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Public Zone 公開區 => Travelogues 遊記相薄 => Topic started by: hangchoi on 25 November 2014, 12:13:43
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Spent a few days in Japan, touring around Kansai area. We took a midnight flight to Kansai Airport and arrived in the early morning. The first stop was the farther city Shirahama (白浜). This is a famous city known for its hotspring and seafood, but it took us two hours or so railway time.
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Hotels there usually have hotspring built inside. The room rate offers you a night for stay plus dinner and breakfast, so called 一泊兩食. We picked a hotel close to the coast as I know that they have quite a good hotspring. Below are the pictures of the hotel.
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My room. We got a room with built-in outdoor bath on the balcony. Room is quite big and user friendly, which means I can walk into the shower area to clean myself and there is another door from shower area to the outdoor wooden bathtub. Beds and settings are Japanese style. comfortable and decent.
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After we dropped our bags, we went to walk around the city. It is a small city with nice beach and some sight-seeing spots. The famous one for photography is the Engetsuto Island (円月島). People used to take photo during sunset and tried to put the sun in the hole of the island, but I found it impossible at the time I visited.
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They have a big market with lots of seafood. We saw the whole process of cutting a tuna......
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Hotsping......Our hotel has a good variety of hotsping. Public baths for male and female separately, a mixed bath for both sex together (with their special clothing of course) and 3 private bath house. It turned out that we went to all 3 private bath houses. We went to the first one without any camera device so we only took pictures of two of the private bath houses. All 3 house have different temperature and furnishes, all facing the pacific ocean.
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Day 2, we went to Kyoto. Kyoto was the main theme of our visit this time. We were there in the afternoon after 3 hour railway. We left our bags at the station and went to our first spot, Sagano Torokko Train. This is a special small train touring around Arashiyama (嵐山) and Hozu River (保津峽). We went late and did not make any reservation for the ticket, but fortunately we got tickets for the fifth cart finally (which is a open cart without window).
We only got one ticket with seat number and another ticket was a standing ticket, which was only available in the fifth cart. I found that the standing ticket was even nicer as I can see the view of both sides and took pictures.
The third picture was the Hozu River, I thought of Tairuko (太魯閣) in Taiwan.
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Journey for the train is about 30 minutes. We spent the rest of the day walking around Arashiyama. Tenryu-ji Temple (天龍寺) is close to the train station, by an about 10 minute walk. This is a world culture heritage, but by saying that is somehow meaningless, there are a lot of culture heritage in Kyoto.....
We picked this time to visit because it is the time to see the colour changing of maple leaf.......
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There are a number of different temples around too......
After the visit of Tenryu-ji, we walked down to Togetsu-kyo bridge (渡月橋)
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We did not book a hotel to stay as we found this may be a good experience to live in some guesthouses in Kyoto. We picked Waraku (和樂庵). This guesthouse is over 100 years old and it was highly rated by Taiwanese. It is a small house where people will share a room with different people, they have to share the same toilet and bathroom as well. They only have four private rooms and we made the reservation a few month ago. Hence we need not to sleep with others in the same room. The room is decent and nice, quite classic.
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Third day, we went to another old capital of Japan, Nara (奈良). When people go to Nara, they usually only go to Nara Park. However, our first spot was the Nara Palace (平城宮跡). This is the palace of 平城時代. The palace is huge and the construction was imitating Changan (長安). This first picture is the first Taichi Palace (第一次太極殿), which is now the north most building and some picture for the square and the south most building 朱雀門. See, even the names of the buildings are quite chinese. This third picture is the middle gate, midway between Taichi Palace and 朱雀門
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Nara Park. The main feature is that you will see deers walking around the whole park, and there are two "heritage" temples as well......
It seems that the deers learn how to face the camera.....
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Nara Park is another site for seeing maple trees.......
