Golden Week Japan Part II: Kyoto

From the bustling neon of Tokyo, Carissa and I took the night bus (much cheaper than the bullet train with all the expected sacrifices of comfort!) down to Japan's old capital of Kyoto.  I wanted her to see more of a traditional "Japan's Japan" before heading back up to Sapporo.

Unfortunately, due to Golden Week, everyone else had the same idea and the crowds were awesome to say the least:

I love posing with fake geisha.  The real ones are too fast and too difficult to hunt down!

May 5th is one of the holidays which makes up the blessed Golden Week.  Up until 1948 in Japan, this holiday was known as Boys' Day.  Now, it is labeled (among most anyway) as its more politically correct counterpart, Children's Day.  Colorful carp banners are flown outside of the homes of families who have boys, special sweets are eaten, incredibly expensive and detailed Kintaro (strong, historical figure) dolls are put on display in the home.  Basically, it's a day to celebrate the happiness and prosperity of all children (although, admittedly, with emphasis on boy children...you're not hiding nothing, Japan, with your renaming of the holiday!!!)

While visiting one of Kyoto's many shrines, we happened upon a parade for the Boys' Day celebration:

I particularly like this guy's glare towards me.  Either he takes Children's Day really seriously, or he's not really thrilled about having proof that he was dressed up in that outfit:

Despite the crowds (ohhhh the Golden Week crowds!!!), I still love Kyoto and all of its quintessential "Japanese-y-ness."

We were also able to meet up and have breakfast with one of my international friends from college (and former basketball teammate) Kotomi:

In my opinion, a trip to Kyoto is NOT complete without a trip to the Fushimi Inari, my most favorite shrine in all of the city!  It's so beautiful here and, because of its sprawling size, the crowds actually seem a lot more pleasant and navigable (and at times, dare I say, even nonexistent):

Carissa and I stayed with my favorite Couchsurfer, Shoji, at his amazing Couchsurfing guesthouse (which Jacob and I stayed in during our October trip to Kyoto).  We got to meet with some travelers from France, Argentina, and Italy as well!  I love this place:

Kyoto by night has a completely different feel to it than in Tokyo.  It's more College Town once it's "early-to-bed-early-to-rise" tourists have slipped back into their hotel rooms.

Of course, Kyoto by day is just as fun:

As much as I love Kyoto and Tokyo, it felt so good to hop on a big plane back home to Hokkaido to show my sister around our lovely Sapporo.  Part three of Golden Week to come...

Golden Week Japan Part I: Tokyo

Ahh, Golden Week in Japan...a time when there are actually three national holidays in a row, sandwiched by two weekends!  It's only curse, as far as travel within Japan goes, is that it's the time when those who rarely use vacation days (ahem...THE JAPANESE) actually get out and see their country!

For my Golden Week adventures this year, my little sister, Carissa, flew over the big Pacific swimming pool to join me for a two-week tromp around some of Japan's most crowded destinations during this time.  First stop...TOKYO!

One of our Tokyo highlights was meeting up with my roommate, Kaori, from my freshman year in college.  The last time I saw her was in 2002 when she came and visited me while I was studying abroad in the Netherlands!  A reunion seven years in the making:

Kaori is in charge of a lovely, lovely spa in downtown Tokyo and had her gals give us free facials and makeovers!  My skin had a new Asian glow about it...no doubt quickly undone from the thick cloud of bus exhaust I stepped into shortly after:

The rest of Thursday we spent in the fabulously trendy Shibuya district, where every store, freaky hipster, and mini-skirted school girl easily challenges your inner and outer coolness factor big time:

The sign below (on a tres trendy love hotel) says Shibuya Crystal...sweet!

This is taken from the (almost) middle of the infamous Shibuya crossing where, at every red light, traffic comes to a six-way stop, releasing a super surge pandemonium of about 1500 people in a mad dash to make it to their respected neon island oasis...yes, that's 1500 people EACH time!  The video (not mine) shows the crossing in its full glory.

Thanks mostly in part to Carissa's jet-lag and the 4:30am sunrise, we were up by a quarter to five in the morning on Friday and decided to head down to Tokyo's world-famous Tsukiji Fish Market!  It is the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world, and includes some 900 wholesale vendors selling everything from caviar and sardines, to massive (MASSIVE) tuna and deadly fugu (blowfish).  This is no place to walk around in your party-shoes (or muck-absorbing canvas Converse as I personally found out):

Can you believe how HUGE these tuna are?  This is at the end of the tuna auction, where restaurants and wholesalers send their registered bidders to snag the best bang for their buck--err, yen:

I love fish-heads on a stick:

How do you end a morning at the bustling fish market?  Why with a fresh sushi breakfast at one of the alley stalls down the street, of course!!

We also had a chance to meet up with my travel-buddy, Taka, who I first met in Dublin when I was living in Ireland!  His Japanese friend and a friend from Mexico joined us for some yakiniku (BBQ), so we had a grand international affair all through slightly confusing weaves of Japanese, Spanish, and English:

Saturday we headed to Harajuku for some serious people-watching:

And headed up to Sensoji Temple in Asakusa before hopping the night bus to Kyoto:

So Tokyo's a bit difficult to smash into readable blog, but it was definitely amazing considering I hadn't truly visited the city since those blurry, jet-lagged orientation days back in August!   

Golden Week Part II in Kyoto to come...

Sakura Hanami (Cherry Blossom Viewing) in Sapporo

Coming down off of a Golden Week traveling-vacation-high with my sister (blog post to come...currently sorting through 4 gigs of photos!), I thought I could at least tie over the updates with our awesome outing yesterday in Sapporo!  This time of year is when the cherry blossoms come and (extremely quickly) go, bringing with them a throng of people heading out and about for a hanami, or drunken, BBQ-ing, singing cherry-blossom-viewing!

As we are currently sans-grill, Carissa, Jacob and I packed our own picnic lunch and headed down to Maruyama Park for the festivities.  We actually missed the absolute height of the cherry blossoms, which only lasts for a couple of days, but there were still quite a few trees with blossoms, and quite a few hanami-goers out and about to boot!

The park itself was a massive display of excess:  The scents of sweet flowers, grilled meat, and beer wafted among a thick cloud of BBQ smoke and a colorful maze of people!   Nature-viewing in Japan could absolutely be no other way:

As luck would have it, one of the parties beckoned our gaijin (foreigner)-selves over to join up with their party!  Seriously, sometimes it really pays to obviously be very different!  One of the guys in the group was on the Sapporo city council.  Figuring that it's never a bad idea to have a few friends in high places, I got his meshi (business card) and made it a point to have good beers and conversation with him!  

Jacob, as usual, wowed the crowd by singing a few Led Zeppelin tunes with the guitar guy...he's so handy to have around!  And Carissa did her best to avoid the group's efforts to hook her up with the only single guy there, a Sapporo city detective...ha!

I was a little disappointed that we missed the blossoms in their full glory, but it was such a beautiful day with such an amazing group that it was hard not to get into the full hanami spirit!  It was a grand welcome back home and a nice little transition from Golden Week vacation to work week reality!