My adventure started on Thursday night when I boarded the Miyazaki car ferry bound for Osaka. It takes twelve hours and sails over night to it's destination. It was really quite an experience and a lot of fun sailing alone. There is a section on the ferry dedicated for women only to sleep and keep their stuff. Which is really nice, it made me feel much more comfortable. One very odd thing was the "casualy frozen food" vending machine, it was placed next to the beer vending machine. (Sorry it is a little blurry)
Once I disembarked the ferry around 7:30am I got to take a crash course in taking the subway system in Osaka. I am so proud of my self that I was able to figure it out and ask people for help~ I was able to make it to my hotel around 8:30am, after wandering around the Shinsaibashi area for a good hour or so after becoming completely discombobulated on the subway. Lucky for me I was able to ask someone in a Starbucks where my hotel was. Once I checked into the hotel, I walked around the large shopping street near by to do some Christmas shopping and such~ Bellow is a very small section of the Shinsaibashi shopping street. It is so long I wasn't able to walk the full length while I was there.
I left for the airport around 3:30pm to pick up Anthony. The kansai airport is about 45 minutes to an hour away from the Nanba eki. Just a few stops south of the Shinsaibashi subway station. The main stations around Osaka are huge! They have arrows pointing to many different exits and they have shops all over the place in the larger ones. Lucky most things have English as well as Japanese. After picking up Anthony at the airport and returning to our home base for the next few days, we went to explore the shopping area together and eat dinner, then fall asleep exhausted.The next day we meet up with Charlie, to explore Kyoto! Kyoto is only about a 45 minute train ride from the Osaka JR station. It was very interesting. Every few blocks there was a sign pointing this way or that to various temples and shrines. We visited a few and walked around the area a bit.
The first temple that we went to was Kinkakuji, the golden temple(above). It is painted in real gold! We were really lucky and got a tour guide, one of the local university students offered to give us a tour of the temple, I believe it was for a project. She explained what the different levels of the temple were for, as well as other various sections of the park. The first floor of the temple was used for Noh plays, the second for poetry writing, and the third for meditation. The temple actually burnt down in the 1950s by a crazy young monk. After they reconstructed it they put a phoenix on top to protect it from fires in the future. After we finished the tour of Kinkakuji, we wandered around finding other temples and such. We got a little confused at one point, but a nice lady helped up out. It must have been obviously that we were a little baffled by the lack of street names, with us looking at a map and staring up at street signs and point every direction. After she helped us we found the subway, with a few wrong turns, and headed on back to Osaka.Another thing about Osaka, the shopping...is...amazing. There are so many shops. Near the Osaka station there is a large shopping mall with an electronic section which has many many floors. On the bottom is cellphones and computers, then home appliances, the games and toys are on the 5th floor I believe. And there were a lot of games. Japan has turned the Nintendo DS into more then just a game system. You can buy what is basically software for your game boy. There are cook books, learning software for math, science, history, you can buy face training/exercises , kanji learning games, dictionaries, and much more. I think it is a very interactive way to get kids to learn while playing video games :P But the games are not just for kids even, there are plenty for adults as well, to help with Kanji, and such. The clothing shopping is also amazing~ But I held back my urges to shop~
On Sunday Anthony and I headed to Kobe. We were heading to meet Charlie who we stayed with for a few nights while we visited Kobe. Thanks Charlie! :) We toured around the Sannomiya shopping area, visited the Kobe tower, saw the luminarie, and ate at many yummy restaurants. The Sannomiya shopping area was pretty amazing, there was one street that ran underneath the train tracks. It started off in nice fashion and got weirder and weirder and we headed down the street. Kobe is a pretty nifty place. Not as busy and crazy as Osaka, but not as slow and sleepy as Miyazaki. It was nice to experience a different part of Japan. We were going to attempt to see the luminere on Sunday but the line was insane. There were a bunch of police helping control and corral the crowds. They had us walking all around the down town area. We walked for about 30 minutes before we found a sign that said the wait was 90 minutes. (Bellow: the line that we were to wait in, we were no where close to the lights yet.)
So we decided to visit the Kobe tower instead and come back the following evening. The Kobe tower was pretty cools, we could see much of the city and the bay. Harbor Land, a shopping area and kinda a hanging out place with a Ferris-Wheel. (Bellow: Yay Kobe Tower!
On Monday Anthony and I took the train to Himeji to visit the Himiji castle. It was spectacular. I visited is on my trip to Japan last summer, but the castle is still amazing. They were restoring part of the castle when we visited. I think they are always restoring some part of it, because it is so large once you finish you have to start over again. We climbed to the top of the main castle, which is about six floors, and saw the shrine to protect against fire. The shrine was originally moved from it's original place when the castle was first built, but people kept getting ominous feelings so they moved it back, to the top floor of the castle. From the top, the whole city is visible. I can see why it was such a strategic place to build a castle. Anthony and I were thinking the whole time how difficult it would be to actually try to storm the castle. The paths are all windie and twistie with holes in the walls above for people to pelt one with deadly objects. The walls are also built out of a lot of stone so burning them isn't much of an option. Plus by the time one actually gets to the castle, there are supper steep steps and a lot of hiding places for defenders to launch sneak attacks. It was fun and adventurous to clime it all~
After stocking up on Omiyage, souvenirs, we headed back to Kobe to see the luminarie.The Luminarie was a little better on Monday. We decided to try and get in line early, around 5pm instead of the 6:30-7pm we tried on Sunday. After about 30 minutes of wandering around in an ever moving light we finally got to see the start of the luminarie. Then everyone started to stop and take pictures every two meters. But it was awesome and very pretty. There was also a little matsuri, festival, near by so we grabbed some snacks before continuing out wandering. (I am only posting one picture for the sake of length, but I have many others to show~)
On Tuesday we got packed and ready to leave. Then we visited Charlies's college and ate with one of the professors that did the teacher exchange to Evergreen. We also did last minute shopping and brousing. I bought gloves because I was tired of my hands freezing off every night in Kobe. But they created a nice little Murfie-field and it has been warm in Miyazaki ever since I returned. We headed to the ferry on Tuesday evening. A nice lady helped us find the right bus stop to the ferry, and showed me how to fill out the form. The ferry ride was uneventful. I tried out the onsen on the ferry. It was interesting, but it felt nice. The same lady who helped us find the ferry also gave us a ride back to the dorms. It was an amazing stroke of luck. It was nice to return to Miyazaki after all the hustle and bustle of the large city. There are positives and negatives to each setting. The trains are more convenient in the Kansai area, but Miyazaki just has a nicer more laid back atmosphere.
I am glad to be back in Miyazaki, and spend the Chirstmas holidays with Anthony :)
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