Those of you who may frequent here or have read my previous posts will know of my love affair with Japan. This country is simply amazing and I wish I had more time to explore every nook and cranny of it, unfortunately though that isn’t possible so for now I’m having to make do with weekend roaming of places within reach of Osaka.

For the  first weekend off I’ve grabbed a work mate and we’ve dived into Osaka aiming straight for Dontonbori with the aim of two things, buy a new lens for my camera at the massive Bic Camera store and eat some takoyaki. All in all a rather full proof plan  that we pulled off quite successfully. After the lunch of takoyaki we headed in the direction of Tennoji to head through Osaka’s computer district and check out the zoo. We ended up skipping on the zoo due to the weather (just too hot to keep running around outside) and headed to some temples instead.

On Sunday the plan of attack was Osaka Castle and it’s surrounding grounds (whilst avoiding going in since we had both done it previously) followed by the Osaka Aquarium. All in all it was very good though unfortunately the aquariums main attraction (a large whale shark) was not there as it was receiving a health check-up.

As per normal photos are below. If anything else pops up during the week I’ll post it below but expect the next update next weekend.

That was basically the sum up of the post, we had snow overnight here in Narita though it probably wont last longer then the day by the looks of it though if it does off to the temple I go again tonight. Also had a few minor earthquakes but nothing note worthy though it was interesting to actually experience one.

No photos just the banner this time. Will probably do a better post either before I fly or when I get back to Sydney. For now off to work.

Work news aside Narita decided it would be a good weekend to continuously rain and be miserably cold. Ignoring this obvious stay inside and rest weather my colleague and I headed out into the town to find some lunch and visit the Naritasan Shinshō-ji Temple, one of the oldest and most visited temples in Japan (i’m sure this is helped by traffic from the airport though…). To get to it though is the most fun as you slither through closed off streets (on the weekend) lined by shops selling all types of souvenirs and the speciality of the region, eel. The smell and the smoke coming off the shops is truly extraordinary and quite hard to put into words. The street itself (Omote-sandō for those wondering if it had a name) was quite packed considering the weather, on the 1st of January or on a bright summers day it would be pretty hard to move without getting dragged along by a crowd.

The temple itself is huge consisting of one giant temple in the middle and a lot of grounds around it filled with various temples, shrines and monuments. It even includes a giant walking track through a forest at the base of the biggest pagoda (due to the weather we decided against exploring it). If you ever get a few hours lay over in Narita its worth the quick 15min trip on either the Keisei or JR line to Narita to head down and explore the grounds it really is impressive.

Anyway here are the photos as per usual, not much due to the weather. They are also pretty badly modified due to in course the weather playing havoc on my camera’s sensor, my own laziness and my computer hard disk dying making it quite hard to work on the photos. Maybe its time to invest in a SSD for this laptop…

Either way will update with news regarding travelling home when I have some more details locked in (hopefully Monday) as from the looks of it if there is no more work to do I’ll be done with everything Monday afternoon which would make for a very boring week sitting out at the airport.

Now with that out of the way on with the information on Sapporo. The main thing on Sapporo is its cold, its one of the few cities in the world to have the population it does and the average temperature it gets (average is 8.5c) and an average snowfall of over 6m per year. While I was there it was about -9 to -4 degrees each day which according to my friends is one of the coldest winters in a while (it definitely felt like it). Overall though it was beautiful to walk through the city with all the snow falling but its understandable why not many people go outside.

Well they do go outside, but only when the underground paths no longer go anywhere. One of the incredible things in Sapporo is the network of tunnels under the city which house all kinds of shops, restaurants and subway entries making it easy to walk from one section of the city to the next all under the ground and in heated corridors making it easy to escape the cold. Then again for the mad ones like myself it is quite pretty to walk above ground in the falling snow (then again I’m sure if I had to do it daily I’d take the underground path).

So what was my main reason for going to Sapporo? Well back in March 2010 I went to Sapporo to work in the Airport on the new terminal that was being built. While there I made good friends with the local staff who would run the products in the airport. At this point I made a promise that if/when I returned to Japan I would come visit and catch up. Simply put I was true to my word and returned to see them all!

Highlights include going out to dinner for Shabu-Shabu (hot pot), seafood (honestly so many different types I’m not sure if the place had a specific name/speciality) and checking out the view from both the Sapporo Tower (a mix between Tokyo Tower and the Eiffel Tower) and the JR Tower which sits above the train station. For anyone heading to Sapporo I highly recommend the JR Tower its view is from smack bang in the middle of the town and at night they dim the lights in the observatory to make it easy to see all of Sapporo light up, its very very impressive.

Once again that’s enough rambling here are some photos and its time for me to get some sleep. First day of working tomorrow so need to be rested.

