Parks, beaches, and food. Last day in Japan!

Happy Easter, everyone!

Another big day, and our last in Japan!! I can't believe it. It was also a gorgeous day- clear, sunny, and mid 70s.

We started off today by taking the train to Umimonakamichi Park, which took an hour longer than we planned since there were unexpected train delays. It's rather frustrating as a tourist to be standing on a train platform for an hour not having any idea what's going on because all of the announcements are in a language you don't understand. But that's part of the deal!

Anyway, we finally got there and walked around a bit. The park was unlike any other park I've ever been to. It's a sprawling family-oriented entertainment park with play areas for kids, bikes to rent to cycle around the whole park, an arcade, a water park area, beach lookouts, flower gardens, an aquarium, and a miniature zoo (which was actually pretty decent). We spent just under $4 each to get into the park and you could easily spend several hours there. We started by checking out the beach lookouts, which was pretty but I was disappointed that you couldn't actually go on the beach. Then we walked along the coast for awhile before angling back in towards the zoo area. This was pretty neat. There were three different types of monkeys each on their own little island; the small spider monkeys looked so tiny! Especially compared to the snow monkeys we saw near Nagano. There were several petting areas where you could pet sheep, goats, pigs, turtles, etc. I saw the strangest looking goat thing I've ever seen with spiral horns and huge floppy ears and horizontal pupils. He looked like some creature out of Star Wars. They had flamingos and parrots and prairie dogs. They also had an area where you could go in with capybaras, wallabies, and kangaroos! Who would've guessed we would see kangaroos after leaving Australia?! After leaving the zoo we walked through some of the flower areas which were really pretty; the roses weren't bloomed yet but the tulips were pretty. Then we left the park.

Next stop was the Momochi Seaside Park to visit the beach. I was hungry when we got there so I found a snack- ice cream that you could "make" yourself. You could pick the fruits/nuts that you wanted to put in there. I added blueberries, peaches, and walnuts to vanilla ice cream base and it was delicious. Then we sat on the beach and enjoyed the sunshine and sound of the waves for about two hours. 

Then we caught the subway back to the same area as yesterday to try getting food at the yatais again. Success! It was really different from other street food vendors I've seen before. It's like these mini-restaurants sprouted out of the ground; each stand had it's own seating for up to about 12 people. So we picked one of the stalls and ordered some ramen (it is our last night in Japan after all). This was our first time trying tonkotsu ramen, which means the broth is made from pork bone. It was super good and I'm really glad we tried it. Typically I had been getting shoyu ramen, which is the soy sauce base. I think the other one I tried was our first one in Japan and that was miso, which I don't really know how to describe. But anyway, the yatai endeavor was really cool and unique.

We were on our way back to the airbnb and almost here when we decided instead to play a little pachinko right across the street since we still had a little more yen than we really need for less than 24 hours left in Japan. We tried a couple of different machines and the second one I played kept winning. It was pretty exciting; I thought I was winning a lot since I only started with 50 balls but I won over 800. I still never really knew what exactly I was doing but sometimes a kind stranger would give me a tip as they were walking by. By the end when I cashed it out it wasn't as much as I was hoping, but it mostly covered what I had put in for the night. So that was good, although I didn't end up actually spending the money which was the goal but I guess that's a good problem to have. :)

We fly to Singapore tomorrow! Also, a huge shout out to our favorite travel buddy- happy happy birthday to Jack!! We miss you!

Fukuoka

Update on the malware issue: I have had a couple of responses from PropellerAds but have no resolution yet; they say they are looking into it. Again, please email me if you see any suspicious activity on your credit cards and you believe it is because of the malware scam.

So last night's capsule hostel was interesting. The place was really clean and the hosts were very nice. The capsule itself wasn't a problem for me (I was worried about claustrophobia), but the beds themselves were really uncomfortable so that was a bummer. On the plus side Matt got some sleep (I gave him a Benadryl before bed and that did the trick) and he's feeling a bit better today.

