Tag Archives: shrine

Hiroshima

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On the previous post we left the calm of Koyasan for Hiroshima.

We arrived at the train station that the sky was still bright, so, once left our belongings in the hotel, we went for city tour.

Random statue found in the city

As we had planned to visit the Peace Memorial Museum the day after, we decided to go and check the Hiroshima Castle.

Hiroshima castle

It was rebuilt in 1958, as a replica of the original. Now serves as a museum of Hiroshima’s history before World War II.
The park surrounding the castle contains also another historical landmark: the Hiroshima Imperial General Headquarter.

Remains of the Imperial General Headquarters

This site was left as it was found after the bomb. Literally nothing left…

Sara trying to help to preserve the garden

Despite having these rests, the park is really beautiful and well kept. In this park there is also a tree which survived the bombing, despite being less than 800 meters from the hypocenter.

Walking away from the park, we started looking for a place where to have dinner. We wanted to go to Hassei, one of the best reviewed Okonomiyaki restaurant in town. Unfortunately it was closed for a private dinner.

We fell back on Micchan, an Okonomiyaki chain which was just a couple of hundred meters from Hassei.

The cooking procedure is the same we saw the last time in Kyoto, but here the grill was much longer, and the place was big and ventilated enough to avoid our shirts to smell like cooked stuff.

Multi ingredients Okonomiyaki

Food here was much better than the one we had in Kyoto. Hiroshima truly is the capital of the Okonomiyaki!

 The upcoming day we planned to wake up early in the morning, so we aimed directly to the hotel to get some rest.

Good morning world! Today the sun shines and we are going to rock the day! That’s what you usually say after a great sleep. Our hotel has the hardest beds we’ve ever sat on, and I’m pretty sure that many people which are used to “fall” over the bed have broken their bones. I swear, the futon is waaaaaay softer! 

Anyways, after reading online that the Miyajima trip can result in a feel-like-a-sardine experience when going after 10am, we planned to go there either with the first ferry leaving the pier or the second. The second sounded better. Our 4+ alarms started their drill at 5:30 am, and after a few snoozes we were finally rising from the rock hard bed. We crawled to the station as the city was silently waking up, and after locking our backpacks in one of the key lockers we reached the pier with a short trip of metro. 

In Japan there are two things you never have trouble finding: restrooms and coin lockers. Either their bladder is really small or the gallons of green tea they drink has a very diuretic effect!  As for the coin lockers you can find them at any train station, regardless of its size. The lockers usually come in 4 sizes (S~XL/400¥~700¥ per day) and they have a fixed rate around the country. Both our big backpacks fit well in a medium size locker. 

Back to the trip. Our ferry was almost empty, and we were the only non Asians on the boat. Ha-ha! 
The trip lasted just 10 minutes, and we arrived around 7:30 am on the island. 

We are on Miyajima

We walked down from the pier towards the main shrine, and had a few deer encounters on the way. These little guys wander in the streets not giving a duck about cars or people. They are actually cuter than the ones we found in Nara. 
When we went into the main shrine, it was actually us and the monks. The shrine is named Itsukushima, which is actually also the name of the island. The latter is usually called Miyajima since in Japanese it means shrine island. 

When we arrived there was low tide, and the whole shrine was actually resting on wet sand/mud. It was a nice view, but we decided to reuse our tickets later to see also the high tide version where the shrine seems to float on water. 
While sitting on the shrine’s “pier” we spotted an horde of tourist arriving, and promptly stood up to go enjoy another temple nearby. Daisho-in.

The entrance of this temple is full of statues covered with hand knitted hats of scarfs.

We wondered in the temple alone. No other tourist were there, and we could really appreciate the quiteness of the place.

There was a cavern in the temple with a lot of lanterns hooked on the ceiling. In the darkness of the cave, it seemed unreal.

Walking away from the temple we bumped into another collection of statues dressed for winter…

We didn’t plan on going up the mountain Misen, but we had the best experiences walking in the nature, and the sign said 90 minutes for the trail, so we went.

We wondered if that timing was in monk-minutes or lazy-tourist-minutes. Anyways, after just 10 minutes walk we encountered a wild deer who didn’t like the tourists which populate the pier. 

Luckily, the timing for the hiking trail was estimated for lazy tourists, and the whole path took us around 70 minutes. 

On top of Mt Misen there is a lover sanctuary, and also a flame that is said to be 1200 years old… 

Climbing for 5 more, we reached an observation deck. The view was mesmerising, but we heard a scream faaar far away. We were hungry (what a surprise). Let’s go catch us some food! We descended down another trail, where we encountered many people struggling to get up. It was surprisingly pleasant to be greeted by anyone we met by a simple “konnichiwa” or “ohayo”. 
We checked some places to eat but they all looked too touristy. Miyajima is particularly famous for a leaf shaped sweet and oysters. Neither of us like the latter, so we went for the sweets. It was obviously filled with red beans, but it tastes so good! 

I’ve also read some good reviews about an okomiyaki place, so we went there. Yesterday we thought to be eating the best okomiyaki ever, but this one was off the scale. The place is called Okomiyaki Kishibe, it’s a very small room with an old cute lady cooking and another on helping. We were the only non locals among the 10 clients. We tried to write down all the steps to recreate the recipe at home, but some of the ingredients were mysterious to us. Anyway the hiroshima style okomiyaki consists on different layers of noodles, cabbage, egg, batter and pork. 
This awesome experience costed us just around 10 euros each, including two beers (which account for most of the receipts here in Japan). When we stood up we felt all the weight of the previous hike, and all our muscles were suddenly crying aloud.

Before leaving we went back to the water shrine to see how it looked with water under its feet…

Definitely something else!
We rolled down to the pier and took the first ferry to Hiroshima. 

The JrPass I’m Hiroshima allows us to make use of a bus service with a funny name and a chubby deer mascotte: Meripuru~pu.

Using this bus we reached the Atomic bomb dome, one of the buildings that didn’t vanish with the atomic bomb explosion.

