Konnichiwa...
We were in Japan the first week of April and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. They say the Hamani was a bit early this year due to an unusually warm weather. We were lucky to be able to enjoy the festivity with the locals during our visit. We went to Ueno Park to witness the Japanese enjoyed picnics under rows and rows of cherry trees in full bloom.
We tried the world famous subway in Tokyo.
At first, it was a bit intimidated, but by the second time, we’re the
pros. We mingled with the locals,
shoulders to shoulders on their fast, reliable, crowded, and extremely clean
subways.
We noticed that the Japanese are obsessed with vending machines. Vending machines spitting our soft drink, candy, chip, condom…etc you name it and they have it in the vending machine….:) They even have vending machine for you to order your food in the restaurant. We went into one restaurant, sat down, and expected a waitress to come over to take our order. We soon found out that we needed to go to the machine in the corner of the restaurant to choose the dish that we wanted, to feed the money into the money slot, and to pay for it then the machine would spit out the tickets. You then handed the tickets to the waitress and that’s how she knew what you wanted…what a novel idea. Why can’t fast food chains in the US do the same…heheheh.
We rode the bullet train from a station near Nara to Kyoto. As our train was sitting on the platform, you can feel the train shake violently for a second as another bullet train zipped by. Quite an experience.
We went to Gion corner in Kyoto on the third day as we had some free time on our own. This is the only place that they’re still practicing the art of Geisha in the country. We went to see the shows called Miyako Dori. It’s only performed from April 1-30 of this year. The show with Geiko and Maiko dressed in various elaborated costumes and acted according to some story line in different scenes of the four seasons. I can only vaguely guess the story line, but it inspired me to go home and read up more on the story line. We enjoyed the fabulous traditional Japanese lunch after the show at the near by restaurant in the area. We had bento box lunch, hot tofu soup, sasimi, pickled cabbage, tempura shrimps, sake, etc.
Overall, despite a month long trip, it was quite short for us and that we thoroughly enjoyed the trip. We experienced the vast contrast from the poor section of the floating village near Tonlesap Lake in Cambodia to the highly sophisticated, extremely clean Kyoto and its polite people. It was a perfect vacation for us.
Tokyo
Kyoto
