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Hello Jason! Greetings Hannah! Konnichiwa Ashley-san! Ni-hao Jen!

I’m writing a short note to let you know of the places in Japan that we will definitely tour, and the possible order in which we’ll visit them. It would be fun for the four of us (and hopefully five or six – Rachel GOMBATTE NE! John-san MO!) to create a forum on a share space (a private group on Facebook?) so that we can talk about the trip amongst ourselves. Now that our tickets are booked, it is our trip to plan together! Let’s put our ideas and web-searching skills into a bucket and plan out an itinerary that everyone will be equally excited about. Within our budget ($4000.00 toppers) the sky’s the limit. Mieko is already hard on the case of searching through the Japanese-language sites for ideas that I’ll post on our Facebook group.

For example, check out the Sky Building in Osaka’ Shin Umeda City:
http://www.skybldg.co.jp/
On the left, click on “Floating Garden Observatory. Let it load and watch that. Then click on the menus on the left side, especially the 360-degree view in Day and Night Time View
The English link doesn’t have all the images, just explanation:
http://www.skybldg.co.jp/garden/e/index.html

There’s also the Hanky Entertainment Park (HEP) that features a massive shopping mall and Ferris Wheel with views of the cityscape. It’s a very popular hang-out for young folks like yourselves:
http://www.livehep.com/

Mieko also told me that some of you are interested in the ‘Maid Café’ experience in Japan. Here’s a link to one of them:
http://www.maidolce.com/index.html
Here’s a page of links to some others in Kyoto and Osaka. Scroll down and Osaka even has ZQNCafeARGO, a cosplay café.
http://www.geocities.jp/ext_stage/osaka_maid01.htm

Also the JET Program has an extensive discussion board network and I still have an account. I could ask for travel advice from foreign English teachers living in the area… perhaps they will know of some events that don’t get posted online or know of some must-see gems that are not normally mentioned… especially for restaurants and cool buildings and things like that… I’ll post their better suggestions on Facebook.









Important note – the flight itinerary has changed. There is now no overnight stay in Toronto on the way there, because we can leave in the morning of the 6th instead of in the evening. We will still stay in Toronto one night on the way home. It now reads:

Lv Thunder Bay on MARCH 6 at 6:30 am, to Toronto to Vancouver, arriving Osaka
on March 7 at 5:10 pm
the return would read as follows:
Lv Osaka on MARCH 21 at 5:40 pm, via Vancouver to Toronto at 10:25 pm
overnight
Lv Toronto on MARCH 22 at 8:10 am, arriving Thunder Bay at 10:00 am.

The 7th to 21st – 14 days on Japanese soil! Woo-hoo!

And the best thing is, we definitely have time to be creative with our travel plans. The trip will not be entirely composed of historical sightseeing, although the few dozen places I am thrilled to show you along our journey will blow the top off you’re minds. We still have a large window to plan other events. We can start researching to find whether there will be fun festivals to celebrate in the towns and cities that we’ll be passing through… do we want to tour an anime studio in Osaka? Hang out at Universal Studios? Where do we want to eat lunch? At a 60th-floor restaurant of an ultra-modern building? That’s so much fun! Or with a bento lunch box, we can have a picnic on the expansive grounds of Osaka-jo… (just an aside – Osaka-jo is the postwar reconstruction of the castle built in the 16th century by the great unifier of Japanese warring states Hideyoshi Toyotomi. James Clavell’s historical novel Shogun recounts the intense and brutal power struggle that played out between Hideyoshi’s greatest vassal lords in the last decade of the sixteenth century, following the sudden death of the great Hideyoshi himself. Enemy-c**-ally of Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated his enemy lords in the epic battle of Sekigahara in the year 1600 to establish himself as Shogun of Japan. This marked the end of the Warring States Period in Japanese history, for peace was restored after 250 years feudal civil warfare. It marked the beginning of the Edo Period, or the Tokugawa Dynasty, with its political capital moved from Kyoto to Tokugawa’s home region surrounding Edo (now Tokyo). The family dynasty lasted until the battles of the ‘last samurai’ (Saigo Takamori) in 1867 against the emperor’s soldiers, who defeated the samurai. Restored to power after 267 years, young Meiji used his clout as emperor to modernize Japan’s commercial industry and her ability to make war as a global power. That’s just example of the type of history that Japanese castles can represent.) For me, the history – the meaning and memory of everything – makes the experience of sitting and relaxing that much more luxurious and intriguing. People-watching over lunch – buskers, fellow tourists. We might be invited to share in a game of soccer or a guitar jam for a half-hour with some other young people hanging out by the castle moat on a warm spring Osaka afternoon. And of course we could go inside and tour the castle, where on the 3rd floor of the castle keep is a complete figurine reconstruction of the Battle of Sekigahara. So the question remains… what do we want to do? We can plan out, to the best of our ability, even the remotest detail.

