Asian Vacation, part 4

Kyoto, beyatch! I have been putting off this post because Kyoto was my favorite city we visited, and I can't do it justice here. But, here are lots of pictures and hopefully a glimpse into this amazing place.

Josh, Beth, Matt, and I traveled to Kyoto via train from Shimonoseki (we landed in Tokyo, overnight trained to Shiminoseki, spent a couple days there, then headed out to Kyoto- more on Shimonoseki later). Side note, my Japan Rail pass kicked serious ass. I used it almost daily (and often more than once a day) for the entirety of our time in Japan, and the last time I swiped it was at 11:58pm on the day it expired! This was a really special trip because Beth and I haven't traveled together since we went to Spain six years ago (!), and the four of us have wanted to travel together for a while.

Anyway, on the way to Kyoto we stopped off at Hiroshima. Hiroshima is a difficult experience to put in to words. It was very sobering. The atomic bomb basically flattened the city, and burned it to the ground. We went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and it was so gruesome (burned clothing, pictures of people who had lived and died after the bomb, witness accounts, etc). The museum is surrounded by a park and there are many international events held there each year.

On a brighter note we ate okonomiyaki for the first time in Hiroshima on the way back to the train station. So dericious! Okonomiyaki is a type of layered meal with a crepe-ish base, cabbage and other veggies, super sweet bbq sauce, hot sauce, and an egg and/or meat and seafood stirred in. Yum!





We arrived in Kyoto in the early evening and walked to our hostel, which had opened just a couple weeks prior to our arrival. The hostel is near a huge shopping center that we walked through and ate at a few times. The cool thing about this shopping place is that it covers a few acres and has been a shopping street/area in Kyoto for hundreds of years. A highlight was a tea shop called Lupicia- the store had many teas to sample and smell, and they even gave us a lesson on how to make macha! The store was run by a man from France who had lived in Japan for a few years. The best part of our whole trip would have been Matt breaking out his French to talk to this dude, but that didn't happen.

Kyoto is a big, modern city with tons of history. This means you can hop on a bus and see beautiful buildings and architecture, then walk through centuries old temples and castles and parks and neighborhoods. Pretty sweet. Beth was a fantastic tour guide; she navigated us around and read from Lonely Planet at each site.









After a couple days Beth and Matt headed home to Shimonoseki and Josh and I trained south to Nara. Nara was the first permanent capital of Japan and also has a lot of historical sites. In Nara we fed and petted the rampant deer population (they run that town because they have been there forever and used to be believed to be messengers from God). We also saw the world's oldest wooden building which houses the world's largest Buddha.







From Nara I headed back to Shimonoseki and Josh went the other direction to Tokyo.