New Year’s Eve, 9:00 PM: We finally got to our new destination, Osaka. Being on the phone for 3 hours with Chase? What a way to end a decade. Anyway, it felt good to be in Osaka, away from the bad luck we’d had in Kyoto. And thank goodness for American hotel chains in Japan. We were treated like royalty, and the hotel room was double the size of the one we had the first time we were in Kyoto.…
Today, we went back to Kyoto. It was only a 40 min drive from the old man’s house. We wanted to check out the main attractions in Kyoto that we had not seen before, like the famous bamboo forest, the temples, and the Imperial palace. Gion district was near the temples in Kyoto, and this part was famous for their abundance of geishas. This day did not go according to plan. I don’t even really want to write about it…
After leaving Gyokuzoin temple, we hit the road. The plan was to do lunch in Kobe, pick up some groceries, and then go to stay at the farmstay we booked through Airbnb. The country scenery was so beautiful. Because of the spacing, the land looked less like suburbia and more like a rich neighborhood where everyone can have massive plots of land. It was so lush and green. We got on the highway and it was so expensive. We didn’t…
After leaving Nara, we started driving toward Gyokuzoin temple as it was getting dark. We started making our way into the mountains, and we saw so many beautiful streams and trees. The road started getting narrower and narrower. When the road got too narrow and overgrown, we realized we had mapped to Gyokuzoin temple, but there was another pinpoint we should have mapped to for meeting the monks that would take us to our place to stay. They told us…
Today we planned to bum around Nara and hang out with their deer, and then end up at Gyokuzoin Temple, a temple you can stay at for the night. We left Kyoto early, at 8am. We went to the Toyota rent a center and got a white Toyota Vitz! It was quite cute and narrower than an American car. Masa started to go to my side, and then I went to the driver’s side. Oops! We forgot that the sides…
They say Osaka is Japan’s kitchen. Today, we woke up early and took the train to Osaka. We planned to see the castle and everything, but then we were like, why do that if we’re going to see Himeji castle anyway. So we decided to skip that. We took the express train to Osaka. Even though we were passing through the countryside, it didn’t look very country to me. It looked even more populous than my hometown! We passed by…
Today, we mostly traveled. We packed up, cleaned up the apartment a bit, and we had some extra time before the train ticket office opened, so we just chilled for a while before we called our taxi. I even washed the dishes. Then we took the taxi to the train station, and went to the ticket office. Again, the lady helped us and we were able to get our tickets for the journey. We got onto the train and I…
Dec. 26, 2019. We reserved the whole day for TeamLab Borderless because we weren’t sure what to expect and how long we should budget for this. NOTE: stop reading if you don’t want spoilers for Borderless. You probably have seen the pictures all over the internet/Instagram of what it’s been like, but part of the magic of Borderless is discovering it for yourself. We got 2 little rice balls from 7-11, and we went straight to teamLab borderless as soon…
For Christmas morning, Dec. 25, we just wanted to take it slow. We ate cake in the morning, and then we went to Shinjuku to wait for Robot Restaurant. Somehow, even though it seemed like every single restaurant in Tokyo was booked for Christmas Eve, we were able to get reservations to Robot Restaurant for Christmas Day. It started at 12:30 PM so we went to a sushi place first to eat. We had sushi bowls and it was quite…
Today, Dec. 24th, our plan was to go to Ueno and check out the parks and museums there. Then, at night, we would visit some of the Christmas markets and light shows in the city. Japan is crazy about light installations. I get it though, driving through suburban neighborhoods to see Christmas lights isn’t a thing here like in the USA. The day started off so nicely. We first went to Ueno park, by train. We went up a great…