Begin at the bottom

This is a blog page, so the expectation is that one is adding to this incrementally, from the bottom. Not exactly what I did... so select items from the list to the right, from the bottom up. Or go in whatever order you want, as I did these more thematically than chronologically.

Have fun!
Sarah

Would I go again?

Absolutely. It was great touring with someone who could speak and read the language, even as a beginner. Although there were a lot of signs in English, even in places were there weren't tourists, that didn't mean that people spoke much English, if at all. Would I go if I didn't have a interpreter at my side - probably not, but I think going with a tour group would be fun.

Alan and I traveled inexpensively, which can be done without sleeping in hostels and eating ramen noodles every night. There are things we probably should have done since we were there, that we didn't because of the cost. However, I think we got to see a lot in the limited time we had. And, we had fun! There were moments of tension - typically occurring when I was bone-tired and Alan would have a burst of energy, but we survived.

If you get a chance to go to Japan, take it!

Where we stayed

The types of places we stayed ran the gamut in terms of Western-style vs Japanese. Some had beds, some had futons. Some had a complete, roomy bathroom in the room, some had toilets and showers and tubs, all in separate rooms, all down the hall. Some - um, one, had chairs in the room. But we always had the two most important things: something comfy to sleep on, and AIR CONDITIONING!!!

We stayed our first two nights, and our last night, in Asakusa, in Toyko. Our first room had a mini, in-the-room bath. Second room was complete Japanese style. In this picture you can see 2/3's of the items in the bathroom. It was only nearly possible to get oneself in the bathroom too.
We next stayed at the Turtle Inn in Nikko. This place had an onsen - hot springs! They had two tubs, both very nice. Outside of the tub was a shower area where you get all cleaned up, and rinsed, before soaking in the tub. Very relaxing. Behind the hotel was the Daiya-gawa river, which made for a nice setting.Those are our sweat soaked shirts hanging up there. There are two Turtle Inns - well one is the annex. The annex looked much nicer than the one we were in - I know this because we were directed to the annex, which was further away, and therefore we had to backtrack with our enormous luggage in tow.Apparently all repeat visitors bring turtles. Alan took this picture in the dining room of dozens of turtles.
Next we stayed in Kyoto for three nights. We stayed at the Ryokan Rakucho, which was my favorite place. This picture shows the typical settup; tatami mat for the floor, futons for beds, pillows to sit on, a low table for tea, etc. No closet, but a cubboard. There were two floors at Rakucho. The second floor, were we were, had guests rooms, a kitchen area (fridge, sink, microwave, toaster oven) and a toilet. The first floor had guest rooms, a kitchen area, washer/dryer, showers, toilets, and a tub. Alan was going to soak in the tub one night, but found it to be extremely hot! I like the fact that we could buy yogurt, fruit, bread for toast for our breakfast, and keep it in the fridge. We were the only Americans in this place, the rest were Europeans. In fact we saw very few Americans while we toured about. Here's the front of Rakucho. The front door was never locked, even though there was a laptop computer right there for customers use.
Our next two nights were in the most Western place we stayed in. We were on the 14th floor, or something like, of a modern building in Hiroshima.Our second to the last night was spent in a hotel near Tokyo station. It was the most expensive place we stayed, and pretty much without charm, or niceties. Location I guess, is everything!

New Stuff

All is not old in Japan; in fact much of what we saw is quite new. This is near Asakusa, where Alan and I stayed at the very beginning and end of our trip together. The second building is supposed to look like a glass of beer at night... the white stuff on top is the foam. Don't know what the gold tadpole is supposed to represent. You can see some of the bicycles lined up along the street. People in Tokyo, or anywhere else we traveled, didn't lock their bicycles up! Imazing!!! You didn't need to!!





Alan and I spent some time at the Kyoto train station. It's a train station shopping mall - a combination that seems pretty common. Much is underground, but then there was a fabulous building above ground at Kyoto, with a high end department store and hotel. Needless to say, we spent money in neither, but did take lots of photos. The architect for the building was Hara Hiroshi. You can see picture of other of his buildings here.
I'm the person waiting patiently with her suitcase in this photo. Alan went up to the top where there was a rooftop garden. Still, garden, rooftop, or no, it was amazingly hot and... well, you know.