We had toast and jam for breakfast this morning, compliments of our host. They had some unique jams and jellies which were really good. My favorite were the white peach and blueberry. Then we checked out and headed to the train station. It was another gorgeous sunny day there so it was a bit of a bummer to leave, especially since we knew we'd probably see rain in Fukuoka.

We arrived in Fukuoka a little over an hour later, but we sat in the train station for awhile since we couldn't check into our airbnb yet and didn't really know what else to do with our luggage. We found a comfy place to sit and watched an episode of Orange is the New Black until we got the message that we were good to check in. Our place is nice- it's a little more spacious than our last couple of places, the bed is on the floor as usual but it's a thicker mattress which is nice, it's got a small kitchenette and fully furnished, plus it's only 12 minute walk from the train station. We're here for two nights but I can't believe this is our last spot in Japan! 

We read that Fukuoka is famous for their street vendors, called yatais. We decided to try that for lunch so we went to an area, Nakasu Island, which we read had a lot of them, but when we got there it was all empty and then we realized it didn't start until 6pm. We were really hungry then so we just grabbed a quick bite of pasta at a nearby cafe. It was a really pretty area though with tulips and cherry blossoms along the water.

Then we walked to Maizura Park to see the castle ruins and cherry blossoms. All of the cherry blossoms are falling off the trees and it's so beautiful; it looks almost like snow falling down and piling on the ground. It started to rain right as we got to the top of the castle ruins so we grabbed a few quick photos and then left. We ducked under an umbrella and eventually found shelter at a nearby Starbucks, where we decided to try to wait it out until 6pm to potentially go back to the food trucks.

6pm came and it was still raining pretty good and therefore the food trucks probably wouldn't be very much fun, so instead we caught the subway back to the main train station, Hakata. It's a huge station with lots of things there so we just walked around until we found a place we wanted to eat. We settled on another fried skewer place, similar to what we had in Osaka. I had a couple of the same ones I had before (beef, onion, green pepper) and then I also tried garlic, which really wasn't very good. My grandma Pat would probably get sick just smelling it (she's allergic to garlic). The others were good though. Although I think they mislabeled the green pepper because mine were jalapeños. Super tasty but a bit spicier than I thought it was going to be. Matt declared that he'd rather try a fried cockroach than eat the peppers, though he did start to backtrack when I said I was going to put this in the blog.

That was our day! It was still raining with some distant thunder as we hustled back to our airbnb for the night. The storms change up our plans a bit but it is kind of nice to see a little spring thunderstorm. 

Hiroshima

Notice: I had decided to add some advertisements to the blog so that I could potentially earn a little bit of money from it. I added it last night and everything looked good, but unfortunately while I was sleeping it seems some malware got through instead. Upon waking up and realizing what happened I immediately removed the ads, but if you viewed the blog between the hours of 11am-7pm on Thursday April 13 and you received a scary looking pop up that said it was uploading your credit card information- please take this seriously and monitor your credit cards. I myself did have one of my credit cards hacked and it already had several fraudulent charges on it. I'm so sorry that this happened. I feel terrible that I put everyone at risk. I have contacted my advertising platform, PropellerAds, for what support they can provide. I am waiting to hear back and I will keep you all updated on that. The blog is back to being ad-free (and safe!) now and I will let you know in advance if that will change in the future.

Today had a rough start for us. First of all there was the whole malware thing to deal with (again, I'm so sorry about that!). Please let me know (via email) if your information was hacked as well so that I have that information. I feel terrible and I can't believe that this happened less than 3 hours after I decided to add ads to the blog.

Then Matt wasn't feeling well and didn't sleep well. We're hoping it's allergies and not a cold, but it's never fun to feel all icky.

