Last week Yumi and I took some time to travel around Japan. It was a great opportunity for me to see a little bit more of her country. We traveled by Shinkansen, the Japanese `bullet train.` As you might have figured, it took us no time at all to get there. The train traveled 340 km in like two and a half hours. Wow! Anyways, our first stop was in Kyoto. We spent about two days there mostly going to shrines and temples in the area. The first picture on the left was taken in one of these shrines called Kinkaku-ji, or Temple of the Golden Pavillion. Everything is so well preserved in these shrines and the fee to visit them is not expensive at all. Each temple charged about 500 yen per person, which would be around 5 dollars. Not too bad! Kyoto was the place I liked the most in our trip. There were also a lot more foreigners there than here in Tokyo, so I felt more part of the group than an outsider among the Japanese. :) Along the way, we also got to try some amazing food! Ive gotta tell you, there has not been one time that I have complained about the food here. Everything tastes so good! I love how they use a lot of vegetables in their dishes, and how fruit here actually taste fresh (unlike in the United States...) While in Kyoto, Yumi and I were fortunate enough to be placed at a hotel right above Starbucks! Haha. So we HAD to make daily trips. The Starbucks here is also a bit different than the US. The drinks tend to be a bit more expensive, and I feel as if they have less options here. My favorite Japanese drink from Starbucks is Hojicha Tea Latte, which is a sort of roasted green tea drink. Continuing on our trip... On the third day, we went to Nara. It was raining a bit in the morning so that made the trip unpleasant sometimes. But Yumi and I made it fun. Nara is known for having all these cute deers around. People want to take pictures with them and they are very sweet. However, they can be wild too. If you leave your purse unnoticed, they might reach for some paper to eat. Yumi and I saw this happening a few times to some people who werent paying attention.. :/ Nara also had a lot of shrines and temples for us to visit. One of the prettiest to me was the Todai-ji temple, which had this huge (I really mean HUGE) Buddha figure inside of it. We also visited a brand new temple which I cant remember the name of, but which was really pretty as well. Most temples have an abundance of gold in them. Those that do not have some type of meaningful thing, like a dry garden, for example.
For the fourth and fifth days of our trip, we left the Kyoto area and went to Hiroshima. However, we stayed at a Japanese style hotel off of the coast of Hiroshima, in the Miyajima area. To arrive there, we had to take a the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, an area train to take us to a port and then a boat to Miyajima. The most famous thing of the area is the Shinto Itsukushima shrine, which has that sort of red gate in the water. It is as pretty during the day as it is at night, when its lighten. The area is also known for these little cakes filled with sweet beans, and they are really good. Since we were at an island, all of our meals at the hotel included fresh seafood, which I loved! That night we relaxed at the hotels hot springs before heading to Hiroshima the next morning. Honestly, the whole Hiroshima area surprised me. I expected the whole area to be preserved as it became after the World War II. However, there were only a few spots left. We learned that hours after the bomb hit Hiroshima, its citizens were already making efforts to reconstruct the city. It was so sad hearing from a guide of all of the stories from the WWII. The A-bomb Dome is pretty much the only thing that they preserved and I looking at the damage made to it (basically only the base of the building is left), I cannot imagine what that bomb did to the whole city. That afternoon was filled with learning and sadness. The museum covering the details of the war had so much information that took us almost 3 hours to go through the whole thing. After that, we were exhausted and headed to the train station to get a Shinkansen which in 4 hours would bring us back to Tokyo. Pics from this trip are posted on Orkut and Ill soon post them on Facebook as well.
Semana passada eu e a Yumi tiramos um tempo para viajar pelo Japao. Nos viajamos no Shinkansen, o `trem bala` japones. Como o nome ja diz, o trem e rapido mesmo. Viajamos 340 kilometros em duas horas e meia. Ta doido! Nossa primeira parada foi em Quioto. A area e famosa pela quantidade de templos e nos passamos a maioria do nosso tempo os visitando. A foto a esquerda foi tirada em um dos templos chamado Kinkaku-ji, ou Templo do Pavilhao Dourado. Tudo e bem preservado nesses templos e o ingresso nao costuma ser caro, por volta de 500 yen, ou uns 5 dolares. Quioto foi o lugar que eu mais gostei de visitar nessa viagem. Principalmente porque por la tinha muito mais estrangeiros do que aqui em Toquio. Tinha mais franceses do que tudo, e uns americanos rabugentos tambem, claro. Nos tambem comemos muito bem nessa viagem. De tudo que eu ja comi aqui, nao posso reclamar de nada. Tudo de muito bom e eles usam bastante legumes e verduras quando cozinham, tipo o Brasil assim. Alem do mais, as frutas daqui nao tem o gosto ruim igual as dos Estados Unidos. Yumi e eu tambem demos uma sorte danada de ficarmos num hotel logo acima do Starbucks. Entao e CLARO que nos tivemos que dar uma parada por la todos os dias. Minha bebida favorita aqui e o Latte de Cha de Hojicha, que e um tipo de cha verde.
No terceiro dia da nossa viagem, nos fomos a Nara. Estava chuvendo aquele dia e nos tinhamos que andar de um lugar para o outro, entao as vezes divemos que parar e esperar a chuva passar para podermos continuar. A regiao de Nara e conhecida por ter um monte de veadinhos. Eles sao bem doceis e os turistas adoram tirar fotos com eles. So que tinhamos que ficar atentas, porque eles adoram pegar pessoas destraidas de surpresa e comer papeis ou qualquer outra coisa que eles viam. Em Nara, nos continuamos a visitar os templos japoneses. Um desses templos, o Todai-ji, tinha um Buddha ENORME dentro. Um outro templo que nos visitamos, o qual eu nao me lembro o nome, tinha acabado de ser construido e era muito chique dentro, com muito ouro e muitas pinturas japonesas. A maioria dos templos possui muito ouro, enquanto outros que nao tem tanto ouro tem outras coisas que sao de importancia aos japoneses, como os jardins de pedra.
Nos ultimos dois dias de nossa viagem, nos fomos pra Hiroshima. Pra chegar la, tivemos que pegar outro Shinkansen, um trem local e mais um barco para chegarmos a ilha onde passariamos a noite, em Miyajima. O templo Shinto Itsukushima e a atracao dessa regiao, que consiste do portao vermelho na agua da foto a direita. O portao e bonito de manha e a noite, quando esta iluminado. A regiao tambem e conhecida por ter esses bolinhos recheados de feijao doce e mesmo que voce nao acredite, eles sao bons! Ja que estavamos em uma ilha, todas as refeicoes do hotel tinha frutos do mar, incluindo o cafe da manha! Aquela noite nos relaxamos no spa do hotel antes de irmos a Hiroshima na manha seguinte. Eu fiquei surpresa com Hiroshima. Achei que eles fossem preservar a regiao toda que foi atingida pela bomba, mas nao. Eles praticamente preservaram um predio, e o resto e tudo predio novo. Um dos guias nos disse que horas depois que Hiroshima foi atingida com a bomba nuclear, as pessoas que sobreviveram comecaram a ajudar a reconstruir a cidade, pouco a pouco. Aprender sobre a guerra mundial na escola e ver com os seus proprios olhos sao duas coisas bem diferentes. Principalmente escutar as historias de quem estava la, presente no dia, foi muito triste. Yumi e eu aprendemos muita coisa sobre a cidade e o povo, que hoje em dia fala de Hiroshima com muito orgulho. O museu local sobre a guerra abrangia tanta informacao que demoramos tres horas pra ver tudo. Depois de irmos ao museu, nos comemos e ja estavamos exaustas, entao fomos a estacao de trem e pegamos o Shinkansen que nos levaria de volta a Toquio em quatro horas. Ja coloquei algumas fotos no Orkut e logo colocarei algumas no Facebook. Beijos!
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