In the afternoon of the second day of my 18-kippu trip, we went to Nara after visiting Kyoto for one and a half day. We arrived at Nara Station at about 4pm, and we intended to visit Todaiji Temple to see the big Buddha statue there, but it was too late, the temple would be closed at 5 pm, so we didn’t have enough time to go there. There was an information center in Nara Station, we asked for a map of Nara so that we could still go around in Nara.

Besides the Big Buddha statue (大仏), Nara is also famous for its deer. There was Nara Park, where we could find deer living there and we could even approach them. I approached some of them and touched them. The deer were very excited when people came to them with something they thought as food. I didn’t bring any deer food, I was just holding a map and stretched out my hands hoping that the deer would come closer. But the deer thought that the map I was holding was food, and indeed, it came closer to me and ate the map in my hand. I was surprised, and so were my friends. We tried to take the map back, but we couldn’t. That made us got lost in Nara, since we didn’t have any other maps anymore.

So we just walked around in Nara Park, and we approached another group of deer in the park. I tried to touch the deer again, and they let me touch them. I also took some pictures with them. The deer which I took picture with was moving around, so I tried to catch up with it. I didn’t know why, but suddenly it just struck me with its head right on my belly. It didn’t hurt at all, because their horns were already cut down so that they couldn’t harm people.

Then we continued to walk around and arrived at Ukimi-do (a hexagonal gazebo) built over Sagi Pond in Nara Park. We just took some photos there, and went back to Nara Station. We didn’t spend much time in Nara, and at that night we went to Osaka and stayed in Osaka for several days.

On our way back to the station, we accidentally found some souvenir shops. The price of the souvenirs was not very expensive, so we bought some souvenirs there. I got a deer doll which could make some sound, and my friend gave it  a name, “Rusaana Limuria”.

From Kyoto Station, we visited the Arashiyama (嵐山) area. There’s a wooden bridge called Togetsukyo (渡月橋) near the Tenryuji Temple (天龍寺). This bridge is a symbol of Arashiyama together with Mt. Arashiyama. There were some jinrikisha (人力車) pullers who would pull the jinrikisha on this bridge so that the passengers could enjoy the view of Arashiyama on the jinrikisha from the bridge. There was also boat rental nearby.

We went around in Kyoto by using bus, and we bought a one day pass for 500 yen. But Arashiyama is located out of the one day pass zone, so we went to the Arashiyama by train, while other places were reached by bus.

After Arashiyama, we visited the Kinkakuji Temple (金閣寺). Kinkakuji is famous for its golden pavilion, one of the main buildings in this temple which was golden colored. This golden pavilion could be viewed from across the pond. There were also some statues in this Kinkakuji area on which people tossed some coins for luck.

From Kinkakuji, we took the bus to Ginkakuji (銀閣寺), but we didn’t go into the temple area. We simply walked along the philosopher’s walk and then we met our friend at Kyoto University. Then he took us to the Heian Temple (平安神宮) to see the big torii gate in front of the temple.

The next place that we visited was Gion (祇園). Gion is a well known geisha district in Japan. There were many tea houses along the street in Gion. There were not many geishas that we saw in Gion, but there were one or two geishas walking quickly when we were in Gion. We were at Gion only for a short time and then we went to another place.

Our friend then bought us to have some dinner, tofu-don (豆腐丼). Tofu is one of the famous foods in Kyoto. It was delicious indeed. I don’t like to eat tofu, but the tofu-don I ate was delicious and tasted better than usual tofu that I had eaten. I ordered fried tofu-set (唐揚げ豆腐丼セット) which consisted of the tofu-don, miso soup, etc.

The next place we visited was Maruyama Park (円山公園). Maruyama Park is the main center of cherry blossom viewing in Kyoto. There was a big cherry blossom tree in this park. We went to the park at night to see the light-up in this park. There was also ikebana exhibition at that time. We walked deeper into the park area and saw a march of people bringing some lamps with 狐の嫁入り (wedding of the fox) written on it. Then there was a woman wearing a fox mask sitting on a jinrikisha among the march.

The next day, we were still in Kyoto, visiting the Kiyomizudera Temple (清水寺). Kiyomizudera is well known for its wooden stage of its main hall located above the hillside. There were shrine behind the main hall and also souvenir shops along the street in front of the temple. The souvenirs sold in the shops here were quite cheap compared with other places, so many people bought souvenirs here, and so did we.

From Kiyomizudera, we went to the Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷) where there were a lot of torii gates rowing up to the inner shrine. These torii gates were offerings from the worshippers, so there were names of people who offered the torii gates written on them. Foxes are considered as the messengers, so there were also many fox statues here.

