kotoshi, shichi gatsu ni Nippon ni iku tsumori desu

[John Whitley]

You can overdose on gardens, temples and shrines in Kyoto in a mere 5~6 days...

Ha! My wife and I tried this on our Winter 2015 trip, and failed miserably. I think we have an unusually high tolerance...

More seriously, congrats Derek. That's a good length of trip; it'll be a blast. One suggestion is to consider getting "IC" card(s) for each traveller in your group. These are the stored value "tap" cards used throughout Japan for the transit systems. They come with specific local brandings such as "Pasmo", but all of them work wherever IC cards are accepted, including at some vending machines. Many transit stations will have kiosks that can dispense new cards, and virtually all of them can top up cards. At least within Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, the kiosks tend to have an "English" button as well, which greatly aided our poor written Japanese skills. Japan Post locations are reliable sources for ATMs that US travellers can use to get local cash, in turn useful for topping up and for Japan's much more cash-based economy.

The utility of these cards depends on what setup you get for the JR rail passes, but they were invaluable on our trip. They completely eliminate the hassle of figuring out correct fares and ticketing prior to making a trip -- just tap in at the start of your trip and tap out at the end. The exiting gate will show your remaining balance.

Closely related, one of the best decisions on our trip was to get data SIM cards for our smartphones immediately upon arrival. This gives you access to both Internet travel resources while you're there, as well as Google Maps. Our experience of Maps support in Japan was excellent, especially around transit/train routing in the cities. I'd recommend any of the NTT Docomo based resellers (for Docomo's great coverage quality), choosing one that has a plan well-suited to your length of stay. The airports will have a ton of vendors; the hardest part was sorting through them after having gotten off an international fight. Also not to be discounted, the Google Translate app, was also amazingly useful and I gather has continued to improve since our last trip.

Last but not least, I'll share a huge brainwave my wife had during our trip. Particularly in Kyoto, we discovered that it would take forever to walk to our "major attraction" for the day because there was so much to see on the way. To reduce the "shiny object" (or maybe "omg architecture") effect, her idea was simple: hire a cab first thing in the morning to take us to our outlying location, then meander at our leisure through the city back towards our hotel.

[Yxoc]

John, two excellent points, thank you. I am still wondering if the JR pass will actually result in a savings for us, I need to map the itinerary in a good detail with anticipated train/bus trips to see how much we will actually use it. A 14 day JR pass will be circa $1700AU for the family of four, which, frankly, sounds like a lot of cash. But it may not be easy to calculate the cost crossover point between JR Pass and pay as you go. I realise that even with the JR Pass I will need to pay for some travel.

The sim card is another goodie - I can't imagine getting around anywhere these days without easy internet access.

Jacob - No offence taken by me. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Dryness and Sarcasm so don't cut back on my behalf!

I appreciate the summary regarding the Ise shrines. I will be testing the families patience for temple/shrine visits so I don't think I can afford to risk anything that might be boring - I may have to limit our trips to those locations that have inherently more 'bling'.

Roughly where in Gifu prefecture are you? The quiet country lifestyle sounds appealing, if we wanted to spend a day or two in a Ryokan in that area could you recommend a few places?

Derek

[Yxoc]

Hello All,
We head off to Japan this weekend. And I've just realised I can't count - September is the 9th month of the year, replace shichi with kyū in the title. What a clown I am

We have decided on the following itinerary and booked our accommodation accordingly:

Four nights in Tokyo
Two nights in Nikko
Two nights in Fujikawaguchiko
Two nights in Gifu
Eight nights in Kyoto

I'll report back in three weeks with our experiences. Still deciding if I try and pick up any wood working tools over there... Will see how I go.

[Chris Hall]

旅でお楽しみください。

If time permits, please take lots of pics of interesting architecture and woodwork and post them here!!

[Yxoc]

Alas it is over ,
Last Friday we returned from a truly wonderful holiday in Japan. All the positive remarks that people make regarding the Japanese people seemed to be justified in our experience. Their incredible politeness, astounding work ethic, immaculately clean and safe environment and wonderfully efficient public transport systems were very apparent. So much so that I fear they must be horrified when they come to Australia and see how rude, lazy and careless we are by comparison.

I have lots of photos that I would like to share and so I will try and upload them one day of our holiday at a time. Let me know at any time when you've had enough.

Derek

[Chris Hall]

Photos? Did I hear you mention photos?

[Yxoc]

Sorry,
There was a little bit of processing required to get the batch of photos on to the computer and resized.

Let me say at the outset that I was working with a fixed 35mm lens and 'leg' zooming was the only way to get a closer view of the intended subject which was limiting at times. Additionally, my camera is quite susceptible to lens flare whenever the lens axis was close to the sun. Given that I was often photographing upwards to capture roof details, this issue cropped up often. Lastly I had to up the exposure compensation to sufficiently expose the details of the roofing structure at times and this meant that the rest of the photo was often overexposed.

Any way, excuses aside, we started our trip with four nights in Tokyo, staying in the little village of Tateishi in Katsushika. Each day the walk into, and back from Tateishi station took us past a local Shrine and temple. Google maps listed the shrine as Tateishi Suwa. It was rather modest and unremarkable but neat and nicely kept all the same. The major structure looked in good repair:

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The shrine was not fenced off from surrounding areas at all and was nearly a thorough fare for the direct route between our apartment and the train station and major village shops. I am a sucker for carved elements and have a few photos of that subject to share. This shrine was not without some nice embellishments:

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[Yxoc]

The centre located Dragon was not easy to photograph:

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Unlike the shrine, the temple was well fenced and did not lend itself to easy access. I walked passed every day waiting for it to be open, or for some signs of life to appear and, tired of waiting, I eventually inquired with the next door kindergarten which seemed to have some relationship with the shrine itself. The children could sometimes be seen playing in a small playground within the temple grounds. The staff there said I was welcome to go in and take photos but was to avoid entering the main hall and the cemetery at the back. The main hall is a bit dark in this photo unfortunately:

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Just off to the right and sharing the temple grounds was a small shrine:

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[Yxoc]

Like so many of these little shrines we saw, the joinery looked to be replicas of full sized structures just on a smaller scale. This example was starting show some age related wear and tear:

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That's all for this instalment. Next up is Asakusa and Senso-ji temple.

[Yxoc]

Asakusa was a charming location with many traditional style shops but it was one of a couple of locations in Japan where the sheer weight of tourists detracted a bit from the experience. I knew there would be a lot of crowds in Japan and a lot of tourists in some more popular locations but nevertheless there was a couple of times I felt overwhelmed. Sensoji temple itself seemed to be a mostly concrete reconstruction of a former wooden building, and I tend to think that if you're unlimited in your selection of building materials then why wouldn't you build a Skytree instead? Nevertheless I duly wandered around the grounds and took a couple of snaps, nothing really better than what you can see on Japan-Guide.com. But, for completeness here is the Hozomon:

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The Pagoda:

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And the main hall:

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The Kaminarimon or Main entrance gate was under cover for renovations.


Just a little way off to the North East was a Shrine that looked more authentic:

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It struck me how elaborate the drainage and water collection system was on this shrine and indeed similar structures, made from bronze or copper it seemed, adorned many other temples and shrines I came across:

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