Hey everyone! It's been a while since I posted anything; I got pretty busy with school and traveling. I've seen a lot of noteworthy things, but I've been going out so much I haven't had any time to sit down and blog about any of it. So- the next several blogs will mostly consist of things that I did during the past two months. I hope you have as much fun reading about my adventures as I did having them (though let's be honest- you probably won't ^^;)
Anywho- This happened a while ago (The 21st of April) but I wanted to give a quick recap of my first official touristy thing in Japan and my overall impressions.
Anywho- This happened a while ago (The 21st of April) but I wanted to give a quick recap of my first official touristy thing in Japan and my overall impressions.
My first train ride in Japan ( ^o^)/
Since I only live a short distance from school, I generally only ride the bus; if I get a bit adventurous I take the subway. After meeting up with a classmate, we went to the bank to grab some souvenir and traveling expenses and bought train tickets.
Kinkakuji
Our first stop was the kinkakuji (or golden pavilion ). This place was really big and fun to explore. The highlight of course was the golden temple; which is actually coated with gold leaf. The place was actually a lot bigger than I initially expected ( you can see a map of it here) and I enjoyed walking around and enjoying the scenery.
Ryoanji
Afterwards we took a trip to ryoanji, a Buddhist temple that hosts the most famous rock garden in Japan. There's an interesting optical illusion to this garden; there are 15 rocks in the garden but no matter what angle you view the it at, you'll only be able to see 14. Crazy huh @_@?
Nijo Castle
We ended up taking the bus after Ryoanji and went to Nijo castle, the former home of the Tokugawa Shogun (you can think of this person as the military commander in chief). The castle was amazing but unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures inside, but I did get some nice shots of the exterior parts.
After all the official stops my classmate and I went to this place called Gojo and did some exploring. There are a lot of temples and shrines here, and I had a lot of fun strolling through this part of town. We even found a shop selling nothing but ghibli studio merchandise! (score xD)
So yeah that was my first trip to Kyoto. It was super fun but also tiring. There was more I wanted to see but since we needed to take the train home, we called it a day after Gojo. Luckily for me I was able to go a second time and see the rest of this beautiful city. But- that's another story ;D
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