Japan: Day 8 (Himeji city, Kobe city and Sushi back in Kyoto)

On Day 8, we took side trips from Kyoto to Himeji and Kobe. Himeji has a castle (Himeji Castle) that is the largest surviving castle constructed with traditional methods. All other wood castles were destroyed in wars or natural disasters. The castle is made of wood and therefore, no smoking is allowed. (This was NOT taken from Wikipedia but straight from Dave's mouth)

The pictures don't show the scale of the castle. We had to take our shoes off inside and our feet hurt after walking through.

Preview of Day 9: Day 9 involves monkeys!

One of my favorite pictures, mainly because of the wood color.

If enemies tried to scale the walls, defenders could drop stones or boiling water, or throw spears or shoot guns through the holes.

Throughout the castle there were different family crests on the tiles to show when that section of the castle was built or remodeled.

A view of the city of Himeji, from the top of the castle.

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For lunch, we ate at a noodle shop where they hand make noodles, as shown by Rob.

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We then went to a garden near the Himeji Castle and saw probably 10 flowers total. Not really the blooming season apparently...

This was really gross to look at for some reason. It really disturbed me and I took a picture and couldn't look at it again.

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We then took the bullet train to Kobe, the birth place of my grandma (FYI - she's not Japanese). The station was near a lively part of town and just walked around town for a few hours.

Gotta take a picture next to the St. Paul sign.

Walked to Chinatown in Kobe.

In Chinatown, we saw a bunch of locals standing in line so of course, we had to try it. We got deep fried beef on a stick and a potato mixture on a stick - it was really, really tasty!
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For dinner, we ate at a sushi bar. It was a conveyor type restaurant, so you grab the sushi plate you want. When you're finished, the server counts the number of plates to total the bill. We actually went to two sushi bars that night.

Benson Bros special ordering sushi. We thought the screen was for selecting what dish you grabbed from the conveyor. It turns out, the screen is for special ordering sushi so we ate some dishes twice! Whoops.

Japan: Day 7 (Orange Gates, Walking Tour, Green Tea Ice Cream, Geishas and Dinner on the River)

Day 7 was another busy day! We took the local train to Fushimiinara Taisha which is a shrine with endless orange torii gates. There was a hike up through all of the orange gates. The gates were interesting because they were made of wood and on some, you could see the rotting.

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After the orange gates, we started a walking tour of SE Kyoto. Our first stop was at Tainai-meguri, very interesting - it was a pitch black walk in a small building. Next, we walked to Kiyonizu-Derea which is a temple full of fun activities...

Rob tried to test his strength...

...and she did too.

At the temple, Rob and Julie tried the Love Stone walk, "...if you walk safely from this stone to the other with your eyes closed, once, your wish will be granted soon. If you can't, it will be long before your love is realized. And it is said taking advice requires you to have someone who will help you achieve your love."

Rob, confidently doing the Love Stone walk. Everyone clapped once he reached the rock.

Julie had a cool "kick" while trying to find the rock. A nice gentleman helped her.

School kids, excited about finding the rock with their eyes closed.

The boy was way off...and so was the girl, she almost ran into me (I love how she's protecting her glasses). It's OK, they are young!

There was also a wish fountain at the temple. Drink from it, your wish will come true.

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We then walked down Ishibei-koji, one of Kyoto's "single most attractive streets". The streets were stone-paved. There were older style homes and it was very clean...cute!

He delivered newspapers! Very cute.

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We decided to get ice cream because we were hot. And since we were in Japan, we tried Green Tea ice cream! Julie, Dave and I disliked it (Julie and I only ate the vanilla part on the twist)...Rob was the only one that "liked" it. :) Glad we tried it, will never have it again.

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We saw a lot of people and tourists hanging out on a couple of streets so went to check it out. It turned out to be the Gion district - Geisha are known to (possibly) come out at night. I spoke with a local and he said it is rare but possible. The area was like paparazzi because there were tons of people waiting with their cameras.

Waiting on the street for Geisha to come out.

Oh my gosh, there is a geisha coming out right by us!!

