I didn’t get a chance to write anything this morning. We slept in yesterday and headed to the train station around 10:30 am. I had been kind of half dreading going to Tokyo. For one, I always get a little anxious dragging our luggage around to a new place. Secondly, we were going to have to take our luggage on the Tokyo subway, which I heard is pretty crowded even in off times. Long story short, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. Relatively easy, in fact, except for about 20-30 minutes after we arrived at our station when we were trying to find our hotel.

We are staying right outside Shinjuku station, which is Japan’s busiest station. It’s HUGE, and we couldn’t find the exit that the hotel told us to exit out of. However, there are a lot of maps around, so we found the place eventually.

The hotel is really nice, and the Shinjuku area is crazy and fun. One of the reasons I was hesitant about Tokyo was that I am not a huge fan of crowds. But even though there are tons of people around, they aren’t packed in like sardines. It’s actually a pretty laid back area.

Last night we did some drinking among all the neon, and today we did some shopping around Harajuku. The fashion was not as crazy as I had heard. Unless you consider H&M and Forever 21 crazy fashion. Maybe all the Harajuku girls moved on to somewhere cooler after Gwen Stefani brought all the tourists in?

Tonight we walked around Shinjuku some more, but I’m pretty wiped out (and neither Jay or I can walk much more). So after dinner, we came bak to the room for some vending machine beer.

Tomorrow, home!

Maybe it was the cold rain that started after lunch, or the 5 miles a day of walking, but I didn’t feel like doing anything yesterday. However, it was out last full day in Kyoto, and we still had a few things left on our to-do list. Luckily, we have pretty much mastered the subway, which runs very close to our apartment. Central Kyoto is only 1-2 stops away, which is easily walkable if you have not been walking non-stop for a week.

Anyway, we got a late-ish start yesterday, around 10am. We started off at the Kyoto imperial palace. We didn’t actually go into the palace – I think you need to arrange a tour in advance? But it is in a huge park (the national garden), which was nice. I thought it was a little odd that the palace itself is walled off, so you can’t even peak in. They must have some super-secret stuff in there.

From there we went to Nijo castle, which is more touristy. We got the audio guide, mainly because it was one of the few opportunities we’ve had to get explanations in English. Most of the places we’ve been so far have basic signs in English, but very limited explainations. So, the castle was nice, especially the gardens around it. It drizzled all afternoon and evening, but there is almost no wind, so we stayed dry under our umbrellas.

Today we are packing up and heading to Tokyo. Kyoto has been a great base, and it’s beautiful, but I am ready to move on to the big city. We’re a little leary of dragging our luggage on the Tokyo metro from Tokyo station to Shinjuku station but it won’t be rush hour, so hopefully we’ll make it through unscathed.

One of the reasons we picked Kyoto as our base for this trip was it’s central location to other side trip-worthy places. Yesterday we went to Nara – an easy 35 minute train trip away.

In Nara, most of the major sites have been enclosed in a huge park. So unlike Kyoto where the temples and shrines are kind of crowded in with modern residential and commercial buildings, the attractions in Nara have more space to breathe. Good thing, too, because the Japanese tourists were out in force again. The open spaces made it much less claustrophobic that Kyoto.

The weather was beautiful – about 55 degrees and sunny. Nara is famous for its “wild” deer, which roam around the park. They are actually ridiculously tame after a lifetime of getting fed “deer cookies” by tourists. Some of them are pretty presumptuous, actually coming up to sort of beg for food. They are pretty much everywhere in the park, but the government does a great job of cleaning up after them. The only place that smelled like deer was right outside the central food court area, where the population was more concentrated than the rest of the park.

We were pretty much templed-out, so we decided not to go in to most of the sites. The one thing we came to see was Japan’s biggest Buddha statue. It was totally worth the trip.

We walked the philosopher’s path yesterday, which is a little walkway along a canal that runs between a bunch of temples in eastern Kyoto. It’s really scenic, at the base of the mountains. We didn’t exactly plan to be here during the peak of the autumn colors, but it has turned out that way.

The Japanese LOVE the changing of the leaves – they call it “koyo.” And Kyoto is known for being beautiful this time of year. The result is that half of Japan came out to see the temples yesterday. Throngs of people everywhere.

Jay got his fill of temples by lunchtime, but he was a good sport when I dragged him to a couple more. They do all start to look the same after a while.

