Japan's Trips

Well, finally the two weeks’ tiring trips had over two days ago. Ua has left yesterday’s morning and three of us sending her off.
The whole trips were great even though during those two weeks, there were some unspeakable bad feelings towards each other ( maybe it’s just normal, it does happen to many people, I guess ) Anyway, it’s just a temporary feeling when you stick too close to each other. Despite this one, we cooperated much. She’s good at reading maps, while I can use Japanese in communicating with people. Hah !

Now about the trips: we have visited Kyoto, Mt Fuji, Kamakura, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Nikko, Hakodate, Kobe, Nara and of course Osaka. I don’t have any new experiences for Kyoto, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Kobe and Nara since I already visited them when I was here but for the rest of the places, they were incredible.

We saw the very clear shape of Mt Fuji (with half of the mountain covered with white snows) and it was even snowing! It’s really beautiful! If only we could get nearer (the mountain is open for climbing only in summer).

For Nikko, we paid much to get into the shrines, but it was worthy as it’s the most beautiful one as I ever seen in Japan. And the city itself is small yet nice, and surrounded by mountains (white ones when we got there). But it also cost us a lot for the souvenirs.

Hakodate was great. It didn’t matter if we had to take 9 hours of trains to get to Hokkaido. We were supposed to visit Sapporo as well but we just didn’t have enough time and it was really cold. The Xmas fantasy in Hakodate was great, the sea was beautiful and even its seafood are well known in Japan. We ate the crab rice and cuttlefish rice (delicious even though we had to pay very much for it)

During these trips, I didn’t take notes for places I have visited, it’s too tiring. We slept only like 5 or 6 hours during nights and the rest on the trains. Buying the JR pass was worthwhile; we got to from the North to South islands of Japan, riding on regular trains and shinkansen (bullet trains) most of the times, so it really saved up our time on roads.

Before sending Ua off, we bought the “18 kippu”, the cheap tickets that allow you to travel all Japan in one day. We got 5 tickets. After from the airport, Henry was too tired that he decided to get home earlier while I and Ken continued to Nagoya. We could only see the Nagoya castle and walking in the evenings. We met with Ken’s friend, Yamada san and for dinner, we went to Izakaya for meal. The izakaya called “Gomi dori” which I don’t think I will ever forget it for a long time. The name is extraordinary (if you don’t see the kanji, you might think Gomi is garbage). It’s famous for chicken wings but of course we also tried the others. It was really expensive yet very delicious.
Me and Ken have a plan to visit Izu Peninsula this Wednesday, using our left ticket. The place looks interesting and I’ll tell you later, ok?

In Osaka, meeting up with Ken and Henry are a very pleasant thing. I am still staying at their places and will leave this Friday if I don’t extend my stays. Last Sunday, we had dinner with Yamashita san and Meena, a friend of Ken. Yamashita san is still as healthy as the last time I saw him. The day before, I also met with Satoko and as usual, she took me to one good sushi ya san. Too bad that that was the only chance I could see her as she had to fly to China the next day.

A few days ago, we had plenty of snows here in Osaka and Kyoto and other places. Never seen that much snows before, haha...even the scenery to Nagoya was fulfilled with white snows all over. Very beautiful !