Japan - Part II of II

Day 5:

After we had visited Tokyo Disney Sea our tour took us to see Mount Fuji up close. A bus picked us up from our hotel and we were soon off to the resort town of Hakone, which is near Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is often covered in clouds and on the day we went to see the mountain, it was extremely cloudy. When we reached station 5 (the highest point you can go by vehicle) all we could see was fog.

When we left the mountain, we were then treated to a boat ride on Lake Ashi and then a cable car ride up a nearby mountain, which has a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji...if the sun would have been shining :(

Our lunch in Hakone was a traditional Japanese Meal. We were given a choice of a vegetarian meal or a bunch of raw fish. Reena and I opted for the vegetarian meal. I thought it was surprisingly good, but Reena was disappointed. I still don't know what most of the vegetables were that we ate, but I'd eat more...I ended up eating whatever Reena didn't want on her plate!

Day 6:

From Hakone we got on the Bullet Train to Kyoto. The Bullet Trains in Japan are always on time and can travel up to 180 miles per hour.



Our tour was so on top of things that when we arrived in Kyoto there was a tour guide waiting on the platform directly at the door where we exited the bullet train! If anyone is looking to travel to the orient, the people at explorient.com did a wonderful job putting our trip together.

Kyoto (and nearby Nara) turned out to be the best place for sight seeing. Our first afternoon in Kyoto was when we were taken to the Nara deer park, where a hoard of deer roam freely throughout the park, nudging all the tourists until they feed them with crackers from the local stands. Reena couldn't resist feeding the deer while we were there.



Once we made it past the deer we saw the Todaiji Temple, which has the world's largest bronze Buddha and the Kasuga Shrine, which has more than 3000 lanterns.

Day 7:

Day seven of our trip took us to a number of fascinating places. The most memorable was the amazing Golden Pavilion. This was the only location where everyone from the tour was asking for someone outside their group to photograph them so that everyone could be in the picture. We were no exception and asked a couple who was on our tour the day before (and staying at our hotel) to take our picture:



The next stop was Nijo Castle, the former home of the Shogun. The Shogun was more than a little paranoid and built nightingale floors throughout the building. These floors creaked whenever you took a step, and the sound of the squeaking floors resembled the call of a nightingale. It was great when the whole tour group would start walking at once and it sounded like a flock of birds was calling from the ground.



We were next taken to the Imperial Palace, where emperor Meiji used to rule. Below is a picture of the emperor's living quarters:



After lunch at the Handycraft Center (which had some really good pasta!), we were taken to visit the Heian Shrine and Sanjusangendo Hall, the hall with 1001 identical golden statues of the goddess of mercy. The emperor had commissioned these statues in the hopes of calming the people of this area who had been fighting amongst themselves for years. It was a great day of sightseeing; an impressive way to end our guided tour.

Day 8-9:

We left our tour group to explore one last city on our own...Osaka. Osaka turned out not to be as exciting as the other places we visited. Maybe it was because we didn't have a tour bus taking us around, or maybe there wasn't as much to do, but nonetheless we did make it to both Osaka Castle and the Umeda Sky Center. The Umeda Sky Center has an elevator to the 35th Floor, where you take a glass escalator up to the 40th Floor, and finally another elevator up to the roof!



From the top of the Umeda Sky Center you can see all of Osaka and when the airplanes land at Osaka airport, they look huge coming in...because you are so close to them.

After a night in the Osaka Hilton we packed up our things and took a bus to the airport. Our flight back to Detroit left Osaka at 1:30p.m. on November 28, 2008 local time. We arrived in Detroit at 11:00 a.m. on November 28, 2008 local time! It was an amazing trip...now time to plan the nest one!

Japan - Part I of II

Reena and I have returned from a wonderful trip to Japan! We had spent almost six months preparing for the trip and very extremely pleased with the way everything turned out. We had booked our trip through exloprient.com which did a great job of booking our hotels, tours, and almost all of our transportation. They even put us in touch with an English speaking concierge at our hotel in Tokyo who was able to purchase Tokyo Disney Sea tickets for us in advance (which allowed us to bypass a huge line at the park) and get us reservations at Massa, La Rochelle, and Szechuan Chen (three Iron Chef Restaurants). Our experience with explorient was so good that I would recommend them to anyone considering a trip to Asia.

