Kyoto trip part 2

Japanese style pyjamas, included with the room.
Myself, Ben and Baska.













This was day 2, in Nara, about 70Km south of Kyoto. A small town. This park has the majority of the temples, and also deer roaming around. For ￥150 you can buy deer biscuits and feed them. As you can see the ones with horns don't










Some people taking a trip in Rikshaws.













This was our main focus for this part of the trip. Inside this building sits a large buddha.













And here's the large buddha. Quite hard to see the scale, but it's very huge. If you look at the outside of the building there are a set of windows on the 2nd level, this is for the buddha to see outside.

Kyoto trip

Spent 2 days in Kyoto. Took and overnight bus there and back, and didn't get much sleep either. Spent one night in a Japanese style inn (ryoken).





First temple, high point of the city. Not too steep to get there.













This temple had many of these gates lined up, the whole walk through them all takes 2 hours. We didn't do the entire walk.
















This is the Golden Temple. Covered in Gold leaf.



















Ryoken










Ryoken with our bedding, for 4000 yen each per night it was a very nice room.

Some food

This is a korean BBQ, you order your types of meat and cook it all yourself over hot stones. Very nice.













I'll let you guess what this is.

final day in japan - part 3

Rainy day in Ueno, but the cherry blossoms were coming into bloom. The plan was to go to the museum, however it was a monday and they were closed.
















The building in the background is the main building of the museum.











The natural history museum in the same park had this outside the building. Owls in the center of the world.











Driving range in the middle of town















Here's the main building of the museum the day i returned. The park was also full of people having picnics and having photos with the cherry blossoms.

final day in japan - part 2

Why waste space when you can just build a new building over the top of an old one.

















View from inside the older building














The main gate to the University.















The red gate to the same university, about 1Km from the main gate. This one looks nicer.









Some Japanese Archery practise. This looks fun, I'm sure there is somewhere that will allow tourists to give this a go.

final day in japan - part 1

I'm trying to remember what I've done since the last post. Firstly, shifting my friend into his new place, and it just happened to rain that day. But all went smoothly, and this was why i was without internet until now. Moved on the Wednesday and partied on the Saturday, big night and trying to fit 8 people into one room was pretty tough, so 3 of us ended up moving into the lounge, with not enough to keep us warm but with 2 snorers not many people got much sleep.






A temple in Asakusa has a ceremony twice a year. Lukily i was here for one of them.




Priest leads the way












Children follow (some feel left out)














The main attraction is this dragon













The band bring up the rear.





This all ends next to the temple where the preformance of the dragon begins.

internet

I've been without internet since the last post. My last day here so will get up to date with what's been happening in that time.

Day two

Shinjuku



Cocoon Tower






















Shrine entrance












Another Shrine















View from 45th floor, Observation Level













View from the park, Cocoon Tower in distance















Dinner. Choose the mix, mix the egg through and fry.











Cooking
















Finished product

Day one

First day was looking around Harajuku. Sundays are very interesting days there as you can see by the photos.















Some people just dress up and hang out here. Oh, also there are free hugs here, but take them at your own risk. There were also people in the park dressed up like they were part of the cast of "Grease, Asian Style" dancing in the park.

After passing through these people, there's and entrance to a shrine, it's a 5 min walk once you pass the entrance below.


Before entering, pass the gates it's customary to wash both hands and rinse your mouth with water. (you don't actually drink from the cup, you're meant to pour some water into our hand)






A place for people to say their prayers. Throw some yen into the boxes, bow, say your prayer and clap 3 times.












How's this for a busy street?















Next stop was a quick one just to visit the busiest crossing in the world. It was sunday so probably not at it's peak.


This













To This









To This

First day = very long

Ok, first thing, the airport is very quiet at 5:30am and waiting around for 1 hour is quite boring. Even worse is arriving in auckland and getting to the international departure lounge to find your plane that was scheduled to leave at 9:15am is now boarding at 10:15am. So about 11:15am the plane left the ground.

Here's a good example of "perfect timing". Brunch service has just completed and the drinks have been served, so what should happen.........turbulence! Apart from a few bumpy sections of flight, a couple naps and about 4 movies, not much else to say except that all of the flight attendants thought i was japanese. First sentence to learn "Nihongo wa hanashimisen" which means "I don't speak Japanese". That sentence is getting a lot of use, but you can pretty much get by in Tokyo with just English, but doesn't hurt to learn some basics.

Touching down about 7:30pm local time as opposed to the scheduled 4:25pm may have been the reason for long immigration queues, but they moved through everyone pretty quickly. From the actual arrival gate everyone walks to a train which takes you to the main terminal for all the immigration and customs. Once in i was through it was just a matter of hiring a cell phone and getting the train into tokyo. Quite strange that Japan is still working with cash, it's very rare to see places with eftpos and banking is still done with bankbooks and actually visting the bank, although ATM's will update your bankbook when withdrawing money. Having said that their technology won't accept any cell phone that isn't a 3G mobile, hence the reason i hired one. Arriving into the west side of Tokyo in Shinjuku was close to 9pm, meeting my friend we made our way to one of his friends apartments where we ended up playing games and watching a movie, at which time it happened to be about 2am local time (6am NZ time) so that was a very long first day.