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Kyoto Trip and Back…

August 18th, 2006 by patchmonkey

After heading to Tokyo for another day, I headed with my girlfriend, Mariko, to Osaka and Kyoto. Like before, I stayed in the Karasuma Kyoto hotel, which is nice and inexpensive - if you go through the JTB Plan, it’s very good. For the same price as Shinkansen tickets, you get to go Kyoto on the shinkansen and get 3 days/2 nights at the hotel.

When we got there, we dropped off our stuff and headed to Osaka to meet Risa, Mariko’s good friend and explore for a bit. Osaka was EXTREMELY HOT. But it was still nice. I picked up a takoyaki maker and Mariko got to have some “Bikkuri Donkey,” which is a restaurant in her hometown but not in Tokyo. They mainly serve “Hamburg” dishes, but it was a pretty cool atmosphere.

I also was interviewed for a Japanese Podcast. It was pretty funny - they asked what my favorite foods are and if I had ever been involved with the Japanese healthcare system. The answers: any kind of “-yaki-” food and “yes, I have, and it’s pretty hard for a foreigner to get good treatment from japanese doctors when they don’t speak any English, at all.” It was pretty good, though, a fun experience.

Mariko and I then went to wander around for a bit more before stopping at Starbucks to rest and nap before meeting Risa, who was very happy to see us. We got okonomiyaki at Botejyu, which is a famous and very tasty okonomiyaki place. VERY TASTY. Then we did some Purikura and made some pictures, which was fun, and headed back to Kyoto.

The next day, we went to Arashiyama, which I probably spelled wrong, and it was beautiful (well, it did rain later). Arashiyama is a part of Kyoto, but a little off to the side. Still, there’s a bunch of temples and shrines, and I had never been there before, so it was exciting.

The rest of the time was really shopping and buying presents. Y’know, the usual activity for Japan.

————–

THE FINAL DAYS

Monja going away party, dinner with Justin…and then a very happy/sad partying…

patchmonkey on August 18th, 2006 | File Under General | No Comments -

August Trip Around Japan

August 15th, 2006 by patchmonkey

Some may call it the Disaster Tour. Some may call it the \”food everywhere\” tour. I took a week-long trip to other places in Japan - Nagasaki, Miyajima, Nagano, Hiroshima, Fukuoka…Japan really is beautiful.

We started by leaving Tokyo early in the morning, 7:40-ish to be exact, heading for Shin-Osaka, in order to catch the train to Fukuoka. In Fukuoka, Aaron and I walked around, ate famous \”Hakata Ramen,\” went to a sake brewery, saw the famous \”yatai\” (street stalls - usually they sell fast food, but these ones sell everything from sushi to French and Italian cuisine! Very impressive), and then wandered around for a long time looking for a bar. We finally wandered away from the red-light district and over to the \”International Bar,\” which was actually quite interesting, and drank for a while.

The next morning, Aaron and I woke up, grabbed some \”Hakata Okonomiyaki\” (different because there\’s an egg on top) and headed for the limited express to Nagasaki. Nagasaki, as you may very well know, was bombed in WWII with an atomic bomb. Today it\’s a lot more like St. Thomas - complete with cruise ships! There\’s also a large christian/catholic influence because it was the only area where foreigners were allowed for quite a long time. And the atomic bomb museum is very depressing and very enlightening as well.

In the evening, after Aaron and I went to the top of a local mountain in a gondola (where we saw a Japanese man singing \”Country Roads\”), we went down to eat \”Nagasaki Champon,\” which is nagasaki ramen. On the way out of the restaurant, we ran into these two Californian girls who missed their boat. Yes, they were late making it back to the cruise they were on. Not very lucky. We ended up making two friends and took them back to Fukuoka with us to go to the travel agency there.

Saturday, we were back in Fukuoka with the two stranded girls, and we took them to the travel agency before checking in at a capsule hotel. I would recommend a capsule hotel as a one time and then never again experience. One sleeps in a little tube - but many have the benefit of having a nice sauna and bath to go to, so that evens it out.

We also then took them out for a different brand of famous ramen, some shopping, some yatai, and then some more International Bar, where much enjoyment occured. However, we don\’t know if the girls made their plane.

From Fukuoka, I headed off to Hiroshima (on the anniversary of the atomic bombing), ate some Hiroshima Okonomiyaki (which has noodles in the middle), and headed off to Miyajima, which has deer, a beach, and a big water shrine (the one always seen in pictures of Japan). It is also the most boring place in the entire world when you are alone, because it was me, the deer, and the lady who ran the inn I stayed at - I didn\’t realize how boring it could be. I took a lot of pictures, and headed out to Nagano in the morning.

Nagano, by the way, took 8 hours from Hiroshima. It was very very far, but riding the trains was very nice. I stayed with my friend Justin at his cabin up at Lake Nojiri, which was amazing. It was the absolute most beautiful place I\’ve ever been - the lake was gorgeous, the mountains were beautiful, there were all sorts of onsen and pretty cool people there. It was tremendous…

I\’ll finish up with more about my last days in Japan when I get back to the USA…