Nara

After a fun day and night in Nagoya, Dan and I headed to Nara by way of Kyoto. Nara was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784 prior to it being moved to Kyoto. It is home to eight World Heritage Sites as well as thousands of tame deer roaming freely in the area with the temples and shrines! The deer were hysterical and the sights were amazing! Here are some hight lites:

This is the Todai-ji Temple which was first built in 751 and is still today the world's largest wooden structure! It houses and enormous Buddha.










Another one of my favorite areas is the Kofuku-ji Temple area. This is mainly because it has a big pagoda and I really like pagodas.

And of course I am sure that you all are looking forward to see pictures of the deer! The more or less ignored you unless you had a rice biscuit in which case they were all over you! Here are a couple of pictures. There are a bunch more in my photo album.










So Nara turned out to be another amazing place to experience! Stay tuned for tomorrow's post which will be on Kyoto my favorite stop of the trip.

Ring of Fire

12:30 at night last night I was woken by what felt like someone shaking my bed but when I looked around there was no one around! I soon realized I had experienced my first earthquake. Thankfully it was small enough to cause no issue other than turning on the water in the sink in my bathroom! It turns out that it was centered in Northern Honshu, the island Tokyo is on, and registered a 6.8. In Tokyo it only reached in the 3s and was not a big deal. It turned out for me to be kind of neat but hopefully I won't have to experience a bigger one!

Nagoya & Sumo

Hi everyone! I just got back last night from my long weekend and I had a fantastic time. I have posted my pictures for you to look at but I am going to put up a series of posts on the individual cities I traveled to in order to make sure that I do not miss anything.

It began this past Friday morning when Dan and I caught a 7 am train from Tokyo to Nagoya. We left this early in order to make sure that we were able to get Sumo tickets! We arrived in the poring rain shortly after 9:30 and were in luck that tickets were still available for that day! Upon getting the tickets we entered the arena to find our seats and watch the novice Sumo before the main event later that night.After checking things out, and buying a clear umbrella (VERY popular in Japan) we went to find our hostel drop off our bags. From there we went to the Design Museum which was very disappointing unless you were into looking at the design aspects of 1970s style chairs and old time cell phones. Thankfully our next stop was Nagoya Castle which turned out to be wonderful.

This was very impressive and I encourage you to look at the pictures of it on my photo page. It was rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II and was rebuilt with a museum on the inside.

After the Castle it was time for the Sumo match which was very exciting to watch. Here are a few pictures:
So Nagoya was a great start to the trip. Stay tuned for posts on Nara & Kyoto!

Nikko

Well yesterday I had the day off of school due to visa issues with our visiting professor from China. I made the best of the opportunity and traveled two hours from Tokyo by high speed train to Nikko, Japan.

Nikko is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is home to a number of Shinto and Buddhist Shrines including a Shogun mausoleum dating back to the eighth century! It turned out to be much larger and more impressive than we had hopped for which was a great surprise. The Shinto area was especially impressive due to how ornate it was in contrast to normal design. From what we hear it is considered gaudy by many Japanese but I thought it was pretty cool.

Other highlights included the Shinkyo Bridge:
and the monkey carvings:
All in all it turned out to be a fantastic day trip and Nikko gets a big thumbs up in my book. Also this weekend brings more excitement and plenty of blog potential. I will be heading to Nagoya to hopefully attend a Sumo match, Nara the historical capital of Japan and of course Kyoto. Stay tuned!

I made it to the top of Japan!

Well after around 8 hours of hiking through the middle of the night Danijela and I made it to the top of Mt Fuji and Japan 3776 meters above sea level! (over 12,000 feet) The trip began just before six o'clock in the afternoon for what was about to a VERY long day.

We began our trip (six of us in two groups) with a two and a half hour bus ride out of Tokyo to the 5th station to begin our ascent. We were prepared with essential equipment including fleece jacket, wind jacket, winter hat, head lamp, 2 liters water, food and a camera. These were all needed, in addition to gloves bought on the way, for the eight hour climb to the top!

The climb was long, hard and incredibly crowded and everyone had the same goal of reaching the peak before sunrise to see the sun climb above the horizon from the highest point in Japan. I am happy to say that I was one of the lucky ones as we were able to reach the summit literally minutes prior to sunrise.

So at just after 4:30 in the morning with essentially no sleep we were rewarded for our efforts! A little later the second part of our group made it to the top, we had a bowl of Miso Ramen soup and bought some postcards. The decent then was much, much faster only taking around three hours but was very nice because we were able to see all of the wonderful scenery that was just behind the darkness of the middle of the night on the way up.

The day finally ended when the bus pulled back into Tokyo at around 3 pm in the afternoon nearly 24 hours after we had started our expedition! I have to say that despite the cold, never ending hiking, blisters, and lack of sleep it was well worth while! And I can agree with the old Japanese proverb which says, "A wise man climbs Mount Fuji once, a fool climbs Mount Fuji twice."

Mount Fuji

In an hour I set off on an all night trek up Mount Fuji a dormant volcano which happens to be the highest point in Japan! The trip will take roughly a day with no sleep. I catch a 2 hour bus ride from Tokyo at 5pm to arrive at the mountain with a goal of reaching the top before sunset.

There are six of us from the group making they climb and we all cannot wait. It should be hard but a lot of fun and an amazing experience. I am off to catch my bus now but in around a day I should have a ton of wonderful pictures and memories.

Photos Are Up!

Alright, I finally have access to a fast internet connection at Temple Japan and have been able to upload my pictures! There are a about a thousand of them so it may be a bit overwhelming but I am excited to hear what you all think. Enjoy!