August

It's been a busy month. Beginning of the month involved being anxious about the coming 2 week vacation and trying to get things planned out. When vacation finally came (Aug 8 - 22) we were off to the Kansai region and surrounding areas.

Getting there
One thing we are always trying to enforce during our stay in Japan is to save money on transportation. The trains are efficient but also very costly. JR, one of Japan's train companies (there are many train companies in japan that operate trains in different regions of Japan) has this discounted ticket package called the "seishun juuhachi kippun" which translates literally to .. teenage 18 ticket. But you don't have to be 18 years old to get it. You can be a granny or grandpa or an internship student like me. There's a better deal for foreigners but we couldn't use that because ... it just doesn' t apply to us since we're staying more than a month. Anyways, I wont get into details but if you buy this ticket, you get a stamp for the day that you're travelling and you can travel anywhere using JR's trains with that one ticket and fixed price. The ticket is valid for 5 days. (doesn't have to be consecutive). It's a good deal but extremely incredibly slow, if you have the money, take the shinkansen. If you have time and want to save money, go ahead and try seishun. Make sure you know your schedule. Check out www.hyperdia.com best website ever if you want to get around anywhere using Japan's train system. After a full day of travelling, we finally arrived in the Kansai region, Nara where we stayed the night at the other co-op's apartment before travelling to Onomichi, our actual first destination!

Onomichi, Hiroshima
Long story short, we biked, we sun-baked, sweated, biked, biked, ferried, public bathed, and bummed on the streets for the first time in our lives. I'm pretty sure there were many more things to do but we were on a tight schedule and needed to head to hiroshima (main city) after staying one night and 2 days.

Nice couple we met on the train during our long journey

Biking in onomichi

 Choseikaku Villa, Setoda Island Japan

 Magnificent place, everything was blinding white. 

Still on our bikes.... it was a long, hot and humid day.

Manga cafe we intended to stay for the night didn't exist, all of the hotels ran out of rooms so we spent the night outside... Japan is a great place for bums imo. I felt totally safe with my bag out there. the only dangerous thing in the night were the mosquitoes. 

Watched the sunrise. I couldnt really fall asleep on the hard picnic table thing that we decided to camp out on.

Famous floating tori gate in Miyajima. Unfortunately I didn't get a very nice pictures. There were millions of tourists taking pics

Hiked up Mount Misen, highest point in Miyajima island 535m. It took us around 1 hr. 

After we got down, the tide came in and the tori gate was "floating" The sunset was beautiful.

We ate oyster okonomiyaki, it is the specialty food of Miyajima, either that or just Hiroshima..

The next day we went to Hiroshima (the main city) and visited the atomic bomb dome and museum which is highly recommended. Made me feel  like there's still so many things I'm not aware of... 

Hiroshima Castle at the end of the day

On the Sealiner to Takamatsu and tokushima, Shikoku!

 Finally arrived in takamatsu!!!

 After checking in our hotel in takamatsu, there was more travelling involved... went to Tokushima for the Awaodori festival!! dance for the fools.

 It was so lively, people everywhere. Festival food ftw. Didn't feel very good after trying the chicken skin dumplings tho...

 Famous dome thing in takamatsu

 Next day we went to the Shikoku Mura where they recreate a whole bunch of structures from all over shikoku island. This wooden bridge was super scary and dangerous

 um random bridge.

 Shikoku is known for their udon. It was pretty good for a reasonable price. You could also order udon in a tub!! it was really neat. But we couldnt finish that so we just ordered small individual bowls.

 Went to Ritsurin Garden afterwards. Beautiful but the pouring rain ruined half of our experience there.

 Next was Nara. Went to see the daibutsu!

 Daibutsu was ginormous!

The deer were everywhere. everywhere! You can buy rice crackers to feed them.

 We stumbled upon the obon festival. Festival for the dead. It was really beautiful. As we walked along the trail, we saw an endless trail of lanterns.

 Daimonji festival in Kyoto. We only saw two of the four (?) characters that lit up on the mountains...

 Kiyomizudera, Kyoto. Magnificent wooden temple. (above)

 Ginkakuji (silver temple) - the only thing silver was the bird thing on the roof. The garden was pretty nice.

 Kyoto, fushimi inari gates.... We went at night and were attacked by mosquitoes!!! Amazing place nonetheless

 Kinkakuji!!! Golden temple in Kyoto. Much more impressive than ginkakuji!

 Arashiyama, Kyoto bamboo forest!!

 Osaka~

 GLICOMAN!! 

There were crabs everywhere.

Osaka Castle, my favourite out of the other ones I've seen.

 Shinkansen back home.. We were exhausted.

The next weekend after our trip, we went on a 2 day trip to Hakone. That's another story.. I'm exhausted. Mann how does time go by so quickly! It's been a while since I've stayed in my dorm for so long. So far my dorm has only been a place I come back to eat dinner and sleep. This weekend will be my lazy weekend. Tomorrow I have to do some grocery shopping for my empty fridge though, and maybe do some preparation work for Friday. I have to conduct experiments to test my system.. can't screw up. I actually have to do some  quick implementation for the practice sessions... I'm not sure how well it would work X_X or whether it would work at all. I have to get to work 1 hr early to get it done tho.. Hopefully a couple of hours will suffice. *Crosses fingers*