Today we headed from Takayama to Kanazawa.
Our first stop after our hotel was the Gold Leaf museum.
Then it was on to the Omi-cho Market.
A water fountain outside the Kanazawa train station.
Japan 2018 Day 17: Takayama to Kanazawa
Japan 2018 Day 16: Takayama/Shirakawa-go
We were staying at the Takayama Station Hotel.
We headed out to the Miyagawa morning market.
This guy had a Totoro knapsack.
Then we went to see the parade float exhibition hall. Twice a year Takayama has a festival where a bunch of people push and pull these huge parade floats down the streets of Takayama.
In the afternoon we took a tour to Shirakawa-go village. We passed through a lot of tunnels through the mountain sides to get there.
The first stop was a scenic outlook that looked down on Shirakawa-go.
Our tour bus.
A farmer working a rice field.
Shirakawa-go is popular for the Gassho style houses. The roofs are made from a type of Japanese grass and the inside is actually quite spacious.
A farmer planting some rice.
Rice plants ready to go.
Inside one of the ghasso houses.
Shirakawa-go is a UNESCO heritage site.
Some roofs are newer than others.
Crossing the bridge on our way back to the bus.
A onigiri poster for Lawson’s.
Let’s English!
Gillian and I playing Super Mario on the Nintendo in the hotel lobby.
Japan 2018 Day 15: Kyoto to Takayama
Today we traveled from Kyoto to Takayama.
This was a Limited Express train with wide scenic windows.
These girls had a tripod setup and were taking pictures of themselves.
Gillian with a wood sculpture.
Some giant carp flags.
We toured around the streets of Takayama.
Gillian wanted to go to Hida-Furukawa station which was a 20 minute train ride. It is the station that appears in the movie Kimi no na wa (Your Name).
The train was pretty empty.
There were spots around the train station that appear in the movie, like this view of the train station.
A group shot while waiting for the train back to Takayama.
This was a liquor store across from the Takayama train station.
Japan 2018 Day 14: Kyoto
We were up early this morning to head to the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine, known for its winding path of torii gates. The guidebooks said you need to go early to get pictures without anyone else in them.
There is a hike up through the gates.
This guy was painting one of the tori gates.
Time for a snack. A tsukemono cucumber on a stick.
Our next stop was the Nishiki market. Some expensive rice.
Some octopus on a stick.
There was a Peanuts store.
A giant container of umeboshi.
There was a tsukemono sampling station. It was delicious.
Gillian with a bottle of umeboshi.
Gillian enjoying a tskeumono cucumber on a stick.
The market was in an indoor mall.
Lunch was at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant.
After lunch we visited the Toji Temple and its gardens.
Another heron fishing for lunch.
And then it flew off.
Some fire buckets.
The Japanese Colonel.
In the evening we headed to the Gion area.
We spotted another geisha.
There was some sumo wrestling on the television at the hotel.
Japan 2018 Day 13: Kyoto
Today we went Arashiyama’s monkey park, where they have macaque monkeys roaming around. We got there early, so had to wait for it to open. There was a heron on the river bank.
The monkeys are able roam around the park.
There were some babies sticking close to their mothers.
This was the oldest monkey in the park.
You can go inside the building and feed the monkeys.
The next stop was Arashiyama’s Bamboo Grove.
Next it was on to the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji).
The buses were crowded.
We headed to Nijo Castle. Here is an umbrella stand, that lets you lock up your umbrella. Gillian needed one of these in Hiroshima, where someone took her hotel loaner umbrella from a stand outside of a 7-11.
We ended the day geisha spotting in a small neighbourhood in Kyoto.
These were magnets on the back of the hotel door. Depending on which service you wanted you would put the magnet on the door.
Japan 2018 Day 12: Hiroshima to Kyoto
Today we were heading to Kyoto, but since the weather was so good, we returned to Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park today to see the memorial cenotaph and a few other memorials we didn’t get to see during the rain yesterday.
Some of the millions of paper cranes at the Children’s Peace Monument.
Looking up along a street, that’s a lot of wires.
Another cool parking lot.
It was back on the bullet train to Kyoto.
