18 Aug 2012

Day 10 / Kumamoto

von mhk | Veröffentlicht in: Tour 2012, Wanda 2012 | 0

Without any hurry we moved from Nagasaki to our stopover Kumamoto. We first took a taxi and then everything very slowly.

Our afternoon program was just to visit the Suizenji Garden, which absolutely turned any negative thoughts about this city around, where we had difficulties in the past. The garden is named after a temple, which was standing here once, but contains two shrines now. The spacious garden shows the 53 stops of the Tokaidō, the road once leading from Kyōto to Tōkyō. Most impressivly is the Fuji-san in pure intensive green grass, which is also seen from the tea house, which once stood in the Imperial Garden in Kyōto. Enjoying some matcha and sweets (mine imitated an egg and had a whipped egg whites surface and was incredably delicious) we rested and had this amazing view when the clouds opened flooding the garden in even more wonderful colors.

After some succesful yukata and geta shopping and a nice curry rice dinner we had a short time sleep in our not so nice hotel room.

8 Aug 2012

Day 5 / Izumo

von mhk | Veröffentlicht in: Tour 2012, Wanda 2012 | 0

The beginning of our very Japanese adventure. While my father stayed in Kyōto I joined the fellowship of the cha-no-kai clubs from three different art and design universities on a trip to the Shimane prefecture.

Our bus left Kyōto with round about 50 people at 6 am. Everyone tried to catch as much sleep as possible before we arrived in Izumo around noon. After eating Soba typical for the area we went to a museum to learn about the history of Japan and Shimame. There were also a couple of models to show, how the Izumo Taisha main shrine changed over the time. Appearently it stand on huuuge collums quite some time ago. Already the imaginated picture of that is amazing, isn’t it?

And of cause we visited the original too. A really beautiful and extremely famous shrine. I think, outside of Japan most people havn’t heared of this place, but all Japanese do know it somehow as it’s very important in the legend of the origin of Japan.

It was amazing, but we all were happy to than finally reach the Ryokan we were staying in. In front of the scenery of a lake we had a typical extended dinner and went to a beautiful and relaxing Onsen. Which just prepared us to stay awake for longer for Nomikai, a gathering for drinking, talking and enjoying the time, with our teacher. And man, it was really nice to play UNO most of us knew from our childhood with up to nearly 20 people. What a long fun day!

Oh, and it was sooo cold and ice flowers appeared.

3 Aug 2012

Day 2 / Uji and Fushimi

von mhk | Veröffentlicht in: Tour 2012, Wanda 2012 | 0

Day 2 / Kyōto is pretty hot. But it’s less humid than expected and sometimes a breeze refreshes our sweating skin. Yeah, but we knew, what was waiting for us, so we won’t moan. At least not in public! 🙂

Today we’ve been in Uji, enjoying the smell and taste of matcha. We also went to Byōdō-in, an amazing temple with a hall with a huge Buddha inside and the famous pheonixes on top. By the way, the 10 yen coin shows the hall, while the 10.000 yen bill depicts one pheonix. And in perfect contrast to the old traditional buildings, the modern museum took our breath away.

In the evening on the way back to Kyōto, we payed the stunning Fushimi Inari shrine a visit. We didn’t walked up the hill, but enjoyed the renewed buildings of the main shrine. I can’t say anything but to admit, that still this is my favorite place in Japan. And especially in the golden light of the falling sun, it’s beauty and magic touched me again very deep inside. Love it!!!

Shrine