Tag Archives: Temple

From Ubud to Lovina: back to summer.

Leave a reply

Early wake up!

We have many things to do today!

But first, breakfast!

[wpvideo 4SEExczR]

Sara enjoyed a dragon fruit, while I ate a weird banana flavoured sweet we bought yesterday from AlfaMart (local market).

Checked out from our to-do list breakfast, we rode the scooter to the city center. Next stop was a music instrument shop where Sara wanted to buy a Hang.

Unfortunately the shop was closed and, despite we passed there also later, we found it closed again. So no Hang…

As it was still quite early we went to visit a temple inside Ubud we didn’t manage to visit the day before. This temple entrance is located next to the only Starbucks in the city, and they basically share the entrance… Weird.

Panorama of the temple entrance

Temple Gate (closed)

The temple was closed to visitors, like all the other temples here in Ubud. So annoying. So we just enjoyed the entrance, and went to grab a coffee in Starbucks.

Starbucks Breakfast!

After this we took back the scooter to the rental, got back our 500 thousand deposit, and walked to our villa where we were to meet with the owner for the checkout.

It took us 20 minutes, and Sara fell in love with a strange kind of Palm…

Palm Lover…

As we got home we found the owner already there cleaning the swimming pool, and found out he already called a taxy to take us to Lovina. Such a resourceful guy.

We shook hands and left with the taxi.

The driver was a nice guy, spoke a fairly understandable English, and had zero driving capability. I mean, he survived the previous years driving in Bali, and that is quite astonishing, but he didn’t like at all the 3rd and 5th gears. He just went from first, to second, then run like hell and changed in 4th, but not before passing with the stick on the 5th without leaving the clutch. I seriously had no idea what the hell was going on in his mind, but I was too scared to ask, despite every time he was doing that my heart was sinking a bit.

Somehow we reached the Danau Beratan lake, where the homonym Indu temple is based.

Pagodas on the water

Temple Gate

The entire temple area was crowded with tourists, despite the chill temperature (chill for Bali standards. It was no less than 21º).

In the temple we also found something made from the same matter as the nightmares are made, pointing at the exit…

Sponge Ducking Bob?

From here to Lovina it took us another hour, as we took a detour to see a waterfall but too late realised than Sara would not be able to walk the path to it.

With our super skilled driver behind the wheel,the road to Lovina was a nightmare. I almost vomited but tried to smile all the way to the destination to not seem rude.

As we arrived, we found out that we made a small mistake booking this room…

We booked an entire villa. 2 floors, kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms, and toilet. Of course, swimming pool outside. Ops!

Unpacked our stuff we went to see the beach, 3 minutes walking from the house.

Black sand beach

The beach is paved by black sand, meaning it has volcanic origins.

Dolphin boats!

We also saw many boats probably used to go watch dolphins in the morning. We’re gonna use one of those the next day!

Swing on the beach

We also found a swing hanging from a three. Sara couldn’t resist and went playing.

Was it windy?

There was also a small wooden pier covered by bamboo arcs, which made it peculiar.
Hungry we searched for a place where to have lunch.

Warung Apple (not related to the money grabber pricks making electronics) looked perfect to have a late lunch.

Beer and juice

We ordered something to drink, beer for the man, juice for the lady,and waited for the food to appear!

Glass noodles with pork and chicken salad

We took booth appetizer and main course, staring with meat and then fish.

Grilled fish. Dayum!

Satisfied we went back home to rest a bit. Here Sara fell asleep, victim of the lunch.

3 hours later she woke up and we went out for a walk on the beach.

Late sunset on the Bali Sea

Unfortunately the sunset was already gone,but the sky was beautiful nonetheless.

Like nothing happened just a few hours before, we went looking for a restaurant to have dinner 🤣

We found the best candidate 50 meters from our home, the JB Warung Makan.

We tried not to over order this time. We didn’t manage thought…

Strawberry juice to start

Chicken in lemon grass and rice for Antonio

Chicken in some weird kind of sauce and veggies for Sara

Home made lemon cheesecake.

We left the restaurant totaled!

We aimed for the beach to have a walk, but ended up lying on the pier, looking at the southern hemisphere’s stars and constellations. It’s amazing how many stars are visible when there are no big cities close by.

Relaxed and in full digestive process, we walked back home to end the day.

Hiroshima

1 Reply

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

1 Reply

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!

Spiritual experience in Koyasan

4 Replies

Kyoto is a wonderful city. Our 4 nights there were amazing, but today we are going to take a break from the hustle of big cities.

We are going to Koyasan this afternoon! 

Since our train is at twelve, we went exploring just a bit more of Kyoto before leaving.

After checking out from the Airbnb in Gion, we walked once again to the Nishiki Market. It was as cool as yesterday, just less crowded.

From there we walked north for 30 minutes, to reach the Imperial Palace.

The park around the Palace

Kyoto has been the capital of Japan for more than a thousand year, from 794 to 1868, and it’s palace is massive. We took a guide who walked us around the buildings showing us gates and gardens.

The palace external walls

The imperial palace structure is truly massive! Well, at least this  reconstruction. Because, guess what, also this building was burned down by a fire. Not only the palace, but two third of Kyoto were destroyed in the fire!