One of the interesting things of Miraikan is the dome theater. In order to watch the show in the dome theater, we had to take the ticket first at the ticket machine. No additional fee was needed, we just needed to scan our museum admission ticket and then choose the show we wanted to watch. But the tickets were quickly “sold out”, so if you want to watch the show in the dome theater, you had better go there early. We watched the “Tender is The Night” at the dome theater. The theater was good, it was really a dome and the seat could be lowered to the position as if we were sleeping on the seat. But the theme of the show that I watched was boring that I really fell asleep at that time. In the show, the song even said “oyasumi” several times that made me even sleepier.

There were several permanent exhibitions in Miraikan which were very interesting. There were also several games that we could try. In the Life science exhibition, there was a palm DNA scanner. I only needed to put my palm on the scanner and the scanner would scan automatically like this:

Another interesting thing in Miraikan is Asimo. Asimo was only exhibited at certain times for 10 minutes. Asimo is a humanoid robot which can move freely with movements almost like human’s movements.

There were other interesting things in Miraikan that I could not really remember and write down one by one. But it was a lot of fun to visit Miraikan. We spent quite some time to visit and see all the exhibitions there.

The first thing that we bought in this festival was ice cream with flavor of tropical fruits or other agricultural products from tropical countries. There were coconut ice cream, papaya ice cream, jack fruit ice cream, mango ice cream, etc. I bought an ice cream with taro flavor. The ice cream tasted good.

Then we went to find some Thai food. I like to eat spicy food, and so does my friend, so we walked around all the booths in Thai festival to see what kind of food sold there. We looked for the food which looked the hottest, and luckily I got a quite spicy menu, stir fried spicy chicken with holy basil (I don’t really remember the exact name). My friend bought spicy green curry chicken, it was quite good too, but not as spicy as mine. Another friend bought tom yum.

But, the food was still not spicy enough to make me feel like this

There were many tropical fruits and vegetables sold in the festival, but they were expensive (compared with the price of those fruits and vegetables in my country). The fruits like mango, rambutan, dragon fruit, etc which were already cut into pieces were sold in a frozen state. So people had to wait for the ice to melt first before eating. It was quite troublesome, because you could not directly taste the fruit right after buying it, and the taste would become quite different compared with the fresh unfrozen fruit.

Besides the small mikoshis carried by adults, there were even smaller mikoshis carried by children.

There were also musical floats parading through Asakusa during the Sanja Matsuri.

After the lunch session, the home-stay participants and the host families had free time and we were free to go anywhere we liked. We chose to go to Oya Cave (大谷) because it was a famous spot of Tochigi Prefecture and it was not too far away. Naka-san had some thing to do first, so I went together with Elodie and her host mother, Yukie-san.

Naka-san came to join us and then we went to visit the Oya Temple. We went into the temple and saw a 11000-year old fossil in the temple. There was also a big Kannon (観音) statue. We met several other home-stay families who also visited that place. Naka-san even bought a frog made of the Oya stone from a shop there for me.

On the way home, we went to supermarket to buy some fish and vegetables for dinner. Then we cooked Japanese style noodle together. It was my first experience to eat Japanese style noodle, and I liked it. After dinner, Naka-san asked me if I had had an experience to wear kimono before. I hadn’t had any kimono wearing experience, so Naka-san let me tried on kimono. Naka-san was a teacher who taught people how to wear kimono, so she had a lot of kimono collections. Since I liked blue, she chose a blue colored kimono and let me try it on. She helped me to wear the kimono, and also let me wear the cloth-sandals and put on kanzashi on my hair.

I was asked to take off the kimono by myself. There were so many items and steps that I couldn’t remember which one I should take off first. She showed me some pictures of her activities of introducing Japanese cultures to foreigners. She also taught me how to make origami of kimono.

The next day, we went to Mashiko (益子), a place famous for its pottery. We went to the pottery class and learned how to make potteries. It was also my first experience to make potteries. Making potteries was not easy at all. I failed several times, but it was fun to learn making pottery.

Then we headed back to gather at the Tochigi Youth center. Before going back to Tokyo, we had pictures of the home-stay participants. After the photo session, both Naka-san and I talked and totally forgot about our cameras until we were asked whether the cameras were ours or not. It was really funny to know that both of us were so forgetful. I really enjoyed this home-stay very much, and I learned a lot about Japanese culture and life in this home-stay program.