It looked like a skeleton, and even being very close to the hypocenter, most of it’s walls are still there. 
We then went through the Children’s Peace Museum, and the flame of pace together with the cenotaph for the victims. 

Then it was the time for Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum… The museum is informative, and the first part is “lightweight”. As you move forward the museum gets more and more real, and Sara had goose bumps for the whole duration of the visit. 
After this kind of experience it’s inevitable to ask to ourselves how and why weapons like that keep being tested.

For respect we didn’t​ snap any pictures inside the museum.

We left the museum and went to catch our bus, as we were running late for the Shinkansen to Kobe. On the train we realised we didn’t have accommodation. We we booked the hotel in Kobe we selected the wrong date. So we had to find another while going there.

With some luck we did find a room in the APA hotel, just few minutes walk from the train station.
But this is another day story…
Thanks for staying with us, and see you tomorrow for another post.

Koyasan by day

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The futon was confortable and the room was warm. Sleep should have been easy.

Sara slept like a rock, while thanks to my allergy I spent the night sneezing and abusing of Rinazina.

As a result, when the time to wake up came, Sara jumped off the bed, ready to attend the morning prayer. I decided to stay in bed to get some more rest.

Later Sara told me that…

… the pray was interesting. We poured incense over a bracier. While the monk recited mantra ringing a bell once in a while. The fire ceremony was cool too, as the temperature in the temple (around 6 degree).

As soon as Sara came back to our room a monk brought breakfast.

Vegetarian breakfast tofu based

Most of it was tofu. If you’re not fond of it it looks dubious, at the touch feels like a sponge, and tastes like plastic.

The rest was vegetarian. Luckily I had a couple of Honey Dorayaki to save me from starving.

We packed our stuff and left the everything at the monks until we were done exploring Koyasan.

We went back to the cemetery. It looked nothing like the night before. In bright sunlight all the shadows hiding object from our view, left space to a lush forest.

Cedars trees in the Koyasan cemetery

Enormous cedars trees, some of which older than 500 years, flank the path tanking the peregrine to Kobo Daishi mausoleum.

Under the trees and among the tombstones there are thousand of little statues, many of them wear handknitted hat. One of them was even abused with makeup…

Lipstick and foundation…

Going forward we entered the sacred part of the cemetery, where taking pictures is forbidden. The air you smell here is different from the previous area. You can feel the religiosity of the place with the monks attending at the ritual in the temple and a group of peregrine chanting some kind of mantra.

Here is where Kobo Daishi body is resting in meditation since 835. His followers believe he did not die. Instead he will wake up when the next Buddha will come. 

After stamping Sara’s collection book we walked back to the city to visit the other main temples and attractions.

Entrance gate to Kongobuji

Next stop Kongobuji, the headquarters of Kobo Daishi before he went to sleep.

Internal Rock Garden

We walked through many rooms, learning about Kobo trip to China as an ambassador, and his comeback to Japan as a Teaching monk.

A room with all the shoji (sliding doors) painted in golden colours

We were even offered a tea in one of the biggest room of the house.

The room where we enjoyed our free tea

Traversal section of a tree cut when was around 700years old

Most notable thing in the house is the rock garden. This place is a buddhist garden representing two dragons (the big black rocks) coming out from a sea of small white rocks.

Daigaran pagoda

Next to the headquarters is situated the Daigaran complex. As everything in Japan, the original buildings in this complex were burner down or hit by lightning, more than once. 

Konpon Daito

The Pagoda especially was destroyed several times because struck by a lighting. I can understand why, given the 4 meters copper flagpole they put on each rooftop.

Main gate of Diagaran

The access to the other buildings was  subordinate to a offer of some hundreds ¥. Problem is, nobody was there to check. But everybody was giving exactly what was written on the paper… Amazing how people here are so respectfully.
Following are the description plates of a temple, a Pagoda and a gate. Here you can see how all those building have burned during the centuries. Like this tree most of the Japanese heritage ended up in the same way… 

Last thing on the list was the Daimon gate. This huge wooden structure got fire only a couple of time and was rebuild recently at two thirds of the original dimensions.. Still, it’s massive. 

Daimon gate

Walking back to our temple to take back our laggages, we stopped a couple of times to buy some suovenirs. Thanks to this we lost the bus I planned to take to the cable car.

Fortunately there was a second bus just 15 minutes later.

On the bus we met another Italian couple who, like us, decided to spend a couple of week traveling all around Japan.

View from the train

We talked and shared our experiences during all the cable car and the train back to Osaka. There we exchanged numbers and parted. 
It was nice to meet you Laura and Roberto!

In Osaka we took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, the next stop of our trip.
This is enough to for today.

See you tomorrow with the updates regarding Hiroshima!

Nara: Temples, Deer, and Mochi

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It’s Nara time!
We woke up early, and had a quick breakfast at home. We ate some fish (custard cream filled taiyaki) and our beloved Hachimitsu dorayaki.

Diabetes here we come!

After just two big as hell coffees we were ready to rock! We took again advantage of our JR-Pass and headed to Nara with a local train.

The trip was short, around 40 minutes, but it was very long for our inner peace. Since we arrived in Japan we slowly adjusted to its calmness and silence. The train to Nara was a nightmare that brought us back to the noisy trains we are used to in Europe.

This city is a must see for every traveller, so there were no locals on the train, just screaming children and loud tourists.

Good mood, good mood… We can still isolate and forget the noise, since we are going to visit the oldest existing wooden building and pet some stinky deers! 

After 40 stressful minutes we got there.

Some history: Mostly known for its friendly (sometimes overly attached) deers, Nara is Japan’s first permanent capital and was established in the year 710.

As we got off the train we went straight to the information center to collect a map, hear some suggestions, and plan our day. The girl who attended us was very kind and suggested us also some unbeaten tracks.

Who said deer are friendly?

Our first goal was Kofukuji Temple, founded 1300 years ago. Just aside the temple there is a big five story pagoda, symbol of Nara.