Day 1-2:

The first two days of our trip were spent traveling to Japan. There is a fourteen hour time difference, so we lost 14 hours in transit. It also took 13 hours to fly direct from Detroit to Tokyo. The flight was so long that they served us two meals and showed us three movies while we were in flight. They actually ended up replaying two of the movies because the flight was so long! The movies might have helped make the flight go by more quickly but the ones they showed us were: "Baby Mama", "Swing Vote" (with Kevin Costner) and "Bonneville". All of these movies stink; swing vote might have been the worst. Kevin Costner plays an absolute loser who is so unlikable that the thought of him casting the deciding vote for President made me realize how wise the founding fathers were for suggesting the electoral college. Do not rent this movie; it's ten times worse than "Water World".

The airline food that was served was pleasantly surprising. The chicken with vegetables was edible, and the Swiss cheese omelet with potatoes and pork link sausage was quite good. But the best part of the flight was finally arriving.

Once we arrived in Japan we went through customs and then had prepaid bus transport (through explorient) to Hotel Pacific (our Tokyo hotel). Tokyo is 40 minutes to an hour away from the airport. When we had left Detroit it was 12:30 p.m. on November 20. When we got to our hotel it was 6:00 p.m. on November 21 (Japan time).

We checked into our hotel and everything was ready for us. We decided that we were too tired to make our dinner reservation and went straight to bed. But before we made it upstairs we saw two Japanese businessmen screaming at each other and one guy actually reached for the other man's throat. They were only a few feet from us when this took place. I took a step toward them to break up the fight, but Reena wisely pulled me away from the scuffle. We didn't have any idea what they were fighting about and several hotel guards soon broke them apart. The hotel staff felt bad that we had to witness such a scene.

Day 3:

On our first real day of vacation we had our first tour. We first went to the Tokyo Tower, which was modeled after the Eiffel Tower, but looks more like a red and white radio tower. We were taken inside the tower and up to the viewing port, where we got our first glimpse of Mt. Fuji. If you look at the picture of Reena you can see Mt. Fuji in the distance.



Mt. Fuji is only visible from Tokyo 10% of the time so we were very lucky to have such a clear view of the mountain.

The next sight we were taken to was the Imperial Palace. This is the current home of the Emperor of Japan, who has no legislative power whatsoever...just a lot of money. The Palace is rarely open to the public, but you can walk the gardens and see the ancient walls and towers that surround the grounds.

Last on our tour was a trip to the Sinsoji Temple, the largest Buddhist Temple in Tokyo. Outside the Temple were all sorts of shops that sold skewered octopus, noodles, and other various Japanese foods. We (wisely) passed on these because we had lunch reservations at Iron Chef Chinese's restaurant. Reena ordered a scallop dish that was served in a real sea shell and I had a lightly breaded chicken dish with Chinese vegetables in a sweet and spicy bean curd sauce. The chicken was really good and almost melted in my mouth. After our entrees soup was served (unbeknown to us, soup is served last in fancy Chinese restaurants). The soup was HUGE! We could not finish most of it.



After lunch we took a nap. We never really transitioned to Japan time. We were usually asleep by 7:00 p.m. and would wake up at 3:00 a.m. Once we woke up we would watch BBC news or read the English newspaper that the hotel provided until 6:00 a.m. when brunches started. On this day though, we slept at 5:00 p.m., but set the alarm for 7:00 p.m. We had a dinner reservation at Massa (Iron Chef Italian) at 8:30 p.m. But when we woke up, we were still stuffed from lunch. Nonetheless, we made it to our reservation and had what I will call a memorable meal at Massa. The food, while well cooked, was not my style. The meal ended up being an awkward affair, but we did get a picture with Kobe at the end!



Day 4:

We spent our second full day in Japan visiting the happiest place in Asia: Tokyo Disney Sea!



The spinning globe is the symbol of Tokyo Disney Sea. Water spreads over the blue areas of the globe, but the land masses are kept dry because they are slightly elevated.

The park was packed! It was Labor Day in Japan when we were there, which means everyone was off work. Lines were so long that it would take 20 minutes to wait in line at the drink stands. So we prioritized the attractions we wanted to see and ended up making the ones we were most interested in. Some of what we saw included Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Sindbad's Storybook Adventure (our personal favorite. Sindbad's had a really catchy song and had one of the shortest lines...a mere 35 minutes. We also made sure to ride the two story carousel, which had genies in place of some horses.



One of the best parts of any theme park is the attention to details. The shops were the best sign of this. They were great, with so many wonderful details. The best shop was the Sleepy Whale Shop, which has the exterior appearance of a whale whose eye opens and shuts lazily. Inside the shop you can see the whale's bones along the ceiling and you walk on a spongy floor that is the whale's tongue!