Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Heading Home

The tickets have been purchased. Les jeux sont faits.

We leave here July 5th and we're spending 11 days in Japan before getting back to Calgary July 16th. I can hardly believe it.

We are flying in to Tokyo but would like to see some of the rest of the country if possible. Any suggestions?

5 comments:

Jon said...

Make sure to get the JR RAIL PASS for visitors. It is SO worth it if you are going ANYWHERE in the country.

Hiroshima was awe inspiring.

Osaka was pretty neat, although we didn't get to spend much time there.

Kamakura, just south of Tokyo was nice. It has a big Buddha.

Check out some of the theme parks around the Tokyo area. The one in Yokohama (Cosmoworld) was small, but fun. The China Town in Yokohama was really cool.

In Tokyo proper:

Make sure to check out the Ginza, Harijuku after 8PM (lots of weird people to look at), Akihabara (electronics district).

Don't bother with the Tokyo Tower, it was pretty lame.

Check out rea's japan buzznet site: http://reaincalgary-japan.buzznet.com/user/photos/

She has some good comments and information in there.

Jon said...

Oh yeah, if you make it to Hiroshima, go to Miyajima (an Island), it had a great cable car ride.

Bob Milner said...

I suggest you practice bowing.

Jon said...

We only went for 10 days and we ended up doing all that and more.

Japan is a tiny country and you can get to Hiroshima from Tokoyo in 3 or 4 hours by bullet train.

You won't be able to see everything in all these places, but you will get a good sampling and then you can decide if you want to go back and do more.

Just remember this as well, once you have seen one temple, you have seen them all. I would not recommend spending the time going to see all the big temples in a city. They are pretty, but there are just too many and I didn't really get that much out of them after the first 20 or so. :-)

Jeff Milner said...

Not all the temple's are equal. I really enjoyed going to The Golden Pagoda Temple in Kyoto - however, having said that most of the other temples are along the lines of if you've seen one you've seen them all.

Also of interest in Kyoto was seeing the Palace. It was pretty cool.

If I were in Tokoyo I might consider Tokyo Disneyland, but as you know, I'm a big amusement park fan.