Well, a few days ago I went to Shizuoka! Shizuoka is about 180 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.
We went by Shinkansen (the bullet train). Let me tell you... the trip took 1 hour and 30 minutes... with several stops.... so about 1 hour of travel time... 180 kilometers an hour.
It was pretty neat :) It takes longer to get from Chiba to Tokyo on a regular train....
Anyways, Shizuoka is just south west of world famous Mt. Fuji! Therefore, the train runs right beside Mt. Fuji. Mt. Fuji is 3770 meters high. It's interesting because the city beside Mt. Fuji, Shin-Fuji, is at sea level. So yes, there are NO mountains or even hills in front of a 3770 meter high mountain and the ocean, which makes Mt. Fuji look HUGE. HOWEVER! As I seem to not have any sort of luck with seeing Mt. Fuji (still haven't seen it from Tokyo... which apparently is rare), it was raining when traveling to Shizuoka. So I did not see anything except a VERY faint outline of it's bottom third.
When we arrived in Shizuoka, we were greeted by cloudy weather, luckily not rain... We headed off to a place called 日本平 (Japan Flat). It's a little mountain in the middle of Shizuoka City that was supposed to have a wonderful view of Mt. Fuji, and in summer, have many pretty plants, flowers, tea farms, mandarin orange farms, rose flowers, and more. Of course, it was very cloudy, 6 degrees with a brutal wind from the ocean that made it seem pretty close to freezing or colder. So we couldn't see Mt. Fuji... cept a few short moments where we saw a faint outline of the lower parts of it. We had a great view of Shizuoka though, and a great view of the Ocean, so not all hope was lost :).
After just wandering around for a while longer, we headed back to Shizuoka Station (静岡駅) (btw, if any of you ever go to Japan... for no matter how long, a VERY useful kanji to know is 'station': 駅。 おぼえて (Remember it) :) ). We went to somewhere in the station... oddly enough I don't remember where... ah! Wait, we went to a bagel cafe! Very good teriyaki chicken on a blueberry bagel there...
After that, we decided there was nothing left to do as it was too late, so we headed to our hotel. It was POURING. Luckily, I happen to have a wonderful jacket that is water proof :) Just my feet got wet. We arrived at our hotel and slept until 9 the next morning.
We got up, had a small breakfast, left, and found another cafe to have more breakfast in. We also read the 'what to do in shizuoka' booklet we got while there. We ended up wanting to go to a park that used to be the site of an ancient castle that has since been destroyed. The park is still there though.
The park was nice, and the day was WONDERFUL. The weather was great, 18 degrees or more I would guess. Perfectly clear, and sunny. After the park we headed off to a buddhist temple. The temple was not the reason for going there though. The temple is built at the base of a mountain. (this is still in the middle of Shizuoka City). However, there are paths heading up the mountain that lead to a shrine eventually. There is a wonderful view of Shizuoka and the surrounding area there. I got many pictures, that can be viewed here .
Sadly, there were clouds starting to come in from the north, that hid Mt. Fuji for my pictures... Luckily, at least I was able to see Mt. Fuji a few times that day.
We decided to take an experimental way down the mountain down a side trail off the back of the mountain. It took quite some time to get back to the station.... (2 or so hours) hehe. Oh well, 'twas a nice walk. We grabbed a couple of bento boxes and hit the Shinkansen back for Tokyo once again.
Christmas has also come and gone now for me. I spent the day in Tokyo, mostly looking for new headphones and a case for my new ipod nano video (green) that I got from my parents ;). I did find some stuff, and got it. Had dinner with Asako at a realllly neat restaurant (looked very ancient-like), and went home. Not too much happened other than that :P I did go to Asako's parents place on the 24th and had a very nice evening there though. I FINALLY got pictures of them there... but not on my camera, so I'm just waiting for them to send me the pictures, and they will be here :).
I've also added two extra pictures to the Chiba album:
A christmas one
A funny one
Merry Christmas all :)
Showing posts with label japan date weekday walking tokyo ueno asakusa temple buddhist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label japan date weekday walking tokyo ueno asakusa temple buddhist. Show all posts
2007/12/26
2007/11/16
A nice, but Long Day of Walking!
