So.... Japan. Sitting now at my hotel room in Singapore, at the airport waiting for my flight back to Israel, and having some time to kill, I will take this opportunity to summarize my Japanese experience, which all in all, was excellent by the way, no matter how bitchy I might have sound in my daily posts. I definitely want to come back (Tokyo!) ( Read more... )

Today's weather has been bad. If it wasn't raining it was very cold. However, that did not stop us from touring Tokyo with two young volunteer guides that showed us around, and from having fun!

After meeting them at our hotel lobby, our first destination via the train was the Imperial Palace. We couldn't really see much today.

Other places we have ( Read more... )

Today we had a guided tour of Tokyo with a volunteer guide. That was really fun. First, she spoke English! She even helped us when it was time for lunch (not that finding a place wasn't difficult at first). We saw parts of Tokyo that we haven't been to (naturally) and we learned some new things, for example, why a lot of the Japanese walk around ( Read more... )

Tokyo is big and much prettier in the urban kind of way at night when all the lights are turn on. I am writing it here because I forgot to mention it in my last post. I was tired and indeed I went to sleep rather early.

Today we had an extra early wake up - 6:30 and the plan for today was to see Mt. Fuji, the most important site, let alone ( Read more... )

Without much fanfare we left the nice town Nikko. A few hours and three trains later we arrived in Tokyo, the last destination of our trip. I was expecting here to get the cultural shock I kept on thinking I should get in Japan. Well, Tokyo around mid-day is big, but not much shock inducing. Unless you count that someone saw we had trouble ( Read more... )

In the morning we left Kyoto and started our Journey towards Nikko. Three trains and half a day later, we arrived at Nikko.

Nikko is a tiny little place in Nowhere, Japan or so it seems, but I find it very charming. It has the feeling of a ski resort town (no snow here, but it is high and the view of snowy mountaintops in the distance). ( Read more... )

Today we took the local train to Nara (something of about 50 minutes away). The main attraction of Nara is that it is relatively small and everything is in walkable distance.

The main street that leads to the city attractions (temples and shrines, I will get to it soon) felt like Disneyland or something, for they had speakers around the road ( Read more... )

Today too had three parts. Okay, two main destinations outside of Kyoto and the third one was the 100 Yen Shop, that gets an honorary mention because it took us 45 minutes to get there from the train by foot. I shall start at the beginning....

No lazying it out today. By 8:22 in the morning we were on the train bound for Himeji. The sole ( Read more... )

We had plans for today - to wake up at 8am and go to another town near by with the train. Well, we woke up at 8, it was raining (never a conducive factor in keeping to one's plans) and Dad wasn't feeling 100 percent, so we decided to change plans and stay local today (we want to do some laundry and go shopping. Can't come back from Japan empty ( Read more... )

After the long day we had yesterday, today we started late: We only got out of bed around 9:30. We left the house only around 11. All in all, the day involved quite a lot of walking, but for the first time, the sky was somewhat clear and it wasn't as cold as it was before.

We started the day with a late breakfast at a noodle restaurant. I quite ( Read more... )