Osaka, Nara & Kyoto
We had a wonderful time in Japan. The weather was perfect, vacation weather, not too hot and no rain. Margaret and I met up at the Kansai International Airport without any problem despite her less fortunate "all wet" luggage due to the heavy rain in Hong Kong. The HKIA ground crew must have left the bags out in the rain!!!
The hotel was much better than expected (most average price hotel rooms in Japan are like shoe boxes), it was quite spacious. Since it was kind of a business hotel, it had a Japanese style sitting area and even a small yet functional kitchen. However, like most hotel rooms, the bathroom was a little bit small. Nonetheless, it was still a great deal. The late dinner that night was at a nearby Japanese "dine/wine" restaurant recommended by a friend of mine. It was so good that we went back there on our very last night of the trip.
We were going to spend two days in Osaka, but it turned out to be just like any other big boring Japanese city after one day. We found Nara in the travel book we had, Nara being one of the old cities must be better than Osaka! Nara didn't let us down, it has many old historical sites (mostly temples) situated in the huge Nara Park. In addition to the historical site, the park is also famous for the deers that you can find everywhere strolling freely.
Nara was good, Kyoto was even better! Many of the historical sites have already been enlisted as World Heritage and Cultural Sites. Two days were just enough for us to visit the more famous places. We even had our highlight of the trip while we were at the "Old Streets" of Kyoto. While Margaret and I were busy at what we were interesting in (separately!), we kind of got separated! With so many small side streets, shops and things to side track you, I spent a good half an hour trying to look for her without any success. Luckily we have already talked about our next destination and knowing her I knew she would go there to meet me as well. When I got to the next site, she had only arrived there 5 minutes earlier because she couldn't find the place. It was "interesting" to have lost your wife in a foreign land which made this a "foreign" affair, but luckily this international incident was settled satisfactorily to both parties …
On the very last night in Osaka while looking for some stufff for my freiend, we found this huuuuuuuuge electronic shop with 7 floors near our hotel. It has so many "toys" all laid out with electrical power for you to play around. Too bad we only had one hour left before the closing time else we could have easily spent several hours in that place trying out all the different gadgets. To round up our vacation, for our last dinner of the trip, we went back to the same restaurant that we ate on the very first night to try some other dishes that we didn't have a big enough stomach for at the time.
The next day was an early bird as she had a 10am flight to HK and an 11am flight to Taipei myself. She went home to Megan and I dived back to work in the afternoon. It was our first experience of traveling to and out of our holiday destination separately which was quite interesting. This holiday certainly has to be put onto our "Good Holiday" list.
P.S. You can catch some of the photos we took through the "My Photo Album" link on the right or the flickr link.
posted by Victor @ 1:33 AM
3 Comments:
The photos are really clear! Did you take them using your new digital SLR?
You seem to like Japan very much... going there again and again!
I'd be lost once I get off the plane in Japan, and I heard that Japanese people don't understand English.
They were all taken with the DSLR. I took so many pictures in that few days that my 1GB card just refused to store anymore so I had to sacrifice some to make room for others. You are just seeing a small fraction of the pictures I took over this trip.
Just starting to get the hang of it. There is still a long way to go with that camera in taking good pictures. It is very difficult to get the lighting and colours right.
Margaret and I have pretty much been to most major cities in SE Asia and now Japan. There is only one big area in Asia that I have not visited much - China. There are many places in China that I wish to see but for some reasons we never ended up going there.
Getting around in Japan is actually very easy. The public transportation system in most cities are very convenient. Yes, they don't speak much English but we never had much trouble getting the ideas acrossed.
Glad to know that you had a great holiday!
The "lost your wife in a foreign land" incident was funny! :)
Cheers,
Sue
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