I’m going to give you a list now of the places we will go. It would be fun to Google the respective places and read up a bit on what they’re all about.

All of the sites we will see in Kyoto will be on the east side of the city, with the exception of one. Find Kyoto on Google Earth or locate a good map of Kyoto from Google. Find Higashi-yama, or East Mountain. From the south, we will walk northwards along the base of this mountain and visit some major temples and shrines and other interesting areas.

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Sightseeing Phase 1 – Kyoto, Himeji Castle, and Nara

1st Day in Kyoto (whenever that may be… right away? After a day or two in Osaka?)

In order:
-- Kiyomizu-dera (Temple)
-- Sannenzaka and Ninnenzaka (these are a few stepped and terraced streets at the base of Kiyomizu-dera whose elegant wooden shops and restaurants preserve a taste of old Kyoto. Girls can dress as maiko -- an apprentice geisha in her flowing kimono and face painted white – for a fee of course – and walk around the shops. It will be fun to look around in here and shop a bit and sample tasty morsels on our way up to Gion for lunch.

Break for lunch (there are restaurants of every type, nationality and price range at Gion. Let’s find a great spot!).

-- Yasaka Jinja (Shinto Shrine)
--Chion-in (Temple)

Supper time (we can eat anything, anywhere).

What do we want to do the first evening in Kyoto? Perhaps we’re tired? Perhaps we’re not!

2nd Day in Kyoto

In order:

--The Philosopher’s Walk
--Ginkaku-ji (Temple)
--lunch around Ginkaku-ji – plenty of restaurants
--Kinkaku-ji (Temple), after bussing to the west side of the city. I will have guide booked for this particular temple as I was not guided when I went.
--walk around the west mountain south of Kinkaku-ji, plenty of places to tuck into.

Supper Time (anywhere)

What do we want to do the second evening in Kyoto?

DAY 3 -- AFTER TWO DAYS OF SIGHTSEEING IN KYOTO -- Himeji Castle

--Day trip from Kyoto to Himeji Castle.
I will have a local castle guide meet us there and conduct a tour for us. I didn’t tour the castle with a guide and so cannot say that I am prepared to speak about it at any length and with any authority. Himeji is the most celebrated Japanese castle that survived WWII. Renowned in its own day for its elegance of construction, it has a prominent military history as well. The city of Himeji grew out of the old fortified castle city, whose walls can still be seen amid the bustle of modern city shopping streets at a distance from the castle keep. It’s quite a place to poke around and the castle grounds themselves are amazing.
--we’ll travel back to Kyoto in the evening and stay there.

DAY 4 – NARA – Japan’s first capital city (capital from 710 to 784 A.D. when the capital was moved to Kamioka for just a few years and then to Kyoto)

--get up in the morning in Kyoto, eat breakfast.
--travel to Nara (it’s not far at all), check in to hotel.
--Kofuku-ji (Temple) just for a prolonged look around, not long, on the way to Nara Koen (Park) by foot to hand-feed the sacred deer (no Big Macs!) and eat lunch.
--Todai-ji (Temple) – biggest bronze Buddha in Japan sitting inside the largest wooden structure in the world. Awesome place.

What do we want to do in the evening?

DAY 5

--eat breakfast in Nara
--Horyu-ji (Temple) – which is a short trip to the outskirts of Nara – Horyu-ji is a very important temple in Japanese history and also happens to possess the world’s oldest wooden building.
--I will try to book a tour of an imperial burial mound in the area for this day as well – (with some consensus, historians postulate that the early recorded imperial families of Japan had recently crossed over from Korea and continued the Korean practice of burying their kings in huge burial mounds with all their regalia etc. The resemblance is uncanny nonetheless. I’ve visited mounds in both countries and can attest to the superficial similarity at least. I’ll read more about it in the meantime).

