Trip to Japan!

My first solo trip after Chase was born was to Japan. I went when he was 19 months old and finally weaned. It was amazing.

I went with Sakina, Mika, and Olga, and stayed with Katie for a few days. We also saw Kiyo while there. It kind of turned into our 10 (and a half) year high school graduation reunion. Crazy to think that we've all known each other close to 16-17 years!!

This post will be a bit different since I documented this on instagram pretty thoroughly and will reuse some of the pictures and captions here.

Comparison between the day before we left for college (August 2005) and us in Tokyo (November 2015). We really didn't change much -- it's actually quite uncanny.

This is us visiting the Tokyo Skytree, tallest tower in the world. We got lucky with amazing visibility, including Mt. Fuji next to the setting sun. We also got lucky to see Tokyo in both the (dimming) daylight and at night once all the lights went on!

 

Some more Tokyo sights: a sales robot which humored us with funny jokes, Harajuku area which was incredibly busy, Christmas lights in Rappongi, and a machine that takes your ramen order.

We took the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. It only took 2.5 hours, during which I learned how to read in Japanese and made myself a cheat sheet that I used nonstop since to read the things around me. We also went to a Japanese tea ceremony and learned how to make green tea.

In Kyoto, we went to the Kiyomizu-dura temple, which was open at night to highlight the beautiful fall colors. Although some nice orange/red branches could be seen, most were still green due to the unseasonably warm weather this year. We drank from the Otawa waterfall, which is supposed to have wish-granting powers. The temple, which has a stage held up with no nails at all, seen on bottom right here, gave a beautiful view of Kyoto at night.

Also in Kyoto, we visited the Fushimi Inari Taishi shrine which has hundreds of gates all going up a nearby mountain. We almost walked to the top (takes about 2 hours) to see many of these gates. We then went out to the Tenryu-ji temple which had extensive gardens, a large pond with tons of koi, and was situated next to a bamboo forest.

Tokyo tower as seen from our hotel room back in Tokyo where we finished exploring another day before heading back to our respective home countries. 

The food in Japan was amazing!! Only a few things pictured here: Japanese pancakes (okonomiyaki), sushi (first thing in the morning, right next to the fish market so super fresh), ramen, shabu shabu appetizers and the shabu shabu hot pot! In general, everything was so tasty and budget friendly! Such a major change from Switzerland.

Overall, we had such a wonderful time visiting Japan. It was my first time in Asia and I really enjoyed exploring everything! To me, it felt closer to America than Switzerland, so that was an interesting experience. Can't wait to go back to Japan or other Asian countries!