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The two heritage....Todaji Temple (東大寺) and Kasuga Taisha (春日大社)
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In the late afternoon, we left Nara and headed back to Kyoto. Before we arrived at Kyoto, we went to 伏見稻荷大社. This is the place rated by the foreign tourist as the best sight-seeing spot in Japan in 2014. To me, it is like a usual Taishi and the only interesting point is that they use Bird Post (鳥居) to build a path up to the hill.....As the time was in late afternoon, there is not enough light to take pictures for that, except some poor one :-\.
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The last event of that day was a fine dinning at Kitcho (吉兆). This is a restaurant which is said that they never lost 3-star rating. We made the reservation well before. It was their reservation term that you still need to pay if you do not turn up at your reservation time. The reservation process is rather lengthy as you need to fill in a questionnaire to tell them what you do not want to eat so that they can adjust their menu for you.
The main store is at Arashiyama. To suit our schedule we went to their Granvia Kitcho. We got a room for two and they served us really like what we see in movie. Their food is fresh and nice, setting is beautiful. The only comment is that their oral english takes time for you to understand.
We took pictures of our foods one by one..... ;D
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More dishes....
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Food, Food, Food....
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More...
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Next day morning we went to Rokuon-ji Temple (鹿苑寺), a more famous name of this is Kinkaku (金閣寺) or "The Golden Pavilion". By this name we must go to see its golden temple.....The temple was built in the era of shogun in 足利時代 or 室町幕府. There is a washing basin of 足利義政....
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In this trip, we booked two restaurants for lunch/dinner. Other than Kitcho, we went to 八阪圓堂 to have tempura lunch. We specifically asked for bar seat but it turned out that nothing special to see, as they have a cover to block any spitting of oil and you cannot see the chef making the food. Their food is yummy, fresh and nice. We were attracted by their fish tempura......
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Yummy tempura....the corn is surprisingly good......
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More tempura.....fresh and crispy...see the fish...it looks like it is still alive
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They made them one by one so that each one is really hot, which gave us time to take photo.....
Btw, they have a sommerlier on site so you may get some nice wine too...
The last one is grapefruit sherbet. I think it is the season of grapefruit in Kansai, we met a number of dishes using grapefruit, both in Kitcho and here
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Next stop was Kyoto Imperial Garden...A place for seeing sakura or maple....Once it was the palace of the King of Japan and now it was a guesthouse for government use.
The area is huge with thick wall but the moat is rather narrow......some the later visited Nijojo is like a palace more.....
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It is a nice place to see maple tree changing colour.....in the afternoon, my wife went here to take pictures with wafuku
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At night, we went to Kiyomizu-Dera Temple (清水寺) to see the night scene of maple tree.....With the lighting, the view is totally different from that of the day.
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The night, the main temple and the maple tree with light make up a nice picture.
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Now comes to the last day in Kyoto. In the morning we went to Nijojo Castle (二夈城), a castle witnessing the rise and fall of Tokugawa era (德川幕府). As I mentioned before, it looks like a real palace, deep and wide moat, decent structure with functional offices for government official. It is sad that some spots did not allow photograph......
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The most important building in Nijojo is Ninomaru Palace (二之丸御殿), which was the government headquarter at that time. No photograph is allowed inside and you need to take off your shoes to enter. That was the place where the end of shogun happened (大政奉還)
Even the planter area around it was nice.....
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Japanese Castle usually has two moats. The inner part of the castle was the living place of Shogun, Honmaru Palace (本丸御殿)
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After Nijojo, we took a 10 minute walk to see a stone plate, Honno-ji place (本能寺跡). There is a Honno-ji temple is Kyoto but the existing one was a new one. This plate marked the original location of Honno-ji where the incident of Honno-ji (本能寺之變). There has nothing special to see indeed. My wife asked why I en-routed here and I said that I came to pay my tribute to Oda Nobunaga(織田信長).....
