Having seen enough of Tokyo for now, it was time to start our journey to Kyoto, Japan’s former capital city. Kyoto is best known for it’s enormous amount of temples and shrines. This, naturally, makes it an excellent city to show your mum the “spiritual” side of Japan. Mum brought JR passes with her, so we could travel there for free by shinkansen.

From Tokyo to Kyoto it’s about 3 hours by train, so we arrived fairly in time to be able to check out one of the temples near our hotel, Higashi Hongan-ji. This absolutely massive temple can be found near Kyoto station, and was very impressive by its sheer size. Although the main part is currently being restored, it was still a very impressive site to walk around. Especially the ropes made out of human hair (donated by believers to create the ropes used to hoist all materials for the original temple) kinda stuck with me…

The next day we decided to explore the Southern part of Kyoto first. Here, we ran into our first group of school kids, exploring the sites on a school trip. On such trips they get all kinds of assignments, one of them being to talk to foreign people. So there I was, answering them questions like “what’s your favorite food?” and “what kind of sports do you like?”

After the interview, we entered the shrine, which had a magnificent garden with it. While walking around in the garden, we found an upwards path, which led us to an area with a great view over Kyoto.

After leaving this one, we quickly continued on to the next. This shrine was a lot bigger, and more tourist infected than the previous, but the garden surrounding it was truly amazing.

We wandered around there for a long time, exploring every part of it, until we finally reached the superb bridge near the exit. If anything, it was the perfect Japanese scenery, straight from the movies.

Oh, and little did I know, my mum is a tree-hugger!

The last shrine we visited that day was complemented with a beautiful park area behind it. We had the feeling the shrine would be very nice to visit in the dark, so we explored the park and the surrounding areas of the shrine a bit, while waiting for night to fall.

Luckily, we were right! The shrine looked very nice at night.

Next up, was the royal palace. The palace is pretty much in the center of Kyoto, with a huge park around it. The park itself wasn’t very impressive (especially compared to the parks and gardens the other day), but it does seem like a park that’s more used by the locals. There were people hanging out, children playing, joggers, etcetera. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to go into the palace on our own, but had to join a guided tour. So we joined the herd, and were led around in about an hour.

After the tour, we went to the West side of Kyoto. No, we did not find ghetto there, we did find an excellent river and mountain area though!

We had seen on the map, that somewhere around there should be monkeys. So we went up the mountain in order to check them out. Unfortunately, the climb proved a bit too much for my mum, so I went up the mountain alone. Where I not only found the monkeys (no, I didn’t spank them), but a magnificent city view as well.

After the monkey mountain, we walked around in the river area for about an hour. Unfortunately, my memory card was full at that time, so I couldn’t take any pictures anymore. So you’ll just have to take my word for it, that it was an excellent walk, with some amazing views along the way. After getting back at the hotel, we quickly searched for a camera store, so I could buy a new memory card. After getting the new (8 GB!!) card, we had dinner in an Italian (style) restaurant, on the 11th floor of the station mall. Needless to say, the city view was amazing.

The next day, we traveled to Nara at a slow pace. Since we knew it was going to be our last city we’d visit and there weren’t that many sights to explore, we took our time. We arrived around 3 in the afternoon, checked into a hotel and started exploring the town a bit. While doing so, we quickly ran into the main attraction of the town (or at least the cutest), deer!

At that point I suddenly noticed a little red icon flashing on my camera, indicating it was about time to recharge the damn thing. Guess what I decided not to bring, because I was sure the battery would last the entire trip anyway… Luckily, we found a small camera store, where they provided a battery charge service. So I left my battery behind for charging, while we went back to the hotel to rest a bit. Two hours later I returned to pick up my recharged battery, which I of course had to test immediately…

No, the girl being cute had nothing to do with it, really! Anyway, the next day we spent exploring the temples and parks in Nara. Walking a lot up and down the mountain area surrounding the town. Running into deer everywhere.

All temples are very nice, but the main attraction is definitely the 16 meter high Buddha statue in the Todai-ji. This temple’s entrance is guarded by two huge statues. However, these guardians feel tiny in comparison to the huge Buddha inside.

As we entered the temple, we immediately noticed another typical Nara “sight,” school children! All running around, trying to complete all their assignments from their textbooks. This also meant we were constantly stopped in our tracks by groups of them, everybody asking us the same questions over and over (Holland, Ramen, Aikido, sure you can have my autograph). After a while, we started feeling like an attraction ourselves! But it was very fun to do, and we usually got nice reactions from the kids.

The last shrine we visited was very nice, and as it was located in the mountains, we had a great view over Nara there.

