

 Beside the Goten Palace are tons of other smaller buildings. This one got our special notice because it is orange and off limits. That makes everything more exciting right?  It is actually a monk training yard made around 1640. 

We stopped across the street for lunch and had our first real Japanese meal. This was also my favorite meal the entire trip and I was disappointed that I could not find vegetable tempura anywhere else! There was only shrimp tempura, but this vegetable stuff is the best. They had some pretty good prices too. :) 

Ninjo Castle (Day One)

 Here was our first look at Japanese in traditional dress. Please note the umbrellas. Lots of people carry umbrellas around to ward off the sun so even on a warm sunny day you have to dodge those things.

 Here is the most colorful spot of the whole castle. The inside was only wood and we were not allowed to take pictures of it. Once again we had to take our shoes off. The floor boards in this place were designed to squeak so the royal family could hear intruders in the middle of the night. It was pretty squeaky and large. It had two reception rooms, two waiting rooms, four grand rooms, two living quarters, and minister offices. Surrounding the place is a network of gardens, meaning trees mostly with a few bushes. 

Japanese castles are not what I expected castles to really look like since I always picture medieval ones and these one look very similar to temples. I guess the difference is the size and the moat and who lived there. 

 

The castle has two moats. This is the inner one. The outer one reaches right next to the road. 

Due to Jet Lag by 4pm I was exhausted. 

Day Two

This day was the day we walked the most from 8am to 7pm and the next day it hurt to stand up. The day before we'd walked 9-4 and took a break before going out again for dinner.

Ginkaku-ji Temple

 To reach the temple we first went up this narrow street (yes cars drive here) that was lined with trinket shops on each side and millions of gradeschoolers.

 This was my favorite place of all of Japan. It is a zen garden. Once we let the school tour groups get ahead of us, they kept saying "Hi my name is ---", it was such a peaceful place to walk around. The air was misty and we climbed stone steps with bamboo railing around the path. It was very green and pretty.

 I assume they rake the sand every morning. We saw them in the action of it. 

Philosophers Path (Day Two)

It was already a hike to the temple and then we walked the philosophers path which was a narrow rocky thing between a canal on the left and houses on the right.

 What can I say? They got hungry. This is along the path.

 Here is an example of jizo statues with bibs/aprons and the coin collection cups. It rained early that morning so they are full of water. 

 The actual path.

 Amanda's confession:

I have tons of pictures of parked cars. Here is just one example of a parked car. I was just astounded by the Japanese ability to park cars in the most narrow of spaces. Usually these spaces were beside stone walls or roads or overhangs. Sometimes I couldn't figure out how they had even done it because in order to fit they needed their side mirrors pushed up to the side of the car, but how did they back in with no mirrors? I never did catch a car backing up to park in action which was a shame since I probably would have filmed it as discreetly as possible. 

Also along the path we saw Cat Haven. There were at least eight cats in here and more on the ground walking around. 

Nanzia-ji Temple

 If you paid extra you could walk through the top and over this bridge at this temple. It just looked like all wood inside so we passed. This was the oldest Sanmon gate in Japan.

 But we did get a phone call from Grandma Heit while we were here. It was an accidental dial, but we sat on some steps by this thing while we said hi. 

Then it was more walking. We walked past a zoo so I had to get one shot of the giraffes.

 We walked along a canal (the keage incline) to see the largest torii gate.

Heian shrine

 Here was the place that was under construction. You can see the green construction cones and they also had frog ones and yellow bunny ones that were pretty amazing. 

Shinto shrines are orange and have torii. Buddhist temples are white and brown.

 Before entering there was a large water pool where people would use the ladle to dump water on their hands to clean them. Later on we saw more of these with signs saying not to drink the water. This one did not have such a sign but it needed one. A tourist had us take a picture of him drinking from it. We didn't feel up to telling that he probably wasn't supposed to. 

 There was an additional garden we could go through at the side of this place that we walked through. It had two main paths that wrapped around a lily pad pond. Here is a bird maybe a crane that was fishing.

 This is a side building since at the main one we could not take pictures there. They were performing a prayer ceremony at the time and had a guy making sure no pictures were taken. 

Here is an example of tied up prayers.

Marayama Park

 This is a park. I kind of expected grass. Actually the playgrounds in Japan are greatly lacking. Even the smallest ones here in Wisconsin are considered super playgrounds compared to the ones I saw there. Normally I would only see one slide and one swing on top of dirt. Even the playgrounds attached to schools were like that with the exception of adding a climbing structure perhaps. Most of the recess area is just open dirt space.

 This tree helps provide needed shade. 

 This toilet is notable is that it is the first squatter potty that I ever used. You squat to use it just like it sounds. I was glad that I also had my hotel toilet to use as well which was a bidet (I had my own dislikes about it) but at least you could sit down.

This is Yasaka Shrine I believe. It was at the back of the park. 

 We found a really nifty short cut that actually took us right where we wanted to go.

  Kiyumizudera

 There was a guy walking around telling everyone his hobby was photography and asking if he could take our pictures on our cameras for us. He asked us so we said sure. It's pretty cool to get shots without other people in them. Because if you look below this is what there was around us.

It's easier to get these kinds of shots because you can hold your camera up above everyone's heads to do it. This was set on a hill. 

Gion Corner

 We got to enjoy a traditional Japanese show where we heard them play old instruments. These ones were super squeaky and I was not a real fan. There were also some "trumpet" like instruments that you blew into. The men who played them had to puff out their cheeks to get out a note and they too were a little irksome sounding.

 The show included a play where two servants get tied up so they can't get into the masters rice wine cellar while he is away. They however end up getting into it and feeding each other and it closes as the master returns and finds them drunk. 

 Chris said his favorite part of the show was this puppet play. This was of a girl who loved this boy and ended up setting a building on fire to return some missing sword to him to help him out. 

It took three guys to make the puppet move at all. 

This was the closing act of a maiko dancing. From personal experience you can't move in those clothes. Her arms are up as far as they can go. Her dance consisted of turning in circles, raising her arms in various positions and stomping her feet. It was really slow and I'll admit since it was the end of the day, I was going to fall asleep.

After all that we had to walk back to the hotel. 

Chris had planned on us eating at a fancy restaurant that over looked the water, but I was just too tired. We did walk through the restaurants though and past a music show that was happening on the "beach" by the canal.

That's it for the first two days.