I was too tired to write an entry yesterday, so I’ll just sum things up here. Yesterday we went to Nikko, home of the Rinnoji Temple, the Toshogu Shrine and the Futarasan Shrine. We decided to visit it to see the tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa. We took the Tobu Railways SPACIA train to Nikko then used a special pass I had bought beforehand online (the World Heritage Pass) to see the places. Nice nature and architecture, and I saw three large statues of Buddha (three BIG BUDDHA, right NRK?) in the Rinnoji temple. The Toshogu shrine was also magnificient, although the famous Nemuri-neko (sleeping cat) was extremely small, almost unnoticeable. Rain caught us in the afternoon so we went back to Tokyo.
Today instead we transferred by Shinkansen to Kyoto (very fast trip) and settled in the new hotel here (definitely larger, although I have to access the net from a lobby). Tomorrow we’ll go for some sightseeing in the morning and shopping in the afternoon (Gamers and Melon Books have branches here, near the hotel even).
New photos have been put up in the gallery.
I’m aching all over but I managed to write this entry. Today I went to the Ueno area first, hoping to go to the National Museum: however I forgot it was closed on Mondays, so I had to go to the National Science Museum instead. It turned out that it wasn’t a bad choice after all, as the museum is rich with exhibits and has a very good presentation.
After that we moved to the Toshogu Shrine in Ueno Park, a shrine that was dedicated to the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. It’s not an “active” shrine anymore, but you can visit it for 200 yen. As the heat was killling us, we went back to Tokyo Station for lunch.
The afternoon was spent in Akihabara, the famous “Electric Town” district in Tokyo. It’s a real chaos, in my point of view, as there are so many stores it’s overwhelming. I went to Gamers and Melon Books, and got a hold of some stuff (which you’ll see in the image at the end), although I could not find a keyboard cover for my Eee. I’ll be back later this week to get other things.
Tomorrow we’re going out of town, in Nikko, to see the Toshogu shrine, the mausoleum of Ieyasu Tokugawa and the famous nemuri-neko (sleeping cat). The train leaves at 9.30 and I stilll have to claim my ticket, so it’ll be an early morning.
Now it’s time to get some sleep. The gallery has been updated with new photos, by the way.
I didn’t get time to write before about it, but I and my brother went to Japan for a 10-day holiday there, starting on yesterday. After a 12 hour trip, we arrived in Narita Airport and I took the chance of getting an IC card (prepaid subway/bus card) plus a shinkansen reservation I could only make in Japan (and that cost me “just” 27,000 yen).
Once that was settled, we boarded the Japan Rail (JR) Narita Express and arrived in Tokyo. From there it was a matter of finding the right subway line to get to our hotel. Said hotel is pretty clean but rooms are quite small, and for two of us even a double room is small (not mentioning we have large luggages!). After some good sleep (we arrived at around 21.00), we spent the next day going to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace.
It would have been a faster visit had it not been for the weather. There are about 33-34 C coupled with very high humidity, making walks under the sun a daunting task. Nevertheless, the place was quite nice, with also some remains of the older Edo Castle before the Meiji era. In the afternoon, we checked the Roppongi Hills shopping centre and took a lift to the Tokyo Sky Deck, 235 mt above the ground. A good view on the large city that Tokyo is, also the largest city I’ve been in.
For tomorrow, we plan on going first to Ueno, then to Akihabara and Asakusa. Stay tuned. In the mean time, there are some photos.
In preparation for my trip to Japan (I really need to write about it), I have spent a few euro on a digital camera, a Canon Powershot A590. It looks like a decent camera, has a viewfinder (essential for me), some manual customization and of course it works with Linux (using digikam). Here are two examples, depicting no less than my two felines:
