Spring Break!

This Spring I traveled to Kyoto, Ise, Kobe and Naruto. It was quite a tiring journey as I did it in four days but I had an enjoyable time. I took the night bus to Kyoto so I arrived early in the morning and headed to the Toji (東寺) Temple flea market. This was a great market for many Japanese style items. I bought quite a few Kimono's, some lovely pottery and an excellent glass sake bottle. I also had a look around the temple which was very pretty.

Afterwards I decided to walk to Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺) via a quick stop at the lockers in Kyoto station to store all my goodies. I also walked through Gion and got a glimpse of a few Maiko, Geisha in training walking in the streets. 

This was my first time at Kiyomizu-dera and I really loved it. The views over the city scape of Kyoto were beautiful and the temple was very pretty. Unfortunately, I was still a bit too early for sakura but there were some plum blossoms. 

The next day, I went to Ise which was one of the main reasons for my trip. I wanted to see the Ise Katagami museum. Ise is particularly famous for Katagami, which is Japanese paper stencil cutting. The stencils are used in Katazome, Japanese dying. Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures but this is the website if you are interested, http://tourismmiejapan.com/search/spot.php?act=dtl&id=182.

In the afternoon I went to Ise-Jingu, the Grand Shrine. The shrine is rebuild every twenty years using traditional techniques and this year it will re-open. Therefore, I couldn't see much of the shrine but the grounds were very nice. There are two parts to Ise-jingu, Geku (outer shrine) and Naiku (inner shrine), but I only had time to visit Naiku.

I spent that evening in Kobe so that I could travel to Naruto the next morning. I was very excited to cross the Onaruto Bridge in to Shikoku because I had read about it before coming to Japan. I got off the bus at Naruto Park so that I could cross under the bridge to look at the whirlpools. I was a little late but caught the end of the tide changing and saw some interesting whirlpools. The attendants there spoke perfect English and they were very nice to talk to us for a little while.

I had met two of my friends there and we all went to Naruto Otsuka Museum, which is Japan's largest museum. The museum holds life-sized reproductions of some of the greatest Western art of the twentieth century, including the Sistine Chapel. Most of the work I had never seen before so it was very interesting. Luckily, my friends are art historian so they explained a lot of the paintings to me.

We were all very excited that you could touch the work because they were copies and took this picture of us touching the Mona Lisa. Apparently the real Mona Lisa is kept behind bullet proof glass.

Kobe Chinatown

I spent the next day exploring Kitano in Kobe. This area has lots of American and European style buildings, that were very pretty and actually made a nice change from Japanese style building.

I found two Japanese girls dressed as Sherlock Holms on an investigation, I thought they were so cute.

I also found the beautiful Kobe Mosque and was excited to see that in this area there was so many Middle Eastern shops. I was able to buy some of my favorite food; halloumi cheese and cous-cous.