We’ll travel back to Kyoto for supper and check into our last hotel night there…

END SIGHTSEEING PHASE 1 -- Total – 5 of 14 days.





Sightseeing Phase 2 – Koya-san and travel to Shingu

It makes sense that we do those five days of sightseeing all in a row, because it’s all in the same relative area. Keep in mind, though, that if we discover anything in our research that adds a day in Kyoto or Nara or Osaka, so be it. That’s our choice.

Phase 2 brings us southward towards Shingu (where Mieko and I are from) with a must-see stop at Koya-san (Mt. Koya) in between. Before that though:

Day 6: Laundry in Kyoto, relaxation , and travel to Koya-san

At some within the first week we’re going to want to wash our clothes and take a break from the sensory overload and walking so much every day. For convenience, I’ll just say that Day 6 could be that day, although we might get a day of rain on Day 4 or 5 and take the rest day then…

--breakfast, laundry, and lunch (or bento lunch box for the train) and travel down to Wakayama City and then over by bus to Koya-san, where we’ll check into our temple.

Day 7: Koya-san

--wake up at dawn, prayers and breakfast with the monks, then:
Koya-san:
--Kongobu-ji
--Garan
--Okuno-in
We will bus back to Wakayama City and stay the night there.

END PHASE TWO – 7 of 14 DAYS

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Sightseeing Phase 3 – Shingu and environs

Day 8: Down to Shingu – the place where it all began.

--wake up in Wakayama, visit the castle in the morning, which is near the train station/hotels/restaurants. This castle has some excellent displays of samurai dress and head gear, swords etc…
-- lunch near the train station.
--Take the three-hour train ride south along the gorgeous coast to Shingu.
--just in time to either check in to our hotel or in with our respective host families before supper.

This is the point that we have to talk about as a group. Do we want to stay in a hotel in Shingu and keep to ourselves, or do we want to stay at Shingu High School students’ homes? If home stay, then do we want to pair up or go it alone? As the Assistant Language Teacher at Shingu High School, I was in charge of the ESS Club (aka the English Speaking Society). Members of the ESS Club are keen English students and are always a lot of fun. If we wish to do home stay, I will contact my former English-teaching colleagues and have them arrange homes for us with ESS students. This would be a FANTASTIC opportunity to make friendships with Japanese high school students and to experience Japanese home life. They will be able to speak a minimum of English, but best yet, they will love to practise your Japanese with you. If some or all of you are uncomfortable with staying in people’s homes, then we will have to consider the hotel option. Just so you know --the Japanese school year starts from April, and so most of March is a holiday. Clubs are still in session, but the ESS Club is generally not. This means that your host friend will likely be on vacation and will have plenty of time to hang out with you and introduce you to his/her friends as well. I think it will be a lot of fun. But it’s up to you. On the financial side, home stay means that breakfasts, suppers, and beds will be free of charge while we’re in Shingu. The only cost is that we should bring them a thoughtful gift from Canada or Kyoto/Nara (it needn’t be expensive!) to thank them for their hospitality.

If we do home stay, you will hang out with your host families in the evenings. FUN! If we stay in a hotel, we shall have to amuse ourselves. After breakfast each day in Shingu (either at the hotel or with your host families) we will go off as our regular little group for sightseeing. Perhaps your new friends would like to join us. The more the merrier!

This is the gist of Shingu and why I am excited to show it off to you (besides the fact that Mieko and I fell in love on its shores…): In the old days the southern, remote mountainous portion of what is now Wakayama Prefecture was called Kumano. In the mythological founding of Japan, Shingu is the place where the Gods first descended on what they had created as the islands of Japan. There are three inter-connected shrines called Kumano-sanzan (ie the Three Mountain Shrines of Kumano) that are of extreme historical significance. And they happen to be beautiful as well. One is called Hayatama Taisha (Grand Shrine) that stands beside the mountain in Shingu itself where, according to mythology first set down in writing in the early 8th century, the Gods first descended. Another is called Nachi Taisha, just off the town of Nachi, which is just down the coastal highway from Shingu. Nachi Taisha was installed to formally worship Nachi Falls (the highest waterfall in Japan) for its healing powers among many other things…. and another is called Hongu Taisha, which is in the town of Hongu -- a breathtaking 40-minute drive from Shingu on steep mountain banks upstream on the emerald-coloured Kumano River. The mountains of Kumano were considered sacred back in the day (for Buddhist reasons you’ll find out – too long to type out here) and those reasons in conjunction with Japan’s mythical founding meant that the Kumano-sanzan was very important. Starting about 900 years ago, a series of emperors from Kyoto would make annual pilgrimages to Kumano-sanzan to pray for the nation’s salvation and prosperity. For this reason, the Kumano-sanzan became a World Heritage Site in 2004. We will visit each of these ancient shrines and I know you’ll love them.