We headed to the Kiyomizu-dera temple.
There were lots of people wearing Kimonos.
The streets were busy.
We found a Studio Ghibli store.
Gillian with her Totoro friends.
We had somen for lunch today.
Carp flags hanging outside of a school.
We made our way to Nanzen-ji temple.
It has a raised aqueduct that was built in 1890. It is part of the Lake Biwa Canal and it still supplies 97% of the city’s water.
Japan 2018 Day 11: Hiroshima
Today we toured around Hiroshima. Our first stop was the Atomic Bomb Dome, which is the remaining structure after the bomb destroyed most of the city.
This was the hypocenter where the bomb fell, it was detonated approximately 180m above this spot. The surface temperatures reached 4000 degrees Celsius.
We toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
Our next stop was the Hiroshima Castle.
A pussy willow tree that is 770 meters from the hypocenter, that survived the blast.
This was a circular escalator in a mall.
A bin full of onigiri in a Don Quijote store.
The parking is fascinating, the circular turntables are used to maneuver cars into the right position.
For dinner we had okonomiyaki.
Okonomiyaki is a savory pancake containing a variety of ingredients.
Gillian getting fitted for a Yukata.
Japan 2018 Day 10: Nachi-Katsuura to Tanabe to Hiroshima
We started the day travelling from Nachi-Katsuura to Tanabe City with our final destination Hiroshima.
Standing in front of the Tanabe Tourist Information Center.
We walked around Tanabe, as we had some time before our train to Osaka.
The Tanabe train station on the left.
Gillian by the Tanabe clock.
It wasn’t a very busy city.
Not a lot of touristy bling in any of the stores that were near the train station.
From Tanabe, it was back on the train to Osaka and then a transfer to the bullet train to Hiroshima.
Arrived in Hiroshima.
Walking to our hotel. We had used one of the luggage services to send our bags ahead to the hotel from our Osaka hotel so we didn’t have to deal with them on our side trip.
In the evening we headed to Miyajima Island in Hiroshima Bay.
More deer on the island.
The famous Great Torii Gate is partially submerged at high tide
We were there for sunset.
Group shot.
The Toyokuni Shrine (5 storey).
It was nice to see the Tori gate at sunset, but a lot of the stores and restaurants were closed already, so it would have been nice to spend some more time on the island. After we got off the ferry we had dinner at one of the local restaurants before catching the train back to our hotel.
Japan 2018 Day 9: Osaka to Nachi-Katsuura
Today we headed to Nachi-Katsuura in the Wakayama region. This is the area Dad’s family came from.
There are a lot of cemeteries along the way.
Once we got off the train, we left our bags in a locker by the hotel and then caught a bus to Nachi Falls. Shanna and Gillian hiked from the bottom up to the waterfall, Susan and I stayed on the bus a couple of stops more to have a shorted walk to Nachi Falls.
Nachi Falls in Nachikatsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, is one of the best-known waterfalls in Japan. With a drop of 133 meters, it is the country’s tallest water fall with single uninterrupted drop
The Seigantoji Temple.
We met up with Shanna and Gillian somewhere along the trail.
We stayed staying at another traditional style ryokan type hotel in Nachi-Katsuura. There were very few stores and restaurants open.
Japan 2018 Day 8: Osaka/Nara
We headed to Nara Park to visit some temples and see the wild deer roaming the streets.
The Kofukuji Temple pagoda.
On the way to Todaiji Temple.
There were lots of school groups.
The girls were stopped by a group of school kids asking them questions for a school project.
Todaiji Temple‘s Daibutsu Hall.
The Great Bhudda.
The kids in the school groups would wear the same colour hats so they could keep track of them.
It was on to Kasuga Taisha, Nara’s most celebrated Shinto Shrine.
Shanna trying to make the deer bow to her.
We headed back to Osaka, stopping to reload our Pasmo card.
Osaka Castle rising above the foliage.
Some of the old Osaka Castle walls.
Osaka Castle in the background.
More school groups.
The views from the top of the castle.
Gillian and Shanna mapping out our next stop.
We finished the day exploring the streets of Osaka, including Dotonbori.
