Japan trip: Part V - Osaka

Time: 14.03.2015-05.04.2015
Notes about first days in Osaka still missing, so it is a bit difficult to write about everything..

25.03.2015

After we arrived to Osaka we were really tired and just wanted to go to our hostel. What we understood much much later is that when you take the cheapest hostel, then you should not expect much from it. Or not expect anything at all. I am still pretty sure that those linen were not washed before and I do not even want to know what things were thrown out from these windows. It was really weird place to stay and Yanne later said that actually we were just one block away from the most criminal area in whole Japan. Gyoza how I like Osaka. I was really surprised because despite being the second biggest metropolitan area in Japan you can see way too big differences between different areas of the city. In Tokyo and Kyoto the difference was not so big and obvious, but in Osaka it seemed like two different cities. At the moment I am talking about the differences of Shinsekai and other areas. Well, Shinsekai was the place were we stayed. A lot of alcoholics, a lot of garbage everywhere, the whole place looked almost abandoned. It is definitely a place where you do not walk around during the night alone. Maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but it is a place were you should not be alone.
So the evening of 25th we tried to overcome the shock about the hostel and the area and made last repacking for going to Okinawa, because we were going with low-fare airline so we wanted to go just with hand luggage.

26.03.2015

After waking up we decided to rented bikes to go see as much as we can see in Osaka. Yanne was at first a bit against it, but it ended up being one of the greatest decisions, despite the fact that my bike was broken and it was difficult to ride with it, not mentioning taking photos. We went around the Osaka and while being without map we did not know really where we are or where are we going. I have to say that Kanjani8 are definitely the stars of Osaka. All places where filled with notes or photos about them and saying "Kanjani8 ate here!!". It is great to see that boys are so famous there. At the same time it more felt cozy and home-like. Everything gave the feeling that it is the home of Kanjani8 members and everybody act like family. I do not know exactly why I felt like it. Another thing that I noticed was that I saw so much more host clubs in Osaka compared to Tokyo. But maybe in Osaka they just stood out more in the street view.

We went to eat okonomiyaki, because Osaka is the city of Okonomiyaki. It became one of the favorite foods for Chris, so we even ended up buying all the ingredients back with us when we left Japan.
We visited Osaka Castle and we actually met our aunt there who was in Osaka for one conference. Weird to go to the other side of the world to meet with your relative who lives almost in the same city as you. Unfortunately, I must say that Osaka Castle was a big let-down for me. Outside of it is amazing and one of a kind, definitely worth seeing, but inside is just museum with really modern restoration. While I am still studying interior architecture, I believe they could have done the inside in a better way. Basically after this we turned around again and started going back - of course from a different route. We went back through Minami district and that was only place where I thought 1) Oh, Osaka is BIG city 2) It is too crowded to ride a bike here. It was really crowded and it was the only part that reminded me something similar to streets in Tokyo.

For our surprise, we were not too tired so we decided to go out for a party. I had missed some moments so I do not know how we were invited to nomihoudai in one pub. It was pub where a lot foreigners went. We met a lot of people there and it was really interesting to hear how they are living in Osaka. In a weird way, we ended the night playing video games in one gamer's bar with one really cool English teacher. I still feel bad that I really sucked in the game and I do not remember his name. He was definitely one person worth remembering.

27.03.2015
This was our last day in Osaka. Actually half of day because then we had to go to the Airport.
We spent this day walking around Shinsekai, because Yanne knew that there should be one of the oldest temples in Japan. Unfortunately, we saw many other temples and shrines there, until Yanne discovered that the oldest temple is actually really far from us and we do not have time anymore to go there. Luckily, she visited it later when she made another trip to Osaka. We also went to one temple which contains buddha statues made of human ashes. It was rather creepy place, especially when we saw people bringing more ashes to build another buddha in few years. Also the big statues at the gates of the temple were modern statues made by the priest who has a big interest in architecture - See the photo up..

