We arrived to Japan, collected our train passed and we took 2 trains. First to Tokyo and then to Kanazawa. Kanazawa isn’t big but it’s nice. It has a small seafood market - really good.
We went to Shirakawa-go. It’s a small village with typical houses from the area. It’s really beautiful and well preserved. One part is a museum where one can enter and see everything, the other one is the village where people live and where normally one can’t enter (because people live in those houses). Highly recommended.
We spend it in Kanazawa, we saw the castle, gardens en Geisha district. Since it was our first city in Japan, it impressed us a lot. After seeing more places, we can say it’s not that impressive :P The city is nice, a bit more cosy and it’s like other big cities we’ve seen after that.
We took a train from Kanazawa to Hiroshima. It’s far but it doesn’t take that much time in those trains. First we want in a fast train (~150 km/h looked fast) but then we changed to an even faster one (~300 km/h). We learned that it’s difficult to find bad food in Japan (until we tried McDonald’s - it’s bad and not recommended, I think it’s worse than in other countries).
We went to Miyajima, it’s an island close to Hiroshima. The ferry is included in train passes. It has a gate (Tori) which is famous because it’s in the water (at least in high tide). It’s a very touristic place with a lot of deer but it’s really beautiful. We did a walk here, the island has a mountain so we climbed it. They warn about snakes and we were lucky enough to see one.
We stayed one night in a Ryokan (traditional guesthouse). Later during the day most of the tourist go back to Hiroshima. So in the evening the island becomes quite empty. The bad part of it, is that not many places are open at that time.
There are some really nice temples on this island (the red one is connected with the gate and everyone goes there, we liked the Buddhist temple in the forest more).
There’s a park and a museum about the atomic bomb. If I remember correctly there are buses (included in the train pass) that go between all major tourist destinations.
We took a train from Hiroshima to Himeji. The city is not that big but it has a famous castle. It seems that they promote it in all articles about Japan because all the tourists go there (and all Japanese are surprised because this castle is not that important for them). It’s big, the style is a bit like the one in Kanazawa. Anyway we’ve seen it on the way and we continued to Osaka.
In Osaka we went to Dotonbori, it’s a suburb where everyone goes out, it’s always full and has a lot of lights. We also went to Shinsaibashi - a suburb with shops, we didn’t go shopping and we didn’t buy anything but it was impressive to see all the shops with big brands. But I mean massive shops with 5-6 floors per brand.
That day we didn’t do much (we were healing the hangover from adventures in Brazilian karaoke the night before). We went to Umeda Sky Building - it’s a very tall building with a view of the whole city (a bit like the tower here in Sydney).
We were lucky and it was some festival that day. Something connected with summer and there were a lot of boats on the river and people wearing traditional clothes rowing in them.
From my notes: “Osaka is definitely good for food and bad for tourist attractions” :D We went to Inari to see the temples with loads of red gates(Tori) - really nice and recommended. Then we went to Arashiyama - a bamboo forest.
Other thing we did that day is going to owl cafe. In the beginning it sounded like a good idea but then we noticed how sad and trapped those animals are.
Osaka and Kyoto are really close. One can stay in one of them and see both.
There are thousands of temples in Kyoto, thousands. We saw loads of them, I don’t even remember the names. If you haven’t seen enough before arriving to Kyoto, after the visit you’ll have enough.
Our AirBnB had bicycles so we did a tour through the city. It’s cool to see it that way. A lot of people in Japan use bikes. Sometimes it’s tricky in more popular places because they are full of people.
In the evening we’ve seen Gion Matsuri platforms. Gion Matsuri is a festival they have these time of year.
Gion Matsuri platform parade. Then we decided we walked enough during this trip and that we deserve a rest, we went to a massage place - recommended!
After Kyoto but before going to Tokyo we stopped in Nara (fun fact: those three cities were/are Japan’s capital cities). Here we found more temples and more deer. In one of the temples they have a massive Buddha statue - really nice.
We spend the rest of the trip in Tokyo - there’s a lot to see and do in this city. We started with some tall buildings and the town hall (I think) building where one can go up and see the city. Then we went to Yoyogi park to see the contrast.
From the other things we saw (and recommend) in Tokyo
There are also some spots outside of the city: