JAPAN - the trip

Lots of ladies dress in kimono in Kyoto, like this one. We even saw two real geishas.

Today we left for Kyoto from Osaka. We took a train for only 30 minutes, then we were in Kyoto. The first thing we saw when we got out of the station were pretty ladies in kimonos. We walked to our hotel. When we got there there was a cool sliding door that opened and right there were beautiful orchids!! It was a nice welcome to the hotel. Then we walked through another sliding door that led to the lobby and a whiskey bar. The hotel was called Yoin. We dropped off our bags and went to meet our cousins at their apartment. We dropped birdseed on the way to their apartment. When we got there we were so happy to see our cousins!! Their names are Mila and Arun and they are from Chicago. They are twins. We went to dinner and then visited a temple park and then went back to play with them. We were so happy to be together!

The next day we went to a really cool temple. It is the main shrine of Inari, a Shinto god. Shinto is a religion in Japan. Inari is their god (or kami) of foxes, fertility, rice, tea, sake, agriculture, industry and success. There is a god/kami for everything in Shintoism especially animals, nature, and spirits of dead relatives or leaders. Fushimi Inari is famous for its thousands of red torii gates. There are over 32,000!!!!!! They are a really pretty shade of dark orangish-red.

There are so many cats in Japan!! And at the temples they are taken care of and tame.

We hiked around a lot. The temple grounds here went on and on and on.

Fushimi-Inari was fun because I love hiking and I love going to shrines and this place was a combination of those things. There are a bunch of little trails off of the main trail that lead to other little shrines. It was a beautiful hike because it was the fall and all of the pretty leaves were falling. The leaves were bright yellow from the ginkgo trees and bright red from the Japanese maple trees. I also loved the little waterfalls. They were so naturey and pretty and I just love waterfalls.

Here I am cleansing. A TEMIZUYA is at the entrance to the shrine and you are supposed to purify your body before entering. You should wash your hands and mouth with the cool, flowing water for purification and to be respectful.

Here I am in front of a little mini-shrine.

We light candles and make wishes. Or say a prayer.

Another temple that we visited with our cousin was the Kinkaku-ji temple. It is also called the Golden Temple. It is a Zen Buddhist temple. The garden there was really calm and pretty. It has so many plants and pretty trees and little ponds of water and waterfalls and rock gardens. There were older ladies that were raking the leaves so you could see the pretty green grass and they were trimming the bonsais so they would stay short and pretty. That place made me feel calm and happy and I could have stayed there for a couple more days if it weren’t so cold, but not without food and water and stuff. I guess that is how a zen temple is supposed to make you feel, so they did a very good job there. Another thing thing that I loved that there was the phoenix on top of the temple. I like the phoenix because it is really pretty and I also like the phoenix because I like their tail feathers, they can be blue, purple, yellow, green and red and their bodies are red and gold. They make me feel calm and safe because the legend is that when they die, they are reborn and I like knowing that they are always there. I like the zen temples because I think it is really nice that there are places like that where people can go to feel safe and relaxed. When we get back to California, I’m going to see if there are any zen temples that I can visit.

It is right on a pond so the reflection is extra pretty.

Me and mommy in front of the Golden Temple. You can see the phoenix at the tippy top.

I crawled through the space that is the same size as the Great Buddha’s nostril!!

Snow monkey and me in Arashiyama. I was a little scared, but it was really cool to see these monkeys running right next to me!

If you hold up an acorn, they will bow to you three times and then you feed them!!

When you run out of food, you put your hands up so they know you are done feeding them. This was the same as in Thailand with the elephants.

Today I woke up and went to a park where we were meeting our cousins. It was sad though, because our cousins were leaving to go back to Chicago. We had fun playing and then they left. We brought our backpacks there too, because we left our Yoin hotel in Gion and were moving into our Kyoto house.

Goodbye Arun, I will see you soon. We were sad.

We arrived with our backpacks to our Kyoto house and it looked very Japanese on the outside and inside. When we walked in there was a “genkan”. A genkan is a Japanese entryway where you put your shoes and it is lower than the floor of the main house. You cannot wear shoes in a Japanese house because they are very clean in Japan and if you wear shoes in the house you bring in germs and dog poop or whatever is on the bottom of your shoes. We liked this because this is how our family always does it in California too, but we don’t have it a genkan. After you pass the genkan you have to wear slippers or house shoes or socks. Another thing about our Kyoto house that I liked a lot was the tatami room. I like tatami because its calm and the room has nothing in it except a futon, comforter and a pillow. I liked the tatami, but I also like sleeping in the “western” room that has beds like I am used to in the US and the rest of the world. Another thing that I liked about the Kyoto house were wood slats and shoji screen windows and the Japanese toilets and all the buttons. The bathtubs are also very nice because they are very deep soaking tubs and you can take nice relaxing baths in them. Japanese bathrooms are very different because they have a shower and bathtub in the same room and the whole floor can get wet and has a drain and it is made for that so you can splash away!

Me and Cole in Kyoto. Thats Kyoto tower behind us. It’s cold here.

Me in the genkan with a letter from my friend Victoria in Hermosa!!!! She sent me one when we were in Lisbon, but I didn’t get it so I was extra happy to get this one!!!!

Our tatami room. Mostly me and Cole slept in here.

Outside of our Kyoto house. We love this place!!!!!! The red box is our mailbox.

