New Years in Tokyo :)

Hello :)

I've been in Busan now for 4 months and I've settled into my new school... mostly. My co-workers are very nice and friendly, which is great. My boss... is a boss and we don't always see eye-to-eye, but oh well :)  This academy is much smaller than where I was working in Daegu and it only opened a month before I started working there. My boss is still trying to figure it all out and, unfortunately, it makes working with her difficult at times. Haha.

Anyways, on to the travelling news!!

I had the first week of January off so I started the new year off in Japan!  A university friend is currently teaching near(ish) Sapporo and also had the time off, so he met me in Tokyo and travelled with me to Kyoto and Ossaka. It was absolutely amazing to travel with someone who is competent with the language and who knows where to go and how to get there!

We spent the first weekend in Tokyo... well, kinda. Due to lack of planning, we couldn't find a place to stay IN Tokyo that wasn't going to break the bank, so we ended up in a hotel in Chiba, a suburb of Tokyo, connected by the JR train. I'm not a big city person, so this suited me quite well and our strange location actually resulted in some pretty cool adventures!

Thanks to the creepy stalker-ish side of facebook, a guy Corey had met a few years earlier through a language exchange program, was notified that we were in the neighbourhood and he graciously opened his house to us for a New Years Eve celebration! Before heading to his house, Corey took me to a shrine in Tokyo where we sampled some Japanese street food and observed the beginning of the New Year's rush. There was a line of people leading up to the main shrine even though it was early evening and already dark out. New Years is a big deal in Japan and everyone spends New Year's day with their families, going to a shrine to give the first offering of the season and to get their New Year's fortune told! I guess the New Year's Eve crowd was squeezing in one last offering before the year ended.

After the shrine visit, we headed to Corey's friend's house. We were greeted warmly and were soon joined by another family and a guy from the States. They're an artsy group and spirits were high :) Half of it was in Japanese, so I can't say what exactly we talked about, but apparently I'm very good at nodding and smiling and pretending I understand. Haha. It's a survival skill when you live in a foreign country with a foreign language.  The other option is just looking lost and confused all of the time and that's simply no fun.

We stayed the night at their house and spent most of the next day with them as well. They dressed me up in a fancy kimono and took us to a local shrine.  The shrine was set back in the woods and had old stairs leading up to it. At the bottom of the stairs, there were food trucks set up with delicious food and warm drinks. We spent most of the afternoon there and were invited back to their house for dinner. We had Odang, a staple Japanese food, and rice cake soup, traditionally eaten to celebrate the new year. We left our gracious hosts and went back to our hotel to catch up on our sleep.

The next day we met some other friends in Odaiba, an area of Tokyo with a large shopping Mall and a miniature statue of liberty. We stumbled across a car dealership where you could test drive cars... so we took spin in a fancy green Prius.

That evening, we took the JR train to Kyoto. We stayed at a hostel in Gojo, which is one subway stop away from Kyoto station. There was a lot to see in Kyoto. It's an older city with well-preserved historical sites.  Most of Japan is very modern and cutting edge, but Kyoto prides itself in its traditions and historical significance. To keep the traditional feeling alive in the city, women dressed in kimonos are given discounts at restaurants... Seems like a good reason to get dressed up :)

We spent five nights in Kyoto and I think we only scratched the surface of what the city had to offer. We visited Kiomisudera Temple, Fushiminari Shrines, Kinkakuji (Gold Pavilion), Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion), Heian Shrine, and the Imperial Palace.  All were quite beautiful and I'm sure they're even more breathtaking in the spring when the trees are green and the flowers are blooming. Even with a winter backdrop, these places were beautiful.

We also went to Arayashiama, which is a natural area just outside of the city. Normally, there's a tourist train that takes you through the area but it wasn't running when we visited. Arayashiama has a large bamboo forest, which we walked though and a small shrine with a zen garden.

While we were near Heian shrine, we decided to walk around the surrounding area and found bonsai convention. You had to buy tickets to get in, so we just peeked in the door and were about to leave when a lady approached us and handed us 2 tickets... so we went to a bonsai convention! I learned that the smaller the bonsai, the more expensive it is. It was an interesting and unexpected experience but quite enjoyable... and random. Haha. Living abroad certainly teaches you to 'just go with it'. 

We also did an evening tour through Gion, a Geisha district at the heart of Kyoto, not far from where we were staying. It was interesting to learn about the Geisha culture. Though not as popular is it was in the years talked about in  'A Memoirs of a Geisha' (which i read while in Japan), there are still Tea Houses where Geisha perform and entertain their guests (by invite only). Apparently it's rare to see a Geisha in the area, since they value their own privacy and the privacy of their guests. 

We spent our last 2 days in Osaka. We spent an afternoon at Universal Studios Japan, where we went on some cool rides and visit Hogwarts :) The second day, we went to Osaka castle and met a group of Corey's friends in the evening.


All-in-all a great trip :) For anyone looking to travel in Japan, a word of caution... It's expensive! Food, transportation, hostels. Killer on the bank account. I spent just under 1.5 thousand CAD during my 8 days there. In most other parts of Asia, a third of that would be more than enough for a week of traveling. Oh well. Money well spent :)