As street-food is really popular in Shinsekai, we decided to finally eat takoyaki there. Another food that is really popular in Osaka. I did not think it is so chummy and it definitely was way too hot to eat all at once. Aaa, and there was more Kanjani8 there!
If you want to hear if Shinsekai was as dangerous as it is told to be, then beside homeless people we managed to see one crazy woman escaping from the police and screaming. I do not know if she was under some kind of drug influence or she was just lost her mental state, but it was rather scary thing to see.
So the time came to take our things and go to Kansai airport and fly to Okinawa! We got there earlier, because we had to send most of our baggage straight to Sendai, because it would have been too expensive and useless to bring it all to Okinawa. I do not remember how much it cost, but for all our things it was rather cheap. If you happen to be in position like this, then it is a great option to send your things - just be sure that there is someone in the destination to collect it and store it until you get there. In addition, Kansai Airport is one of the coolest airports, because it is built on artificial island and metro road will take you long over the water to get there. Rather spooky experience for people who are afraid of heights over deep water.

In Kansai Airport we also had time to take part of samurai performance where we were made to wear all the outfits and act as we are samurai's having a fight. Though I was in a really bad mood and I do not like these kind of things, it was funny experience for other members of my travel group.
And then we were off to Okinawa! Few hours of flying and the sunny weather waited for us.. or that is what we believed and hoped, but more about it in next travel post! ;)

Japan trip: Part IV - Kyoto

Time: 14.03.2015-05.04.2015
Three words about Kyoto: Temples, traditions, geisha
With Kyoto I have the biggest problems because I lost the notes I made about it. Should not trust technology so much.. but I'll try to recall as much as I can. Thank Gyoza, that Yanne sent me 30 pages to print out about plans that she wrote. In addition, this might be one of the longest posts about the trip...

22.03.2015
We arrived at Kyoto around 6 am and we spent hours finding a place that would be opened for breakfast. After walking in circles for 3 times around the station we found one place that had curry - the best thing for breakfast. As we were not able to go immediately to the place where we were supposed to sleep, we put our things into lockers -  they are one of the most convenient things while travelling - they are rather cheap and help you a lot. Though seeing signs "Do not leave dead bodies/ human body parts into the locker!" is rather creepy.

We went off to discover the beauty of Kyoto's temples. This is the part of the day were I could mess up the order of places we went to because we visited so many temples that all places are mixed up in my head. Some smaller temples and shrines I already managed to forget entirely.
We used a lot of public transport and especially buses, because all Kyoto is covered by it and the day ticket is not expensive - almost the only place where transport was cheap.

We decided to go straight to Kiyomizudera-Gion area. Once we got off from the bus we actually managed to go a bit wrong and instead of going straight to Kiyomizudera we visited few other temples which names I could not find anywhere and took photos of Jishujinja shrine without knowing it. Kiyomizudera temple was one of the most stunning temples for me. It lies on a big area, is really huge and has stunning views. Even though, half of the temple was under constructions and sakuras did not bloom there so beautifully yet I still really liked it.
On the grounds of Kiyomizudera is the Otowa Waterfall. Its water is divided into three separate streams and there is a belief for every stream that drinking from it either causes longevity, success at school and brings fortune at love life. But be sure to not drink from all three because that is considered greedy and might bring bad luck. Most of us wanted to go drink also, but the waiting line for it was at least one hour, so we decided to move on. We also visited Nishi Otani cemetery that is one of two oldest cemeteries in Kyoto.

We walked on Higashiyama district that connects Kiyomizudera and Gion and maybe it was also the moment when we visited Gion area overall. Gion is really famous geisha district and we managed to see real geikos and maikos and also fake ones. How do we know that it was a fake one? well - she was European model. In Kyoto this is definitely the place to see the old traditional side of Japan.
We continued our walk to Ryozen Kannon temple, that has one of the biggest Bodhisttva Avalokitesvara (Kannon) statues in Japan. It is a war memorial temple commemorating the war dead of the Pacific war. The statue of Kannon is 24 meters (80 ft) high, so you can already see it from a far. We passed Kodaiji temple and walked in small bamboo grove that was outside of the temple grounds and took us to the mausoleum for Hideyoshi and Nene. Kodaiji temple was established by Nene after the death of Hideyoshi. The temple rally continued with Chionin Temple which is one of the most important Buddhism temples in Japan. It has the biggest Sanmon, colossal main gate, and the largest temple bell. USA-Japan collaboration movie "Last samurai" one scene was filmed on the stairs from Sanmon. Sadly big part of the temple was also under constructions, so we managed to see only some of it.

