Travel Diary: Japan Part II

Kon’nichiwa part 2!! Too much Japan, too little time (hence why I had to split this into two posts… and because I’m what they call long-winded).

Day 4: Tokyo & Kyoto

Josey and I ventured (all on our own) to the train station to meet our big group to head to Kyoto for the remainder of our trip. I’m happy to report that we managed to get an hour away from hour hotel all by ourselves efficiently and we totally looked like we knew what we were doing the whole time!!! Photo evidence below.

It was about an hour and a half train ride to Kyoto… so needed, we were exhausted (see the bags under our eyes for reference).

In Kyoto, we checked into our hostels. Which geez, those things shouldn’t even be called hostels they were so dang nice. At one point I passed ours and it was like wow that place looks nice and then after we passed it I realized it was ours!!!

After not eating for what felt like 15 days (relax, I’m dramatic, we had breakfast just not lunch) we headed out to find dinner. We ended up meeting our friend for a real ramen…I don’t even eat normal ramen so this was a gamble…

LET ME TELL YOU, the Japanese know how to do ramen. I even got seconds, I think I converted.

From there we meandered around until we found ourselves in a Japanese dollar store. You could honestly spend all day in there. They had the most random things… like driving gloves (they were women gardening gloves that were pictured on a Japanese man driving). Like what in the world!!

Somehow we walked away with $40 worth of Japanese snacks and candy. And yes, we had just had dinner, to each their own. Some of it was really good and some of it was just a really good experience (if you know what I mean).

After we had put ourselves into a sugar coma, apparently Japanese karaoke seemed like the obvious next place to go. Easy entertainment would have been a better word for it!! If you give a girl a microphone…

Clearly the travel bug has bitten hard because we spent a while that night researching a camping trip to Banff this summer… while in Japan…not even half way done studying abroad. What can we say?

Day 5: Kyoto & Kobe

SOMEONE thought it was a good idea to wake up really early and get a move on for our last day in Japan. As someone who loathes getting up early (when I don’t have to) I hated this, but as someone who was in Japan, I sprung out of bed (I was only slightly unpleasant)!!

We headed to Fushimi (I hope this is how you spell this, I can’t google it because I’m writing this in China and China blocks EVERYTHING, so just work with me).

Before we got there, we made a stop. Again, we hadn’t eating in what seemed like years so we got coffee from Starbucks. Before you roll your eyes, we looked for other shops first but ended up there. Also, if you go to Japan get a moussed latte, incredible. But hey I like coffee and I got Japanese-American coffee and it was tasty!!

Once we got to Fushimi, we were glad we had coffee… we were faced with a decent hike. Well, it wasn’t really a hike, just an unreal number of stairs, I stopped looking after 50 flights (at 9am!!!). But what we were seeing was absolutely worth the stairs and getting up early.

Here are the two moods during the climb: one when we first started and one when we realized it was 9am and we were climbing and an unreal number of stairs.

After Fushimi, we went to the Golden Temple. Which I don’t think the rainy weather we were experiencing did justice, it was fantastic.

After that, we managed to find our way back to the hotel for our final trek back to the ship. Like I said, the subway system is awesome, but its still all in Japanese and isn’t always a quick process, but oh well!!

Finally, we made it back to the last train before the trip. Which wow, all of the exhaustion and feelings of leaving must have it us because we couldn’t stop laughing as we pulled up to our port terminal. We hopped off with all of our like 200 bags, but not with any water left (cuse apparently thats not allowed…)!!