Well, this blog entry is talking about what happened on November 14th (２００７年１１月 14日（水）) (For the person interested... and for the people that can see Japanese fonts, notice the （水）after the date. That is the day of the week without the rest of the Kanji. (sui for Wednesday). They almost always have day of the week in brackets at the end of a date in TV or advertisements, etc...)
Also, please note there there is one more blog, one entry below this one that you might not have read yet. It was written today as well.
Ok! I had 2.5 hours of sleep.... Thats how I started that day.... Joy...
However, I got sleep in a park in Tokyo... so its ok. (It's ok, its normal for people to sleep in the park, not just homeless people, but buisness people too. If you're tired, you rest :) ) However, that was only an hour or so. So when I was finished (rudely awakened by having to go to washroom...) it was 11時30分 (11:30 AM). I began my usual wandering. This time, I had a location to get to though; The last two major wards of Tokyo, Ueno and Asakusa. I eventually got there... quite hungry, and keeping an eye out for a place to eat. I didn't want to spend lots of money that day though, so I decided to find a seven eleven (yes, they are EVERYWHERE here). Seven 11's have good food in Japan :D.
While looking, I took my first picture of Ueno, you can find the Ueno pics here in the Tokyo album, they and the Asakusa ones are at the top of the list of pictures.
Ueno was neat, first off, I walked through a set of streets that were shopping streets. They were walking streets, as many are here (no major roads, you just walk, no sidewalks, but cars are allowed to still go through). There were many different kinds of shops... like... every kind, and there were thousands of them. It was quite neat. There were also HUNDREDS of Pachinko Slot buildings (a kind of slot machine gambling). Pachinko is very popular here in Japan... But in this part of Ueno.. it was ridiculous.
It took me 30 minutes or so to find a 7 11. Which is odd in Japan... That was a long time. I got my lunch, and began walking to find a place to eat.
I found it right away. Ueno Park. What a beautiful place. You can see it in the pics. It reminded me of Stanley Park in a way. Meaning the Ducks, Pidgins, crows, etc... were VERY friendly, and there was thousands of them. The park had a lake in the center of it, and you could rend row boats for a romantic float on the lake. Of course, since I was alone... I didn't go on it... There was also strange and large plants in the water. A whole FIELD of them across the whole lake. You can see that in the pictures. I also found turtles! Wild ones! I've never seen wild ones before in my life... There were warning signs around warning of Snap Jaw turtles (at least I assume thats what it was translated as). They said don't go near them, because they bite HARD. But I didn't see one :(.
It was just after I left the park when I saw it... Something I didn't expect to see there. A sign saying (cept in Japanese, which I read with no help! Woot because of the Kanji), "Left 2 kilometers to Tokyo University". (Here's the Japanese: 東京大学 左2キロ )
Why is this interesting? Because Tokyo University, or Toudai as some say here (It's Todai because of how you say it in Japanese; Toukyou Daigaku), was one of the major object in the first manga (a kind of comic story, but for any age, VERY popular in Japan) that I read, Love Hina. Love Hina was one of the things that got me interested in Japan. They had pictures (drawn of course) of Toudai in the manga, and I was now determined to find that exact same building they used in the manga. It took me about 2 hours to find Toudai... cause I took a wrong turn. Oops, but oh well, cause when I do that I always find neat things in backstreets. By the way, Ueno also has HUNDREDS of smaller temples of both Shintou and Buddhist religion. That was neat.
Toudai was neat. I did find it. And its kind of small compared to say... UBC. But it has old style buildings in it... Kinda made me feel like I was walking around Hogwarts in Harry Potter... Anyways, here is the picture I went there for :) right here
Eventually I made it to my next destination, Asakusa. Asakusa has many old Edo age (1600's to 1900) buildings and shops. Mostly shops though (like, the stuff in them was old), because of various earthquakes and fires over time destroyed everything. Still, Asakusa has many neat shops. There was also a Buddhist Temple that is still being run by a direct family member to the person who founded it in the 1600's. There is also the famous temple that all the tourist go see. Here is a video of that temple:
It was neat. Especially the strip mall just outside of it, which had EVERYTHING you could imagine for souvenirs... Lucky I'm not the kind of person that buys everything I see :).
I then walked.... back to Akihabara.....
Thats about 3 kilometers...
I had already been walking from 11:30 AM to 4:30 PM straight....
I was tired after that walk...
It only took me about an hour though.