I’m no photographer

It was built 600 years ago, and since then it was burned down only five times. Japanese buildings have really a bad relationship with fire, since each temple was either burned down or struck by lightenings. 
Since they heard us arriving, they decided to pack the main building for restoration to keep us from looking at it (we are used to this by now). 

We then went to the next stop. On the way there we spotted our first herd of deers!

First encounter

As we rightfully thought, they stink. A lot!
But they are so friendly that you forget after a while (not really, but still…).

“What do you have there human?”

It is ok to pet them, as soon as you keep everything that can be chewed far from their snouts. Maps and tickets included.

Curiosity: Do you know why there are so many deer in Nara?

According to legend, when the shrine was founded a mighty God was invited to the opening ceremony. The God is said to have come to Nara riding on a white deer. Since then, deer have been respected and protected ad Divine messenger by local people.

Dribling among the deer we arrived in front of Todaiji temple. Here we met a volunteer guide who walked us from the external gate to the temple.

The external gate, which name is Nandai-mon, was destroyed (what a news) by a typhoon during the Heian period.  Rebuilt in 1203 the Great South Gate is the largest temple entrance gate in Japan.

Lantern between the gate and the temple

Todaiji temple is famous for the massive golden statue of Buddha hosted in the Daibutsuden Hall.

Todaiji temple

The hall burned down “only” two times, destroying ​the statue, as a result of war.

Front view of the Buddha

The actual structure was rebuild in the 17th century and downsized to two thirds of the original size. Walking among the tourists crowding the wide area in front of the Buddha statue, we felt the greatness of this place, which is the largest wooden structure in the world.

Side view

The more you know…

The hands’ position of Buddha have a special meaning: the one raised up means “Come to me” while the other stands for “And your wishes will come true”.

Just behind the Buddha, there is a column with a hole on its base. This hole, is said, is as big as a nostril of the Buddha statue. Devoted Buddhists can earn enlightenment in the next life by crawling through this symbolic nostril.
Obviously we didn’t try. The queue was mostly made by children or skinny teens. I suppose we won’t be enlightened in our next life… Too bad.

Just outside the temple was placed a statue of one of the disciple of Buddha. It is said that he had great magic power, but he liked to show off and ended up being banned from the temple.

The magic disciple

Legend tells that if you touch the statue where you feel distress or pain, all your pain will disappear. It’s been almost a day since I tried it and still nothing happened. Should I call the customer service? JK…

Next we walked to the Kasuga Taisha shrine.

Some of the 2000 lanterns

This temple is the living proof that people don’t learn from their mistakes. Since we are here we learnt that basically every temple or shrine or castle has burned down at least once since its opening.
Well, this shrine has approximately 2000 lanterns.
Of those with candles inside.

Exactly: fire!

What the hell was wrong with 1000 years ago Japanese architect?

Very carefully we walked away from this fire hazards to go have lunch.

On the way we stopped to feed some deer and try to take a selfie with one of them. 
We realised that these deer are assholes. They learned from Japanese tourist to lean! That’s right. They come close to you and bow their heads, asking for food… adaptation instinct at its best.

We choose one of the many tourist trap to eat something.

Beef for me, chicken for Sara

It wasn’t bad at all, but the waitress looked no more than 10 years old. It was quite uncomfortable.
To conclude lunch we approached the most famous mochi maker in Nara, Nakatanidou. They are well known as they are the fastest mochi pounders in Japan.

Freshly pounded mochi

Basically they make the dough and start pounding it, in front of the tourist, with two wooden hammer inside a bowl shaped tree trunk. When the dough is well smashed, one of the guys starts slapping it, while the other tries to hammer his friend’s hand.

The super tasty red bean fill

The process is fast, impressive, and hilarious as they scream rhythmically while hitting the green slime.
You can watch a video on YouTube of the entire process here.

The mochi here are superb. If you come for the show, you stay for the food.
As we were planning to leave, we saw an Owl Cafe. We didn’t go in Tokyo, as we felt like it was the worst kind of tourist scam. But we won’t be able to see something like this anywhere else, so we surrendered.

BEST DECISION EVER!

I won’t write anything. I’ll leave the pictures talk.

After that overload of featherly sweetness, we took the train back to Kyoto. At the central station we bought the bus pass to tomorrow visits.
Kyoto has a special ticket that allows people to take every bus in the city, anytime, for 24 hours with a single 500¥ ticket (less than 5€). Perfect for our needs.

We are going to make good use of it, since the forecast for tomorrow says that it will rain the whole day… 

After a mandatory stop at 7eleven, we searched for a place to have dinner. 

Since we arrived in Japan Sara has been mumbling about getting some teppanyaki. It’s a style of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook food.

We found a teppanyaki restaurant, 鉄板居酒屋 祇園てなもんや, with good reviews close to our apartment, so we gave it a try. 

The place was small, crampy, and smelled wonderfully of grilled food.

It is run by a couple and most of its customers are from overseas. As we entered, all the chairs (16 in total) we taken so we had to wait 10 minutes outside.

Totally worth it.

We had gyoza, grilled beef, grilled veggies, and an okonomiyaki each: with pork for me and shrimps for Sara.

We sat in front of the griddle, so we could watch the entire cooking process.

What at the beginning looked like a mess, becames a tasty botch.

Highly recommended!
Once again, as we hit home, Sara fell asleep right away. So sweet…

Tomorrow is gonna rain. We’re gonna make good use of our bus pass.
That’s all for today.
See you tomorrow for another post!

Kyoto: the Western Capital

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This morning we woke up late and we realised that we forgot to describe what happened yesterday after we arrived in Kyoto.

After checking in our nice Airbnb in Gion we decided to go out and have dinner, since we’re always hungry as you already know from our previous posts.

Our room for the upcoming 4 nights

Toilet with sink on top

We walked around Gion and eventually ended up in the Geisha district close by. We had the chance to see some of them walking around, taking taxis or getting off them. Unfortunately we were unable to take pictures since it is prohibited in that district, but believe me they really are beautiful creatures.

As for dinner, we decided to follow a blog article from Inside Kyoto which suggested a sushi place called Ganko sushi.
Even though the place looked quite touristic, we spotted a lot a locals when inside. Sara was exhausted and took a child menu with grilled eel, while I went with a adult sushi set.

Antonio’s sushi set

Sara’s children menu

Detail of Japanese Sushi

On the way home we stopped on the Family Mart just below our apartment to buy something to chew in the morning for breakfast. As we hit the bed Sara fell immediately asleep while I stayed awake until 2 to write the previous post.

When we woke up we had nothing planned. Kyoto is said to contain the essence of Japan and we didn’t even know what the main attractions are beside the thousands gates in Fushimi Inari.

Walking towards the Kyoto station to catch the Nara line to Fushimi Inari, we noticed an huge pagoda, so we took a detour.

The huge pagoda ended up being one of the most important attractions of Kyoto, the Ninenzaka temple complex.
The road is an imperial era shopping street. Is narrow, crowded, and with hundreds of little shops on the sides exposing their stuff. To make matters worst, a legend has it that if you slip and fall, you’ll be dead in 2 or 3 years.

We sweetened the pill with some matcha and sesame ice cream

We’ve never been so carefull while walking a street.
We paid our 100¥ (90 euro cents) each to visit a sort of underground level of a minor shrine. The tour was in complete darkness. We felt totally blind, in the sense that we had to find our way out in a pitch black corridor until you find a sacred stone. When you finally find it you have to touch it and make a wish, and when you go up the stairs it’s said you have been reborn.

After this mystical experience, we went to the main shrine. Useless to say, we didn’t feel reborn at all.

Small pagoda next the shrine

We moved to the main shrine. We initially thought it was still under renovation, but the forest of vertical and horizontal trunks around the temple were actually part of it.

The “work in progress” bamboo structure

Among the tourist, there were lots of student groups visiting the site. We were stopped by a group a group of them. Shily they asked if they could ask some questions, and we agreed with no hesitation.
They asked us where we are from, and to tell them things about our city. And told us something about theirs. When we were done, to thank us for the time we dedicated them, they offered us a present: a small plastic fun with a message written in one side.

So sweet…
We decided to try heading to our initial destination again, and on the way we bumped to another main Kyoto attraction!

This is the biggest torii we’ve seen we are in Japan

It is said to be the Vatican for every Buddhist monk, what a luck! Kyoto has more than 1600 shrines, so it’s very easy to find some on your way to something else.

Heian Shrine

The shrine is Chion-in inside Maruyama Park. We were welcomed by some female monks and invited to see some kind of ceremony inside a smaller temple.

The Sanmon, gate to Heian Shrine

Inside there was a monk repeating some mantra, such a shame we didn’t get a word of what he was saying, but the old lady sitted next to us looked very absorbed.

We then wandered inside the park for a while, visiting Heian Shrine, eventually ending our walk at the station.
This means it’s Inari timeeeeee!

But first, snack with a jumbo pork bun…

The icon of Kyoto, and maybe the most crowded place of all the city!

Believe me or not, this is the first (and probably the last) attraction in Japan we didn’t have to pay to enter.

It felt like taking a tourist shower and then entering a tourist steam bath with a hiking course in it.

The number of people attracted by this place is amazing. Especially if you think that half the visitors won’t even make it to the top of the mountain.

Before starting the torii walk we were greeted by to big Kitsune (fox) statues.

Kitsune at the entrance of the thousand gates

A little digression

The Kitsune statues guarding the entrance of a Inari Shrine are always two, a male and a female. These statues always hold a symbolic item in their mouths or beneath a front paw, and are highly individual in nature: it is said that no two are quite the same in all Japan.

Down the Torii’s path

I won’t lie here: getting to the top was hard. We walked, we panted, we sweated, we rested. Again, and again, and again. The entire path is no more than 4.5km long, but with thousands and thousands of steps, and with each step different in size to the previous, it was a nightmare.

The only thing that kept us walking was the mistic beauty of the gates towering the path.

This is where the torii are cultivated

Once in a while we would spot a small shrine on the side of the path, all of them adorned with small torii. I like to think they are there just to give an excuse to the exhausted visitor to take a break from the main path.

Halfway to the top there is a resting area with some benches giving the breathless peregrine the chance to rest while watching the city of Kyoto. From this point, the main path forks in two, going around the mountain and forming a loop reaching the highest walkable point.

In total it took 45 minutes to track the view point, and another 30 minutes to walk the loop, at a leisurely pace.

Despite not offering much in scenic view, the loop is highly recommended to those who wants to enjoy the Inary walk in the quiteness of the forest.

We got back to the view point just in time for the sunset. As it was really crowded at that time, we looked for a better place to enjoy the moment.

Sunset over Kyoto

Just behind a small shrine, which looked more like a maze of rocks and pillars, we found a short path that took us to a elevated point from which the entire city was visible.

The view from there was something amazing. Hit by the rays of the setting sun, the rooves glittered like gold, while the sky changed colours from blue, to gold, to red.

Torii walk by night

Before the sun set completely we left as we felt some drops of rain. On the way down the path was almost completely empty and we took our chance to take pictures of the torii in the dusklight.

Shameless torii selfie

Unusual view of the torii

To finish our tiring day we decided to give a try to tripadvisor again, going to one of the best ramen in town. Apparently also Chinese people use tripadvisor a lot, so we had to queue for a while before getting in.

We didn’t get a word of what the menu offered, so we ordered according to the most appealing pictures. We ordered a ginormous ramen with pork slices and a medium one with bamboo sticks.

Special large menu for me, medium for Sara

Antonio mistakenly ordered almost one liter of Asahi, for just 600¥.

Well… It is not gonna drink itself

Drunkenly satisfied we walked the 30 minutes home. As soon as we touched the mattress we fell asleep.

Tomorrow Nara.

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Last day in Takayama

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The futon… A 4cm thick matress typically used in ryokan… We even used two because we were concerned by it’s comfortableness.

