Japan
Nara
We’ve spent the last two days in Nara with the Takemoto Family – David’s host family from his school days in Japan as an exchange student. Last night, all the family came to visit and we had a great night, if not a noisy one, as we, David’s host parents, brother, and two sisters and […]
Read More
Dolls in Toritaka
This afternoon we drove to the little town of Toritaka where tradtional dolls are displayed through the month of March. The dolls are bought when a girl is born and displayed each year on the 3rd of March for the Girls Day Festival. The main street of the town is a long narrow street with […]
Read More
Back to Nara
Today we travelled to Nara to spend the week with David’s host family. Our first stop was a little sushi restaurant to lunch.
Read More
Geisha Gazing
Our day started with a trip tp the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, which is one of Kyoto’s stand out attractions. It is built on the side of a hill and is set on lots of high pillars. It was first built in 798 and the current buildings we reconstructed in 1633. It comes from another school of […]
Read More
Back at the BBQ Restaurant
We went back to the BBQ restaurant for dinner tonight. Great Japanese atmosphere and one third of the price of the hotel restaurant. We’re back in our room with a cake for desert that we bought at the little cake shop on the lobby and a cup of drip-filtered coffee from the convenience store up […]
Read More
World Heritage Kyoto
We have really enjoyed being in Kyoto. There is just so much to see and it is very historic. We have been trying to think of all the world heritage sites in Australia and we came up- with a list of about ten.- There are probably more, but the comparison that wre wanted to make […]
Read More
Wonders of Kyoto
Kyoto is probably the most historically cultured city in Japan. It has dozens of temples, many of which are world heritage sites, and some of which date back as far as the eleventh century. Our first site of great note was at Kinkakiju, the gold temple. In the 1220’s it was the residence of a […]
Read More
The Castle, and Other Things at Himeji
We travelled almost 700 km today from Nagasaki to the little town of Himeji. Himeji is famous for having one of the few original castles in Japan – a World Heritage Site. We arrived at about 2.00 pm and found that the best thing to do was to leave our luggage in a coin locker […]
Read More
Japanese Musician
I thought of our friend Bob Whetstone when we came across this piece of street art near one of the team stations in Nagasaki. Every statue I have ever seen of Captain Cook has a seagull sitting on his head, so we thought it very approriate that a musician should have a pigeon on his […]
Read More
Glover Gardens
Glover Gardens were quite surprising. They are located in an area of Nagasaki known as Ishibashi (Stone Bridge) and on a steep hill overlooking the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard. Thomas Glover was a scot who arrived in Japan as a young trader in 1859. The top of the garden is reached by escalator and two […]
Read More
Lunch in the Champon Restaurant
It’s a wet day today and we gave away our original idea of a harbour cruise, and instead decided to visit the Glover Gardens – an English style garden in the area of Nagasaki where early foreigners lived. We’ve stopped at this little local restaurant for lunch. We enjoyed a nice meal with David last […]
Read More
Cherry Blossom Time
We are seeing our first cherry blossoms in the Peace Park in Nagasaki.
Read More