Japan Trip 2018 - Part 7: Osaka, Kyoto and going home

This is where the memories fade a bit or start overlapping eachother in my head. I know in Osaka we had booked a different hotel than our friends, I am not sure why, maybe it was my husbands preference or possibly we were actually too late with booking, but what was funny is that when I looked up the location of the hotel it was at the same location as our hotel in Osaka the last time we were there. Yet the hotel had a different name. I guess it got a different owner (?) and they totally refurbished, it looked stylish inside but we were still happy with the 7-11 convenvience store across the street to buy our breakfast at.

We met up with our friends, ate dinner, did shopping on multiple days, had fun in Amerika-mura. Highlights were the pinball place with a huge selection of pinball machines and a retro game cafe where they dare to serve cocktails next to old game consoles. I tried on a dress in Closet Child but Nick didn't seem to be convinced by the fit so I didn't buy it. 

You definitely need to check out this place if you are in Osaka

Trying out a fancy dance machine.

We had way too much fun in arcades and found a nice restaurant where they served the most tasty crossover of yakisoba and sukiyaki. Also we somehow got free alcoholic beverages at one of the convenience stores, wut, in Osaka they want to get you drunk.

Delicious Sukiyaki for the 4 of us!

What was also funny is that it became November and you know what, the music played around the shopping areas suddenly changed to...can you guess?...christmas songs. Okay Japan I get that you like western holidays but this is maybe a bit too much. But yeah I didn't mind spotting some cute christmas items in the Pokemon Center though. I got a special discount since it was close to my birthday!

Minoo Park and cake

On the 4th of November, my birthday, we went to Minoo park which is a pretty forest valley including a waterfall at the end of the path. Remember that Japan had some natural catastrophies that year? Well it was certainly visible around the forest as lots of trees had fallen down. We also came across an interesting snack that I believe was sold here: fried maple tree leaves. Apparently you can eat them, we tried some, it wasn't bad actually. When we were back in Osaka my friend Sanne found a nice place to eat some cake for my birthday, yay!

 

  

Birthday cake!

Kyoto and going home

The day after this Nick and I went to Kyoto just to get a bit nostalgic again and walk around, it is still a very nice place where you can see traditions mixing with 'the new'. We took the chance to buy some souvenirs for our family and friends.

I am not telling a lot about Kyoto because we already went there in 2015, but I only wrote blogs in Dutch then. Because we only went for one day now, we did not visit any pretty shrines.

Visiting the Kyoto Pokemon Center of course. Still making use of my birthday discount!

The day following that we would go to the airport again to fly back home. The train to it felt a tiny bit scary because of the typhoons the bridge had just been repaired and because the KIX airport is basically on an island outside of the land you have to go over the water. But we got there safely of course. It was fun seeing if we could spend our last Yen on something we liked. I also spotted a very small Pokemon shop as well.

Finally after our long trip, back home, we made a picture of all our purchases. It was so much, I am almost embarrased but yeah seeing as that lots of these things can only be found in Japan, it's also great to be able to bring a lot of fun stuff home, that now decorates our house.

Later on I also made a canvas to hang our keychain collection on, since this is one of the easy and affordable souvenirs from Japan, but then again some are just too pretty to use in the end, haha.

In the end the three weeks were still pretty long, I think the ideal time would be around 18 days or so because I do think that some days were just filled with shopping that was not 100% necessary and maybe also because we already went to the major sights before. It definitely was fun though and I am happy we planned some overnight stays outside of the cities, that was really worth it. After a while Nick was making jokes about how many times we would visit Japan in our lives, as I had said that after this I had enough for a while but then that 'while' also seems quite short if you feel like returning one year later haha. Although we can afford to go it is not always easy to plan multiple weeks if it is during the normal academic year because we have to work. Also, because we are expecting a baby in January, I think that it probably will take a while before we will go on a big trip again, but that is alright. We still feel like Japan is our favourite country to visit for holidays. There is just so much to see, the nature is great, the taste in items/hobbies is matching ours and Japanese manners are still very nice, so I think we will go back one day, but I don't know when. Let's see!

Japan Trip 2018: Part 6 - Hiroshima & Miyajima

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From Tokyo we traveled per airplane to Hiroshima. Why with the plane? Well it was actually cheaper than taking the train and the experience of taking a plane in the same country was also one we never had before. It was quite a small plane of course and a bit bumpy at the end of the flight, but overall a nice experience. 