Our tour continued with Shiorenin temple where we actually made a stop to finally sit and rest our legs. We just saw a glimpse of it outside because our legs were still sore from climbing Mt. Tenjo the other day and now walking all day long. After we had gathered enough energy, we walked to Heian shrine. I must say that in reality they all are rather close to each other, so walking is the best option, but we just had already rather long day behind us. Heian Shrine was build in 1895, so this year it became 120 years old. Sadly we did not manage to visit the garden behind the shrine that is said to have most of Heian's beauty. But we did manage to see more geishas who were surrounded by enormous group of people taking photos. There have been many complaints about this subject, so when you see one geisha then please remember to act politely and do not stop them for hundreds of photos - their job is not to be models for tourists.

The time had passed already into evening so we had to go back to the station to collect our bags and drive 35 minutes back to north to find the place where we were supposed to spend the night. We found it again via Couchsurfing, but it was more like a Sharehouse. The name of the place was Factory. It is basically on the bank of Kamo river. The owners were really cool guys and it was perfect environment for artistic people. They played guitar and piano, there was art on the walls, one of them studied philosophy and they liked Beatles and European classic literature. Even though the rooms were really messy, it was really enjoyable for me and Yanne to stay there. Yanne spent most of the evenings talking to them. I wish I could meet them again. I even started to think about going to Kyoto University of Art and Design and start living with them, thank Gyoza that I came to my senses after leaving Kyoto.

23.03.2015
We started our day with a walk to the Imperial residents in Kyoto. There we saw basically nothing because everything is surrounded with big and high walls that do not allow you to see inside. Nice thing was that sakura's were starting to bloom so there were some trees already totally pink.
We walked around the area and managed to find one big store that sold all kind of things, so I finally got new batteries to my camera and I could take good photos again. All of the day was cold and from time to time it rained a little bit. For a moment there was also a threat of thunderstorm. We spent a lot of time near to Kamo river, crossing it from weird places and eating our breakfast/lunch kind of thing bought from Lawson on the riverside.

We decided to find Nijo castle that has nightingale floors and stunning paintings. Nightingale floors are floors that make a chirping sound when you walk on it. Nijo castle is one of the best examples of it. They serve the security purpose, so with creaking sound people will know that there is an intruder. Actually Chionin temple has also nightingale floors. In Nijo-castle it is not allowed to film or take photos, though sometimes you just happen to notice later that the camera around your neck had been filming all the time - wish I could say it wasn't me. The paintings there are currently being restored. The ones we managed to see were astonishing - really detailed with great colors and gold.

Already the gates to the Nijo castle are one of a kind thing to see - it is almost totally restored to its original colors, making it one of the most colorful gates. In Nijo castle there are more buildings and despite being in the center of Kyoto, the area is rather huge.
I bet all of you know that in Japan it gets dark really fast so by the time we finished with Nijo it already started to be the time where you have to say goodbye to the sun.

We wandered around Shinkyogoku-Teramachi and Shirakawa. Teramachi and Shinkyogoku are popular shopping streets in Kyoto downtown. Near to them is also Nishiki market that is really famous for its goods. Sadly by that time most of the selling-points in Nishiki market were already closed. It was interesting area as the streets are rather small and crowded. Walking in these streets we managed to see many things including Minami-za theather that is one of the most famous kabuki theaters in Japan. We had a plan to go watch one kabuki performance, but because we had one less day due to Kawaguchiko-Kyoto bus, then we had to exclude it from our plans. Shirakawa area runs down the Shirakawa Canal and we saw a lot of night life there. So many young people everywhere. The Shirakawa Canal is lined by willow trees that make the scenery magical during the night.

As the last place we visited  Gion shrine, also known as Yasaka shrine. I do not even know why we did not visit is the day before. We had walked by it several times and passed by it with the bus, but we were waiting for a moment like that night. As the sun had set and the shrine was illuminated with lamps. Yasaka shrine is huge and contains many many different small temples. There is a temple almost for anything. For some reason, most of us ran to the temple of love to get blessing and good luck in love life. Hmm.. until now nobody of them has received that luck.. Maybe it just takes more time. But I was fascinated by the statues - there was one temple where the guards were really angry looking kitsune (fox) behind the ware-box. In the temple dedicated to the God of Horse were big life-sized statues of horses. During the night everything looked really spooky and stunning at the same time.
We decided to end our day after Yasaka shrine, because the clock was really late and we thought that we should spend a bit time with people in the Factory too, where we spent another night. It was night full of long talks and self-made pear liqueur.