So we were in rather low spirits as we packed up and checked out of our airbnb. We headed to the train station and got tickets to head to Hiroshima. Well, kind of. The reserved seats for our second leg were all sold out, so they told us to try to get seats in the unreserved section and best of luck. As soon as we got on it was apparent that there were no seats available, so we stood in the hallway for the first half hour. Then at the next stop I sniped some seats from people getting off, so the next hour we had seats at least.

And we arrived in Hiroshima! We were walking out of the station when I spotted a bakery and I was starting to get hungry so we made a pit stop there for some snacks. One of the things we got was a cheesy roll thing which was absolutely delicious. It was just stuffed with cheese inside and it was super hot like it just came out of the oven. That helped to turn our day around a bit!

We walked to our airbnb which is more like a mini hostel area. We were able to get in and drop our bags off but not check in yet, so I'll say more about that later.

Then we walked to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. This was sad (as one might expect). First we saw the A-bomb dome, which is the remains of a building that was partially left standing which was preserved as a memorial of the bombing and a reminder of the horrors of using a nuclear weapon. It was a registered on the World Heritage List in 1996. 

Then we saw the Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students and the Children's Peace Monument; those were tear jerkers. The monument was funded by fund-raising campaign by Japanese schoolchildren, including Sadako Sasaki's classmates. Sadako was a young girl who died of leukemia from the radiation of the bomb.

Then we saw the Memorial Cenotaph for the A-bomb victims. This is a saddle-shaped monument that covers a cenotaph which contains the names of the people killed by the bomb. The arch shape represents a shelter for the sounds of the victims, and it frames the Peace Flame and A-bomb dome. The Peace Flame has been burning continuously since it was lit in 1964 and it will remained lit until all of the nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed.

We also checked out the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which was pretty graphic. It had a lot of artifacts from the day of the bombing so that you could see the damage. It also had lots of pictures and replicas of people and their injuries- I won't go into more details. It was informative but also pretty upsetting. It's hard not to get emotional when seeing that kind of pain and suffering.

Throughout visiting the monuments I wondered if the Japanese people there looked at me and felt the same way that I had when I saw them at Pearl Harbor six months ago. I had been angry at what their country had done to mine and wondered why they were even there. But today definitely gave me the other perspective and I understand better why they were there and wanted to pay their respects. I think it's good that we're all reminded about the terrible things we've done and the consequences so that hopefully nobody ever decides they have to go to that extreme again. But I'll get off this topic; it could be a dedicated blog series all on its own.

After leaving the museum we strolled back through the Peace Memorial Park towards the river and found a sunny place to sit down and relax for a bit. It was an absolutely gorgeous day; about 70 degrees, slight breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. So we enjoyed an hour of the evening sun before going to find a place for dinner. We ended up picking a sushi place, since we were hoping for something healthy and relatively cheap. It was pretty good but ended up being a little more expensive than we thought, we're still not sure how that happened.

Then we got back to our airbnb. It's similar to a capsule hotel in that they have sleep rooms with just little individual capsules that you sleep in. There are several other travelers here as well but everyone has mostly kept to themselves. But the place is nice and clean, so I'll report tomorrow on how sleeping in a capsule goes!

Walking Kyoto

What a big day! We did a lot of walking today. We did a really smart thing and got a subway day pass since the JR train wasn't going to help us very much, and that saved us a ton more working. The subway day pass was 600 yen/person (just under $6).