Today we’re going to Nara to see Japan’s biggest Buddha statue. It is in a temple, alas. Most of Nara’s attractions are set in a giant park, with a bunch of wild deer roaming around, so it should be a nice day for just hanging out in the park (with half a million japanese tourists).

Here’s a photo of part of a temple. I can’t remember which one.

It’s official: today I’m switching to gum shoes. On the return trip from Koyasan, we had to switch trains in Osaka, so we decided to spend the whole day there. We woke up at 5:30 for the morning prayers in the monastary, ate breakfast (tofu and pickled vegetables, yum) and checked out by 8. So we got to Osaka around 10.

We arrived in the Namba section of Osaka, which is kind of a giant mall. We walked around there for a while until lunchtime. We wanted to try Okonomiyaki, which is an Osaka specialty – a bunch of crap fried into a “pancake” and served with mayo and barbeque sauce. The place we went cooks them up for you on a griddle in the middle of your table (photo below). It was fun, but I defintly felt pretty gross after eating it. Especially in contrast to the healthy food we ate in Koyasan.

So after lunch, we started a long walk over to Osaka castle. We knew it would be a long walk, which was ok because it was a beautiful day; however, we got a little bit lost, which added on a little bit more walking and kind of damaged morale a bit. By the time we got to the castle (about 2:15), my feet were killing me. Poor Jay was carrying our backpack the whole way and didn’t complain nearly as much as I did.

Still, we soldiered on. We walked most of the way around the castle and went in to see the view from the top. (sorry, no iPhone photos… I used the real camera.) Since we could barely walk after that, we took the subway back to Shin Osaka station, just barely hitting the beginning of rush hour. We took the bullet train back to Kyoto, had dinner at the Isetan department store, with a great view of Kyoto, and took a cab back home.

Osaka seems like a great city. The upscale shopping street and financial districts both reminded me of Chicago, although the Namba area seemed uniquely Japanese.

Today we are doing the Philosopher’s walk in Kyoto, and maybe going out for a nice dinne after.

Spent the day in Osaka. Here’s what i wrote in Koyasan last night:

We had to catch the 11 am train from Osaka to Koyasan in order to have enough time for sightseeing before evening prayers. So we left the apartment at 8:30 am to catch the bullet train to Osaka. That part of the trip only takes 13 minutes, but it cost $25 per person beause we paid for reserved seats. If we had known what we were doing, it would have taken us maybe 45 minutes instead of 2-1/2 hours to get where were going, and we could have saved $20 per person by taking a regular train and not reserving seats. Wahwah. Whatever. It’s vacation!

Aaaanyway, From there, we had to take the Osaka subway to a different train station. That was not quite as easy as buying bullet train tickets (which is easier than buying metra tickets), but there was a guy there whose job seemed to be finding people who need help and helping them.

The subway was subwaytastic, and then we had to walk to yet another station to catch our train to Koyasan. That one was a tad bit more confusing, mainly because we wanted to buy reserved seats for a train that didn’t offer reserved seats. The train to Koyasan had the most white people I’ve seen in one place since we got here. So I was pretty sure we were on the right train.

After about an hour and a half we got to Gokurambashi (or something like that), where we disembarked the train and got onto a cable car. The cable car was not as impresive as I’d imagined – there was no real view. At the top of the mountain we took a bus to the Okunoin temple.

The main thing to do here is to walk the path through the 500,000 tombs here, surrounded by huge trees. Even though it’s pretty cold up there, the mountain air is refreshing.

We’re now at Rengejo-in, which is run by a monk and his mother who both speak English. Because of that, it’s really popular with westerners, although we’ve only seen two other people, and they were Asian.

There’s no Interent here, so I’m writing this offline for future posting. We just had tea, and the evening ceremony is in 10 minutes, followed by a dinner of tofu and vegetables.

Yesterday was our first real day of sightseeing. We got a bit of a late start after a leisurely breakfast in the apartment and headed out around 10:30.

Luckily our apartmen has a closet full of umbrellas because it rained nearly all day. No problem though. All the Kyoto establishments seem prepared for wet weather – they have these umbrella stands where you can lock up your umbrella. This is important as we found if you leave your umbrella unlocked, an old Japanese woman is likely to replace her broken one with your not broken one. We stared at her menacingly until she brought it back. Weird.

