One of my last big trips of the summer was to the Japanese Alps in Tateyama Kurobe. Altogether we would be spending three days up north, then heading back down to Tokyo towards the end of our vacation. On the first day of our trip, we took the train out to Hida Furukawa. Hida Furukawa is a small carpentry town a little north of Takayama. Both towns have preserved the look from the Edo period, so it was really interesting…
Day two of my trip I visited Miyajima Island. The island is known as one of the Three Views of Japan. One of the highlights of the island is the floating torii gate at Itsukushima Shrine. Many people enjoy taking the ferry out to the island and spending the day there. From Hiroshima Station I took JR out towards the ferry terminal, then I took a 10 minute ferry ride out to the island. One of the things I was…
I took a short two day trip to Hiroshima last week. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision but I’m really glad I went. It might have been a little ambitious of me to travel during the summer, but luckily I managed to avoid getting heatstroke and super tanned from my time out in the sun. =P Initially when I was researching how to travel to Hiroshima I looked at several options. First was buying a JR…
During the same time I visited Mie and Toba, I also took a day trip with my dad and uncle to Nara and Kyoto. Again we made use of our Kintetsu 5-day pass. Even though we saved quite a bit on the fare, it was a gruelling train ride there and back. I was ready to shoot myself on the way back because it took so. bloody. long. Lol Early in the morning we made our way to the station…
Day two of our trip. We left Matsusaka early in the morning and took the train towards Ise Grand Shrine. The shrine is a huge complex composed over 125 shrines centred around two main shrines, the Naiku and the Geku, or the inner and outer shrines. Many people actually make the trip out towards Ise just to pray at the shrine because it is one of Shinto’s holiest and most important sites. We first toured the outer shrine and spent…