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We would go to Kobe that night and before that we still have a few hours hanging around in Kyoto. We decided to have a short hike at Arashiyama area from Daikakuji Temple (大覺寺) back to Tenryuji-Temple. It took us about an hour or so walking......
The route was suggested by Japan Tourism Board and it went through around different temple and scenery....a nice walk indeed.....
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This is a path of soul cleaning....actually.......
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The last part of the hiking route is to pass through a bamboo path....which should be quiet and comfortable....but it turned out that the path is full of people, Chinese especially...and they are talking with Cantonese....Hongkongers are full on the path...... :-X
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We arrived at Kobe in the evening. Kobe beef is one of the cuisine that we must go for......My wife's Japanese friends recommended us to a place which offered nice food. It was a local shop with friendly chef, and customers. Even those customers we met asked us why we went to this shop......
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Yummy food.....
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I like Kobe Beef...... ;D
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On the day before we left Japan, we were in Osaka. Osaka Castle was a must see place to me. I went to this castle 17 years ago. With more understanding on the Japanese history, this time I can have a deeper study of this castle.
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The main building was rebuild in 1960s, by imitating the second Osaka castle built by Tokugawa. The one built by Toyotomi Hedeyoshi (豐臣秀吉)was demolished. This first picture was the water well that still existed in the first castle.
The main building was made into a museum now, with modernized internal fabric. Not a trace of history left. The theme of exhibit is about the change of regime from Toyotomi to Tokugawa and the two main battles about it, i.e. Winter war (冬之陣) and Summer war (夏之陣)
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The seventh floor of the main building is the viewing deck, you can see the view of the osaka city.....
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We spent the rest of the day for shopping and re-visited a Ramen stall we were there 17 years ago. The Ramen stall is Golden Dragon and their ramen is still yummy......
That concludes my trip to Kansai.....
After all, I found that I like Kansai more than Tokyo, with good food, wonderful hotspring and beautiful Kyoto and Nara with full of history. I think I will visit this place again in near future......
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Very nice red leaf. :)
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Very nice red leaf. :)
I like the tree having partly red and partly green/brown, but my wife wants to see all red. ;)
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It just happened that my friend's son got an intern in Osaka a few months ago and I had to arrange my company's vacation in CNY time. Hence, we decided to go to Osaka again to visit him and for our company's trip.
It is ok to me to go to Osaka again after my visit just 4 months ago because the trip was rather short and there were still some places that I wanted to go. We arrived at Osaka in the afternoon and we spent the evening shopping. I did not shop around Namba area last time except those department stores. This was a good opportunity to pay a visit.
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As requested by my colleague, we went to Universal Studio on the second day. Harry Porter was the only spot built in there. The ride was quite fun and interesting but you need to make advance booking for the visiting time.
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Other than Harry Port, Spideman is another good ride to take.
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Some other pictures in Universal Studio......
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The second day we went to Arima (有馬). This is an ancient town close to Kobe but you can get there by an hour bus at Osaka Train station. This town is well known of its Onsen (溫泉). Once the concubine of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豐臣秀吉) lived there and made this town famous. The third picture is a statue of her. Her name is Ne Ne.
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The town was well preserved. You can see the old house in Edo era.
Second picture is the place where Ne Ne lived. Third picture is the well of the origin of the hot spring and the forth one is the modernized area of the town, which is close to the public transport.
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We stay in an Onsen Hotel. The name is 月之館. They have both western style and Japanese style room and we got the latter one. The stay was a half-meal package and the dinner was served in your room.
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Dinner was served in your room. After the dinner, the maid will clear up the table and prepare your bed on Tatami.
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This hotel has a few hot spring baths, both outdoor and indoor. I can't take picture of the indoor bath, so only outdoor one is shown below.
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The next day we went to Kobe for lunch, as it is quite convenient to go to Kobe by train. We had a yummy Kobe beef lunch. ;D
I think the one we tasted in my last trip was better than this one
My observation was that most of the restaurant in Kobe hired some Chinese to serve the Chinese customers. Market-driven employment, huh......
