Sunday 21 October 2012

Bit more Tokyo, National Parks, Onsen, Kyoto

Last time I left in a rush to go to a second one of those international parties in Tokyo. This one was in Yijugaoka. This was a bit of a smaller party and a slightly more relaxed one. I met a bunch more people, practiced more Japanese and found a girl to have lunch with the day after. Here's the pictures from the party.



The next day I met up with Satomi for lunch. Satomi talks no english at all and since I had already done all the basic introduction stuff in the hour that I talked to her at the party. So I was pretty nervous about being able to talk to her about new things, because my Japanese is still pretty limited. We went for sushi first in Shinjuku. It was quite nice. Pretty good sushi as usual in Tokyo. After that we went to Tokyo Tower. Much older than the recently finished Tokyo Sky Tree, but I liked it nonetheless. It has it's own charm and I can see why it's the symbol of post-war Tokyo.
While it wasn't easy, I was able to talk to Satomi for a few more hours and I think we both had a good time.







Crazy robot in Tokyo Tower. Thought there was someone in there, until Satomi pointed out it's a machine.

In the evening, I tried going to another international party in Roppongi, but after finally finding it after 30 minutes of searching, it turned out it had started 1.5 hours earlier. And thus there was only 30 minutes left, for which I didn't want to pay the entry fee. Unlucky.

On sunday, me and my dad got our Mazda rental car and left Tokyo. On the first day we drove through Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park, before staying the night in Chichibu. A seemingly quiet town that nonetheless has about 70.000 citizens. I guess compared to Tokyo, anything feels small. Here's some pictures from driving through the park.

 360 degrees panorama
Me and my dad
Bears? 0_0

The next day we drove northwards to an Onsen called Houshi Onsen Chojukan. It turned out to be in the middle of nowhere. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the bathhouses for obvious reasons, but here's the pictures from the room and the outside. Aswell as driving up to the onsen.





 Lots of waterfalls nearby the onsen


 Middle of nowhere = quality onsen


 View from our room. Pretty pretty good
 I'm generally not into candy, but the japanese sweet we got upon arrival was so delicious I bought 2 boxes when we left from the souvenir shop!
 Our room


 Me in a massively comfy traditional Japanese outfit. I think it's called a 浴衣、ゆかた、Yukata
 Izakaya style meal
 Dish #1 Japanese pickles
 Dish #2 Unsure of what it is
 Dish #3 Something with egg
 Dish #4 Vedgetables I believe with some tofu on the left
 Dish #5 Mushroom soup and probably the most delicious soup I've ever had. It was very subtle with a tiny bit of lemon in there.
 Dish #6 I believe fish liver
 Dish #7 Fish without liver

 Dish #8 Steamed Pork
 Surprisingly enough extremely comfortable futons!
 Breakfast was also served in our room!
 Dish #1 Japanese pickles
 Dish #2 Unsure
 Dish #3 Some sort of egg
 Dish #4 I believe some sort of fish
 Dish #5 I've had this before, it's EXTREMELY sour. I don't really like these
 Dish #6 Mushroom miso soup
 Dish #7 Some sort of steamed dish
 View from our room in the morning



 Lobby/Entrance
Souvenir shop

Basically I bathed for 3 hours, ate, bathed for 3-4 more hours outdoors under the stars, slept, ate, bathed for 3 more hours and left. It was the most relaxing experience of my life and afterwards I felt cleaner than ever before and cleaner than I ever will I'm sure. The room/building was also extremely nice the dinner was fantastic, worth a michelin star imo. Breakfast wasn't as outstanding but still good. Overall an ABSOLUTELY MUST DO if you ever go to Japan. Going to a top notch onsen on it's own is almost worth a trip to Japan.

After the onsen we drove on to Hakusan National Park. We stayed at another Ryokan for 2 nights and the day inbetween we toured through Hakusan National Park. Unfortunately enough we had our only bad weather day so far on this day and were only able to explore for a little bit. We drove over the Hakusan Supaa Rindo. A crazy 33KM mountain road going up nearly 2KM and down again within 33KM. We drove it to the end and then back again.

