Sunday, 15 October 2006

So we had a great time on our trip to Kyoto - even though I feel like we walked a squillion miles. Here's a brief overview,and remember, if you want to see the rest of our photos, just have a look at our Flickr site.

We spent our first day in Kyoto wandering around and not doing anything in particular. Mark and I are pretty hopeless tourists - we don't tend to plan things very much - so we walked to the Higashi-Honganji Temple which isn't far from the train station.

Higashi-Honganji Temple.

Then we walked to the Imperial Palace Gardens to have a look around and I met a lovely litte Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Meron.

Meron - a real sweetie who at no time tried to bite me.

On Tuesday we caught the train to Himeji and visted the Himeji-jo Castle which is said to be one of the best castles in Japan. And it was pretty fantastic. The thing I liked the best was the smell. I know that sounds weird but the beams and all the wood in the castle has this wonderful smell. It's a kind of cool, cedary smell which makes me wish I could have been there when the castle was built in 1580. It's amazing that something so old can still be around in such good condition.

Himeji-jo Castle.

Next to the castle are the Koko-en Gardens which are a reconstruction of the former samurai quarters of the castle. There is a central part of the gardens with a big pond sporting the obligatory koi. Even though nearly every pond/moat/stream in Japan has more koi than you can poke a stick at, I still end up watching them for ages. And the koi at Koko-en Gardens were beautiful.

I took this photo from the bridge as they were all swimming towards me, hoping that I would feed them.

By the time we got back to Kyoto, I had a blister on one of my toes the size of a pygmy. So the plan was to rent bikes for the following day and ride around Kyoto. Unfortunately, I forgot to advise the weather of our plans and it was bucketing down rain for most of the day on Wednesday. But we went ahead with my grand plan and we were soaking wet within 5 minutes. But the good news is that once you are throughly wet, you can't get any wetter, so it wasn't so bad.

Here I am in the driving rain at Nijojo Castle.

Unfortunately because it was so wet, most of my photos came our hazy and more than a little murky. After Nijo-jo Castle we rode up the hill to Chion-in Temple. We took off our shoes to walk around the verandah of the temple building and for some reason my wet socks left an Adidas imprint on the floors as well as footprints. The funny footprints caused much mirth in an old Japanese Nana walking behind us. Also gave one of the Monks a fit of the giggles.

Amusing footprints.

Here's Mark wishing that he didn't have to visit another Temple ever again.

And then, as the rain let up, onto Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. This temple is quite big and a popular tourist spot with visiting Japanese and school groups.

Kiyomizu-Dera Temple.

We didn't do anything very exciting on Thursday morning, just ambled around the shops and stuff. We took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo and then the train out to Maihama and spent the night at one of the big hotels near Disney Sea. On Friday we went to Disney Sea and had a great time. I've never been to Disneyland or Disney Sea before so I was very excited (Disney Sea is like Disneyland (in fact, just next door)).

Here's the big mountain that is smack in the middle of Disney Sea.

Here I am!

Here's our singing Gondlier - ever heard Santa Lucia in Japanese?

Anyway, Disney Sea was a lot of fun. Can't really compare Disney Sea with Kyoto - it's like the two extremes of Japan.

Saturday, 14 October 2006

Just got home. No blog post written but Flickr site has been updated.

Will get to blog soon.

Saturday, 7 October 2006

I've had tonsilitis so I've been a total misery guts and uninclined to blog. But now I'm much better and even have stuff to blog about.

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, technically speaking, it was my birthday, on Wednesday. And it was good. There were many gifts, lots of eating, some tv but no drinking (remember, antibiotics for the tonsilitis). My mum sent me a massive care package full of stuff that you can't buy in Japan.

Here's the box of goodies from my mum - and yes, she included both Twisties AND Violet Crumbles! Birthdays don't get much better than that.

Jammin' J sent me a beautiful shell pendant

Nice huh?

And Dan sent another box of deliciousness including a new book.

Look - an English language book! Yay!

And I'm now on holidays for a week and we're going to Kyoto on Sunday. I'm quite excited about it and I've charged both the batteries for my camera, so you can all start thinking up excuses why you can't come to slide night.