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I probably won't get a chance to post in the morning so this is a simple note letting you guys know I'm heading off to Nara and Kyoto until Friday, my time. Should be a great trip filled with kofun, temples, obon celebrations and the obsessive lengths I'll go to visit historical people's graves. And here's hoping my bad travel luck doesn't kick in. Ja ne!
I probably won't get a chance to post in the morning so this is a simple note letting you guys know I'm heading off to Nara and Kyoto until Friday, my time. Should be a great trip filled with kofun, temples, obon celebrations and the obsessive lengths I'll go to visit historical people's graves. And here's hoping my bad travel luck doesn't kick in. Ja ne!
I'm in a quaint little ryokan atm trying not to fall asleep as I type since I started out this morning at 7am. The trip was surprisingly easy. Shinkansen is now one of my favourite ways to travel. I have never been on such a smoothly run train with clean bathrooms and quiet train cars. No wonder people wax poetic about it. It made the two hour trip to Kyoto fly by. From there, I caught the train to Nara, found my ryokan, dropped off my bags and headed off.
I had fish and chips for lunch since I figured I had a 50/50 chance of them tasting good. I lucked out and they were excellent plus the chips were real potato wedges and good malt vinegar. Yum. The lady behind the bar quized me while I ate and later wrote out directions for me on how to get to the temple I wanted to go to. I'd have figured it out on my own, but it was nice of her to do so.
I headed off to the outskirts of Nara to visit Yakushiji temple which was pretty cool to wander around with it's pagoda and cool buddhas. Lots of monks too. I got to see them praying. All the while, I was dying from the heat so I drank a ton of water and sports drinks today in an effort not to suffer heat exhaustion. May I succeed since tomorrow will be more strenuous. After Yakushiji was Toshodaiji which has the largest wooden hall in the world or something (I don't really care actually) which turned out to be under renovation so I wandered the grounds instead taking pics of lilies and turtles.
I lucked out then and found directions to a nearby kofun (Emperor Suinin's) which I followed to find a beautiful moat surrounding a perfect example of a key style kofun (the key part is hard to show since it's huge). You couldn't get anywhere near it but I took tons of pictures. I had a entire conversation in Japanese with a guy burning weeds in front of the kofun too (it's kinda rare since they usually try to speak English). Oddly enough, later in the day I got to practice my French on one of the guests at the ryokan. It's kinda cool to actually use the languages I know.
Dead tired after that, I made my way back to central Nara (and accidentally scammed the system... the train guy didn't seem to understand that I didn't want to buy a ticket, I just hadn't managed to buy one at the station I got on at). back to the ryokan, checked in, found out my room was this little cute japanese style room with a powerful air conditioner and tea. Used the bath which was great. It was Japanese style so you wear your yukata down to the bath, shower on stools and then jump in the largest bathtub I've ever seen. I'm glad I'm so used to onsen or else I might have been weirded out *L*
I vegged in my room for a bit since I was exhausted. Have read Howl's Moving Castle all day and adore it. Thank god I know the local book shop in Ube has a copy of the sequel or else I'd be sending some urgent pleas *g* Finally, hunger drove me from my room, that and the need to go see the big lighting up of Nara park that happens this entire week.
Grabbed some kitsune udon for dinner (cheap too, about 4 dollars) and some ice cream to eat while walking. Set my camera to twilight so I got some utterly gorgeous night pics. I love my camera. The lights were really beautiful though I have to go back tomorrow night and get more pics of the main temples since I had not the strength to walk the 2 km to all of them after how much I'd already walked. There were tons of people there which both ruined and heightened the atmosphere. It's a big date spot and it was adorable to see couples renting boats with lanterns to go out on the lake with "romantic music". I got a pretty neat movie of it too.
月よび 飛鳥 に 行きます。
I had fish and chips for lunch since I figured I had a 50/50 chance of them tasting good. I lucked out and they were excellent plus the chips were real potato wedges and good malt vinegar. Yum. The lady behind the bar quized me while I ate and later wrote out directions for me on how to get to the temple I wanted to go to. I'd have figured it out on my own, but it was nice of her to do so.