Double futon bed

Well, I can’t recall a better sleep in the last few years. Amazing.

I just realised we didn’t post any picture of our room yesterday. Here they are in two configuration.

The room as we arrived

The room this morning.

Breakfast time! As we arrived yesterday we had to decide which kind of breakfast we wanted: Sara went for the traditional Japanese while I opted for the more cautious international.

Traditional and “International” breakfast

The international was quite simple: egg, ham, coffee, a toast and a kiwi. Light but enough (i still have two Dorayaki in the room eheh).

The traditional was more complex: miso soup, a lot of veggies, tofu, tea and a miso paste that was cooking on a magnolia leaf to then put it in the rice.

Cooking the Miso

Both breakfasts​ were a pleasant way to start our day. With our full bellies we went straight to the city to seize the day. 

All the guides and articles found on the web recommended to go to Kamisannomachi, the main street of the old town, early in the morning to enjoy the view without the crowd of tourists.

The water canal on the side of the street

It was indeed better than yesterday, and if you mentally remove all the wires hanging over your head and the asphalt below your feet you can somehow imagine what life was like during the Edo period.

The street is full of little shops that sell handmade goods, so we got our first (small) souvenirs.

Our first small souvenirs

When backpacking everything you buy weights on your shoulders, so we sadly couldn’t buy any of the local sake bottles. 
Instead we decided to try everything the food shops had to offer, starting from a local miso soup (very popular in the area). 

The difference between the people in Takayama and the ones we’ve met in Tokyo is astonishing. Not only they are more relaxed (reasonable since we are in a smaller city) they also are extremely kind and gentle. When taking pictures of the craft in the shop they would thank us repeatedly and try to explain in any way (mostly using signs) the items they were selling. They usually also ask where you come from and then they thank you for coming this far to visit their city.

As we went towards the next place in the list, a morning market, the tourists wave started to rise. We noticed that there were only few occidental tourists like us, while the majority were from China.

Tourists at the market

We finally reached the market, where we tried more foods like takoyaki (balls of batter with cooked octopus), taiyaki (fish shaped batter filled with different flavours of cream ranging from chocolate to beans) and then a skewer of small balls of rice pudding covered by soy sauce and grilled. Screw the diet!

The last takoyaki

Apart from the food, we had the opportunity to experience a breathtaking view of all the cherry trees blossoming by the river.

Sakura tree

Sakura tree on the main bridge

More Sakura trees on the canal

We also noticed that strollers are not very popular in Japan, except if used to carry dogs.

We also wondered why toy puddles are so popular here, since most of the dogs we have seen since we are here are of such breed.
After the market, we went to check a giant structure we could see from the river. The structure ended up being a very huge torii of the close Sakurayama Hashimangu shrine.

We took some pictures and went to check this shrine.

It is the first of a long list of shrine this city has to offer trough the Higashiyama walking course, and Sara was really enthusiastic about visiting them all and get some stamps from the monks!
Unfortunately all, believe me ALL, the shrines were closed. Well we could have expected it, it’s Sunday, and we are entering the golden week. That meant no stamps for us!
Even being closed to the public, most of the shrines had their outer gates open, allowing us to enjoy their gardens.

Tree with a demon trapped inside. Do not break the charm!

Toriis to a shrine

Inari guardian with a message

A 400 year old oak

We were almost at the end of the walkway when we heard thunders… coming from our stomachs. Apparently all the small snacks we had didn’t fill us up, so we decided to go back to the city to grab some meat filled buns.
We wandered around the streets randomly, and this was for sure one of the best parts of the day.
You get to see the everyday life of the people living there, whether they are energetically washing rusted nails in a bucket or working on their farms. Whatever they are doing, they always stop to greet you with a polite bow.
Randomly following the sakuras on our path, we ended up in another beautiful (closed for our joy) temple. The Hida Gokoku Jinja shrine was surrounded by sakura trees and we took plenty of pictures of it. 

Geisha posing in front of the torii

Panorama of the blossoming sakuras

Did I already mention our innerselves were rumbling? We went back to the crowded part of the city and bought the first edible thing we could find to calm down our hunger. We ate two buns, one with our loved red beans and black sesame and the other with pork and onion.

The bun seller with her buns

Buns!

Maybe it was because we were really hungry, but the buns were outstanding. We really like red azuki beans, but they often disguise ad chocolate because of their shape and color! We were more than once fooled by the brownish color of a filling to then find out it was not chocolate when biting. 

Lies…

Enough with our broken chocolate dreams, back to the day. We grabbed some other snack at a 7 eleven close by, and then went for our final goal, the Takayama Jinya.

Selfie in front of the entrance

“A room” as explained by the description…

Sara was disappointed by the fact that there weren’t enough English descriptions in the museum. Moreover  we had to leave our shoes at the entrance as the entire building floor consisted of tatami, and our feet were getting really cold.
We than decided to hurry up and finish the visit in order to put our shoes back on.
Since we were not freezing enough, we went for a green ice cream that we saw everywhere in the town. The ice cream was a green tea flavoured one, and it actually tasted great! 

Happiness is an icecream

At one hour to our train departure, we went back to the ryokan to take our backpacks and went to the station were we waited. This time the trip includes a relaxing stop in Nagoya of 7 minutes. The right time to jump off a train, run like crazy in the underground maze that is every Japanese station, trying to decode the timetable displaying the trains in Japanese and guess the platform of our next train.
Against every odd, we made it on time.
Before closing this post I would like to make one out of context consideration: after almost one week spent in Japan we realised that there are no trash cans around the streets. If you buy something to eat, you may end up walking with garbage in your hand for a couple of hours before being able to actually trash it somewhere.

This is due a terroristic attack happened in Tokyo in the 90s, where the terrorists hid a sarin gas bomb in a trash bin killing  12 people and injuring thousands (Source).

Time to sleep now.
See you tomorrow for another post.

Shirakawa-go & Takayama 

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Hello again! We had such a great sleep tonight and we were totally ready to start our day with a superb breakfast.