So we eventually arrived in Kitakyushu, its at the most northern tip of the island of Kyushu (hence the name, kita meaning north). Its mostly an industrial town but since my friend lives and works here now we stopped by to see how life is for him. Overall there isn’t much to see/do in the town itself besides Kokura Castle, drinking/eating and shopping so that’s pretty much what we did. We also headed out to Moji-ko, a small part of Kitakyushu which links the island of Kyushu to the main island of Honshu. It is famous for its yakicurry, basically the typical Japanese curry but its baked instead in a pot. It’s pretty damn delicious.

While in Kitakyushu I also learned my work schedule, basically I’m to work in Narita only (the actual airport) while staying in the nearby town until the 30th of January. So maybe on the weekends I’ll head into Tokyo otherwise I’ll probably just explore around here and catch up on some sleep.

Note to self, next time get my international drivers license just in case this happens again… Damn that rental car place across the road and its temptations.

Anyway enough blabbering on with the photos. The following are from Moji-ko and Kokura.

Anyway not much else to update, we did the more common temples in Kyoto the morning before we left, photos are underneath as always as they are pretty much the main reason for this post!

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the photos from Ryoanji Temple are missing a few, in particular the ones from the famous zen stone garden. I still need to re install my panorama program so until that happens the photos wont be up. I’ll add them to a later post.

Work wise it looks like I’ll be heading to Narita, Okanawa and Nagoya. No idea how much time I’ll get to post or get some photos but I do have my proper camera with me so I shall try to make the most of the weekends.

Anyway as promised, more pictures from Kyoto.

The shrine itself sits a top of Mt Kuno at the peak. To get up to it is a giant stair case of 1159 stairs (according to an old man climbing with us this had a special meaning in Japanese though I’ve yet to find any other proof of this). The shrine itself is quite fantastic and we were lucky enough to see it in the fading light of the sun going down which made for a very impressive sight.

After the shrine we headed back into town to get some food at a local Izukaya followed by nomihodai at a local pub (basically all you can drink for 2,000 yen in two hours), dangerous stuff.

And that leads into this morning (well yesterday probably when this post goes up). We headed off to Kyoto around midday after a quick lunch then checked in at our fantastic hotel and headed out on the town for a while to wander around and explore. Eventually we were finished and we headed out to dinner at a all you can eat Brazilian bbq in Kyoto named Estrela (seriously if you are ever here go, its fantastic) followed by heading in for an early night.

Also news on the travel/work front. Looks like I’ve been asked to stay on till early February to do a project here in Japan. Will post some more details once its a bit more set in stone. For now, photos!

After a big night out last night not much happened today so I went for a wander around Shinjuku and checked out all the cool buildings.

And thats it! Photos as follows as per usual. The night ones are from the Metropolitan building at night. Probably should’ve gone up before 10:30pm though as a lot of the big sky scrapers had turned off most of their lights by this point.

So I might as well go on to describe how it all was then. Firstly the day we hit Harajuku on it seemed to be a special day for the Shinto Religion (we guessed new years prayers) as the entrance to Yoyogi Park, right next to the exit of the train station was absolutely packed with police guiding people to where they wanted to go. Once we got through the sea of people we ran into the next sea of people scrounging around through the back streets of Harajuku in search of the last new years specials. Our wandering group though only had one shop in mind though, the Neon Genesis Evangelion store that’s hidden away in the back streets (we still looked in others just didn’t chase a specific store). Unfortunately for us the shop was closed for that day only so we had to come back at another time (which we did the day after). After that it was a case of finding some lunch while we wandered in direction of Shibuya to catch our train out to the Studio Ghibli Museum.

For those not familiar with the name of Studio Ghibli I suggest reading their wikipedia page. Basically they are the number one anime film makers in Japan with every film bar one or two being a smash hit. Some names you might possibly recognize are Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro and the only foreign film to ever win the Oscar for best animated feature, Spirited Away.

Basically they have a huge museum which needs to be booked in advanced as it is very very popular so we got our tickets well before hand and headed on in to enjoy it. Inside the museum it is incredible (no pictures allowed of it though) showing how early animations were done using characters from the various movies. It also shows room after room and storyboarding and the initial drawing, inking and colouring and the process involved through each step. Also within the museum is a cinema which shows a Studio Ghibli production that can only be seen in the museum which changes on a yearly basis. The one we got to see was a sumo competition between mice and how an old couple helps the mice (really hard to explain in this short space).

To sum it up it was a fantastic experience and well worth it in every way. Other then that its been mostly shopping so far with plans still to go to the Tokyo Museum and the Government Building lookout before we head off to Mt Fuji on the 8th and Kyoto on the 9th. In the mean time here’s a bunch more pictures.