Sam & Georgia's Travels : February 2014

This Buddhist Temple is in the centre of Kyoto. It is a huge wooden structure, one of the world's largest.

The Ryoanji Temple, which houses the Rock Graden, mainly consists of pretty incredible gardens. There is a large lake and most paths are lined with cherry blossoms, although they weren't flowering. It was a really nice place to just walk around and observe.

A trip to the top of Kyoto Tower gave us incredible panoramic views of the entire city. It's a huge city, but doesn't feel that big when you are walking through it.

Kyoto is the cultural hub of Japan, it is much more traditional and rich in history than Tokyo or Osaka. There are 17 World Heritage Sites around the city.

An incredible rock garden at the Ryoanji Temple. This rock garden was created in around 1500 by a Zen monk. It really is impressive to sit and observe. Although I wouldn't want to be the person who has to rake it everyday.

Disneyland Tokyo! Disneyland is always fun, we went on as many rides as we could manage and Sam had to tear me away from the huge selection of Disney inspired hats and socks. The Japanese seem to be quite obsessed with cool socks..

And we are off again..

Our 14 hour journey seemed to go by pretty quickly and we both managed to get q good amount of sleep. However we did have a bit of trouble once we landed and realised we didn’t have a clue how to get to our hotel. What was meant to be a 40 minute train ride, turned into almost two hours. Then when we tried to change trains, we were wrongly directed to out of the station. After about half an hour of walking around, we realised we were in the complete wrong area of the city. Finally we jumped in a cab and made it to our hotel!

We had a nice long sleep in the next day, before heading into the city centre. It was from here that we headed out to the area of Harajuku.
It hasn’t taken us long at all to work out the trains and it has made it incredibly easy to navigate such a huge and intense city. The trains are extremely efficient and reasonably easy to use. Plus like everything else in the city they are clean and feel very safe.

Harajuku is a really cool area that is the centre of fashion in Tokyo. All kinds of different styles are jam packed into this small area, which makes it fun just to sit and watch the different people wandering past. The Japanese people has incredible style, and the stores sell all kinds of cool different things.
We managed to pick up some pretty cool stuff for cheap.
The whole morning it was raining but in the afternoon the rain turned to snow. It was incredibly cold, but it was amazing walking the streets in heavy snow.

We were up bright and early the next day for a day trip out to Mt. Fuji. The trip was with a tour group and included a visit to a traditional Onsen and an outlet shopping centre.

Once we got out of the city the scenery was beautiful and everything had a thick layer of snow.
Mt. Fuji really is quite spectacular. There is an incredible view from the visitor centre where you can see from the base to the summit. It was an extremely clear and sunny day, so the view was perfect. I think the mountain is so impressive because it stands alone and the entire mountain is visible.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to drive up to the 5th station because the road was closed, so instead we went to one of the 5 lakes that surround the mountain and had a look from there. The huge lake only added to the impressive view.

After lunch we headed to a traditional onsen, which is kind of like a public bath except they are hot springs. There are a number of strict rules that must be adhered to in the onsen, and the main rule is that clothes, underwear or bathing suits are not allowed. People with tattoos are also not allowed, and men and women bath separately.
It was a very strange experience to say the least. Although it was uncomfortable, it was pretty incredible to be sitting in a hot spring in Japan with snow on the ground around you. It’s also something that not many tourists do, which made it pretty cool.

From the onsen we headed out to an outlet shopping centre. Though we didn’t have much money to spend, it was a beautiful place to look around. It was all outdoor and everything was covered in snow. Despite Sam trying to initiate a couple of snowball fights it was a nice couple of hours.

When we got dropped back into the city, we had a Japenese BBQ style dinner before wandering through an electronics area.