From Hanok Village, we went to Namsan Tower (N Seoul Tower). We had to take cable car to reach the Namsan Tower because it was located at higher place. In the N Seoul Tower area, there were fences where people put a lot of locks on them. The locks were usually put by couples as a symbol of their love. There were locks which had already been put there for several years and some people even used locks with different and odd shapes.

In the tower area, there was also Teddy Bear Museum. Everything displayed in the museum was teddy bear. Bear was said as a symbol of Korea, so in the museum, the Korean people were represented with bears. Teddy Bear Museum was divided into two exhibition halls, the hall of historical Seoul and the hall of today’s Seoul. There were exhibitions of the plain people life in the past, the life of the king, the life of the ministers, the period when Western people started to go to Korea, and until the life of present Korea people. The bears were not static, but they could move with some simple and repeated movement indicating what they were doing.

There was some illumination of N Seoul Tower at 7 pm. So, we watched it before entering the tower. The light was focused on the wall of the tower and the floor in front of the tower. After watching the illumination, we went up to the tower. From the tower, we could see the night view of Seoul. On the glass of the tower, there were writings showing which city in the world which was located at that direction and its distance from the Seoul Tower.

Then we finally went to the airport to go back to Tokyo the next day. In the Incheon Airport, there was Korean tradition experiencing lounges for foreigners. In the airport, we tried on hanbok once again. So we tried hanbok for a total of 3 times, even before trying on kimono .

It was cold in Tokyo, and we were welcomed by snow in Tokyo.

Tree Lanes in Nami Island

Statue of Two Main Characters in Winter Sonata

Winter Sonata First Kiss Spot

We went back from Nami Island to Seoul in the afternoon. Because the bus stop was near Insa Dong, we walked to Insa Dong and after that we went to board on Hangang River Tour Ship. There were two tour courses, A and B courses. We could choose whether to go up or down the river. The price of the Hangang Tour was different depending on the time and items included in the ship. We took the tour with 16,000 Won. It was expensive, but we could find no more suitable time besides that one, so we took it.

Standing outside on the ship was so cold. It was winter and the wind was blowing and made it even colder. But the view we could see on the ship was beautiful. We could see the night view of Han River at night. (The two photographs below were taken by my friend)

The main attraction of this festival is 300 people carrying the portable shrine and parade according to the designated route such as Kanda, Nihombashi, Otemachi, Marunouchi, and so on.

I didn’t follow the portable shrine, but went to the shrine instead. In the shrine, there was also some dance performed in front of the gate and also inside the shrine area. Besides that, there was also drum performance.

At certain time, there was soba making, and the soba would be used as an offering for the god of the shrine. There were many soba makers who made the soba, and 1 person perform different step of making the soba. Some of them mixed the flour and water, some of them flattened the soba dough, some of them cut down the soba into strings and some of the arranged the soba into a wooden box.

Deok Su Gung served as the main palace for Great Han Empire (1897-1910). Actually, it was not listed in our trip plan, but because there was palace guard changing ceremony on that day, so we visited this palace first. This is the video of the guard changing ceremony.

There was a booth which provided free hanbok (Korean clothes) to wear and we could take some pictures with the palace guards while wearing hanbok. It was my first experience to wear a hanbok.

After taking some pictures, we went into the palace. The entrance ticket was 1000 Won, not so expensive. In the palace we could see many traditional royal buildings made of wood. There were also stones marking the positions of each minister during the meeting with the king in the old times. The front seat was for the high rank minister, while the rear seat was for low rank minister.

After visiting the Deok Su Gung Palace, we went to Gyeong Bok Gung Palace. The entrance ticket was 3000 Won. It was built in 1935, but was reduced to ashes during the Japanese invasion in 1592. The restoration of Gyeong Bok Gung began in 1990 and it was still restored when we visited it. It was already afternoon when we got there, almost 5 pm. Actually there was free hanbok wearing in Gyeong Bok Gung too, but we were too late, the booth was closed right before we got there. Besides the buildings for residence, there was also a performance stage which was surrounded by water. There were also stone sculptures of the twelve Chinese zodiacs.

On the way from Deok Su Gung to Gyeong Bok Gung Palace, we visited the Museum of King Se Jong and also the Haechi Madang. King Se Jong was a very famous king in Korea who invented the Hangul (Korean writing system). Haechi was the symbol of Seoul, it was a lion-like horned yellow creature.

From Deok Su Gung, we walked to Cheong Gye Cheon. It was a public recreation place in Seoul. Initially, there was a small stream there, but it was widened and illuminated, which made it look more beautiful. There were also stones where we could step on to cross the stream.