I headed off to the outskirts of Nara to visit Yakushiji temple which was pretty cool to wander around with it's pagoda and cool buddhas. Lots of monks too. I got to see them praying. All the while, I was dying from the heat so I drank a ton of water and sports drinks today in an effort not to suffer heat exhaustion. May I succeed since tomorrow will be more strenuous. After Yakushiji was Toshodaiji which has the largest wooden hall in the world or something (I don't really care actually) which turned out to be under renovation so I wandered the grounds instead taking pics of lilies and turtles.
I lucked out then and found directions to a nearby kofun (Emperor Suinin's) which I followed to find a beautiful moat surrounding a perfect example of a key style kofun (the key part is hard to show since it's huge). You couldn't get anywhere near it but I took tons of pictures. I had a entire conversation in Japanese with a guy burning weeds in front of the kofun too (it's kinda rare since they usually try to speak English). Oddly enough, later in the day I got to practice my French on one of the guests at the ryokan. It's kinda cool to actually use the languages I know.
Dead tired after that, I made my way back to central Nara (and accidentally scammed the system... the train guy didn't seem to understand that I didn't want to buy a ticket, I just hadn't managed to buy one at the station I got on at). back to the ryokan, checked in, found out my room was this little cute japanese style room with a powerful air conditioner and tea. Used the bath which was great. It was Japanese style so you wear your yukata down to the bath, shower on stools and then jump in the largest bathtub I've ever seen. I'm glad I'm so used to onsen or else I might have been weirded out *L*
I vegged in my room for a bit since I was exhausted. Have read Howl's Moving Castle all day and adore it. Thank god I know the local book shop in Ube has a copy of the sequel or else I'd be sending some urgent pleas *g* Finally, hunger drove me from my room, that and the need to go see the big lighting up of Nara park that happens this entire week.
Grabbed some kitsune udon for dinner (cheap too, about 4 dollars) and some ice cream to eat while walking. Set my camera to twilight so I got some utterly gorgeous night pics. I love my camera. The lights were really beautiful though I have to go back tomorrow night and get more pics of the main temples since I had not the strength to walk the 2 km to all of them after how much I'd already walked. There were tons of people there which both ruined and heightened the atmosphere. It's a big date spot and it was adorable to see couples renting boats with lanterns to go out on the lake with "romantic music". I got a pretty neat movie of it too.
月よび 飛鳥 に 行きます。
Tags:
I'm in a quaint little ryokan atm trying not to fall asleep as I type since I started out this morning at 7am. The trip was surprisingly easy. Shinkansen is now one of my favourite ways to travel. I have never been on such a smoothly run train with clean bathrooms and quiet train cars. No wonder people wax poetic about it. It made the two hour trip to Kyoto fly by. From there, I caught the train to Nara, found my ryokan, dropped off my bags and headed off.
I had fish and chips for lunch since I figured I had a 50/50 chance of them tasting good. I lucked out and they were excellent plus the chips were real potato wedges and good malt vinegar. Yum. The lady behind the bar quized me while I ate and later wrote out directions for me on how to get to the temple I wanted to go to. I'd have figured it out on my own, but it was nice of her to do so.
I headed off to the outskirts of Nara to visit Yakushiji temple which was pretty cool to wander around with it's pagoda and cool buddhas. Lots of monks too. I got to see them praying. All the while, I was dying from the heat so I drank a ton of water and sports drinks today in an effort not to suffer heat exhaustion. May I succeed since tomorrow will be more strenuous. After Yakushiji was Toshodaiji which has the largest wooden hall in the world or something (I don't really care actually) which turned out to be under renovation so I wandered the grounds instead taking pics of lilies and turtles.
I lucked out then and found directions to a nearby kofun (Emperor Suinin's) which I followed to find a beautiful moat surrounding a perfect example of a key style kofun (the key part is hard to show since it's huge). You couldn't get anywhere near it but I took tons of pictures. I had a entire conversation in Japanese with a guy burning weeds in front of the kofun too (it's kinda rare since they usually try to speak English). Oddly enough, later in the day I got to practice my French on one of the guests at the ryokan. It's kinda cool to actually use the languages I know.