We hopped off the subway at the north west corner of the Imperial Palace and walked south through the grounds. We thought that's all we were going to do and that we wouldn't be allowed to go inside, but then we stumbled upon an open gate which appeared to be letting visitors in. We wandered in and then further realized that a free English tour started in 2 minutes so we thought, why not, and joined that as well. It was an hour long tour that took us to some of the major buildings within the palace and it was really interesting. Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 through 1869 (over a thousand years) when it moved to Tokyo, so it has a lot of history. She pointed out the Carriage Porch which is where senior nobility and high ranking courtiers entered through when they came to visit since that's where they could leave their carriages and oxen. But when former President Bush Sr visited in 1992 his motorcade was able to drive through the South Gate (Sakaimachigomon Gate). Then we were shown the waiting rooms (Shodaibu-no-ma) where visitors were allocated according to their rank. In descending order of importance: "Room of the Tigers", "Room of the Cranes", and "Room of the Cherry Trees". They are named after the paintings on the sliding doors and they also had different colors for the tatami mat edgings. We moved on to the Shishinden which is the hall for state ceremonies, such as enthronement of the emperor, up until 1928. The central staircase is flanked by a cherry tree which symbolized loyalty and a mandarin orange tree which symbolized longevity. We also got to see the emperor's private garden which was really pretty. She told us an interesting fact that although it's the emperor's garden, since he is not allowed to touch the ground people would have to roll out mats for him to walk through the garden. She also explained the unique, thick roofs we saw on many buildings at the palace and we've also seen on many temples throughout Japan. For important buildings they make the roof out of Cypress bark and bamboo nails and it's really thick because it's 7-8 layers of cypress bark. One of the reasons they use this is because the bark has a chemical in it that keeps the termites away. Also when they strip the tree of the bark the tree continues to live and it re grows the bark in about 10 years. The crazy thing is that the cypress bark roofs only last about 30 years, but to replace all of the cypress bark roofs at the palace it takes about 25 years because it takes so long to do! So pretty much right when they finish they have to start all over again.

After we left the palace we went through the Nishiki Market. Saw lots of fish and fruits and veggies, but not too much that we wanted to grab for a quick lunch. We did buy a bottle of umeshu though, which is the plum wine well-known here. We kept wandering and found a Turkish kebab place. Matt decided to get one of those and after I tried a bite I decided to get one too. We took them to a little square and ate them by the cherry blossoms, along with our umeshu (no open container laws in Japan!). Then, as we were eating we noticed that there was a hedgehog cafe right beside us. Hedgehogs are an inside joke with Matt and I, and to find a cafe right where we stumbled upon to eat lunch felt like such a huge coincidence so we decided to go check it out. It was called "Tom's Mr. Hedgie" and we got to play with our own hedgehogs for 20 minutes. They were so cute!! They really just wanted to bury their heads and sleep though.

Then we took the subway and walked to Maruyama Park, and along the way we saw a huge Buddhist temple that we briefly checked out. It had some really big stone steps that we walked all the way up and down. There seemed to be a lot of construction on the temple though so I couldn't get many pictures. The park though had a ton of beautiful cherry blossoms, so we sat there for a bit and split an ice cream cone. This time with no incidents! And we put some raspberry honey on it as well. Yum!

Then we walked through the Higashiyama district which was very popular. It was pretty packed with pedestrians, but it had a ton of shops and restuarants along there. This is when I thought I saw two real geishas (or Geikos, as they are known in Kyoto). We've seen lots of women dress in kimonos and with elaborate hair styles, but these girls had the full makeup and they seemed to be walking very gracefully and not looking around or encouraging the attention they were receiving. As soon as I saw them I turned a 180 and surreptitiously tried to follow them and take a picture of their faces. I never did quite get that picture but I got a couple of good side photos. But after doing some research I'm pretty sure they were not real geishas and were probably girls who paid to look very similar to them. A couple of telltale signs that they are not real geishas (that I've read) are that if they have a long hair ornament to their chins and have their upper lip painted (one of the girls I pictured had both), and if they have multiple colors on their collars (a true geisha or maiko would only have red, gold, or white). Also, it would be exceedingly rare to see a geisha in her full regalia out before 5pm, especially in a touristy place. So anyway, all the excitement for nothing. But here are the pictures.

Next stop was the Kiyomizu-dera which is a Buddhist temple and part of a UNESCO world heritage site. It had beatiful bright orange gates and pagodas as well. The Otowa waterfall runs beneath the main hall where three channels of water fall into the pond. If you catch and drink the water it's said to have wish-granting abilities. We didn't partake in since there was a long line. I didn't get any great pictures of the actual temple since it was under construction as well, and pictures weren't allowed inside.