Alan of course spent a lot of time in Tokyo, but our travels together were mostly elsewhere. We did spend a couple of evenings out on the town. One night we went to Ikekuburo, which was fun. We ate in a shopping mall with 2 floors of restaurants, where I had to point to the plastic model of food in front of the restaurant to order, since there were no pictures on the menu. I had quickly gotten used to those glossy photos! Ikebukuro is known for having a "tacky entertainment district" but it looked like a lot of fun. Perhaps a little over stimulating. This is a picture of the multitude of people crossing a street-wide crosswalk (I really like those, and think that they would be an enormous asset to Chicago).West of this area is Sunshine City, which is a complex of shops, offices, hotel, etc., including the Sunshine 60 (as in 60 stories), which at 240 meters is Japan's second tallest building. This is a view from one of the windows, looking west (I think). If you squint hard enough, you might see the ferris wheel of Tokyo Disneyland way way out in the distance.Next to Sunshine 60 is a car showroom building. I don't know if there are cars on all the floors -- could be, this is Tokyo afterall. But I liked the lighting on the building.
On our last night in Tokyo, and Japan, we met Linnea for dinner. Linnea was also living at the Arai's. She had taken the same program as Alan a couple of years ago, and lived with the Arai's. She returned this year to attend an even more intensive program, and returned to the Arai's. She's Swedish, but naturally had just graduated from Columbia University in NYC and therefore was one of those ultra-accomplished, multi-lingual Europeans that we always envy but don't do anything to emulate. And, goes without saying, very nice and polite. We ate at a sushi restaurant where the little plates of sushi, etc., travel around on a conveyer belt on a loop. If you spy a dish you desire, you scoop it up as it trundles by.
After the antiquities of Kyoto, Alan and I took the train down to Hiroshima, which, because of certain events during WWII, doesn't have a lot of antiquities. We headed directly to the Peace Memorial Park, which is just south of the Aioi-bashi bridge, which was the intended target of the atomic bomb the US forces dropped. Very close to the bridge, and close to where the bomb actually detonated (not over the bridge) is a building that has been left pretty much the way it was after the bomb. It was one of the few buildings left standing, so to speak. It was a municipal building, now called the A-bomb Dome.
The park houses several memorials, and several museums. A very pretty part of the park is the Children's Peace Monument. At this monument are boxes filled with origami cranes, and other creations, all of paper, all made by school children all over the world.
The Peace Memorial Museum is very good. It tells the history of Hiroshima, particularly beginning in the 19th Century. Because of its location, Hiroshima was always a military town. This is one of the reasons it was selected as a target for the bomb. Also because it was believed, falsely, that there were no POWs there -- did you know there were both American and Korean POWs at Hiroshima? The museum documents in great detail the life in Hiroshima before and after the bomb. One of the reasons there are so much eye-witness accounts of the bomb by children is because older kids were pulled out of school to work in building or dismantling structures to be used by the military. The museum documents the continued worldwide construction of nuclear weapons. A great focus of the museum, and indeed of the whole park, is towards the goal of peace, and the destruction of all nuclear weapons. There is the Flame of Peace that will be kept burning until the last weapon is gone... Here I am ringing the Peace Bell.

Other than the Peace Memorial Park, and the baseball stadium where the very popular Carp play, there isn't a whole lot to Hiroshima, although I welcome corrections on this. For example, here's the view from our hotel window. This was the only truly Western style hotel we stayed in. Pretty non-descript hotel, and view.There was a large shopping district in the middle of town. We ate in an 'Italian' restaurant, where there were plastic models of the food, like pasta, in the window, just like all the other restaurants. This is another one of those really wide sidewalks. I love those!
This is my favorite picture from our whole trip. Alan took this from the Aioi-bashi bridge, looking at the A-bomb Dome and the twilight sky of Hiroshima.

Old Stuff

Is this a catch-all section, where I'm going to show you pictures of old stuff that I haven't figured out where to put thematically? Maybe...

Our first trip together out of Tokyo was to Nikko. The shrine complex at Nikko is a different from any of the other shrines that we saw, and I hope by now I've impressed you with the number that we saw! It is ostentatious, to say the least, and therefore is quite not like a typical Shinto shrine (usually fairly austere). The story is that the Tosho-gu shrine was built as part of the will of shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1616. His grandson didn't think it was fancy enough, and added to it. Why so fancy? Not just to honor his grandfather, or to display the wealth of the Tokugawa dynasty, but also for practical reasons. He ordered his lords, or under-lords, to pay for the construction of the shrine, therefore placing them in the position of always being just a wee bit strapped for funds! Both of these photographs were taken by Alan.