We’re about to leave for Koyasan, where we will spend the night at a Buddhist monastary. This will be our “busiest” day – we’ll take the bullet train to Osaka, then the Osaka subway to a different train station, then another train, a cable car, and a bus. All before noon, so we have enough time to see the main temple in Koyasan before dinner/prayers/communal baths (!) at the monastery.

Here’s a picture of a pictur of something we saw yesterday. They didn’t allow photos so this is a picture of the souvenier book we bought there.

Arrived in Kyoto yesterday around 3 and checked in to our awesome studio apartment (photo below). Last year at the end of our Poland/ Germany trip we decides that it would be nice to have an apartment, so we could have something a little more homey to go back to after a long day of not speaking the language. So when we were planning this trip, we found this place, and it had great reviews, plus it is cheaper than most of the hotels in the area. I’m so glad we found it because it is already way more comfortable than a hotel.

We didn’t have anything planned for yesterday except for just getting here an checking in. With that accomplished, we set out to find a grocery store to buy some supplies: wine, coffee, and breakfast food. It’s so nice to not have to get dressed and go out for breakfast!

We found a convenience store after walking around the Gion neighborhood for a while. The street here are very narrow and lined with a million little shops and restaurants. We are always just inches away from being run over by a car.

We had dinner at a conveyor belt sushi place (cheap!), where we apparently won some kind of contest by having our charge go through at the exact time when the cash register’s clock hit “00″ seconds. Yeah, not really sure about that. They gave us a little note that said our card would be credited some amount at a later date, but I didn’t catch the exact amount…

We had beers at an Irish pub, and then went looking for a Japanese bar. Harder than we thought. In the Frommers guidebook we are using and the Lonely Planet guide w found input apartment, almost all of the bars listed are Irish or English style. We eventually found a bar on Pontocho street, which is a narrow alley lined with mostly very traditional restaurants and clubs. The we found actually seemed to be modeled after a Mad Men era cocktail lounge, with English lounge music. So it wasn’t exactly the local experience we were hoping for, but we were the only non-Japanese in the place, so it’s maybe as close as we’ll get.

Today is looking like it’s going to rain all day, so we’re headed for the Kyoto National Museum and some other indoor things.

12 hours is a long-ass time to be on a plane. We had bulkhead seats, so leg room wasn’t really a problem (for me at least) but it really started to hurt at abou the 10 hour mark.

Immigration and customs was super easy, although we did unintentionally cut in front of some people in line. Jay and I are both pretty useless when we’re tired, so that’s our excuse.

We took the Friendly Airport Limousine (they were friendly-ish) to our hotel in the Shinagawa area. There are a couple of restaurants in the hotel, which was good considering how out of it we were. It took us at least 20 minutes to decide on a place to eat. Most of the dinner options were more expensive than what we were looking for considering we hadn’t changed clothes or showered in more than 24 hours. We ended up eating Chinese food in what seemed to be a Spanish themed bar. Then we couldn’t resist grabbing a beer at TGIFridays, where we sat in front of a Red Grange poster and drank Suntory Dark beer (much better than the Kirin).

This morning I discovered that miso soup is a surprisingly awesome breakfast food. We scoped out the train station and bought our tickets to Kyoto, using one of the ticket kiosks, which have an English language option. So far getting around and communicating has been relatively easy. Hopefully Kyoto will be similarly easy.

I was going to post a photo of the nice garden at our hotel, but I just realized that I took that photo with the camera, not my phone. So instead, here’s a photo of the Red Grange poster.

So we didn’t sell the house yet, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. I’m sitting in the airport right now waiting for our flight to Japan. We have arrive much too early, as per usual.

Want to know how nerdy I am? I packed our wireless router so we’ll be able to use our iPhones in Kyoto. Our apartment there has highspeed Internet, but they didn’t mention anything about wireless, so I’m bringing my own. International data roaming with AT&T costs about $1 million per Kb, but I can’t be without data for TEN days!!!

So that means I will be trying to blog here every night. At least every night that we’re in Kyoto. We won’t have Internet at the Buddhist monastery in Koya, and whether we sign on in Tokyo or not will have a lot to do with how much they charge… But international texting is only $0.50 per message, so I’ll be tweeting, too. Maybe even from the Buddhist monastery…