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In the afternoon, we took JR to Uji (宇治) A town of Matcha (抹茶)
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Uji has a long history and one of the keep area for Kyoto defence line. Now it still has beautiful architecture and old temple, world heritage too.
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We went back to Osaka that night and had dinner at a whisky outlet, selling a range of Suntory products. Food was so so tho.
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After the dinner, we went to watch a night light show. They projected the light on the facade of the Osaka City Castle to describe the evolution of the Osaka City. Some LED lighting structures were also built. The show was quite night and beautiful.
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I was a bit doubtful on the show as the facade area of the Castle is not too big, but it turned out that the movie projected was quite clear.
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Do you see the dragon and the word ??
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We had an evening flight on our last day. In that morning, my wife went to have a hair cut and then shopping. My colleagues wanted to visit Kyoto as they had not been there before. Hence we split our group into 3, some went shopping direct, some went to shopping outlet at Rinku Town and I took the rest to Kyoto.
As we did not have much time, in terms of so many spots worth visiting, I took my colleagues to east side of Kyoto, Kiyomizu (清水寺) and then walked to Gion (衹園). The second picture is Yasaka Jinja (八坂神社)
After that we only had little time to visit one more spot close to Kyoto Station, we went to Nishihonganji (西本願寺), which is shown on the third picture. Not much to see actually........unlike the Higashi Honganji (東本願寺) which I will tell more later.
We caught the night flight and were back to HK at almost 1 a.m. That concluded our company trip.
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Even I myself can't believe that I had gone to Kansai area three times within one year. November last year, February this year and last month. It just happened that my wife found a cheap ticket to Kansai and we can squeeze some time to take a break for a week.
This time I went to those areas that I had not been before. I am processing the pictures and will share in here later.
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We did more shopping and hanging around in the recent trip. We arrived Osaka in the afternoon and our schedule for the first day was shopping and hair-cutting. At night, we dined at a restaurant named 燦. They had a series of restaurant in Japan. This one was inside a high rise commercial building, overseeing the night scene. Food was above average, not excellent.
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On the second day, we went to Himeji Castle (姬路城), a castle of over 400 years. This is a good place for seeing maple in autumn and sakura in spring. The structure of the castle is still intact, unlike Osaka city which all of its internal area was renovated. This Castle still keeps the old structure and you need to walk up, or even climb up different floors.
Himeji City is about 1 hour train west from Osaka. The castle is about 2 km away from the JR Himeji station. The castle is huge so you can see it when you are still at the train station.
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This castle shows how the Japanese built a castle with strong defence line. You will see the high rock wall, and a technique to strengthen the castle wall called Oil Wall 油壁
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This inside is dark and old. No shoes was allowed. You need to climb a steep wooden ladder to reach the top floor.
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High keep and old structures. This castle was built next to the original site, i.e. the first keep 600 years ago was just next to it. Now you only see the wasteland there (last picture)
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The moat is wide and deep. The bridge also has over 400 years. This castle is kept much better than that in Osaka, maybe this is not the main target during war. There is a shogun's garden next to the castle but nothing is worth to see at the time we visited. However, I think there should be good for seeing maple and sakura in right time. All I can find was this:
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We headed to Kyoto on the third day. This time I would pick up those spots that I did not visited in my previous trips. This first spot was Path of Philosophy (哲學之道) Well, this is a walking path good for morning exercise, I would say. During winter time the scene should be nice......
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We walked from the south-end northward because the north end of the path leads us to Ginkakuji Temple (銀閣寺). This temple was built by 足利義政, who was the 8th generation of the Shogun at 室町時代. Compared it with Kinkajuji (金閣寺), which was built by the 3rd generation shogun, this temple is more subtle, tho both of them have a similar main building.