Then we walked along Hanamikoji street hoping to see an actual geisha, but no such luck. We did see some more cherry blossoms though. Then we walked along Shirakawa which was a beautiful street lined with cherry blossoms and willow trees. Both of these streets were in the Gion area. Then we walked along the river and found a sunny place to sit near the Sanjo bridge to enjoy the views and some more umeshu. It was a popular spot and some chatty locals started talking to Matt about baseball; they were quite intoxicated.

Then we wandered along the Pantocho area again looking for some dinner. We settled on a ramen place (since I hadn't had real ramen in 48 hours!). And that was pretty much it for the day! We caught the subway back to our airbnb and settled in. My garmin says we did about 20k steps today so we're pretty tired.

Tomorrow we head to Hiroshima!

Update: I had decided to add some advertisements to the blog so that I could potentially earn a little bit of money from it. I added it last night and everything looked good, but unfortunately while I was sleeping it seems some malware got through instead. Upon waking up and realizing what happened I immediately removed the ads, but if you viewed the blog between the hours of 11am-7pm on Thursday April 13 and you received a scary looking pop up that said it was uploading your credit card information- please take this seriously and monitor your credit cards. I myself did have one of my credit cards hacked and it already had several fraudulent charges on it. I'm so sorry that this happened. I feel terrible that I put everyone at risk. I have contacted my advertising platform, PropellerAds, for what support they can provide. I am waiting to hear back and I will keep you all updated on that. The blog is back to being ad-free (and safe!) now and I will let you know in advance if that will change in the future.

The Golden Pavilion

We checked out of our lovely hotel this morning. But first, we shared our last meal with Jack and split a plate of banana pancakes from the same place we went a few days ago. Then we packed up and said our goodbyes. :( We miss you already, Jack!

Matt and I took the train to Kyoto where we're staying in an airbnb the next two nights. Our host was kind enough to meet us at the train station and walk us to our apartment. It's a very compact place but it has all the necessities. We quickly dropped off our stuff and then walked to the Kyoto train station to go to The Golden Pavilion.

The Golden Pavilion's real name is Rokuon-ji Temple, but is commonly called Kinkaku-ji Temple (or the temple of the Golden Pavilion). It is a Zen Buddhist temple and it used to be a villa owned by a statesman but was converted into a temple when he died according to his will. The beautiful gardens and buildings were said to represent the Pure Land of Buddha and it reached it's height of glory as trade with China prospered during the Muromachi period. It was registered as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 1994. It looks like how it sounds: a temple made of gold. It's gold foil on lacquer which covers the upper two levels and it has a Phoenix which sits on top of the roof. It's also in a beautiful setting, with the surrounding pond and gardens and forest. I was disappointed that we weren't able to actually go in the temple, we were only able to walk around the grounds.

After we left the temple we were walking back towards the train station when we stumbled on Sakura Paradise Park completely full of cherry blossoms which were perfectly bloomed. They are just barely starting to have their petals fall off so it's the perfect time to see them. So we took a detour and strolled through the gardens. There were street vendors and lots of tables and mats that you could rent and hang out beneath the cherry blossoms. The blossoms were gorgeous; I just wish pictures could do it justice but I did my best.

When we got off the train we found a grocery store where we attempted to find food for dinner for once, since we do have a mini kitchenette. Our first thought was tacos, but we couldn't find any tortillas or taco seasoning, and we could barely find any ground beef (most of it was ground with pork). We walked around trying to come up with other options but we didn't really know what anything was or how any of it should be prepared so it was a challenge. We ended up getting a couple of things of ramen noodles (similar to ramen noodles back home) and Matt got a bento box, which is a big thing here. It's a pre-made meal in a box and you can just pop it in the microwave. It's interesting how many pre-made meals they have in convenience stores and even grocery stores, and it seems like there is less un-cooked options to actually make your own food. I'm sure it's out there but I just haven't seen much of it.