Day 9 – Shingu

--Kamikura-jinja (Shrine). We’ll hike up the ancient stone steps on Kamikura Mountain to the massive boulder at about the middle that has been worshipped by the locals since ancient times. This is the mountain on which the Gods first descended. The terrace at the boulder gives us a magnificent view of the whole of Shingu City, nestled like a baseball infield between the Kumano River, the mountain, and the Pacific Ocean.
--Hayatama Taisha
--lunch
--Ninomaru – Shingu’s own feudal castle ruins…
--a walk along the coast to Koya-zaka, the ancient path that the emperors walked from Shingu towards Nachi. It’s a short but beautiful walk… not all the way to Nachi of course but just over the sea cliffs to the highway on the other side, and head back.

Day 10 – Nachi

--Nachi Taisha – after breakfast. – easily a whole day looking around there. We can do a possible short hike up and behind Nachi Falls itself to the second waterfall that feeds the river that cascades over Nachi Falls. I love this hike, I hope you want to come! It’s not long, and it’s beautiful back there! Virgin forest, never been cut… a gorgeous waterfall that I swam in on summer weekends, although it will be too cold to swim in March.

Day 11 – Hongu

--Hongu Taisha – after breakfast – I’ll have a guide booked for this day because I’ve never officially toured the shrine area. Beginning in spring of 2006, the local tourism board instituted a river tour featuring the type of boat that the emperor would travel down the Kumano River in, from Hongu Taisha on the way down to Shingu’s Hayatama Taisha. If they’re running in March, we can do that. If not, there is an established ferry tour that takes us through the Kumano River’s Doro-kyo Gorge, offering gorgeous scenery of the steep cliffs jutting up on both sides of the river. In the Hongu area, there are also a series of hot springs. One is called the Sennin-buro (thousand-person bath) whose springs run beneath the expansive bank of the river. If you dig into the river bank, fresh hot spring water bubbles up and we can bathe in there. It’s popular even in winter. There are also hot spring resorts, including one of the oldest knows hot springs in Japan called Yunomine which features in several Japanese legends and folk tales. There is a spot at Yunomine where we can boil eggs in the stream to eat.

Day 12 – OPTIONAL

--this is just an idea but, we could go 50 minutes up the coast from Shingu to the whaling port of Taiji where there is a museum dedicated to whales and whaling and an outdoor marine park. We can watch killer whales and dolphin jumping shows, walruses, seals, and sea otters, and look around in the aquarium. If you’re not into that type of thing, we can skip Taiji altogether.

END SIGHTSEEING PHASE 3 – 11 or 12 of 14 DAYS

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So there you have it.

Day 12 of sightseeing is optional.

This means that of 14 days, we have either two or three days that are fully open for us to plan other things. Perhaps we want to spend some time in Osaka before we begin Day 1 in Kyoto. Or, what seems to make more sense to me, we’d stay in Osaka at the end of our sightseeing, after we’ve become proficient street-wise travelers and are confident to walk/subway around through the hustle and bustle. I’d rather not tackle Osaka while we’re jet-lagged and just figuring out what we’re doing. If at the end, we could do our shopping just before heading home on the plane. Before heading back up to Osaka, though, I think it would be really nice to spend an extra day in Shingu just relaxing with our new friends and Mieko our three girls, who will all be in Shingu at that time as well… a barbecue by the river after a morning being shown around Shingu High School or something like that. Something fun and relaxing as a big group would be a nice way to end our visit.

So….let’s do some research and find out what’s happening in Osaka, Kyoto and Nara between March 7th and 21st. Music concerts? Art galleries? Studios? Sumo tournaments? Museums? Festivals? Cool buildings to see?

I’ll make a group on Facebook called Japan Trip 2008. Let’s keep it private among us.

See you there!