JAPANLAND 2008: July 2008

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Kyoto!

I love Kyoto, I try and make it down whenever I am in Japan, there is just so much culture and history in Kyoto. We went to some amazing shrines and saw some real cool stuff. We started off at this shrine that has all it's pathways lined in Torri gates, it is soooo beautiful it's crazy. We ended up on these trails I don't think we were supposed to be one and hiked literally into the wilderness, like way off the beaten path. We found this cool little shrine/hut and continued to walk into the forest. There was some amazing bamboo forests as well, along with gigantic spiders.....After exploring around there for a couple hours we went back towards the station and decided to go to the top of the Kyoto tower (which is cool as fuck btw) you get a full 360 degree view of Kyoto and you can see everything. Lucky for us there were some very striking clouds/sun rays, which made for some awesome pics. After that I had to stop by my favorite shrine in Kyoto (this real small and really cool shrine) but it was closed! Really bummed, we had gotten there just as they were closing...So what did we do? Go get some asahi's out of a vending machine haha. We ended up just walking around and getting lost (literally) we took some turn and I got all mixed around (or so I thought) but we were actually going in the direction I thought. We happened to step under this parking garage and all of sudden it started raining cats and dogs, it was crazy but very very cool and relaxing. We basically sat underneath this garage for about 30 minutes just watching the rain and the people running from it haha. We made it back to the main strip to buy $4 umbrellas and get some food; it just so happens the largest matsuri in Japan was going on (a matsuri is a celebration). And the main street and side streets were closed off to cars and were just lined with street vendors selling food and goods. We got an amazing naan chicken curry sandwhich and walked around contemplating buying dung beetles so we could fight them in the hotel ha. After eating and just walking around for a couple of hours we headed back to the station to catch our bullet train back to Tokyo.

Bill and I literally took hundreds of photos here and I just can't post them all so please go to our flicker galleries and check them out!

Bill: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bildon/sets/72157606099853194/

Me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39659820@N00/sets/72157606100975184/

Beers out of vending machines, I think so

We got some major rain in Kyoto, we chilled here for a while and it was awesome

Never ending....

This bug was fucking HUGE, at least 3.5-4 inches long

Hahaha gotta love the dinner time pringles!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Zushi

This is going to be a very very long post, we've been so busy and doing so much we haven't had time to upload pics/update the blog so this all was a few days ago.

We started the day off by going to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo but it was closed so we just walked around it and decided we wanted to go do something else. We took a train to this place so we could check out this garden we had heard about and it was awesome! It was right next to the Tokyo Dome and it was real damn cool, so much wildlife in there.

We weren't done for the day though, we wanted to go do something else so I thought we should go to Zushi. Zushi is this tiny little beach town past Yokohama, I had been there once before as my friend Kai lives there during the summer and we went there a couple of years ago. This was one of the best evenings of the trip, we went to the beach and got a couple of lounge chairs and just watch the sunset while drinking good beer and eating good food. People (including myself) seem to forget that Japan is a tropical island and there are many many parts that are like visiting hawaii! It was really cool to see all the fish jumping out in the water, some of these fish were huge and were just jumping out of the water all over the place. Another great thing about Zushi is the people, since it is such a small town people are so nice and really down to talk with you. If I could I would definetly buy a house in Zushi, it's only an hour from Tokyo and is an amazing town.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39659820@N00/sets/72157606100975184/

Bill took this one:

We stopped off in Kamakura on the way back to Tokyo so Bill and Brent could get sushi. They loved it, I personally don't eat sushi so I don't know but they said it was amazing. Bill said he would eat whatever I would order for him so I ordered him Salmon Roe but I ordered it in Japanese so he had no idea what was coming until it go there, he could barely eat it haha.