Kyoto and Tokyo

Last time I said I'd talk about our trips in and around Oosaka, namely in Nara and Kyoto. Nara I managed to cover, but I somewhat forgot Kyoto. We only visited Kyoto for one (rainy) day. It also happened that this day was 3rd of January, so pretty much everything was closed. We tried to vist manga museum and Kyoto Castle, but both were closed, unfortunately. We managed to visit Kinkakuji, seen below though. And even though if it was a rainy day, the temple (shrine?) grounds were filled with tourists.

Kinkakuji also had some rather nice views to offer for the drenched visitors.


The closed Kyoto castle can be seen below.


I also forgot to mention about the new year last time. We (this time, me Saana and our friend Jussi.J (not to be mixed with Jussi.K shown on previous post). We thought to see how the japanese people celebrate the New Year, and thus we promptly headed to Sumiyoshitaisha, one the largest shrines in Oosaka. We assumed that there would be some firework, we also assumed that there'd be a festive. On the first we we wrong, on the last we were right. The shrine grounds were filled with myriad small stalls, selling fried squids, sausages, Nintendo Wii games and other apparently appropriate items.


The stalls can be seen behind the hand-washing stand. I guess it has an official name in japanese, but I can't be arsed to look for it. We sampled the festive foods and waited inside the main shirne area for something to happen. And around 23.30 something happened, namley people. Suddenly people started to huddle inside the main shirne country yard and we found ourself surrounded by thousands of japanese. (not kidding, see yourself)


View towards the main shrine/altar/thing.

And here you can se view of the area about 20 minutes before the New Year. Our rough estimate was that the temple had 10.000 to 20.000 visitors that night.Why there was so many people at the shrine at that time? They were queing to give their New Years first prayers. Apparently customary in japan, and in many shrines, the queing continued in the noon of the next day.

TOKYO

After Oosaka, we took a train to Tokyo for a night (two for me, one for Saana), where we stay at Aga's place. (Thanks a lot!) The time in Tokyo was mainly spent buying bow for Saana and wandering around, wondering the humangous capital of Japan.


Store we saw at Shinjuku (I guess)


Street view of Akihabara, a convinient custom car appeared to the picture to remind us of the fact that Akihabara is not from this world. I'm not sure if I should laugh at, or be scared of
that place.

The next day, Saana headed back to Oosaka and her flight while I stay in Tokyo with Aga. During that night, we went to an Okinawan izakaya, drank more than little of the local beverages and talked with some Okiniwana guy for about.. 4 hours I guess. Eventually the guy was so drunk that he was unable to speak, and after listening to Shimauta one more time, he bade us farewells. For an alcohol-fumed night, that was an absolute blast. The place was homely, the company was good and the food was great.

Finally some odd stuff I should have posted last time.
Stone we found in Nara. It has the kanji for 'phone' carved to it. No, I have no idea why it was there in irst place, but once I saw it, I just had to take picture of it with my phone on top.

Christmas cake of my laboratory. Yet another odd Japanese custom, as they seem to like eat cakes druing christmas.Vending machine in Kyoto. This one had neck-ties and batteries in it. I can't imagine why someone would urgently need to buy a neck-tie, but guess japanese people can.

Inside the huge temple of Nara, the picture from outside the temple can be seen in previous blog-entry.

The largest fish tank in Kaiyuukan (Oosaka aquarium), also mentioned in previous post.

That's all folks. Next time, probably something about Sendai.

New Year, Oosaka and Stuff (Nara and Kyoto)

So cometh the holidays around 26.12 and I took a bus south, to Oosaka, city of commerence and flashing lights. There is also a nice castle in the city, which we (me and Saana) of course visited.




Oosaka has also an aquarium, which we visited too.


Picture is from the largest tank from the aquarium, inhabited by several mantas, two whale sharks (yes, whale sharks) and random schools of fish.

We also enjoyed the fish in other form, i.e. food. Few visits with Jussi, Pauli and Laura to fish-specialized izakaya proved that Oosaka deserves the reputation it has as 'Kitchen of All Earth' it has in Japan.

Image of Jussi, very much enjoying his beer. He also mistook a huge ball of wasabi as some sort of fishy food and threw it in his mouth as one piece. The reaction was worth seeing.

Me with a crab we ate at izakaya, turned out to be expensive piece of meat. Though, I must admit that the crab was also really delicious.


As noted, we drank some beer with the fishes, and when we ordered our third beer, the waiter commented that 'the booze is strong in you' or in understandable english 'whoa, you can sure drink a lot'. At the time of our 6th serving of beers, he just wrote down our order shaking his head in disbelief.


We (that being me, Saana and Jussi (but not the Jussi above) visited Nara, the ancient capital of Japan and home of one huge temple and swarms of cookie-hungry deers.




Said deers (being fed by Saana, or actually forcing Saana to feed them).
Said temple.

As I spent some 9 nights in Oosaka, we had time to see a lot. I'll tell you later about all that. For now, time to do something else.