Dead tired after that, I made my way back to central Nara (and accidentally scammed the system... the train guy didn't seem to understand that I didn't want to buy a ticket, I just hadn't managed to buy one at the station I got on at). back to the ryokan, checked in, found out my room was this little cute japanese style room with a powerful air conditioner and tea. Used the bath which was great. It was Japanese style so you wear your yukata down to the bath, shower on stools and then jump in the largest bathtub I've ever seen. I'm glad I'm so used to onsen or else I might have been weirded out *L*
I vegged in my room for a bit since I was exhausted. Have read Howl's Moving Castle all day and adore it. Thank god I know the local book shop in Ube has a copy of the sequel or else I'd be sending some urgent pleas *g* Finally, hunger drove me from my room, that and the need to go see the big lighting up of Nara park that happens this entire week.
Grabbed some kitsune udon for dinner (cheap too, about 4 dollars) and some ice cream to eat while walking. Set my camera to twilight so I got some utterly gorgeous night pics. I love my camera. The lights were really beautiful though I have to go back tomorrow night and get more pics of the main temples since I had not the strength to walk the 2 km to all of them after how much I'd already walked. There were tons of people there which both ruined and heightened the atmosphere. It's a big date spot and it was adorable to see couples renting boats with lanterns to go out on the lake with "romantic music". I got a pretty neat movie of it too.
月よび 飛鳥 に 行きます。
I had fish and chips for lunch since I figured I had a 50/50 chance of them tasting good. I lucked out and they were excellent plus the chips were real potato wedges and good malt vinegar. Yum. The lady behind the bar quized me while I ate and later wrote out directions for me on how to get to the temple I wanted to go to. I'd have figured it out on my own, but it was nice of her to do so.
I headed off to the outskirts of Nara to visit Yakushiji temple which was pretty cool to wander around with it's pagoda and cool buddhas. Lots of monks too. I got to see them praying. All the while, I was dying from the heat so I drank a ton of water and sports drinks today in an effort not to suffer heat exhaustion. May I succeed since tomorrow will be more strenuous. After Yakushiji was Toshodaiji which has the largest wooden hall in the world or something (I don't really care actually) which turned out to be under renovation so I wandered the grounds instead taking pics of lilies and turtles.
I lucked out then and found directions to a nearby kofun (Emperor Suinin's) which I followed to find a beautiful moat surrounding a perfect example of a key style kofun (the key part is hard to show since it's huge). You couldn't get anywhere near it but I took tons of pictures. I had a entire conversation in Japanese with a guy burning weeds in front of the kofun too (it's kinda rare since they usually try to speak English). Oddly enough, later in the day I got to practice my French on one of the guests at the ryokan. It's kinda cool to actually use the languages I know.
Dead tired after that, I made my way back to central Nara (and accidentally scammed the system... the train guy didn't seem to understand that I didn't want to buy a ticket, I just hadn't managed to buy one at the station I got on at). back to the ryokan, checked in, found out my room was this little cute japanese style room with a powerful air conditioner and tea. Used the bath which was great. It was Japanese style so you wear your yukata down to the bath, shower on stools and then jump in the largest bathtub I've ever seen. I'm glad I'm so used to onsen or else I might have been weirded out *L*
I vegged in my room for a bit since I was exhausted. Have read Howl's Moving Castle all day and adore it. Thank god I know the local book shop in Ube has a copy of the sequel or else I'd be sending some urgent pleas *g* Finally, hunger drove me from my room, that and the need to go see the big lighting up of Nara park that happens this entire week.
Grabbed some kitsune udon for dinner (cheap too, about 4 dollars) and some ice cream to eat while walking. Set my camera to twilight so I got some utterly gorgeous night pics. I love my camera. The lights were really beautiful though I have to go back tomorrow night and get more pics of the main temples since I had not the strength to walk the 2 km to all of them after how much I'd already walked. There were tons of people there which both ruined and heightened the atmosphere. It's a big date spot and it was adorable to see couples renting boats with lanterns to go out on the lake with "romantic music". I got a pretty neat movie of it too.
月よび 飛鳥 に 行きます。
Tags:
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