One of the internal gates

Our guide told us (but I couldn’t find the information anywhere on internet so I won’t consider the statement 100% reliable) that the fire was started by a servant who was cleaning one of the gate, and decided to kill a caterpillar using fire.
The gate were (and still are) made of cypress wood, which is great for building as it keeps away termites and ants, but is soft wood, which means it catches fire easily.
So basically our friend servant, shot a caterpillar with a bazooka in a armoury. Pretty sure if she survived the fire, she got  killed by a mob right after.

Back to the palace.

As it was rebuild in the seventeenth century, they made it earthquake proof.

One of the pond in the palace

All the building’s pillars rests on “unattached” stones, so the building structure is elastic enough to survive the shake without breaking.
We also learned that in Japan South is considered good luck. For this reason the emperor room faced south.

On the other hand, for some reason, north east is considered an unlucky direction. For this reason castles had the corner facing the direction cut and a tower with a monkey positioned on it. A monkey is a like a lucky guardian.

The emperor personal garden

Another thing we learned is about the family crest. Each Japanese family has a crest, which can be a flower, an animal or an insect. This symbol is passed by the father to his sons, while the woman will adopt her husband’s​.
After these interesting lessons, we had to leave and run to Kyoto central station or we would have lost the train.
Once again we had to take the Shinkansen (Nozomi N700). It took only 18 minutes to take us from Kyoto to Osaka.

Once there we bought our lunch to consume on the second train that would take us to our final destination.

Bento lunch boxes

Colorful and tasty

In Osaka we also bought the Koyasan World Heritage Pass, a ticket that allowed us to travel to Koyasan, use the cable car, take any bus we wanted, and go back the day after.

Leaving Osaka for Koyasan by train is like leaving behind the modern world and jump into the past.

View from the train

From the train windows you see the city making space to the countryside. Then without noticing the train is climbing its way among the mountains, on claustrophobic narrow iron bridges with rocks below. It is beautiful.

Then comes the cable car!

The cable car

1020 meters to climb in 5 minutes, going 10 km/h on a 30° slope. Basically a damn slow take off.

Almost vertical….

Once we got up there we reached our host by bus.
Did I mention that we stayed in a Temple for the night?

This kind of lodging is referred to as shukubo, and in Koyasan 52 out of 117 Buddhist temples offer the possibility to stay overnight, pray with them in the morning (6 am) and have traditional Buddhist vegetarian dinner and breakfast (this type of cuisine is named Shojin Ryori). 
Thats right. In Koyasan many temples offer the opportunity to spend one night as their guest, experiencing:

  • Tea under the Kotatsu
  • Onsen
  • Ritual dinner
  • Ritual morning prayer
  • Ritual breakfast

Our room with the kotatsu

The room was great. Two sets of paper sliding doors, creating the illusion of privacy, welcomed us in a spacious squared room. The floor was obviously tatami, and another sliding door made way to a closed balcony with a great view on the internal garden.

The view from our room

As we enter our room, a monk brought a streaming teapot, and explained the temple rules.

The onsen was available to use only between 4pm to 9pm, dinner would be served at 5:45, and the curfew set at 9pm.

We decided to enjoy the onsen before having dinner.

The water wasn’t as hot as the one we experienced in Takayama, but we enjoyed the bath nonetheless.

Before going back to our room we decided to wander around the temple and take some pictures in the gardens.

A walk in the garden

Selfie in the garden

Staring st the Koy fishes

We went back to our room just in time for the monk to come back with our dinner.

Vegetarian dinner for two

It was a lot of stuff! Rice, tofu, miso soup, fresh veggies, tempura veggies, soy noodles & carrots, sweets and fruit.

When we were done we called the monk who promptly took away the remains of our dinner and prepared the futon beds.

Not tired enough, we decided to go out and explore the close cemetery, Okunoin (奥の院), the largest in Japan, with over 200,000 tombstones lining the almost two kilometer long approach to Kobo Daishi’s mausoleum.

Walking in the cemetery at dusk

We entered the cemetery that was still day, but when we went back it was pitch dark, so dark we took the wrong way and lost the last bus to the city (7:30pm). We had to walk back to our temple, and the easiest way was a long walk through the cemetery to the city. Luckily all the lanterns were lit. 

The feeling of walking among all those tombstones, and statues, and lanterns is hard to describe.

You walk in religious silence, trying to catch any sound coming from the surrounding forest, while  keeping your eyes peeled to see what hides behind the darkness. 

Walking in the cemetery at night…

On the way we met other people walking, and even some organised groups, guided by monks.

We arrived at the temple tired and cold and literally jumped under the Kotatsu!

Just th le time to warm up our feet and we moved in the futon.

Tomorrow morning we are going to assist the ritual Buddhist morning prayer, so alarm set at 5:45!

Wish us luck, and see you on our next post.

Nara: Temples, Deer, and Mochi

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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.

Keep following us for new articles.

Kanazawa: the Golden Marsh

1 Reply

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!

2 Replies

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

Leave a reply

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.

[wpvideo jzirENG0]

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