On August 24th I went to Japan for vacation. I was there for 10 days with a friend, here is the blog I wrote about it~

Yosh! Japan! To answer your questions.. Yes. It was awesome. Well heres how it went down ~

*Start* We arrived at the Vancouver Airport at a brisk 4AM to find our plane to Japan. It wasn't much a wait (3 hours) and then we were on our plane heading to LA. It was a pretty easy flight, only about 2 and a half hours. Arriving in the Los Angeles Intl. Airport we could experience everything I imagined LA would be like through the smell. Pee and ashtray.. Peetray. It was kinda gross But we waited in our lines and got through customs, and made it to our plane to Tokyo. I completely missed the take off for this one, I just fell asleep waiting for them to take off. But in the air, I slept, watched V for Vendetta, and most of Conspiracy Theory before we landed in Japan 12 hours later. We arrived in Japan on August 15th, 6pm and the first thing we had to do was get access to internet and get directions to our hostel. Our first experience in Japan was navigating the trains, so we didn't get on the wrong one and go far away from where we needed to go. We made it, however, and after getting slightly lost we found our hostel. It was about 10pm by this time, so we decided to go to bed.

The next day we went and checked out Edo street near our hostel. It had all kinds of shops, ranging from clothing, to cosmetics, to sushi tools, to anime stores. Naturally, we went in to a couple of the anime stores which were lined with PVC figurines, trading card games, collectables of all kinds, and even anime candy. From the shops we walked north to see the Sensoji temple..which coincidentally was having a dance festival the very same day. So we watched the different types of dress, dances, and floats and slowly made our way into the main grounds of the temple. This place was super cool, huge temple buildings, a gigantic pagoda, and stands everywhere for telling our fortune. I dropped 100 yen to have my fortune read and got, "Best Fortune". We also had a group of girls ask us to take a picture with them, so I said sure. They were far too excited for me to be able to tell them no. We ended the day with some McDonalds and went back to the hostel early.

The day after we went and got our JR rail vouchers activated and got on the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Kyoto was an amazing city. It is the only big city that was left untouched by the bombings of WWII, and it certainly shows its rich culture. Kyoto was the most traditional city was got to see, and it was well worth the trip. After finding our hostel, we got on the bus to try and go see Sennjosangendo temple. Little did we know, it was already closed before we headed out. Not that we could find it anyways, we looked around and gave up. We went to some little food hut, got some Katsu-don, and ate it at a bus stop. It was a really nice night~ On our way back we found where the temple was and found out it was closed early. The morning after, we went to Arashiyama park for a bit of a nature walk. It was a very nice area, we walked alongside a small river and a boatman taking some people beside us. From Arashiyama we went to Sennjosangendo once more and seen the 1001 Kannon statues, the 28 diety statues, Raijin & Fujin, and Buddha himself. It was really interesting to see all the different dieties, and to see 1001 of one kind of statue as well. They were all hand crafted >.> From there we went to Kiyomizu temple.. or the Pure Water temple. It was amazing, trees everywhere and a 3 story pagoda that was built without the use of a single nail. There were fountains all over for people to wash their hands at, and at the bottom of the grounds was a line up of people waiting to drink from the little falls that dropped into a pool. The water apparently came from deep inside this mountain.. seemed interesting. Matt went and had a drink of the water and said it was the clearest tasting water he's ever had. We even got to see a Geisha posing for some people with cameras. On our way back to the hostel we stopped at the shops lining the streets up to Kiyomizu and got ourselves some souvenirs. We then crashed for the evening. The morning after, we went to the Kyoto National Museum to see what kind of goodies they had there. It was much like a museum here.. except it had Japanese stuff in it, so it was better They had pottery stuff, scrolls, old metalworks like gongs, kimonos... lots of neat stuff. Then we jumped on the Shinkansen to go to Osaka.