The hotel provided not only a nurse style nightwear for free (will add a picture soon), but also a typical Asian breakfast. We were fooled by the idea that the hotel had a continental breakfast, so we were ready for croissants and fruit. Instead, we arrived in the hall and, after being welcomed repeatedly by the staff by the now familiar “irasshaimase”, they served us Miso soup and rice with fish. The complete menu consisted of rice with seaweed and close-to-embryo formed fished, tofu with more seaweed, pickled veggies and miso soup with seaweed.

Our superb breakfast…

We are in Japan, we have to accept the fact that sweets aren’t part of the typical breakfast! Antonio was so so so happy about the meal that he held a grudge for a mere hour, until we reached the station and got some pastry covered in gold leaves, a speciality of Kanazawa, and a coffee from Starbucks.

Golden pastry

We had to spend one and a half hour in the station, so we reserved the seats for the tomorrow shinkansen and arranged some lunch (we bought some rich bento for around 1500¥ ~ 13€ for both).

Sushi fo lunch!

The bus for Shirakawa-go was not-surprisingly in time, and by the time of expected departure all the passengers were on board and their luggage meticulously ordered in the bus trunk. As the clock of the bus switched from 11:09 to 11:10, the driver turned on the engine and we departed. Perfection. (we had to film that, darn).
The bus trip lasted around 1 hour and entertained us (especially Antonio) with plenty of nice landscapes, ranging from rice fields to snowy mountains. We also have to get used to the driving direction here in Japan, the whole trip felt so strange!

Entertained Antonio

Shirakawa-go is located in a valley, surrounded by Alps like mountains covered in snow. The feeling, coming from cities with spring-ish temperatures, was to step in a 18th century’s village in the end of Autumn.

The houses here are shaped as praying hands with a thick roof made of straw. The shape is due the necessity of standing the huge amount of snow that falls in this region in winter.

Typical house​ in Shirakawa-go

As we got off the bus we decided to climb our way to the viewpoint, a 15 minutes walk uphill with the backpacks on our shoulders.

Shirakawa-go view from above

The struggle was totally worth! The view from up the hill was breathing for both the village below and the surrounding mountains covered in snow.

Hungry, we decided it was time to consume our well deserved meal. We choose a panoramic place were other people were taking pictures, to sit down and eat, but a guy, probably working in the local cafeteria, came to us telling that we could not eat there. 

Other people around us were chewing what looked like food, but he didn’t hear any reason. Jerk. We had to move and eat somewhere else. Luckily, that didn’t mine our appetite.

Bon apetit

With our bellies full, we descended to the village. Going downhill was much easier and took almost half the time.

On the side of all the roads in the village, runs a canal collecting the water coming down from the mountains. What surprised us was the fact that despite the water was cold, the canals were packed with fishes.

The canals are also used to provide water for the paddies (rice fields) that are everywhere in the village.

View of a house with a paddy on the side

Walking among the houses we found some of the scarecrows used in the paddies. Sara decided to see if she could start a carrier as one of them. I think she’s not bad at all…

Can you find Sara?

Many of the houses in Shirakawa-go can be visited paying a small admission fee of 300yen (~3 euro). We decided to visit one which was set as a museum.

Harvesting rice 1 0 1

Inside we followed a path explaining the rice harvesting procedure and the process of making Shirakawa-go building’s straw roof. There was also a room for the tea ceremony and a connection corridor with the close by temple.

Tea room

The last thing we wanted to visit before leaving for Takayama was a temple, but it was closed. 

External torii of the temple

As soon as we jumped on the bus, Antonio fell asleep again, together with most of the passenger. Thanks for the company…

We arrived in Takayama that the sun was still up, so we run to our sleeping place to leave the backpacks and went visiting the old town.

The old town extends between the Miyagawa river and a smaller one that merged with it. Along the river there are marvellous Sakuras still in blossom. We took the chance to take more pictures. 

Sakura tree on the river

Another sakura tree

In the district of Kamininomachi, we visited the main street packed with tourists walking in and out the numerous old shops. Also here, on the side of the road was running a water canal with water so clean you could drink it.

Old town district

Tired of all the mess, we aimed for the northern part of the city, where all the temples and shrines are located.

The entrance to the temple district

We liked this area more than the old town: torii, gardens, temples and graves (yes, there are also cemeteries), were all well kept.

How do you even grow something like this?

Except for another guy walking his dog, we were the only ones walking there. So quiet…

Temple with garden

Sunset on Tokayama

We ventured in a cemetery in a forest and found a dog/frog/something statue, watching over the graves.

A guardian statue

Tired and hungry we decided to walk to a restaurant suggested by a girl we met at the local tourist information center.

On the way we saw more Sakura trees in blossom. Such an amazing view…

Sakura tree in blossom

Finally we reached our restaurant: Kyoya. Here we had a taste of the superb Hida beef, and other delicatessen.

Dinner for 2…

The table had a grill in the middle. The waitress brought the meat raw and we had to cook it by ourself. 

Cooking Hida beef

3000kcal later, we were able to leave the restaurant and walk home. But we didn’t go too far that we walked into another beautiful Sakura. We just couldn’t pass by without taking a picture.

Sakura by night

Our place was a Ryokan, sporting a private onsen. We then decided to take advantage of this and have our hot spring experience. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside, but trust me when say I wish I could do this everyday!

We were also given a yukata to wear during the night and for tomorrow breakfast.

Wearing a yukata

Time to sleep now. Tomorrow’s breakfast is at 7 o clock.

Good night everyone.

See you at the next post!

Kanazawa: the Golden Marsh

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We finally left Tokyo.

It actually took a while… Even riding the Shinkansen, which cruise speed tops 300km/h, after 20 minutes from the window sit we could still see Tokyo buildings.

After a while they made space to a different landscape.

Despite going so fast, you can barely feel it. The ride is smooth and quite. The seats are wide and comfortable, and you have a lot of room for your legs.

