Tokyo - the view from our Hotel.
Gundam Front, Tokyo. A whole museum/theme park for the Mobile Suit Gundam anime. This is my husbands favourite
Studio Ghibli Museum, Tokyo. If you ever watched a Ghibli movie you will love this place! This is the robot from Luputa: Castle in the Sky.
This is the park just the other side of Ghibli - the cherry blossoms were the best here!
Tokyo Tower at night! This was the best time to go
Hakone, Mt Fuji. Hakone is the closest place you can go without actually climbling it. It isn't a hard climb but it wasn't the right season when we went. Hakone is also the setting for Neon Genesis Evangelions "Tokyo-3" for the anime nerds! We went on a boat ride across one of the crater lakes.
Philosopher's Walk, Kyoto. The route is so-named because the influential 20th-century Japanese philosopher and Kyoto University professor Nishida Kitaro is thought to have used it for daily meditation. It goes from one buddist temple to another. It was in full bloom when we went.
Fushimi Inari Taisha, Inari. This is the shrine to the fox god and also to thousands of red Tori gates. Tori gates make the path to a sacred place (in Japan they lead to Buddist and Shinto temples.) The thousands of red gates all lined up was really impressive! Almost like an optical illusion.
Tōdai-ji, Nara. Tōdai-ji is home to the worlds largest brass buddah (many places claim to different variants of largest buddahs it seems!) and is home to some very tame/feral deer! They are very used to being fed so as soon as you pay your 200Y for the biccies...watch out! (we also dubbed it the "Margaret River of Japan" as it had a very small tourist town feel).
Lattern path way to a shrine - abit different to the Tori gates of other placees!
Universal Studios, Osaka. The only reason we went was because they had a "cool Japan" exhibition on while we were there. It had special anime rides like the Neon Genesis Evangelion 4D ride and the Attack on Titan display! I also met hello kitty and it was the bast day of my life...
Himeji Castle, Himeji-Jo. This is the last "real" castle in Japan as the rest are all rebuilds from after the war or burnt down in recent history. Himeji was the only one that hasn't been fully destroyed but has been renovated recently using traditional materials and tools. This was one of my favourite places
Iwakuni, Japan. This where we stayed with some wow friends for a week! They are a couple and the husband is a US Marine so we got to stay on the base there. It was a really unique experience!
Miyajima Island, Miyajima. This is the island with the UNESCO world heritage shrine and the giant Tori gates in the sea. Theres also deer here but not as feral as in Nara!
Ōkunoshima Island or Rabbit Island. This was a really interesting place. They made Mustard Gas here for WW2 and tested it on the rabbits (not so nice) but when they left the factory they also left the rabbits here and now its like a rabbit sanctuary! They are everywhere!
Battleship Yamato Museum. This was a really interesting place and probably wouldn't of gone here with our friends. It was the biggest battleship during WW2 and was built because the Japanese were basically scared of the US naval force. There was lots of artifacts from the ship (which now lies in half on the sea bed by Okinawa Island after its last "suicide" mission) but i learnt about manned torpedoes which basically sent 100 sailors to their deaths 0.0. Beside the muesum was a Japanese Submarine you could go in and explore. Here's my husband driving it
Tokyo again! Back to Tokyo for a night before our flight home and we had to visit the newest tourism ambassador Godzila! This was just put up before we left - ROAR!
