Rokudaime

Today me and 6 others rented a car and drove to the Zao fox village in the Miyagi mountains in Sendai. We also visited Washinomiya shrine, the one used in the Lucky Star anime, also in Sendai. We considered visiting other places used in Yosuga no Sora, AnoHana, and Non Non Biyori, but it was late, and we were tired from the long drive, and the weather was bad at that point, so we decided to drive back to Tokyo.


...

Visited the Tokyo Sky Tree today. One of the tallest buildings in the world. The view is amazing, and is best enjoyed during the night when the city is lit up with lights in different colours.






I also came across this giant Totoro in the window of a closed Ghibli shop on the way ...

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 ...

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 ...