 A couple pictures of a beautiful sunset


 The ryokan wasn't quite as nice as the onsen

 Hakusan National Park from the Hakusan Suupaa Rindo



 Monkey on the road

 Bad weather struck

 Food at the Ryokan was also uncomparable to the food at the Onsen
Panorama from an observation point

On Thursday the 18th we left the national parks and drove to Kyoto. The last city I'm visiting with my dad. After which I'll continue my journey through Japan by myself. On Thursday we just gave back the car, checked into the hotel and had sushi for dinner.

On Friday we first of all had an reservation for a tour through the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Here's the pictures.


 Some Chinese girl taking pictures with Totoro

 
 I didn't really think much of most of the buildings, but the gardens were super super nice!




Some temple outside of Kyoto on a hill, protecting the palace in ancient times

In the afternoon, after eating real Kobe Beef, we visited Kyoto station, which is one of the strangest buildings I've ever seen.


 The real deal

 Some of the best beef I've ever had
 Not just Tokyo has a tower. Kyoto has Kyoto Tower
 Kyoto Station
 Kyoto Station's Inside

 One of the strangest buildings I've ever seen from an architectural standpoint
 The reflection looked nicer than the real thing


 Kyoto's also pretty big!

On Saturday the 21st I met up with someone I had spoken to on couchsurfing. Hanbich, a korean guy studying in Japan. We met up at Kinkaku-Ji, the Golden Pavilion Temple. Afterwards he invited me back to his home and cooked me some good YakiSoba. The afternoon we spent sightseeing the area around his home by bike, we talked a lot and before he had to go work on a university project we also managed to go eat ramen.
I must say I wasn't that big a fan of ramen before, but after eating it once in Tokyo and especially yesterday in Kyoto with Hanbich... it's skyrocketed up to my 2nd favorite food after Sushi. The ramen place Hanbich took me was absolutely DELICIOUS and it only cost 650yen(6.5 euros)!!!

 Kinkaku-Ji, The Golden Pavilion
 Me and Hanbich





 Too bad I wasn't here in April to see all the Sakura(Cherry Blossom)


 Some kids performing who knows what. Acrobatics?



 A shrine where high school students come to pray they get into university
 Hanbich also showed me his unversity


 A shrine for babys
EXTREMELY delicious ramen!!!

Today, I went to see the Gion district, ate sushi, went to Kyoto station to make reservations for the shinkansen to Nagoya, saw a big food market in Kyoto, relaxed with my dad at a starbucks and ate ramen again.

 Old district in Kyoto with wooden buildings

 Girls in Kimonos

 Girls in Kimonos with white makeup
 Kyoto style sushi. The waiter mentioned some people in Kyoto in ancient times having small mouths or something, which is why they made the sushi smaller.
 Nishiki Market

 Kyoto Tower by night
 Another cool ramen place!
Delicious!

Kyoto overall is a fun city, but I definitely prefer Tokyo for 2 big reasons. First of all the public transportation in Kyoto is mostly busses. Which is far inferior to the super amazing subway and train system of Tokyo. Second, sushi in Kyoto is extremely disappointing. Even some slightly upscale places in Kyoto are a big step down from simple sushi places in Tokyo.
I do have to give Kyoto one thing though. Out of all cities I've been to, Kyoto has the prettiest girls!

Tomorrow my dad is going to Tokyo and flying back to Europe. I'll be staying in Japan for 3 more weeks until the 9th. On tuesday I'm going to Nagoya, later this week to Hiroshima, next week to Fukuoka, after that a week in Osaka and then 2 more days in Tokyo before flying back.

I'll be meeting lots of people through couchsurfing in these last few weeks and I'm looking forward to it a LOT, because so far the most fun things in Japan have been meeting locals. So I'm very very excited!

Frank