Leg room on the shinkansen

From the window, despite the crazy speed, we admired many different landscapes, from the farms around Tokyo, passing through forests, to the snowy peaks of the mountains surrounding Nagano. The trip took 2 and a half hours with 3 stops: Nagano, Toyama, and finally Kanazawa.

Kanazawa train station is quite big, despite the city is a small one. 

Arc in front of the station

After identifying the tourist center we took a city map and booked the bus ticket for Shirakawa-Go, tomorrow’s destination. Then we walked to our hotel, the Toyoko-Inn, checked in, left our backpacks, and went visiting the city.

Omi-cho Market

Hungry we aimed directly for Omi-cho Market, a smaller version of Tokyo fish market, and grabbed some crokketto for lunch.
Kanazawa is well known in Japan for the gardens tradition, for the ninja district, and for having the only active Geisha district in Japan, together with Kyoto.

The latest was the first thing we went visiting. On the way to it we had to cross a river. We took the chance to wander on its banks and on the close Kazua-Machi district.

Kazua-Machi district

The Higashi Chaiya-gai is a beautifully preserved historical area with many two stores wooden buildings, with narrow streets cutting the area horizontally and vertically.

Most of the buildings, once tea houses where wealthy customers would be entertained by geisha, have today been converted into restaurant or souvenir shops. Only two tea houses are still open to the public during the day.
At the north end of the district, is situated the temple district. We didn’t venture further than the first one, as there are more than 50 temples in this area, and we only had one day to spend in Kanazawa and many things to see.
Next we went to the Kanazawa Castle. First we walked aimlessly around taking pictures, but then we decided to go looking for a tour guide.

We were lucky twice as the tour was free, as the guide was a volunteer, and because the guide was the sweetest woman you can imagine. She walked us around explaining the history and curious facts about the castle, making jokes about the fact that while European castle used to throw boiling oil to invaders, Japanese castle had to rely on rocks only as it was quite common for a castle to catch fire, given the building material.

Kanazawa castle main gate

The Kanazawa castle was so lucky in the past that had one of its sentinel tower annihilated by a lightning strike, and cought fire burning to the ground, but hey! It was never assaulted by an army!
Of the original castle only a gate and a storage building remain. All the rest, by the way, has been reconstructed exactly as it was with the same technique: no nails were used. The entire structure is a huge amazing jigsaw puzzle.

The guide took us also to the Kenroku-en gardens, which are the most beautiful gardens we have ever seen.

Sakura in Kenroku-en gardens

Statues and sakuras, ponds and hills, also a small island shaped like a turtle, which together with the crane is the symbol for luck. 

Statue in Kenroku-en garden

The level of cleanliness and cure was astonishing. Workers were even picking out brown moss from the ground by hand. Crazy yet amazing.

Lone tree

We said goodbye to our guide and hurried to Samurai Nomura house, in the samurai district. 

A road in the Samurai district

Despite the entrance fee was higher than usual (500 yen or 4,5€), we didn’t regret paying for it late.

Nomura house internal garden

Internal gardens, live tea ceremony, letters and sword belonging to the most famous samurai in the history of Japan.

Nomura house

Walking away from the samurai district we ended up in Katamachi, which is the shopping district. It seemed quite unusual after seeing all the previous historical places. We even found a hedgehog cafe!
Next we went looking to what was called the Ninja Temple. No ninja there… Only a big closed wooden house. Meh…

Evening came and found us hungry. We stopped in ８番らーめん 犀川大橋店 for a cup of ramen and walked back to the hotel, passing along the river.

Ramen noodles

We even found a small temple on the way.

After a hot shower we ate some poop-shaped sweet. Very tasty 💩

Tomorrow morning bus to the samurai village! Stay tuned for the next post…

Kamakura: the green escape!

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We arrived in Kamakura that it was already night. Luckily the hostel was close to the station. It was actually behind the rail road.

Despite being so close to the railroad we didn’t hear any train noise during the night.

The hostel was small, well hidden, with a I-am-not-going-there entrance.

The inside was actually really nice. The room was small but quite clean and at the right temperature with a comfortable bed.

Our true fake dream bed!

The toilet was furnished with the latest technology toilet with a bidet embedded in it… Amazing Japan…

After taking a shower, we left our stuff in the washing machine and we went out looking for a restaurant where to have dinner.

We found the SatoNoUdon open and, communicating with gestures, we ordered our food.

Going back home after dinner we walked in an empty park where we found a “fire” tree.

The entire city was completely empty and Sara decided that was the perfect time to take a picture seated in the middle of the walk.

Exhausted we went back home and slept.
Early in the morning we went hiking to the Zeriarai Benzaiten temple which entrance was through a cave.

As we exited the rocky tunnel we found a small area covered in statues and torii with a little shrine and another cave where to wash you money (some kind of ritual).

Immediately we realised that most of the statues and buildings had something in common: on all of them was impressed the triforce simbol.

Here we also bought a booklet to collect the stamps from each shrine we visited, and got our first stamp.

We followed a short hiking path and ended up on a asfalted road. We got lost. Fortunately we found a couple of bicentennial grannies which helped us find our way back to the shrines. Everything without understanding a single word of what the other was saying. Human being truly are amazing.
Back on track, we walked under dozens of small torii to reach a shrine surrounded by thousands of small fox statues. The name of the shrine was Sasuke (no sharingan here).

After getting our stamp, we continued on the hiking track. We walked for 2 km in the middle of nothing but bamboo, cherry and other trees.

We finally got on an asfalted road and aimed for the Kamakura Daibutsu.
After paying a entrance fee of 300¥ (less than 3 euro), we went in to admire the budda statue which is the second tallest bronze statue in Japan.

Behind the buddha is kept a Buddhist garden: no grass, no flowers, just rocks and pebbles. Preferably black or gray. Thanks.

Leaving the Seated budda we walked to Hasedera Temple.

The shrine complex was really old and the landscape were amazing. The site was populated by various statues which looked quite happy to see us. 

Happy statues in Hasedera

The complex also offered great views over the sea and a small bamboo forest.

