myretroperspective

Our last and most favorite stop of the trip was Kyoto. We arrived into Kyoto Station from Osaka by the JR lines. Below is the gorgeous station that we were greeted with. Never have I been in such an innovative and futuresk (please excuse the creation of new words) public space. This is the road leading up to the Kiyomizu Temple. While on a student exchange to Japan 10 years ago, my host family brought me to this same temple. It was so exciting to be sharing the same place with hubs years later. Outside the entrance of the temple Visitors light incense and try to cover their head with the smoke Overlooking the city of Kyoto Beneath the main hall is the otowa waterfall. Three different channels of water fall into the pond below. Visitors can hold long sticks with metal cups at the end and get a drink from these falls and get a wish granted. There is a popular saying in Japanese that is similar to the states "take the plunge" and it is "jump off the stage at Kiyomizu"....

Our next stop was Osaka. to be perfectly frank, it was our least favorite stop of the trip. It was like every other big city, lots of shopping and eating. but this one had, in our opinion, few sites that we, personally wanted to see. The major stop that we went to was the Osaka Castle. Unfortunately, this castle was also closed due to the new year. We were most impressed by the gigantic stone cut walls that surrounded the castle and formed the base of the castle. Our next stop is aways my favoite when traveling. We headed to one of the popular nearby markets.  They had large amounts of tea in huge containers so you could pick out your favorite and get a large bag of it.  Inside the market was a small peaceful little temple.  Rubbing the bull's head for good luck then going and writing good wishes for the new year. We had a Japanese pancake, Okonomiyaki for dinner. I have no idea what all was in this but it was the most delicious meal I have ever had. It had mac and cheese...

This post is about a month too late so I hope the saying better late than never applies on this one. We have a five day weekend right now (i love Korean holidays) so we're enjoying getting to slow down and work on little projects around the new apartment. Ok so hubs is the one working on the projects, the blog is my only project and I've mastered the art of procrastination with it. We went to Japan during our christmas holiday and flew into Fukuoka early Wednesday morning. We headed straight for the bullet train station to take the train up to Hiroshima for the first night. To get from Fukuoka to Hiroshima was only an hour train ride and man those trains are fast! But i'm sure you could've guessed that.  Our first stop was the Hiroshima Castle. There was a gorgeous trail around the entire castle with a large moat around the perimeter. Unfortunately, we couldn't go inside because everything was closed for the New Year. There were several men manicuring all of the tre...