We Made It! (It's a Trip Part 2 .0)

We arrived! After that close call in Sendai everything else went smoothly with our flight to Osaka (Kansai Int'l Airport) and our train to Kyoto! Details about our hotel and transportation are at the bottom of the post.

So why go all the way to Kyoto? To see temple after shrine after temple, eat some delicious food and hopefully get eyes on a real life geisha! And because it's on my list of "must-do's," we've been in Japan exactly 1 year as of today and that in itself is cause for a trip-celebration! But is it really a celebration? We've been here a year already?!? Yikes! It's going sooo fast, too fast!! We've gotta keep busy if we wanna see as much as possible in our time here, especially since we've got a deployment coming up for 2015! So getting back on track...Kyoto was the capital city of Japan from 794-1868. It is full of history, shrines and temples. It was spared air raids and an atomic bomb during WWII due to it's cultural and historical significance. 

After we got checked into the hotel we started exploring! I had somewhat of a plan for our days in Kyoto, some based on my own research and some based on suggestions from a knowledgeable Japanese friend.

Today we visited Toji Temple, Sanjusangendo and had an AMAZING dinner at HAFUU!

Yellow- Kyoto Station. Red- hotel (Sakura Terrace).
Blue- Toji Temple. Light Blue- Sanjusangendo.
Brown- HAFUU. Pink- Fishbowl.

First stop...Toji Temple "East Temple" was built when Kyoto became the capital city (around 794) and was one of two guardian temples of the Imperial Palace. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Additional history, location and admission information (price varies by season) can be found at: http://www.toji.or.jp/en/about/index.html

GPS coordinates: 34.981558, 135.747467

Pagoda at Toji Temple, rebuilt in 1644, at
57 meters it is the tallest pagoda in Japan.

Nandaimon Gate of Toji Temple.

Keenan at Nandaimon Gate.

Cheapest way to Kyoto from Misawa? (It's a Trip Part 1.0)

Cheapest way? I think I found it! Through LOTS of research I found a pretty reasonably priced way to get us to and from Kyoto and Hiroshima...or perhaps I should say "more reasonably priced than the other options"? Details of my price comparisons are at the bottom of the post for those that might be interested in how we saved some major money!

This is the first post in my "It's a Trip" series which covers our travels to, from and in Kyoto and Hiroshima.

So our travels to/from Kyoto & Hiroshima went something like this, just 8 totally simple easy to follow steps, of course these weren't all back to back as we did actually spend a few days vacationing!
    Step 1: Drive to Sendai (spend the night)
    Step 2: Fly from Sendai to Osaka
    Step 3: Local train from Osaka to Kyoto
    Step 4: Shinkansen from Kyoto to Hiroshima
    Step 5: Shinkansen from Hiroshima to Kyoto
    Step 6: Local train from Kyoto to Osaka
    Step 7: Fly from Osaka to Sendai
    Step 8: Drive back to Misawa

So here's a little about our pit stop in Sendai...and our adventure getting to the airport...

Our hotel, right downtown. Probably about
a 5 minute walk to Sendai Station.

Kokeshi Dolls & Senjojiki Beach

I got a new camera! YES!!! I'm incredibly excited, don't really know that much about shooting with a DSLR but I'm reading and watching YouTube videos so hopefully I learn quickly! This lovely Saturday afternoon we decided to drive west toward Mt Iwaki. There's a switchback road that leads almost to the top of the mountain (much easier than hiking up the whole way). On the way there we stopped at the Jogakura Bridge and a kokeshi doll museum in Kuroishi. We didn't end up driving up Mt Iwaki, but we did visit Senjojiki Beach. More on that later...

The Tsugaru Kokeshi Museum is located in Kuroishi and is about 80 km from Misawa (the route we took today was a little longer). Kokeshi dolls are handmade wooden dolls exclusive to the northern region of Japan, the Tohoku Region. The dolls are thought to have first been produced in the early 1800's as souvenirs for visitors to the many hot springs. We opted not to wander through the museum today, rather just check out the dolls they had for sale.

I'm a kokeshi!

Oshima Island

Today I took Keenan back to a place that I had discovered in May. I knew that we would enjoy wandering around on the rocks and taking in the view. Little did I know that a tiny little glass object would make our day!

This Japanese boy had a shirt on that said:
NEBRASKA
1976
CORN HUSKER STATE

Totally random!

Look what Keenan found!!!
Woo hoo! He's been pretty jealous of my
recent float finds (even though he "doesn't care"
about them). Yay!

This is the first we have that's green!

Kuji Amber Museum & Ryusendo Cave

We went spelunking! Well...to be honest, we really just visited a cave open to tourists with well developed walkways and stairs...but that still counts, right?? Today we went to Ryusendo Cave with a stop at Kuji Amber Museum on the way there. (Map and travel details at the bottom of the post)

Kuji Amber Museum is located in Kuji, Iwate Prefecture, which is the only area in Japan where amber is found. There are a couple different buildings to the museum and most of the exhibits had English explanations. I think they also have an area where you can mine for amber, but it was raining hard so we didn't explore outside much. We did venture into an old mine that was part of the museum. We learned a lot about amber, but unless you are already traveling to this area, it probably isn't worth a special trip. The store had quite a large variety of items, but nothing that I just had to have...plus traditional amber's not really my color and the fancy colored amber was expensive!