More than a week has passed since we returned home, and the next (and last) entry is long overdue. Yakushima’s beauty still vividly present in our minds, we continued our journey towards Okayama. As usual, the Shinkansen proofed itself as the best and most comfortable way of travelling through Japan. That’s how a train ride should feel like! Shinkansen time! In Okayama, we visited the black “Crow” Castle, where – thanks to a Japanese gentleman insisting we should come with him (contrary to other places, this is – mostly – not a dangerous thing to do in Japan) – we…
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Greetings from paradise. It’s name is Yakushima, and it’s a little subtropical island located about 4 hours south of Kyushu by ferry. It’s where Miyazaki Hayao and his fellow animators from wonderful Studio Ghibli went to get inspiration for drawing the magical forests (and it’s creatures) of their masterpiece Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke). And it’s so beautiful here, even without having set foot into the magical forests yet, we’re already suffering from reality detachment syndrome. Big time. Our tiny minds just fail to compute so much beauty. After leaving Hiroshima on the beloved Shinkansen, we spent half a day and…
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Today it’s time to move again, and this time, we’re moving on to the most southern of Japan’s main islands: Kyushu. We will spend one night each in Kumamoto and Kagoshima (if the recently erupted volcano Sakurajima lets us, that is), before leaving civilization behind and discovering the island that was inspiration to Studio Ghibli’s Mononoke Hime: Yakushima. Hiroshima was good to us. After the emotionally devastating experiences in the Peace Memorial Museum, we decided to take it slow and spent the next morning in the hospital. No worries, I just needed to start taking care of my nasty cold,…
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A few days have passed without posting anything, so this is what happened. On Saturday, we visited Fushimi Inari Shrine, which was breathtakingly beautiful. We spent hours walking through the bright orange Torii gates. Again, it was so very hot and we suffered quite a bit, but it was so worth it. Definitely the highlight in Kyoto, sightseeing wise. And that’s saying something in this city. We sampled some Tofu ice cream (flavors: sesame and sweet potato – awesome!) and tried other Japanese sweets that I can’t remember the name of, sadly. The Torii Gates of Fushimi Inari Taisha In…
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Today’s our second morning in Kyoto, and before we take off to visit Fushimiinari Shrine (can’t wait!!), let’s look back on what we already did/saw/visited in this spectacularly beautiful city. On our first day, after checking out the location of our (very nice and nicely located) hostel, we went for a walk to Kiyomizudera Temple. Since there are literally thousands of temples and shrines in Kyoto, it quickly dawned on us that we would never be able to visit all of them, but we wanted to go to Kiyomizudera because of it’s location up on a hill, overlooking the city.…
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Before we are leaving for Kyoto, let’ have a quick look back at what happened yesterday. In the morning we visited Osaka Museum of History. The permanent exhibition was quite fascinating, which was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. The reason for our visit was, of course, the temporary exhibition, though: “Evangelion and Japanese swords”. It was as weird and cool as it sounds. We went shopping in the city afterwards. Window shopping, anyway, although I bought something at the Hello Kitty store that can pretty much be described as the embodiment of what we got to love about Japan so…
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It’s 8:15 am on our second day at Osaka and almost time to go to the Museum of History to, wait for it, go and see an exhibition titled “Evangelion and Japanese Swords”. Like in EVA, our very favourite anime (probably the very best thing of fiction ever, if you ask us) ever made – and katana. In one and the same exhibition. It’s so awesome, we almost suffered a mental breakdown when we discovered the posters in the subway station. I don’t think I have to explain why we love Japan, now, do I, because if you know us…