Bamboo trees

More bamboo trees

The temple also hosted the Kyozo, an incredible bookshelf storing Buddhist script which can be rotated.

Rotating bookshelf 

We we should not forget to mention the main temple, an absolute astounding structure.

Also the little Buddhist garden next to the entrance was worth the visit.

Buddhist garden

So far so good, we had enough of temples and decided to take a break and go to see the ocean.
The ferocious wind kept our enthusiasm low and pushed us to the closest train station to catch the first train for Kamakura main station.

7 eleven provided a quick onigiri bite (our stomachs were scaring off people’s with their rumbles) and our JRPass came again handy to reach Kita-Kamakura without any other ticket. 

Kita-Kamakura is the Northern part of the city, and it is home to many temples. One afternoon wasn’t enough to visit them all, and we spent approximately one and a half hour in Engakuji.

Engakuji Sanmon gate

This temple was simply amazing. It hosted national treasures and the views of the meticulous maintenance of the inner Japanese gardens were a total blast.

It is ranked as one of the most important Zen Buddhist Temple complexes in Japan. Among the national treasures there is an ancient bell sites on the highest point of the temple. Trust me when I say i won’t go there anymore!

Just halfway up…

Sara found the time to take a picture with a pair of girls wearing a kimono.

As we left Engakuji we walked to the city center to have lunch. We found a small restaurant, nothing special, but not bad either.

With our bellies full, we went back to the hotel, collected our backpacks and went to catch our train to Tokyo.

Glimpses of Tokyo

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Sure enough, we woke up. Thanks to the 2 alarms, plus 2 backup alarms, plus a snoozed one, we unlocked the “You didn’t oversleep” achievement!

We took our time to pack our backpack again, and went out to have breakfast… at the Tsukiji Fish Market. Before you ask, yes, we had breakfast chewing sushi, sushimi and other similar things… so much for our Italian background.

Before going we left our baggages in a locker at Shibuya Station: only 500 yen (~4.30€) for an entire day (24 hours). There are lockers in all the train station and are used by tourists as well as local people.

Free from our burden we made our way to Tsukiji: from Shibuja we took the Yamanote line to Shimbashi. From there we walked 15 minutes and got there.

Tsukiji outer fish market

Tsukiji is the biggest fish market in the world. People come here as early as 3 in the morning to bid on tunas, and more than 65 thousand people work here.

Just think about it: an average Italian city’s population works everyday in a fish market…

It is divided in two district: inner and outer market. The inner market is where the fish is sold in batches and the tourist are not allowed to enter until 10 AM. This is due to the fact that people walking around aimlessly may be dangerous for both themselves and the weird, totally safe “carts” that dwell in the area. The so called “turrets”.

Tsukiji three wheels cart

The outer market, on the other side, is open as early as the tuna bidding is over. It is basically a maze of narrow streets which run between shacks. Every shack is a small shop selling everything concerning fish, vegetables, fruit, dried food, and knives… I was so tempted to buy a personal forged and engraved one.

Ok. Back to food. We tried some delicacies while walking around the other market: first we got a couple of squid and octopus skewers, then we went for steamed dumplings.

Super tasty fried octopus and squid

Steamed dumlings

Then we saw some people lining outside a still closed sushi shop. We decided to line. Around 10AM it opened and we were allowed in. We ordered a combination of sushi, made just in front of us by a laughing, happy old man, and took a couple of plate from the conveyor belt.

Almost-alive-fresh sushi 🍣

When we felt satisfied we went out and kept walking.

After a while we encountered a little shrine on the east of the outer market.

Here Sara participated in the washing hand ceremony, and rang the bell wishing for something.

Small shire in Tsukiji

Soon after we went inside the inner market, being careful to not being run over by the “turrets”.

It is a true fish market, where fish is cut alive, made in pieces, boxed and sold. No place for weak of stomach.

Tsukiji Fish inner market

We didn’t spend too long here. The workers were already washing the tables and packing their stuff. No point in staying there too long.

We decided to visit Ueno park, as we read that the Sakura blossoming was still going on there. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie: we found two trees (in a entire park) with some pink petals on its branches. So much for full blossoming.

Firts blossomed sakura

Anyway, Sara looked enthusiatic. After all we came here for this, mainly.

Inside Ueno Park we went visiting the Toshogu Shrine, which was close to a Pagoda

Ueno Park Pagoda

Leaving the shrine we met a loud, huge, and friendly crow which landed on a lantern “Craacking” to the passerbys.

This fella here was bigger than a cat.

Going back to the park we found the second Sakura tree and asked someone to take us a picture (yuuu).

Picture under the Sakura

After this emotional Sakura adventure, we went to Asakusa. We decided to walk in the city instead of taking the metro, and we found some beautiful and characteristic views.

This intersection looked like a still image from an Anime

When we got close to Senso-ji we were so hungry that decided to have a cheat meal: melon pan with vanilla ice cream and a portion of caramelised apple pie. To be sure if they were tasty I had to try  both before handling them to Sara.

Melon pan and Apple pie

In Senso-ji we visited a Buddhist temple were we got a journal were to collect the stamps from all the temples we are going to meet during our journey.

Buddist Temple

Next to the Buddhist temple, stands the Senso-ji temple.

Senso-ji temple facade

Hanging at the entrance there is a huge lantern-like-thing.

Going east from the temple we walked through Nakamise, a street full of souvenirs and snack shops.

Nakamise

Last thing we visited today before living Tokyo was Shinjuku Gyoen. We should have come here before… This park was full of blossoming Sakura.

And not only those. Japanese garden, Taiwanese pavilion, ponds… It was beautiful.

Japanese Garden

Taiwanese pavilion

A duckload of Sakuras

We finally had what we came looking for.

Especially Sara…

…

Unfortunately we came here too late. The park close at 4PM so we were forced to leave.

We went back to Shibuja to collect our backpacks and had a coffee at Starbucks, with view on Shibuja crossing.

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After 10 minutes of rest, we took the train to Kamakura, the next destination of our trip!