Osaka was the best part of the trip. It felt like as soon as I got into Osaka, all the stress from navigating in a foreign country just went away. Our hostel was on the 11th floor of this really cool building, and was really easy to find. After checking into the hostel we went to the Shin Umeda City building. It was this really big skyscraper, that had two buildings connected at the top by this circular observatory area. We went up this really creepy class elevator to the top and went up to the observation area. We were soo high. It was really kind of fun. Then on the floor below the observation area they had pictures of Ultraman all over the inner walls. Apparently it was Ultraman's 40th anniversary, and a new movie is coming out in his honor. I must see it @@ Then we went for supper and headed to the hostel so we didn't miss the 11pm curfew. The morning after we went to the Osaka Aquarium, which was swarming with Japanese families. This place was really awesome, it had a big whale shark, some weird spider crabs.. it was definetely a must see in Osaka. After that we looked for this famed SEGA arcade, but all we found was this little arcade at the top of a shopping mall. It was still pretty cool, we played some Lupin the 3rd shooting game, got our pictures taken with some excited Japanese children, and watched this one game with some bear, who beat the shit out of some guy and was licking some kids tears and stuff... it was awesome. On our way out I picked up a Gackt DVD and a Bleach OST, then we went back to the hostel for the evening. The next day we took the Shinkansen to Himeji to see the famed Himeji Castle.. the biggest castle in Japan. It was certainly amazing. I think it was one of the coolest things we seen in Japan. It was hard to imagine that I was standing on the same grounds that real Samurai stood on so long ago >.> We got to the top of the castle and got to overlook the city, which was spectacular. Then we went back to Osaka where we had a little break at the hostel. That evening we went out to this little Japanese bar near out hostel and ordered a plate of this raw, sliced up beef that we grilled ourselves on this grill in the middle of our table. It was really, really good. We had a little sauce dish we could dip it in after it was cooked, and we ordered some beer. The beer was really good, and ended up ordering about 5 beers each, and quite a few plates of food too. So let it be known, I was drunk in Osaka Japan, August 31st 2006 XD. We then wandered around near the hostel for a while and found some porn shop randomly. Although, thats not saying too much since you can seemingly buy porn and hentai anywhere. I then had a really good sleep that night.

The next day we got up and boarded the Shinkansen once again to go to Hiroshima to see the Peace Park Memorial. I was familiar with most of the information that they had there because of my research, but it was a treat to see it in person. It was truly spectacular to see the memorial, and to this day the mayor protests every single nuclear weapons testing all over the world. Hiroshima is now known as the Peace city. Love & Peace !

Then we got back on the (wrong) Shinkansen and went back to Tokyo. The Shinkansen we were on stopped at every single stop along the way, instead of passing by some, so it delayed us quite a bit. We ended up getting back in Tokyo late and had to get our key so that we could get into the hostel. We sorted it out though, and crashed for the evening once again. The morning after we decided to check out the district of Harajyuku while our JR pass was still active. So we headed out, and the disctrict was pretty cool. The highlight was seeing all the cool gothy clothes stores they had, and the huge bookstore/ps2 game store they had. Then we went to the district of Shujyuku where we seen skycrapers everywhere. Here we found a cool little arcade and another really awesome ps2 store. I wish we had that kind of selection of ps2 games here Then we went back to the hostel for the last time. We stayed at the hostel for the afternoon the next day and then found our way back to the Airport. Saying goodbye to Japan, we got back on another 12 hour flight to go home. For some reason, Matt and I couldn't sit in the same row and were put two rows apart. Then we got to LA, flew to Vancouver, said good-bye to each other, and I got on a bus and got home.

I then suffered from Jet lag for about a week, and it was way worse coming back than it was in Japan. But, all in all, Japan was such a good experience. I want to go back soon.. but I'll learn the language before I go again~

*Finish*

*^.^* It was truly a great experience, if any of you are not really sure if you want to go or not ... I'm telling you that you probably do. ~