Ya, so that was that day! I walked for 7 hours total that day... I'm getting in good shape.... cause the next day I walked even more... I'll blog about that soon as well.
Also, please note there there is one more blog, one entry below this one that you might not have read yet. It was written today as well.
Ok! I had 2.5 hours of sleep.... Thats how I started that day.... Joy...
However, I got sleep in a park in Tokyo... so its ok. (It's ok, its normal for people to sleep in the park, not just homeless people, but buisness people too. If you're tired, you rest :) ) However, that was only an hour or so. So when I was finished (rudely awakened by having to go to washroom...) it was 11時30分 (11:30 AM). I began my usual wandering. This time, I had a location to get to though; The last two major wards of Tokyo, Ueno and Asakusa. I eventually got there... quite hungry, and keeping an eye out for a place to eat. I didn't want to spend lots of money that day though, so I decided to find a seven eleven (yes, they are EVERYWHERE here). Seven 11's have good food in Japan :D.
While looking, I took my first picture of Ueno, you can find the Ueno pics here in the Tokyo album, they and the Asakusa ones are at the top of the list of pictures.
Ueno was neat, first off, I walked through a set of streets that were shopping streets. They were walking streets, as many are here (no major roads, you just walk, no sidewalks, but cars are allowed to still go through). There were many different kinds of shops... like... every kind, and there were thousands of them. It was quite neat. There were also HUNDREDS of Pachinko Slot buildings (a kind of slot machine gambling). Pachinko is very popular here in Japan... But in this part of Ueno.. it was ridiculous.
It took me 30 minutes or so to find a 7 11. Which is odd in Japan... That was a long time. I got my lunch, and began walking to find a place to eat.
I found it right away. Ueno Park. What a beautiful place. You can see it in the pics. It reminded me of Stanley Park in a way. Meaning the Ducks, Pidgins, crows, etc... were VERY friendly, and there was thousands of them. The park had a lake in the center of it, and you could rend row boats for a romantic float on the lake. Of course, since I was alone... I didn't go on it... There was also strange and large plants in the water. A whole FIELD of them across the whole lake. You can see that in the pictures. I also found turtles! Wild ones! I've never seen wild ones before in my life... There were warning signs around warning of Snap Jaw turtles (at least I assume thats what it was translated as). They said don't go near them, because they bite HARD. But I didn't see one :(.
It was just after I left the park when I saw it... Something I didn't expect to see there. A sign saying (cept in Japanese, which I read with no help! Woot because of the Kanji), "Left 2 kilometers to Tokyo University". (Here's the Japanese: 東京大学 左2キロ )
Why is this interesting? Because Tokyo University, or Toudai as some say here (It's Todai because of how you say it in Japanese; Toukyou Daigaku), was one of the major object in the first manga (a kind of comic story, but for any age, VERY popular in Japan) that I read, Love Hina. Love Hina was one of the things that got me interested in Japan. They had pictures (drawn of course) of Toudai in the manga, and I was now determined to find that exact same building they used in the manga. It took me about 2 hours to find Toudai... cause I took a wrong turn. Oops, but oh well, cause when I do that I always find neat things in backstreets. By the way, Ueno also has HUNDREDS of smaller temples of both Shintou and Buddhist religion. That was neat.
Toudai was neat. I did find it. And its kind of small compared to say... UBC. But it has old style buildings in it... Kinda made me feel like I was walking around Hogwarts in Harry Potter... Anyways, here is the picture I went there for :) right here
Eventually I made it to my next destination, Asakusa. Asakusa has many old Edo age (1600's to 1900) buildings and shops. Mostly shops though (like, the stuff in them was old), because of various earthquakes and fires over time destroyed everything. Still, Asakusa has many neat shops. There was also a Buddhist Temple that is still being run by a direct family member to the person who founded it in the 1600's. There is also the famous temple that all the tourist go see. Here is a video of that temple:
It was neat. Especially the strip mall just outside of it, which had EVERYTHING you could imagine for souvenirs... Lucky I'm not the kind of person that buys everything I see :).
I then walked.... back to Akihabara.....
Thats about 3 kilometers...
I had already been walking from 11:30 AM to 4:30 PM straight....
I was tired after that walk...
It only took me about an hour though.
Ya, so that was that day! I walked for 7 hours total that day... I'm getting in good shape.... cause the next day I walked even more... I'll blog about that soon as well.
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