So what are you supposed to do? Run after it of course. After, I felt bad for running after the Geisha with a camera because it wasn't being respectful to the individual.

We actually saw at least three Geisha's (picture on top of today's post is another one). Notice the crowds of people around them taking pictures.

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For dinner that night, it was all about location, location, location. The picture below are the Benson Bros trying to find a restaurant. We ate at an Italian restaurant that overlooked the river in Kyoto. Italian food seems popular it Japan!

On Day 7, we took 25K+ Julie steps.

Honey

Actually, the other kind...

When Dave and I got married, we started calling each other honey!!! as a joke. I thought it was funny that other couples referred to their spouse as "honey" because everyone calls their spouse that and quite frankly...it just sounds annoying.

But now, 2 1/2 years later, I find myself calling Dave "honey" all of the time. The word just comes out of my mouth! I have no self control and Dave does this too. The truth is though, I love calling him that!

Japan: Day 6 (Kyoto - Nijo Castle, Tempura, Imperial Palace & Nishiki Market)

Initially, I was planning on combining days of the trip for a blog post but filtering through all of the photos/videos (1900+ for us and 1600+ for Benshen's) is too hard. We saw a lot of neat things on the trip! My hope is to post regularly so I can wrap the trip up...and show the grand finale - a video of our trip. Day 6 was our first full-day in Kyoto and looking back, it was a busy day!

We started the day off by going to the Kyoto Museum...and then left because it didn't open until 10AM (later realizing stuff opens later in Japan). We then went to the Nijo Castle. The castle was originally built in 1603 as the official Kyoto residence of the first Tokugawa Shogun, Ieyasu.

The neatest part was Ninomaru Palace within the Nijo Castle. Unfortunately, you were not allowed to take pictures/videos. There were a lot of large rooms with wall art, places for the Shogun and his friends. Cool part: the palace has nightingale floors in the corridor - when someone walks on the floor, the floor squeaks. This was done intentionally to prevent people from sneaking around and to prevent intruders from getting too far.

Ninomaru Garden at the Nijo Castle.

The garden is so green!

We carried umbrellas because it seems like in Japan, it rains every day. And like other Asian countries, umbrellas are also used to cover people from the sun. It was SO hot that day...we were probably the only ones using CLEAR umbrellas to block the sun from us. :) By the way, who is up for starting a trend in the U.S. for using umbrellas to block the sun with me?? Love it!

Where's Dave?


Julie did an infamous jumping picture with an umbrella...

...and this was the result. It was pee in your pants funny, literally for some.

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For lunch, we ate a tempura restaurant. This was our most memorable meal in Japan! The restaurant was small, only sat 10. The chef cooked right in front of us and he would serve the tempura piece by piece. We ate prawn, green pepper, wheat gluten, pumpkin, squid, shitake mushroom, tomato and okra. Everything was delicious - I heart tempura! I especially enjoyed the pumpkin and Dave especially enjoyed the tomato.

The aisle to get to the restaurant was very narrow.

The "waitress" took a picture of us after lunch. We were happy.
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After, we went to the Imperial Palace but could only walk on the outside. We saw a gym class of boys and girls. The group of boys below were naughty - we think they ran when they were visible by their gym teacher and then walked when the gym teacher couldn't see them. Also, it seemed like the class was divided into athletic kids vs nonathletic kids. I wonder what group I would fit in...

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We then went to the Nishiki Market. This was our first experience with a large Japanese market. This was different than markets in China because food was pre-packaged and overall, the market was clean. I prefer the markets in China because it "feels" more like a market and because it's less organized (and therefore more chaotic which is fun).

The food and drink portions are much smaller than in the U.S. Sometimes we would still be a little hungry after a meal but then got used to it. Maybe our stomachs shrunk a little bit in Japan? I think we over-eat in the U.S. (which I'm guilty of). For the large size, there are two straws because they assume people share...smart!

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For dinner, we ate at a restaurant where you sit on the floor. As you may guess, Rob and Dave struggled - this was our first, and last time eating at this type of restaurant. :)