24.03.2015
With 3rd day in Kyoto we knew that we have to go and see the Golden temple (Kinkaku-ji). The day before we already heard from the locals that in reality it is just a temple that is golden and nothing more and to be honest then that's exactly what it is - just a golden temple. It was filled with tourists taking photos that you can find from every calendar about Japan or if just google it. It was actually really difficult to take photo of it without any people standing in front of you.  Of course it is beautiful, but you can just walk around it and the garden is not so interesting. We visited many different small temples that in the end started to look all the same to me.

We took our trip to Arashiyama bamboo forest. Despite seeing awesome photos online, I was a little bit disappointed by the real thing. Also, we did not have any luck with the weather so it was mostly raining and really cold, which also caused my photos to turn out soulless weird colored mess. I believe that on a sunny day it would be nice to walk around Arashiyama, but this day it was too freezing (says person who is having a summer at 14 degrees today) .   Arashiyama area is situated in the Western Kyoto on the banks of Oi river.

Because the day was cold - I do not get enough of mentioning it - we took a bus to the other side of Kyoto to get warm. We decided to visit Ginkaku-ji temple also known as Silver Pavilion in the East Kyoto. We thought of visiting it the next day, because we had plans to spend more time in Arashiyama, but the plans changed all the time. I liked the Silver Pavilion more than Golden temple, even though the Silver Pavilion has nothing to do with silver and has never been covered with it, it was still much more interesting. Mostly because it had amazing sand- and moss-garden. I am a big fan of Japanese gardens so it was more than awesome place for me.

We also went for a walk on Philosophy path and searched the Honen-in temple. The weather had actually got warmer, so it was okey again to walk for a longer period. My thoughts about Philosophy path.. hmm, it is a path next to a canal. Well it was okey, but I do not imagine myself there clearing out my head with all the houses and people surrounding me. Though when we went off the path, more up to the mountain then we found some really cool places. In addition we finally found Honen-in temple that looked almost forgotten by everyone, because we were the only people there.

Once again the clock was already showing evening time and we had to start going back to our sleeping place. This night we did not sleep in the Factory, but we spent night at one young student's apartment. He was studying law and you could actually notice from the way he acted and talked that he was actually son from a rich family, so called "young master". He was really great and interesting person with a wide horizon. He was the host with whom Chris felt most comfortable with. We also went to the bath house! The traditional Japanese bath house and this experience was totally awesome. If you think that bath house is just a place where you go, get naked and wash yourself and go home again, then it is not correct. Bathhouse can contain also different baths - this one had warm bath, totally hot bath and then reaaallly cold bath, in addition they had a sauna. It is also a place were people come to communicate. There were so many women coming, already knowing each other and talking about their everyday things. I liked the place, even though it was kind of weird to actually see that the place was like taken out of manga - the entrance and the "changing room" are separated only with a curtain, the wall between females and males is incomplete as there is around 1 meter free space from the wall top to the ceiling, so you can hear everything. Of course, as we already had gotten used to it, there were also people interested in how and why we were there. I just love Japanese people.

25.03.2015 
After nice waking up, we went to eat breakfast. I actually do not remember anymore what we ate, but I think maybe gyudon. I think you have noticed that I have hardly mentioned any food during the previous days - most of the time we bought something from Lawson or 7Eleven and ate it. After finishing the breakfast and saying goodbye to our host, we took our bags, rode to the station and once again put everything into the coin-lockers - gyoza how I miss them now. The plan of the day was to arrive to Osaka by the evening. It is around 25-30 minutes ride with a train from Kyoto to Osaka.

So at first we rode to South-East part of Kyoto where the Fushimi-Inari Taisha is. The place is famous for its thousands of torii gates. To hike all the way up the mountain and back takes around 2-3 hours, but I must say that we dropped this plan after spending 1,5 hours hiking up and covering just 1/3 of the distance. In addition to torii gates, there are thousands of kitsune statues as fox are believed to be Inari's messengers. Inari is Shinto God of Rice and obviously this shrine is dedicated to Inari.

It is definitely one of the must-visit places, but also be careful when you go there. I managed to lose my people again and I ended up wandering around for good 15 minutes hoping that they had taken the same path. Even though there seems to be one big rode up, there are actually many places where to go. When we were descending from the mountain we pumped into Yanne's friend from Sendai who was showing Kyoto to his friends. Neither of them knew that the other is in Kyoto and visiting Fushimi-Inari Taisha the same day. You might think that the world is big and there are so many people, but life still makes you see the same faces :)

After spending already half of the day there, we rode back to the station, bought tickets to Osaka and waved good-bye to the most beautiful city we visited in Japan. It is weird to think that even though we visited so many temples and shrines, there were more temples and shrines left that we did not have time to visit. But my trip in Japan continues with next post already in Osaka! 

Japan trip: Part III - Kawaguchiko

Time: 14.03.2015-05.04.2015
Three words about Kawaguchiko: onsen, nature, Mt.Fuji!

19.03.2015 
We woke up really early to go out and catch our bus to Kawaguchiko. If you do not know where this small town is then it is situated only 10 km from Mt. Fuji in the area of 5 lakes on the shore of Kawaguchiko lake. Before bus we managed to eat curry for breakfast. It definitely became my favorite Japanese food.

Even though I had just said to Yanne that I want to talk with her face to face and hear about everything, I ended up sleeping 10 minutes after sitting into the bus. I am just terrible in moving vehicles. When we finally arrived to Kawaguchiko it was cloudy and raining. For Kawaguchiko we had promised ourselves to spend a bit more money and sleep in onsen with traditional Japanese dinner and breakfast. We dropped our bags into ryokan (the traditional hotell) and went to find a place to eat some lunch and see the city. We managed to see a bit of Mt.Fuji, but really only a bit. In addition, my camera battery died totally and it was impossible to reload it as the Japanese plugs do not support the charger and I did not have adapter to change it. We had adapters for phones and laptops, but for some reason they do not work on the camera battery recharger. So for few days I had to depend on my phone camera. The day continued to be really cloudy so we preferred to go back to onsen and enjoy the natural hot water bath outside. I must say that it was actually really difficult to stay there for a long time even though I am used to being in sauna.

excuse our appearances

After onsen we dressed up and went to eat traditional Japanese dinner shabushabu. It was the only day we ate shabushabu because in most places it is really expensive. Our table was just full of food and everything was so delicious. Of course we found out that most people went to eat dinner in their everyday clothes and once again we became photo-models for some Chinese men (Gyoza it sounds so wrong). Even though we had plans to go again to the onsen or do something fun, everybody fell asleep as soon as they touched their futons.
There actually was one thing that turned all our plans up-side-down. We had plans to leave Kawaguchiko the next day with night bus to Kyoto, but all the bus tickets were sold out. That meant that we had to spend one more night in Kawaguchiko or find another way to go away. But the thing was that our budget did not allow us to spend another night in ryokan. 

20.03.2015

We woke up to receive great news. Hirotaka-san on Couchsurfing had replied to us and allowed us to stay at his place for the night. He was from the neighbor city Fujiyoshida that has one of the scariest roller-coaster rides in Japan. But we had to spend the whole day until we went to his place.
We started the day with enjoying traditional Japanese breakfast knowing that we will not get more of it. The day was less cloudy than the day before, but still we did not see Mt. Fuji, because it hid itself into to the clouds. Because there were signs that transport to the next station on Mt. Fuji has been cancelled due to bad weather and road condition then we did not even think of going higher to the the Mt. Fuji. We decided to take a bit smaller mountain and we started climbing Mt. Tenjo. It was really nice workout and it was actually more difficult than I had thought.

In Kawaguchiko there is also a really "nice" folk story written by famous Osamu Dazai about a tanuki and a rabbit - I truly hope that my future children will never hear it. In the meanwhile I will tell you another story that became the joke of the trip. I have a friend who had asked me to bring him a souvenir - "The most pointless small thing you can find in Japan!". What the ramen would that be? Basically I spent all days searching for pointless things until in Kawaguchiko near a children playground I found small shinkansen. Of course I did not take it with me then, I put it on top of one post so everybody could see it from far and the rightful owner could have it back. But there was also small promise that if we happen to come back to this place and it is still here, I will bring it to him. Well, in the end of the trip he got his shinkansen that for some reason got baptized as a tractor..
But back to the trip itself. After coming down from Mt. Tenjo we decided that it was not enough walking and we started going to Fujiyoshida on foot. It was really weird road and for a long time we were not even sure if it was a right place. Compared to Tokyo it was really under-developed country-town. We stopped for a while in Book-Off and I bought "Ranma 1/2" music CD-s - something that you do not find so easily.

