In Summation the Past 3 weeks (ish)

To start I will speak of my trip to Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Himeji in somewhat of an order.

Day 1 of Kyoto.
October 31st we left for Tokyo train station to catch the shinakansen to Kyoto. Shinkansen for those that do not know is the bullet train which travels at a speed of 188 mph and it takes about 2 and a half hours approximately to get from Tokyo to Kyoto. We left around 930 and arrived a bit later. Whitney, Allison, Sean and myself had the same hotel. We discovered that most the touristy type cities train stations have english speaking guides who are surprisingly volunteers and will help you find your way to where you are going hotel, subway anything. It was quite pleasant.

Our hotel was called Super Hotel Kyoto and was right in the middle of the shopping district of kyoto, and for its price it was quite nice comparitively to every cheap hotel in america. After wandering in the rain a bit we found our hotel which was not on a main road and so it took a bit of time.

After which we met up with the others back in central kyoto as well as Gary our teacher and went looking for dinner. After actually being turned down at several restaurants some whom gave the excuse of no english menu, theres a party we all ended up at Sukiya or Yoshinoya dont remember which name it was, but one of the chain diner like restaurants. After eating we all split off went wandering a bit then headed back to the hotel being quite tired from our little journey.

The next day sean and myself decided to not meet up with the others to do sight seeing but decided to do our own thing. We first hit a really big shrine which my name escapes me but the pictures will do the talking. After the shrine we wondered a bit then went to the local zoo; which I won't lie was terrible, they treat there animals like hell it was a blow to the gut to me to see a tiger kept in a small cage with barely any room to move same goes with the lions and leopards but the tiger worst of all, too sad.

Anyhow after that infuriating experiance we went to a temple which you had to pay to get in and did so very pretty and quite large I ended up losing sean along the way and waited for him outside for a bit and decided to leave and probably missed him about 15 minutes later which I later found out. Being on my own was nice anyhow. I explored all the major temples and shrines in the area I was in and climbed a mountain to a nice view point of the city where a graveyard was not sure if I was supposed to be there though but it was well worth the risk, after wandering my way back down the hill to the main city I found myself on the same road as our hotel and made my way back there to rest up at about 5 pm. Found whitney and ended up getting lunch.

The next day Whitney, Allison and myself decided to do some sight seeing ourselves and did our own thing. Of which I found out that the previous day was a reck because the group was too large and got nothing done compared to what I did. Anyhow the girls and I made our way to the imperial palace and the park there and apparently the palace is rarely open and was open that day so we were quite lucky. Afterwards we went to nijo-jo or nijo castle which was the main castle in town, for some history kyoto was the previous capitol of Japan during the Tokugawa era before the Meiji era don't ask for dates I won't give them. Somewhere in there we got some awesome ramen of which I've become obsessed with more on that later. After the castle we wandered our way to the Daiso which is Hyaku (100) yen shop which had a lot of cool little cheap things of which I got many (great gifties cause everything else is expensive) Then we made our way back to the hotel.

After a bit of a rest we went and got dinner which consisted of OKONOMIYAKI. Now let me explain a bit on what this is. You are given a selection of foods which consist of meat, fish, poultry or veggies, or a mix, I got meat and seafood. pork, beef, fish and some other sea creatures, there is a batter involved in this mix along with some veggies and you grill it on a griddle in front of you and put a bbq like sauce on top once sufficiently grilled (photos to come whitney has them) It was very fun and very tasty I highly reccomend it.

The next day sean and I made our way to Osaka which I will talk about in my next post tomorrow and will update everything with photos because I am too tired to do right now.

Photos of the trip can be found on my facebook. Facebook