When we were on our way back, we stumbled upon a small garden, which looked very interesting. We entered the place, not really knowing what to expect, only to find the most idyllic garden yet. Postcard pictures all around…

We chilled in this garden for a long time, before we returned back to our hotel. Being all peaceful and serene from the garden, we were quickly kicked back into reality, when we entered a shrine’s central yard, which we needed to cross to get back. There were about a 100 school kids running around the place, and when they spotted us, it was a loud “GAIJIN” and they all came running for an autograph in their textbooks. Not being mean people, we ended up standing there, signing their books for almost half an hour. Now I know how a celebrity feels and I can imagine that if you have to deal with that day in day out, it gets a bit old .

The next day it was already Saturday. Since my mum flew back on Sunday, we had to return to Tokyo. So we hopped on the shinkansen again and traveled back to “good ol’ Tokyo.”

Back in Tokyo we had some excellent Sushi, and on Sunday morning I dropped my mum off at the airport.

Thanks for the visit mum, it was fun!

As stated earlier, my mum visited me in Japan last week. She arrived on Friday the 30th of May and went back home on Sunday the 8th of June. Which, of course, meant I had to show her everything I could in just 9 days.

We started off in Tokyo, where on the first day she rested a bit in the afternoon. Flying for 15 hours did leave it’s marks. After resting, it was time to introduce her to her first real Japanese food, Shabu Shabu! She also had to learn how to eat with chopsticks, so that was quite a funny sight for me to see. It has something endearing to see your mum trying her best and proudly showing every piece she managed to pick up successfully (usually dropping it in the process .

The next day it was raining heavily, but that didn’t stop us from visiting the Meiji Shrine near Harajuku station. It was a shame though, that I couldn’t show the cosplayers, because there weren’t any! Even kawaii fashionists stay inside when it rains. Although the shrine is a very nice site to walk around and admire, it wasn’t the main attraction of the day.

The main attraction was of course my training at my Japanese dojo, followed by the usual dinner and drinks with sensei! As soon as sensei heard mum was visiting, he immediately pulled out his agenda and settled the matter. The first Saturday I had to show the dojo and training to my mum. It was very fun and fortunately she was allowed to take pictures during practice, so I finally have some training pictures!

Sunday we went to Nikko, where a lot of beautiful sites can be found. Temples, shrines, nature, the works. We walked around the temples and shrines all day, climbing a lot of stairs while doing so. Luckily mum’s muscles held out, so we could reach every point we wanted with relative ease.

After wandering around the temples for too long, we missed our last bus back to the station. So we decided to look for a taxi stand somewhere in the area. Luckily, we didn’t find any and ended up walking back all the way to the station (about a 40 minutes walk). But what a walk it was! The scenery was excellent, especially when we reached the river, and found Nikko’s holy bridge.

We left Nikko around dawn, so we arrived back in Tokyo around 9. Needless to say, we were very hungry by then, so we immediately went for dinner. I decided to go for Yakiniku, where you can grill your own meat and vegetables. Little did we know that we would walk into some kind of party. A large group of Japanese youngsters were drinking heavily and, as quiet as Japanese are when sober, so loud they are when drunk. So mum got a good view of the “other” Japan. People sleeping in the restaurant, puking their guts out, shouting and singing aloud. It seemed like fun.

Luckily about halfway through our dinner, the party moved elsewhere and one half of the group carried the other half out of the restaurant. Mum being slightly in shock (but in a good way), we finished our dinner, after which I brought her back to the hotel. The next day we left for Kyoto and Nara, but for those adventures you’ll have to stay tuned…

Reggeaton Perreo! Spread the word, one movie for every day! This may well be the thing that finally brings about world peace…

Thanks Vin-E!

Sometimes stuff happens that I just can not understand. Last Sunday a man went on a killing spree in Akihabara, Tokyo. Apparently, he was tired of life, which justified all his actions. He killed 7 people and injured about 10 others.

I truly can not understand how someone can perform an act like that. He just slashed people at random, whoever happened to be there, got hit. How can somebody become so disconnected from life?

I can understand if you don’t agree with the society you’re living in. I can understand if you aren’t happy with life. I can understand if you want to change the way the world works…

However, I cannot understand why anybody would want to vent these feelings in such a way. Why on earth would you ever, EVER, hurt anybody, just because you can’t deal with the world.

Shout, Curse, Seek help, Punch a wall, Whatever, but do not take it out on random innocent people, who have nothing to do with it.

Please people, don’t hurt other people … I just cannot understand…

Wakaranai….