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After the visit, we found out that we still have time to go for one more spot. Then we decided to go to 下鴨神社. This temple has even longer history. It was built before Kyoto was named capital. It is also the temple for the god of water. Kyoto is proud of its pure water and they hold ritual in here to seek god's protection for their water. The temple is very large and you need to walk quite a long way to the main temple.
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The forth day was our hiking day. This time we planned to walk Hieizan Enruakuji (比睿山延曆寺). It is located at the northeast of Kyoto. West side of the hill is Kyoto and the east side is Lake Biwa (琵琶湖). We have booked a onsen hotel near Lake Biwa so we would walk up from Kyoto and downhill to our hotel.
The Hieizan is huge with a bunch of different temples and buildings, a world cultural heritage and it was said that here is the origin of Janpanese Buddhism. It composed of 3 different ares: To-do (東塔), Sai-to (西塔) and Yokawa (橫川). If you walk around all these three, that will be about 16km walk. To go up the hill you need to take cable car from Kyoto or tram if you are from Lake Biwa. You will see Kyoto during the ride.
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The temple area is quiet and rather old. It gives me a solemn feeling. The good thing is that not many visitors find this spot, you can walk around freely.
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The entrance washbasins are really nice.
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To-do area.....
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They have a shuttle bus traveling around all three areas. There was a footpath built to connected among them as well. The footpath was not difficult to walk actually, except some huge and steep footsteps.....
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Sai-do area.....
Shaka-do is the important cultural asset, and you will see a lot of budda around Sai-do area.
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We went down to Lake Biwa from the hill. The first picture overviews the Lake Biwa. The tram on the other side looks newer than that in Kyoto side.
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We stayed at Yomotokan Ryokan (湯元館), an onsen hotel at suburb area of Otsu. Room was quite nice and they had a variety of different hot spring bath. This time you need to go to a specific room for dinner/breakfast.
The food was nice and yummy....
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We had never shopped in Kyoto before and we did it on our fifth day. We went back to Kyoto and did some shopping. Before that, we went to Sanjusangen-do (三十三間堂). The most famous spot for seeing is their 1001 statues of Buddhist deity. We were surprised by this totally, it was beautiful yet solemn. Photo taking is prohibited so I cannot show here. But it is worth to pay a visit, even the ticket is comparatively expensive.
The buidlings are quite nice too.
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For shopping, we planned to go to marketplace first. 錦市場 Market Kan has a long history selling a lot of local meat and vegetable. Before we got there, we passed by Higashihoganji (東本願寺) This one is much bigger than the Nishihonganji (西本願寺) . No pictures again, I only took a picture of its door......
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Next day we went back to Osaka. Our first spot was to have sushi in an old shop. This shop has over 100 years history making sushi. The dishes look simple but the sushi was yummy. The shop is located at Keihan station (京橋站)
After our lunch we went to Nakanoshima Park (中之島公園). Here is the city center with lots of government buildings, museum, etc. Surprisingly they are showing the rubber duck.......we miss it.
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The lawn is used to be a place for hanging out. On Sunday, the park will turn into a flea market and some artists will show some of their artifact.......The mermaid is made of sands, you may compare with the people at the back to see the size...
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Our last supper was eaten somewhere near Namba. A Japanese friend of my wife recommended a shop for us. This shop mainly serves cuisine with Sea Bream (鯛魚). Though I do not like fish very much, but the food was very good......What a nice dinner before we were back to HK.....
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Our last supper was eaten somewhere near Namba. A Japanese friend of my wife recommended a shop for us. This shop mainly serves cuisine with Sea Bream (鯛魚). Though I do not like fish very much, but the food was very good......What a nice dinner before we were back to HK.....
Very specialized. They have the time and heart to do specialized things, and the market supports it.
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Very specialized. They have the time and heart to do specialized things, and the market supports it.
Yes, I think it is part of their culture and they people really like to pass their tradition along. There are lot of shops doing specialized things, we once thought of going to a shop for Fugu (河豚) but we dare not to ;D