Japan!

Japan!  What a great trip.  For anyone considering it, I would definitely recommend looking into it.   We spent 8 days there and visited Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo.  It was really a great vacation and I would include it in one of my favorite places I've visited.  

Osaka

We flew into Osaka from Seoul and got there on a Saturday afternoon.  We planned to spend one night and about a day and a half in Osaka, but somehow our hotel reservations got messed up and we ended up having to stay in Osaka for two nights.  (If you've ever traveled with me, you know I tend to make mistakes like booking hotels or planes for the wrong dates... oops.)

So our first afternoon in Osaka we spent exploring the area around our hostel and went up to the Umeda Sky Building.  It's this decently tall building downtown (it's about 43 floors if I remember correctly) and has a great observation deck on the top couple of floors.  We spent a couple hours up there, getting a feel for the layout of the city and watched a great sunset.  The building was really nice and the views were incredible.  

The next day it was so incredibly hot outside, you couldn't stand outside for more than two minutes with out dripping in sweat.  As Jason says, it was Texas hot.  So we decided to find a cool indoor activity and headed to the Osaka Aquarium.  It was a great aquarium, one of the best ones I've been to.  It even came close to the Monterey Aquarium, which is kind of an unbeatable first in my mind.  They had a few big whale sharks and some giant manta rays, pretty cool to see.  Only problem was that it was packed with people trying to get out of the heat.  

Later that day, we decided to try to hit up a Hanshin Tigers baseball game.  We got to the stadium about an hour and 1/2 before the game started and assumed we would be able to get tickets no problem.  However, we underestimated the very loyal Tigers fans.  The game- which was just a normal season game, nothing special- was completely sold out.  So we wandered around for a while, hoping to find someone scalping tickets.  But after walking around the stadium for about 45 minutes and not finding anything, we started giving up hope.  Then at the last minute, just as we were about to head back to the hostel, someone came up to us and offered us some tickets.  He seemed really nervous about making a deal and actually ended up selling them to us for less than face value.  The whole game was a pretty interesting experience.   Everyone knows how popular baseball is in Japan, and the Tigers are supposed to have the craziest fans of all the Japanese games.  The game was really exciting and the crowd didn't stop singing and chanting throughout the entire game.   

Kyoto

The morning after the baseball game, we got up early and headed to Kyoto, only about 45 minutes from Osaka by train.  Kyoto is the cultural heart of Japan and is the ancient capital.  That's where there are the majority of temples and palaces and whatnot in Japan.  They have an impressive 13 UNESCO World Heritage sites, and many more equally amazing sites. 

We spent three days in Kyoto and visited about as many sites as we could fit in in that time.  The first day we were in Kyoto in poured rain for the majority of the day, but the other two days it was beautiful, sunny weather, not quite as hot as Osaka. I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves here. I can't say too much about all of the temples except that they were all really incredible.  The Golden Pavilion (pictured above), was one of my favorites.  But really each one was beautiful in it's own way.  We could have spent much more time in Kyoto exploring it all, we felt like we hardly saw any of it!

Otherwise, we didn't do too much in Kyoto.  Went out to a bar one night and met a couple from Spain.  It was fun to be speaking Spanish again after not for so many months.  We also went of a really great evening bike ride around the geisha area, called Gion.  However, there are only about 100 geishas left in Kyoto, so we were not lucky enough to spot one.  But the neighborhood where they work was really beautiful, filled with quiet streets and secretive looking tea houses.  

Tokyo

From Osaka, we decided that the best way for us to get to Tokyo would be via overnight bus.  Would have loved to have taken the high speed train and gotten there in 2 hours instead of 8, but it was just too expensive.  By the time we made it to Tokyo, we were kind of exhausted, so we didn't do as much there as I would have liked.  

Since we arrived in Tokyo at 6am (uff), we decided to go explore the biggest fish market in Japan first thing.  It was a really interesting sight, much more intense than any other fish markets I've been to.  We saw HUGE tunas, at least 5 feet long, being bought and sold, people cutting giant fish with buzz saws, etc.  Just wish I wouldn't have been so tired for the experience.  

Besides that, we explored a few temples in Tokyo and walked around some popular shopping areas mostly.  Oh, and on our last day there while we were shopping around, we ran into Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.  They were shopping around with some of Demi's kids.  I think we were the only ones to recognize them, even though Ashton stood out like a sore thumb.  We also went out to dinner on our last night with a friend of my Aunt Lisa's who is from Japan.  She took us out to a great Japanese restaurant and taught us a little more about Japanese culture.  

Overall, Japan was a really great trip and I really loved the experience; it's something I'll never forget.  Oh, and just a note for anyone interested, Japanese people were very different from Koreans.  I was really surprised when Tokyo didn't feel half as crowded and busy as Seoul, even though it's bigger.  People don't push and shove you on the streets and the subway the way they do here and don't seem like they're in such a rush.  And the fashions are much more out there.  In Korea, people dress somewhat conservatively and are very designer conscious, always carrying designer bags and whatnot.  In Japan, everyone seemed much more experimental with what they wore, with huge dyed hair (like totally bigger than the 80's), doll-like makeup, bright colored clothes, etc.  While you never see tattoos or piercings in Korea, they seemed very popular in Japan.  And we noticed that people seemed to speak much more English in Japan and didn't stare at us near as much as Korea.  As a whole, the people and the cities just has a more friendly, welcoming feel.  

I have a couple great videos I've taken in both Korea and Japan, but since this is already so long, guess I'll post it later.  Oh and you can get to the link to my Japan photos by clicking here.

Hope all is well, miss you all!