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.

After this I moved onto the Changdeok-gung Palace which has an amazing secret garden area as I got there though, closed! Turns out Monday isn’t the best day in Seoul if you don’t plan before hand.

On Tuesday with a bit more planning I headed out to Changdeok-gung and joined one of the guided tours in English of the secret garden section. It’s a rather long tour of about 90 minutes and can also be done in Chinese or Korean. It’s a simple 3km long walk around the closed off area of the grounds which the old kings used as their private area where access was by invitation only. I highly recommend the tour as its quite interesting and a lovely place to check out. If tours aren’t your cup of tea though the grounds can be roamed without a group in the summer months on a certain day of the week (not sure which one it is).

As usual there’s some photos below. We didn’t get up to much last night or today as we’re heading out of here tomorrow. We are off to the baseball tonight though so that should be fun!

Now onto Seoul itself. A good way to put it would be Tokyo but with wider streets and sidewalks (for the most part), a lot more Americans and far more drinking areas, all in all for a slightly cheaper price (though not on the same level as Taiwan). The hotel we’re staying in is actually a serviced apartments building smack bang in the middle of Insagong, an area that is fast becoming the major tourist section for Seoul. The hotel is called Fraser Suite Apartments and for three of us we have a three bedroom apartment and are paying about $80 USD a night which is just incredible (I’ll post photos of the joint before leaving… hopefully).

There was some other stuff I was going to say in the post but as I’ve been writing this over two days now I can’t remember most of it. Basically Seoul so far has been a relax and unwind and check out the occasional thing whilst enjoying the food and night life which hasn’t left too much time for the touristy bits. All I can say though the nightlife here is incredible with a huge choice of bars and very friendly locals who take any drunken opportunity to practice English or to “help you out”. Food wise its amazing with a huge choice of cuisines but for those who aren’t particular to spice its not a fun place, meanwhile for those who enjoy some spice it’s awesome. We have checked out some of the major palaces and gardens in the city for which there are quite a few photos beneath but I can’t promise too much more will be coming up post wise.

I’ll try and get a better post done next time though no promises. I can say though that on Mondays attractions in Seoul tend to be closed which is rather annoying but I did manage some good photos from the TV Tower here (known as the N Tower). I’ll throw those up some time in the next two days.

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.