Suddenly we had already reached Fujiyoshida and we had to wait for hours in the train station, because we were exhausted. We met our host Hirotaka-san who is originally from Shizuoka. For a while we had a plan to hitchhike to Shizuoka and from there to Nagoya and then to Kyoto. In a way I still wish we had tried it, becuase NEWS was having concert in Nagoya during the same dates, but we had to neglect this awesome plan, because we had too much luggage to hitchhike and the weather was really cold. Of course we also wanted to go on NEWS concert, but we did not get tickets. As foreigner it is not so easy to get tickets and they got all sold out (Yanne could even write a post about how difficult it is). Hirotaka-san was just few years older than us and living alone in a small apartment. It was a miracle that we all fit into his place. Before going to sleep we went to eat sushi in real sushi place and visited one old and rare temple on the top of a mountain close by. It had an amazing view to the whole city. If you ask what made this temple so rare, was that it had a old stage that most temples do not have (or something like that was what Yanne explained to me). After this long day we went to Hirotaka-san's place, watched the final episode of "Second love" with Kamenazhi Kazuya in the leading role and spent the coldest night (at least for me) during the whole trip with 5 people sleeping in less than 10 square meters. But I am so thankful that at least we had a place to sleep and Hirotaka-san was an amazing host.

no buses going further up

21.03.2015

When we woke with still cloudy weather. They say that if you stay in Kawaguchiko it is impossible to miss seeing Mt. Fuji in its full glory, but this is exactly what we were facing - three days on the foot of Mt. Fuji and we had seen only glimpses of it. But we did not let our mood fall and we started our day with eating local Fujiyoshida udon. I cannot exactly say what made so much differnet from other udons, but I can say that it was delicious as hell. I love going to places where the local people eat and I have a feeling that this place did not have so many foreigners coming there so we had a lot of eyes on us. As if I do not feel awkward enough to eat while people are looking.
We went back to Kawaguchiko because our bus left from there, but we still had the whole day to spend. What to do when your on budget-trip in a small town where you have already seen almost everything and it is freakishly cold outside? Well, you just go again to ONSEN! The thing is that it is quite expensive to spend the night in onsen, but it is rather cheap to just use it. As Kawaguchiko has a lot of onsens, then there is a big variety to choose from. We picked out one where the onsen was on 7th floor. It had both inside and outside bath and we ended up staying there for hours! And most of the time all alone. I think we stayed there for 3 hours and only on the last hour there were other visitors too. I felt like a newborn baby after coming out - skin so soft, cheeks like roses and all the tiredness was gone.

In reality you should see Mt. Fuji inside the heart..

 Another thing that actually happened was that Mt. Fuji had decided to forgive us and show its peak. I was speechless when I saw it. White symmetrical peak that is so high that I understood that for the last days the area I had searched the top from was actually only 2/3 of the mountain.  But you want to know a bad thing? We were still in onsen, naked, we did not have any cameras with us to take photos and it is not allowed to take photos in onsen. So we can just say that we actually managed to see how high Mt. Fuji is, but not to prove it with a photo. In the end we took the night bus to Kyoto that was so horrible that my sister felt like suing the company for taking so much money with so low quality. I must agree because even I had very difficult time sleeping. Seats were told to be separated "room" which meant that seats next to windows had curtains and the middle seats had to suffer from all the light in the bus; plug-ins to charge phones were only near to the toilet and it was only one plug-in extension; For the first 1,5 hours the bus-driver had to comment almost everything he did and overall there was very little room for everybody so in the middle of the night I had to stand up from my seat to let some people pass. Oh did I mention that the drive was 8 hours long? yes, I agree that maybe I am too spoiled with buses in my country that already for 2 hour trip have all kind of entertainment, comfortable seats and plug-ins for every seat.
But just like this, we finally managed to reach our next destination: old city of traditions and culture - Kyoto! but about this already in a next post!