We ended up in Hiroshima just around dinnertime and it was a bit stressful finding the right bus and busstop. Also it was so much more quiet/less crowded than in Tokyo. We looked for a restaurant near our hotel but a lot seemed already closed as well. We found an international cafe that also served dinner so it was convenient to go there for now.

The next day was the one big day we had in Hiroshima. Of course we first went to the Peace Memorial and it was impressive and also good to see/learn about everything that happened here. The impact of an atomic bomb is...well let's just say we never ever want that to happen again. It makes me sad to think that some countries even have atomic weapons still to begin with, nobody deserves that. The memorial park was quite a big place and different things to see so we took the whole morning for it. 

After that we did some walking in a still quiet city compared to Tokyo, which was nice for a change but felt a bit weird somehow too. We did some shopping of course and I had some luck as well at the lolita fashion stores there as there were some amazing discounts (like 70% off some accessories...I almost felt like buying more than I wanted just because it was so cheap). And we walked around to see some cool places, even though it was late in the evening. 

Now that is a convenient souvenir.

Hiroshima Castle

When you are in Hiroshima you need to try Okonomiyaki. Of course we already know that dish as it is one of my favourite Japanese foods. There is the Okonomiyaki 'town', which is basically a big building with all kinds of Okonomiyaki restaurants. We just chose a random one and it was a nice experience to have your dinner see being made on the plate before you and eat from it too.

Not sure how you would choose one but it is nice they have English descriptions!

Miyajima

One of the reasons we also went to Hiroshima is because the famous Miyajima (or Itsukushima) is near.  Miyajima means 'shrine island' and it is known for its famous big torii (gate) in the water that you see featured in so many articles about traveling to Japan. So we wanted to see it for ourselves.

View from the boat on the land side

Instead of just spending the day we also planned a night there in a ryokan near the shore.You can travel there by boat, and there was one leaving pretty close from our hotel in Hiroshima so it was very easy. It also gave us an amazing view of Hiroshima outskirts and Hatsukaichi and the other islands on the east side.

View on the different islands

After dropping our suitcases, we went to see the Itsukushima shrine first. After petting some of the cute deer of course. Just like in Nara they roam around this island as well (although we mostly saw them around the first piece of town when we arrived).

 

It was low tide, so no cool pictures of the whole shrine yet. We continued walking to the Momijidani park, which is famous for its read maple leaf trees. Although it was still early in fall, we have seen some red leaves indeed. After that you can continue to 'climb' up the mountain but of course we took the ropeway which is much easier and gives you more exciting views. Although I have to say that, in the second part the gondola can be filled up by 15 people or so and it felt like a crammed bus high up in the sky, which was a bit weird.

Some kind of pretty tea house

The famous red bridge in Momijidani park

We printed an outside canvas of this photo for our garden!

Up in the mountain there are some small shrines and there is a walk you can take to them which was in my memory quite exhausting, but totally worth it as you can walk all the way to the top and get a stunning view on the ocean/islands.

Once we were back the tide got higher so it was nice to walk around the shrine. I think that actually there was a wedding or feast being prepared so we saw some traditional shinto costumes! I think this shrine is really unique so I am definitely very happy that we visited it.

Of course, because of all the visitors, there are lots of tourist shops to see. Funny was that there were a lot of middle school pupils walking around looking for stuff to buy but when evening came they were all gone, because people usually just only visit during the day and then leave. It was so quiet after 5pm. After looking in the shops we decided to go back to our ryokan to see our room and it was really nice, with a view of the ocean/shore! We ate some momiji cakes as well with our tea, as Miyajima is famous for those leaves you can find the shapes back in lots of items.

During night the path along the ocean was very pretty and serene to walk down and gives you a even more unique view on the famous torii. Of course our ryokan had a small public bath as well so we took use of it, slipped our yukatas on and went to sit down near the window to enjoy the rest of the night. Waking up with the view of the shoreline was definitely very nice. 

I don't mind waking up seeing this

After that we checked out and went to the boat that should bring us to the train again. I really loved going to Miyajima, we even said it might have been nice to stay two nights instead of one, but it is really worth going if you are in Japan.

Read part 7 here: http://dreamsweetie.blogspot.com/2020/08/japan-trip-2018-part-7-osaka-kyoto-and.html