Even a simple pagoda gets the overwrought treatment.
This is a famous building, perhaps ostentatious in another fashion. This is the fabulous Kinkaku-ji temple in Kyoto, also known as the Golden Pavilion. The pond in front is known as the Kyoko-chi, or Mirror Pond! First built in 1400, it was burned down by a monk in 1950, who was said to be obsessed with the building. A replica was built soon after, and was regilded in 1987 at great cost.As a jutaposition, across town on the eastern side of Kyoto, is Ginkaku-ji, or Silver Pavilion. You might notice they are similar; Ginkaku-ji was built later in the 1400's. The story is that the shogun who built it intended to gild (?) it in silver, to partner with Kinkaku-ji, but that he ran out of money. Some doubt that was ever the plan, and that the "silver" comes from the dry garden, the "sea of silver sand." Apparently on moonlit nights the garden was full of visitors.
Nara, not far from Kyoto, has lots of old stuff, being the capital before Kyoto. This building for the bell was not far from the Daibutsu-den (remember, the big Buddha?).
This is one of my favorite pictures, taken by Alan. This is also in Nara, at the Kasuga Taisha shrine, first built in 768, rebuilt many times. These are a few of the 3,000 stone and bronze lanterns.This is one of the oldest things we saw, a waterfall! I have lots of pictures of it, but they all look like I was in the shower or something - there was a lot of mist. This one was taken by Alan, and was far enough away so it's not drowning. This is Kegon Falls, in Chuzenji (near Nikko). We took a bus up here, and were going to take a cable car to see this great vista of falls, lake, mountain (Mt. Nantai, which when it erupted thousands of years ago, created Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls), but the whole area was too fogged over. So we caught another bus and went into Chuzenji, and to the 100 meter elevator (through rock) to a viewing platform at the base of the falls. 3 tons of water flows over it a second, and, it's a traditional spot for lovers with no hope of marriage to commit suicide!

A land without squirrels (II)

We did see plenty of images of animals - no shortages there. I don't know anything about Buddhism, but it would appear that animals figure strongly, as we saw animal statues and carvings all throughout the shrines we visited.

This one's famous -- you recognize these three monkeys! They were at Tosho-gu Shrine at Nikko. Interestingly enough, they were part of the Sacred Stable, which happened to be inhabited by a white horse, a gift of the Mauri people of New Zealand. The many school kids there were charmed by the horse, not that much interested in these little monkeys.
These statues are both parts of the fountains in front of every shrine. Before one enters a shrine one should wash off the hands and rinse out the mouth. The water was quite a relief because it was really really... well, you know. These two were at two different temples in Kyoto.


This is a panel in a chest we saw at Daisho-in on Miyajima. The chest was covered in carvings.
Not only did we see images of animals in the temples, but they were also strongly part of advertising. This was for carrier service, like UPS. There was a competitor that also used an animal carrying its young, I think a bear on its back. (Baker)
Advertising, signage, seemed to be gently humorous. Or maybe it was inadvertently humorous? (Baker)
The hiking path up to Mt. Misen was being repaired after one too many typhoons. This is I guess a variation of "pardon our dust," but I love the bowing in apology!

This other sign about the ropeway (cable car) we never did figure out (Baker)

















Alan spent some time looking for this sign. The big train stations have lockers of varying sizes, including ones big enough to hold our gigantic bags. I guess sometimes people put in other things besides luggage. (Baker)
The temple on Miyajima that we spent a lot of time at, Daisho-in, was the most light-hearted one we visited. This statue is actually of a popular cartoon character named An Pan Man, which means red bean paste bread man. I think like those dimsum dumplings you get in Chinatown. Anyway, he's everywhere! Although I think even Alan was shocked to see him here. (Baker)
Also at Daisho-in.
If there was a theme at Daisho-in, it was miniatures, and lots of them. This site contains 500 Rakan statues - statues of 500 of Shaka Nyorai's disciples, each with a unique facial expression. Shaka Nyorai is Shaka Buddha, the image of which is of a Buddha lying down (entering Nirvana), pictured elsewhere.
Here are some of the 1,000 Fudo myo-o, or Immovable King, images that were donated by worshippers.





















This was inside the Henjyokutsu Cave, with the principal Buddhists icons of the 88 temples of the pilgramage route on Shikoku -- I haven't the slightest idea of where Shikoku is. It was lighted with hundreds of lanterns hung from the ceiling. Along the walls were the mini-Buddhas wearing necklaces and other trinkets for luck.
Even the Dalai Lama came here! Or at least some of his guys. This is one of those mandalas made using colored sand. This one is of Kannon Bosatu, the symbol of mercy. (Baker)
Okay, I don't know what the deal is with pineapple at Daisho-in, but it was all over the place, as offerings. This is I believe is Kobo Daishi, who founded the Shingon sect of Buddhism. (Baker)
Finally, at the top of Mt. Misen, above Daisho-in. While I sat in the AC, looking at the sad monkeys, Alan climbed up further, and saw even more shrines, and drank hot tea (hot!) made from water boiled in a pot under which a fire has been burning for 600 hundred years! This same fire was used to light the Flame of Peach at Hiroshima, which will keep burning until all nuclear weapons are banished. Let's hope that's not for another 600 years. (Baker)
And here Alan is himself, up on Mt. Misen,taken by a fellow tourist.