FOOD

The food in Kyoto was really good, especially the sushi and beef. The beef in Japan is reeeeeeeaaaaaally good. It tastes like the Japanese beef that we get in Torrance at the Japanese market, which is my favorite beef in all the world. I like the buttery flavor and the thin flavorful pieces. We had sushi almost every day and it was the best and freshest sushi that I’ve ever had. Another thing that I really loved almost as much as the beef and sushi was the ramen!! I liked the broth kind, the dipping kind and every different kind of ramen that we tried. In Japan, you get to order your ramen from a machine. You put in your money, hit the button for what kind of ramen you want and a ticket comes out. When a seat opens up for you, sit down and give the chef your ticket. It is very efficient!!! And the most fun thing about ramen is that YOU HAVE TO SLURP AND IT HAS TO BE VERY LOUD!!! IT IS CONSIDERED RUDE TO NOT SLURP YOUR RAMEN IN JAPAN!! Slurping is hard if you are not used to it. But you should hear the Japanese businessmen slurp!!! They are masters at it!!! It is so loud!!! We loved it and tried, but we weren’t good at it.

Me and mom slurping away. It was so fun to not use our normal manners!!

These ramen masters work so hard and this was the BEST RAMEN EVER!!!!!!!!!!

At this place we each got our own little booth and the curtain would go up and the guy would give us the ramen we ordered!! IT WAS SO FUN!!!!

See the chef back there?? You never see their whole body, they just make the food and slide it onto your little table booth.

We were in HEAVEN!!! SUSHI AND RAMEN EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!!!

Another thing that I loved about Japan is that I had a lot of freedom. I could cross the street by myself and didn’t have to have a tight grip on my hand every time I cross the street. I also had freedom with the gardens and parks and temples. Mom and dad didn’t worry about us being kidnapped in Japan so we could wander off on our own as long as we stayed together and that was really fun. I felt responsible and brave.

Crossing the street in Kyoto, no tight grip on my hand here!!!

It is the fall so we get to see the beautiful colors of nature. I especially loved the Ginkgo trees.

Me and Cole being silly. We were always happy here because we were relaxed and always had a belly full of yummy food!!!!

Another thing I liked about Kyoto was the zen atmosphere. ZEN is really calming. It makes me feel happy. When I go to zen place it makes me feel peaceful and there were so many zen places in Kyoto because there is so much nature and gardens in Kyoto everywhere.

I loved these mini temples all around town. There was peacefulness everywhere.

This is a temple too!! Isn’t it the prettiest???!!! It is called Yasaka Koshindo Temple and those are little bound monkeys. They are called kukurizaru and this is where Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil came from. You are supposed to write your wish on these little monkeys.

This was a fox at a Shinto Shrine. It was on of my favorite temples/shrines.

Here we are in a Japanese botanical garden. It was really peaceful and warm in the sun.

We were watching the fish. Probably carp.

This is a statue that I liked. I like the smiling buddhas.

The colors were so pretty when we were there.

Homeschooling in Kyoto was fun. Besides math, which was boring, the rest of school in Kyoto was good. We learned about ninjas and shoguns and samurais and then we got to see the actual places and hear the real history about what we learned about at home.

This was at a gallery library near our Kyoto house.

We really liked homeschooling in Japan and learning about the samurais and ninjas.

Here we are video chatting with Ms. Cederquists class. It was SO EARLY in Japan when we did this but we had to make the time zones work.

This was a samurai demonstration. It was a little scary because he was really fast and that is a real samurai sword!!!!!

This was at Nijo Castle. Real ninjas tried sneaking into this place in the old days!!!!!!

We got to go on a BULLET TRAIN from Kyoto to Tokyo. It was really fun!! It was the fastest train I’ve been on! Tokyo was fun and cool. There are a lot of big bright lights and buildings and crazy characters and yummy food. Especially the beef there. It was called Matsusaka. (The cows are treated very well)

Japan was very high tech. This was a robot from the train station.

Shinkansen, the BULLET TRAIN!!! We finally get to ride it!!!

Me on the Shinkansen looking at MT FUJI!!!!!!!! I’ve always wanted to see Mt. Fuji!!!!

Hot Coco art. They are talented at this coffee shop!!

YUM!!! This is the matsusaka wagyu!!!!! You only eat a little bit because it is very flavorful. And it’s better for the environment if you only have a tiny bit of beef in general.

This was from our favorite izakaya, neighborhood restaurant in Tokyo. An izakaya is like a pub where you share food. It looks fancy but this place was very casual. They work really hard to make the food pretty, even at non fancy places in Japan.

We DID NOT buy these. But they sure are pretty!!!! But $100 for a melon???????!!!!!!!

This is called “piss alley”. It had a lot of little itty bitty restaurants all along both sides of the alley. Some of the restaurants only fit 2 or 3 people!!!

Our neighborhood izakaya. Those are all “salarymen” in the background. They go there late after work and smoke cigarettes and drink beer and eat really good food.

The Tsukiji fish market before it reopened as the Toyosu Tsukiji Market

This is what the tuna looks like in the ocean!!!!

The lower area of the original Tsukiji Market.

Here is where the BIG AUCTION FOR THE BIG TUNA happens!!!!! Im on the observation deck. Some tuna sell for $3 million!!!! But don’t eat the bluefin tuna because you have other choices and they are threatened from overfishing!!!!!!

More conveyor belt sushi!! AND ICE CREAM!!! Here we got to order from our own individual tablets!!

Our favorite izakaya in Tokyo. Only bad thing was that the salarymen smoke in there.

Our little Tokyo hotel. It was VERY TINY but had EVERYTHING we needed!!!!

Here I am drinking mommy’s beer at the airport. Haha, it was apple juice!!

Goodbye Japan!! I will be back some day!!!

Thank you for reading my blog! I loved sharing my trip and knowing that everyone was going to read it when I was writing it!! Traveling around the world was fun. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog!! I’m excited to come home!! It was hard carrying my backpack on the trip. But mostly everything else was fun.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANNA SHAH

THANK YOU

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