Rokudaime

Not much that happened today. Resting day without any particular plans before we finally leave Kyoto and head to Hakone tomorrow. Most went to shop in various places, but me and 3 others went to the Shimogomo temple, another temple on the Unesco world heritage list, though smaller. Lots of those apparently. You can never get enough temples. ;-) Also finally got to see a Sakura tree in full bloom, so I took some pictures of that. Also saw several eagles, but didn't manage to take any pictures of ...

Eventful day today. We first went to the Arashiyama mountain, where there is a park with wild and free roaming, but gentle and trusting snow monkeys, that are used to people. There are park staff that take care of the monkeys and feed them. We were able to feed them as well. The view from the top of the mountain was also amazing. Then, when we were on our way down from the mountain, we were stopped by two Japanese guys who asked us if we were willing to be filmed by their TV crew along with 4 ...

Today we went to the Rokuonji temple in Kyoto and the old Kinkaku-jin golden pavilion that is on the temple grounds, and which is also on the Unesco world heritage list. There are also nice gardens and water around it. We also went to the Kitana Tenman temple that is close to Rokuonji.





...

Rain and cold yesterday...Totally different from the warm and sunny weather from the first day. So we changed our plans for the day a bit, and went to Osaka, where we among other things went to a park with tame but freely roaming deer. We could feed them and pet them. The rest of the day was pretty boring to be honest, because of the weather, with lots of walking inside shopping malls and such. Yesterday was amazing though. It was cold, but the weather was better. So we went to the Shirakawa ...

Right! Time to get this thing started! Day 1 was nothing but traveling (19 hours by plane, a couple of hours by train), eating, and sleeping a little bit, so nothing happened there. Day 2, today, was when the vacation finally began in earnest, and it has been great so far! We went to Kyoto (traveling with the Shinkansen using a JR pass. Get one of those beforehand (you can't buy them once you're in Japan) if you ever decide to go on vacation to Japan. It will save you a TON of money!) and visited ...