The Great Asian Race: Day 12-Day14

Day 12

Day 12 was one of our more relaxing days.  We stayed with Chris's friend Greg and his wife Sachiko.  They have  a lovely house in the suburbs of Tokyo.  Very roomy.  And while I am talking about there house can I say something about how much I LOVE their toilets in Japan??!?  They are great!  For one thing, it was really cold there, and there is no Central heating, and you know how when your really cold you don't want to use the restroom because sitting on the toilet is going to be really cold?  (I am like that anyway, toilet seats are cold!!!)  Not a problem here in Japan.  Why you ask?  The toilet seats are heated!!!  It is so nice on your heiny when you are freezing to sit on a warm toilet seat.  Another great feature of the toilets is that they don't have a separate sink in the bathrooms.  There is a small faucet hooked on the back of the toilet where the tank is.  That water you use to wash your hand and then it filters in through the tank and is then used as the water in the toilet!  Ingenius way to save on water!  I love it!

Because we had such a lazy day I did not get many pictures, but here we are at lunch.  Yes, we are cooking our own food again at our table, but it was fun!  And I REALLY liked the food in Japan.

That night we went to a japanese bath house.  There were lots of rooms that you could pick from that were natural hot springs, and you got to have your own private bath house.  Chris and I picked a cute little room with the hot springs made out of beautiful rocks.  You paid for an hour an a half and then just relaxed in the hot springs.  When you got too warm, you could go chill in the Tatomi room and read or just lay and relax.  This was definitely a day I needed after all the craziness we had been going through!

Day 13

Today is a big day and we have a lot laid out in front of us. Plan: Take train to Tokyo, switch to bullet train and go a couple hundred miles to Nagano.  Switch to a bus that will take us an hour and a half up to the ski slopes.  Ski for a bit.  Take the bus back down.  Get on the Bullet train and go a couple hundred more miles to Kyoto, where we will get in around midnight!  

Here we are saying goodbye to the Nielsen's at 6:30 in the morning!  Not my favorite time of day!

All aboard the Bullet Train!  Bullet trains go 500 mph!  It was pretty cool to ride in it!

After finally making it to the ski resort, we are getting really excited.  After 3 years of not skiing because of my surgeries, here goes nothing!!!  The resorts here are cool  We went up to one major mountain, and there are 21 ski resorts linked to this mountain.  You buy one ski pass and you can use ALL 21 of the ski resorts, so we were able to hop from mountain to mountain.  Plus the grand total of us skiing for the day on 21 resorts?  $35!!!

The terrain was beautiful!  We actually skiied through bamboo!!!  But...I was freezing cold!!!  We finally found a mountain that had a gondola going up, so you can imagine that we started taking that more!!

Waiting for the bus at the end of the day was absolutely freezing!!!  Luckily I was able to get some hot chocolate to hold out of a vending machine while we waited!!

So the whole time we are in Japan I keep seeing signs that make me chuckle.  The English translations are very funny.  Here is one on the train that basically means watch your own stuff!!

So here is the part of the story that makes our day the longest.  After riding the train a couple hundred miles, skiing, riding the train again and then getting into Kyoto at midnight, we can't find our hotel!!  Apparently, English is not spoken as much here in Japan as it is in China or Hong Kong.  When I booked our room online, I wrote the address down as it was given to me online - - the English version.  Nobody knew addresses in English when we got into the train station.  We were at the information booth in the train station for 20 minutes trying to figure out where it was....they couldn't help us, couldn't even hardly understand us, then told us they were closing for the night and we had to leave.  So we walked outside hoping we would have more luck with the taxi driver.  He didn't know what we were saying, but loaded our stuff up anyway....and drove around, not knowing where to go because he didn't know the address either.  Finally he went to the police station.  Chris and the driver went into the police station together to try to figure it out.  I sat in the cab watching the timer click more and more money onto our tab.  30 minutes later they came out.  Apparently the police had no idea either, had been calling information about the place and no one had ever heard of it.  I was beginning to think I had messed up and paid $200 for 2 nights in a hotel that was in some other town in Japan!  I was really bummed.  They directed us to a close by hostel for the night.  When we got to the hostel we were relieved to find that the owner knew English.  He looked at our information and said he knew of our hotel (or Ryokan, a small room, with communal bathroom)  that were staying at.  We could walk there from the hostel.  He was lying, it was literally around the corner....and one block from the police station!!  By that time we were just tired and wanted to go to bed!!!

Day 14

Day 14 will be remembered as one of our favorite days on the trip.  We woke up feeling refreshed, even though Ryokan don't have beds, they just have futon mattresses that you unfold onto the the floor.  The day was beautiful, and we were going to ride bikes around Kyoto to see the sights!

Chris in front of our Ryokan, BJ Family house.

Our first stop is the Nijo-Jo Castle.  It was where the Shoguns, who were warriors that had taken power in Japan before the emperor was the one in charge, were located.  They would come together and meet here in the Castle from all provinces of Japan.  It was very cool indeed.

Here is the guard house.

Chris heading into the main gate for the Castle.

The actual castle.  Here is a fun fact about the castle.  As you walk through the floor squeaks underneath your feet.  When they built the Castle they made it squeak on purpose so if their enemies were to try to sneak in, they would know where they were at.  Kind of cool.

After leaving the inside of the castle (sorry no pictures allowed)  We went and walked around the Castle gardens.  Beautiful!

Next on the agenda was to ride our bikes to the Golden Pavilion.  It was a little bit uphill, but we made it!  We were expecting a Yellow temple or something like we had seen before, but as we walked around the corner - BAM!  It really was gold!!!  It was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen!  Just a gold building sitting in the middle of a small lake.   Amazing!

We look superimposed on from the last picture, but we are really standing in front of it!  ha ha ha!


Wishing rocks instead of wishing fountain.

The Tea gardens at the Golden Pavilion.

After that it was starting to get dark.  So we made our way down to the Gion District, which is the Geisha District.  I wanted some photos of the Geishas.  Unfortunately non of the Geisha pics worked out, so I don't have any to show you.  But there were actually a lot of Geisha's walking around Gion.  I felt like I was in the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha".

That pretty much ended our day.  We definitely had a great time in Kyoto, but were not able to see as much as we would like.  We have agreed that if we come back to Japan we will spend a lot more time in Kyoto.

Great Asian Race Day 15 to be continued...