I think we're planning to check out several more temples tomorrow!

Osaka Aquarium

Today we had originally planned on going to Nara, but the weather was cold and rainy so we opted to go to the aquarium instead. We took the ferry there which was a very direct route; it dropped us off very close to the aquarium. And the aquarium was awesome!

We saw otters, sharks, all kinds of stingrays, seals, sea lions, penguins, crabs, sea turtles, and fish of all shapes and sizes. We saw a capybara and also got to watch it swim. We saw a pirarucu which is a prehistoric looking fish. We saw dolphins playing- some of them were the same species as the ones we swam with in New Zealand  We saw huge eels. They had a "Great Barrier Reef" aquarium which really did look like what we saw when we scuba dived there. We also saw some huge spider crabs which were really creepy looking. They look like huge spiders so I didn't like that, but I was starting to think that I'd be happy with some crab legs with butter right about then.

The biggest tank was the most impressive. It was about 9 meters deep and the whole place kind of wrapped around it, so we kept spiraling downwards with a constant view of that huge tank and other exhibits on the other side. We spent a long time looking at this one because it was super cool. It was unique in that it didn't have really any decorations or coral or anything; it was just a huge tank of water with rocks on the bottoms and a ton of huge fish swimming around. It had many different types of stingrays and a couple of them were huge!! There were sharks of all sizes, including hammerhead sharks. And the biggest: the whale shark. There were two and they were ginormous. I'd never seen a whale shark before but it was very impressive. I don't know that any of the pictures I got do them justice, but they would swim right in front of the glass and they were bigger than the whole length of the glass, so it was really hard to get a full picture.

We also saw some divers in this tank doing various things: cleaning the windows, moving rocks around (?), and feeding the sting rays. When he was feeding they all swarmed around him. It was really cool and I think I figured out my next job. Who wouldn't want to do that every day?!

Oh, and then we saw what we affectionately call the "derp" fish. It's really called a sun fish but it looks like the goofiest thing I've ever seen. It's actually really big but it looks like someone chopped the lower half of it's body off, because it stops really suddenly without a tail or anything. It also has it's largest fins on the top and bottom so I think it looks like it's sideways, because then it just has these gimpy little side fins. It didn't seem to be able to swim around very effectively and just generally seemed like it was derping around. Jack and I had a lot of fun making fun of this guy.

They had an entire exhibit dedicated to the fish found in the Finding Nemo series, but they were very careful not to use any of the movie names. They even had the dentist's tank completely re-created.

They also had an entire jellyfish exhibit which was really interesting. I wish I'd been able to read all of the Japanese information because I'm just it was fascinating. Watching them swim is so mesmerizing; I feel like I could do that for hours. I'd also never realized how many different types there were before.

The last part (and arguably the most awesome part) was at the end where they had a tank filled with rays and little sharks that you could pet. You could just reach your arm in and pet the backs of the sharks and rays! The sharks felt kind of rough but the rays were super smooth. I really like getting the hands-on opportunity so I really enjoyed that.

For dinner we went to the Osaka train station and just walked around that area until we found something that suited us all. We ended up at a place that had fried skewers of things. You would just order exactly what you wanted and they would bring you the skewers. Then you would dip them in the sauce they had on every table (no double dipping!) and chow down. It was better than I expected. I had a couple of beef skewers, a shrimp, tried lotus root which was different, but my favorites were onion and green pepper. Yum.

As we walked back to the station we found a bakery which had everything marked down 20% off since it was the end of the day, so we got a couple of things for dessert and for breakfast/snacks tomorrow. Matt and I split a banana pastry tonight and it was really good.

Tonight is our last night with Jack as he's flying back to the states tomorrow. :( We've had a great time traveling with him and we're definitely going to miss him. Matt and I aren't going to know what to do with ourselves when it's just us, so if anyone wants to come meet us somewhere just let us know!! (Seriously)