What We Did > What We Did (30)
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Subway and JP (Japan Rail) Riding
Although I wouldn't normally include this in "what we did", this truly is an activity, more like an event in Tokyo. It's a combination of confusing, frustrating, exciting and actually plain fun all mixed together trying to get around this town.
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Shinjuku - Tokyo
Today happened to be the Spring Soltice, which is a holiday for Japanese, thus people were literally all over the street this day (they are off from work). This fun area of Shinjuku is where we spent the better part of our evening eating and drinking with Shane and Asuko.
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Akihabara - Tokyo's Electronics District
I think Jason thought that he had died and gone to heaven in this area. Literally, building after building were crammed with at least 5-6 stories worth of cheap computers, computer parts, televisions, 6 story video arcades - basically, anything electronic you could ever imagine was housed in this area. My computer that I have was literally half as much here in Japan, than in the states!
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Shinjuku Gyoen Park featuring the Cherry Blossoms -Tokyo
It was amazing to wander through this park, and observe the reverence Japanese have for these beautiful trees. They have a deep appreciation and respect for nature, which I love!
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Exploring Shimokitazawa with Yuki - Tokyo
Our wonderful host Yuki showed us her fantastic neighborhood of Shimokitazawa. It's filled with tons of unique shops, lots of bars, and many confusing zig-zagging alleys. The highlight was eating some delicious "japanese pizza", totally different then pizza from home.
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Bullet Train from Tokyo to Kyoto
The Shikansen or bullet train is the easiest and quickest ways to get to Kyoto (being on of the fastest train's on earth reaching close to 180mph.) However, the lack of consistent air circulation throughout the train made for a pretty uncomfortable ride.
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Feeding the monkeys in Arashiyama (嵐山)
This was the coolest experience! Little did we expect a mountain full of monkeys roaming around freely, who would literally come up right to us. Thank goodness for the caged room that we could safely feed the maquace monkeys from.
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Maruyama Park - Kyoto
This beautiful park filled with little ponds, waterfalls, shrines and of course cherry blossom trees was a wonderful place to get lost and wander around. There was a lot of excitement and anticipation from the locals with the very first cherry blossoms starting to bud being the most popular and most crowded spot for cherry blossom viewing parties
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Chion-in Temple - Kyoto
We stumbled across this large and magnificent temple in Maruyama park, and were fortunate enough to observe some sort of ceremony inside the temple. As the head temple of the Jodo (Pure Land) sect of Buddhism, Chion-in is one of the most important sacred sites in Japan.
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Gion District - Kyoto
Gion is Kyoto's most famous traditional district. It owes its celebrity to its teahouses where geisha have been entertaining their wealthy customers for centuries. Low and behold, look what we saw walking through the streets!!!! -
Kyoto One Day Tour
This was a long and action packed day visiting 6 important sites in Kyoto. This was certainly the sort of tour we usually try and avoid, not really fitting our deomgraphic, but it was a great way to boil down the "must sees" of the 1600 temples and 400 shrines in Kyoto.
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Nijo Casle - Kyoto
The Kyoto Residence of the Tokugawa Shogun built in 1603, Nijo Castle is noted for the contrast of its solemn appearance and gorgeous interiors. This was the first of 6 sites we visited that day, so still had our attention span and interest at this point. Not the most gorgeous castle, but the gardens were beautiful and expansive.
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Golden Pavillion - Kyoto
This was one of my favorites. The Golden Pavillion was set amidst an equisite Japanese garden, which allowed for the golden structure to reflect off the water. It was quite lovely strolling through garden and taking in the beautiful vision.
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Kyoto Imperial Palace
The ancient Imperial Palace clearly shows the Japanese taste for purity, simplicity and calmness. It is not currently an inhabited palace, and honestly we weren't that impressed by it. It's very simple, and we were only allowed to view the outside structure and no go inside the building.
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Heian Shrine - kyoto
Graceful old court life is reflected in the brightly colored Shinto shrine with its vermillion pillars and green roof, and in its enchanting inner gardens and ponds. The structures themselves were nice, but the real enjoyment came from the spectacular Japanese garden behind the shrine. I especially enjoyed prancing along the stones in the pond, however I think Jason was disappointed I didn't fall in.
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Kiyomizu Temple - Kyoto
A quaint old lane lined with pottery shops leads to the temple. We enjoyed a sweeping view of the entire city from its lofty terrace. We especially like all the free food samples from the shops leading up to the temple!
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Day Trip to Nara
We spent time feeding the deer, walking around Nara park, relaxing by the ponds, and strollong through the Naramachi neighborhood. We thoroughly enjoyed this quaint town, and would hope to return again someday for more exploration.
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Tōdai-ji (東大寺) Temple
This amazing temple located in Nara Park houses the daibatsu Buddhah, which is the largest in Japan. We loved this temple probably the most out of all we had viewed, since the surroundings were so special with the deer roaming around and the temple nestled up against the park - it was a beautifl scene.
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Night out in Namba, Osaka
The insanely vibrant energy of this area was magnetic, and we loved just roaming around and looking at all the fun things going on. We also managed to hit up a really good Japanese pizza place here, which by the time we left was packed to the gills with people and had a line of about 15 people waiting - I guess we chose a hot place!
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Osaka Castle
Amazingly, we had a view of this castle from our hotel room. It was neat making the short trek over to the structure to check it out up close. Unfortunately we chose a Saturday for our visit, so the area was literally covered in people, and it was quite a process trying to make our way through the interior of the structure with so many others around.
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Harbourland Ferris Wheel in Kobe
So much fun going around this ginormous ferris wheel, in an all glass cage so we could see everything. The lights from all the buildings in the harbour were so beautiful!
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Stroll thru Kitano area in Kobe
Kōbe's number-one attraction is the Ijinkan or Barbarian Houses. These are 19th-century residences of Kobe's foreign traders, clustered in the Kitano area. This was such a quiant area, and we kind of felt like we were back in SF with this style of architecture.
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Passover Seder in Tokyo
Amazing experience sharing Passover with over 200 international people at the Tokyo JCC. We met some very interesting people from all walks of life, and really enjoyed celebrating the holiday here.
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Midtown Mega-complex in Roppongi
We were lucky enough to catch this mega-complex of restaurants, shops, residences and the Ritz hotel, which just opened on March 30, 2007. This complex is the second largest building in Japan, and a true spectacle. We enjoyed a lovely meal at one of the trendy restaurants in the Garden Terrace.
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Cherry Blossom Viewing at Chidori-ga-fuchi National Garden
What a surreal sensation we experienced viewing the cherry blossoms in this magical surrounding. Everything was so wonderful, that is until it began to absolutely pour rain on us, and we had to seak respite in a local Tony Roma's.
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Tsujiki Fish Market - Tokyo
This is this largest fish market in the world, and boy was it an experience. I seriously thought we were going to get hit by one of the small little go-carts that were transporting fish, since it was so chaotic there. We certainly saw some interesting things. -
Day trip to Yokohama - Tokyo
We decided one afternoon to chose a random location on the subway, and head over there and check it out (Jason also noted on our tourist map a picture of boats around there). Turns out Yokohama is known for Chinatown, although we never got there. Instead we ended up wandering around the new business district for hours, which was fine. IT was a lot of subway travel, for the not the most interesting day. -
Karaoke - Tokyo
How could we leave Japan without having the ultimate karaoke experience. Yuki and her friends Falco and Saori humored our karaoke desires and belted out some fun songs with us til the wee hours of the night/morning.
