Monday, January 27, 2014

Tenno


The train to Tokyo was pleasant and empty so we stretched out a bit. 


We arrived in the evening and made our way to the hostel. It was not too hard to find. It was quite spacious for Tokyo and was a traditional Japanese style room.


We were pretty exhausted and had a big day lined up in the morning so we grabbed a quick dinner and stayed in for the night. We watched an interesting show where the contestants had to pick between items in a room and take a bite out of them. Half of the items were made of food and styled to look like real things and the other half were real things. The shoe on the left is chocolate, the shoe on the right is leather. They chose leather. Hilarity ensued.


The next day we headed to the imperial palace. The grounds of the palace are only open two days a year and this happened to be one of them. We showed up early but had no idea how long the line would be. It was long.



It was probably the largest crowd I have ever been in. You could not see where the people ended. That being said the line moved at a fairly brisk pace all things considered. We waited about an hour to make it through the first set of gates.


The inside grounds were pretty nice but we were not allowed to wonder, forced to stay with the cool kids. There were plenty of guards that made sure this was the case.




We got a peak at some of the people still waiting in line. The line goes back all the way to the sky scrapers and beyond.

 
We eventually made our way to the house where the royal family lives. Its a more modern style building surrounded by traditional Japanese buildings. 


We then waited in a huge mass for the emperor to appear. Earlier in line we were handed little Japanese flags. When the emperor emerged from his royal slumber the small flags painted the landscape.

 
Once the excitement died down the emperor gave a speech. We didn't realize we would get to hear him speak so that was neat. We had a decent view and could at least see him. Having a height advantage definitely helps in this country. 


After the speech we were funneled out of the palace grounds just as we entered them. Again the mass of people was ridiculous. 


After 45 minutes of fighting our way out we made it back to the subway and headed to Akihabara which is a neighborhood in Tokyo that is a haven for anime, electronics, and video games. We strolled the streets and basked in the glow of the electric city.




Having been on our feet all day we sat down and grabbed some lunch. Ramin was on the menu today.


Having had our fill of nerd culture we headed over to another area of Tokyo called Asakusa. This is what is known as the old area of Tokyo. It use to be one of the cities hotspots for entertainment but the firebombings of WWII destroyed most of the area. Although not as popular in recent years it still features the famous  Senso-ji temple which is also a very popular destination during the new years holiday. We entered another blob of people and waited in line again, woo!



The nice thing about this temple was that the entrance is lined with shops and food vendors so we had new things to look at while we were funneled down the street. We grabbed a few snacks.




We finally made it through the last gate and the police took over. We just avoided the cut.


A barrier separated us from the inside of the temple but you could still see the golden throne through the bars. 


Tired of waiting in lines we headed back to the hostel for some rest. It was then off to the Shibuya area for our evening festivities. This is a more modern downtown area of Tokyo. 


Fairly tired and not feeling too adventurous we decided to just walk around and grab some dinner. Tonight was conveyer belt sushi!

 
We ate everything from raw octopus to fresh sea urchin.


Full of rice and fish we headed home. With days like this we need all the sleep we can get.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

day

The grocery store by the main Nara train station was still open on new years eve so we decided to stock up on junk food to help us bring in the new year. We went a little overboard.


In Japan the new years celebrations are centered around the importance of the first time something is done. Many people visit shrines right after midnight to mark their first visit of the year and to make wishes for the new year. At around 11:00 pm we headed over to Todai-ji temple to take part in the festivities.


As you can imagine it was absolutely packed. We knew a lot of people would be there but I don’t think either of us expected it to be this crowded. We stepped in line not really knowing how long it would take to get in the temple.


The actual celebration of the clock hitting midnight was fairly subdued. Everyone was aware of the event but there was not the yelling and celebrating like we see in the states. Everyone gave a small "woo!" and turned their attention back to waiting for the temple to open. To our surprise, despite the tens of thousands of people, the line moved pretty efficiently.


Within 30 minutes we had made it through the outside gates and were steps away from the main temple.


Todai-ji is a Buddhist temple that houses the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana. Once we stepped in we were greeted by the incredibly large Buddha looking down on us. It is really hard to show the scale of just how big this thing is through photos but it is massive (5 stories tall and weighs 550 tons).




There are also a number of other impressive statues in the hall.




Outside the streets were alive with food vendors and sweet shops. There was also a huge bonfire just outside of the temple where people were congregating. We headed out and took part in the celebrations.





I got a local delicacy they call a “hot dog”.


We headed home around 2 am and passed out instantaneously. The next day we rented a pair of bikes and ventured out to see the rest that Nara has to offer. One thing to note is that the city is littered with deer.



They sell deer biscuits all over town and we bought a bundle to use as we biked around. You have to be careful and only pull out small amounts at a time because the deer tend to get aggressive if they know you are packing.



We spent our day visiting the other historic temples in the city. Once again the crowds were in full force. Most of the temples and shrines sell good luck charms for various things like safe travel and future love. There were huge lines to purchase these items.








After covering a large portion of the city we had to call it quits because our train back to Kyoto was going to leave without us. From Kyoto we were to catch the bullet train to Tokyo. We returned our bikes and then stopped at the grocery store one more time to grab dinner to eat on the train.


Its a 4 hour ride over to the capital so we have some time to catch our breath before our next adventure. All in all it was a very pleasant new years.