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Post by Cosmichorror on May 12, 2009 11:24:13 GMT
Ok, I'm in Kanazawa now after a 6-7 hour long train ride from Aizu.
Aizu is a beautiful city in the mountains with amazing train ride approaches. It's a castle town, built around Tsuruga castle, rebuilt after being destroyed during the early Meiji era. The castle was at one point ruled by the Uesugi clan, headed by Kenshin, one of the famous generals in the Sengoku period of Japan. Due to dificulty getting tickets and rooms and whatnot, we didn't have that much time to look around the city, but we did get to the castle. The only problem with Aizu is that, due to its relative isolation, it has few signs with english on them making things a bit more dificult to get around, but we managed.
Here in Kanazawa it's raining, but the station is quite impressive. More tomorrow.
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Post by skyman on May 12, 2009 20:55:02 GMT
Sounds great! Looking forward to the pictures.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 13, 2009 8:50:01 GMT
In Kyoto, about to take off. More coming.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 13, 2009 11:11:28 GMT
Ok, only looked around Kyoto for a few hours as it started getting dark making picture taking dificult. I'll be looking around more tomorrow.
First impressions: Kyoto is a beautiful city, smaller than Tokyo of course, but seems like a place I would like to live in.
Pictures of Kanazawa, the train ride to Kyoto, and those I took today here are going up in the next little while.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 14, 2009 9:08:15 GMT
Well, we wern't in Kyoto long enough I feel. Lovely city with some lovely inhabitants. It's going up there on places I want to live in Japan.
We're in Matsue right now, just got in from the train. The scenery on the train was quite nice. Just about to head out to check out the city.
On a side note, several of the towns we passed through on the train ride look like they could have been the city in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 16, 2009 9:25:29 GMT
Ok, in Hakata, aka Fukuoka, which is in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan. It's certainly bigger than the last few places we've stayed at... feels more like Sendai or Sapporo.
We visited the Akiyoshi cave today while in Yamaguchi. Very impressive. Took lots of pictures, but I don't know how well they're going to come out. Akiyoshidai and Akiyoshido (Akiyoshi plateu and Akiyoshi cave respectivly) are formed from ancient coral reefs long ago, the plateu surface has numerous limestone rocks jutting up from the grass. It was raining today, but not so much in the cave.
We're here for a night and then we're on to Nagasaki. If I need to tell you what that city is, you must have been living under a rock for the last 60 years.
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Post by Edivad on May 16, 2009 9:34:13 GMT
That cave made from ancient coral sounds very cool, looking forward to the pics. As for Nagasaki, visiting that might be interesting, if a bit...eerie. You don't get to visit a town that got a nuclear bomb on it everyday.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 16, 2009 11:57:25 GMT
Well, from what I understand, Nagasaki, unlike Hiroshima, has really rebounded from its bombing. Here Hiroshima has all the memorials and stuff, Nagasaki only has one, but has a lot of business areas and so on. We're going to get to Hiroshima on our way back up though.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 18, 2009 11:50:55 GMT
Ok, Nagasaki's a cool place, but not temperature wise. Today was our hottest day since we got into Tokyo.
Visited the various peace memorials in Nagasaki today, unfortunatly I had forgotten that both my camera batteries were nearly dead, so I was only able to get a picture of a funny sign.\
We're off to Kagoshima tomorrow, but we're going to head to the penguin aquarium here in Nagasaki first.
Cya in Kagoshima!
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 19, 2009 14:24:06 GMT
Ok, in Kagoshima, probably the most southern city in Japan. There's a volcano here and we're planning on going there in the morning. Don't have much more to say right now. More once stuff has happened.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 22, 2009 14:26:48 GMT
Ok, I'm in Osaka now. Sorry for the lack of picture updates, but there just havn't been that many pictures.
Kobe was nice, but would have been nicer if it didn't rain...
The Kobe Tower is not that big really, but does score marks for its unique shape.
Nearby is the Kobe Maritime Museum. I definatly suggest this place as the Kawasaki Good Times Exhibit is here too, showcasing the Kawasaki corporation's history. There's lots of hands-on stuff too, like a flight simulator that moves, and a jetski game where you stand on the jetski. This was a very fun place. A ticket for both the tower and the museum will run you 800 yen, about $8, a great deal.
We're here in Osaka for a night, then we're back in Tokyo for our last night in Japan. Cya from there!
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 23, 2009 13:46:40 GMT
Ok, back in Tokyo now. We're here for one more night and then fly back tomorrow afternoon.
We didn't have much time in Osaka, and there was only one place I wanted to get to anyway, the Pokemon Center there, basically just a store with Pokemon merchandice. Was rather meh overall.
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Post by Cosmichorror on May 24, 2009 3:49:49 GMT
Ok, current time is ~12:50pm here in japan, we're just about to take off to the airport. When next you hear from me, I shall be in Canada! Woo!
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