Highlights of Japan & Sth Korea – 16day Tour 2024

Days 5 & 6 11 & 12th November 2024

Happiest of birthdays to my eldest son, Scott this 11^th November & Remembrance Day for our WW1 veterans. “At the going down of the sun .. we will remember them” .. “Lest we forget”.

Lots of photos in this blog. Getting accustomed to brekky and sorting out everything, it is almost automatic with the only issue to mind is what clothes to wear to suit the perceived weather. The bus departed at 8.30am & on time. Go figure!  We are heading South to Kyoto, some 184klms & 4hrs incl 1 toilet stop. We passed a lot of typical small villages surrounded by mountain ranges which is like a never-ending story travelling down the centre of Honshu Island including the very impressive infrastructure and the road network. Every now & then some landmarks or infrastructure stands out like in this photo. My working life included a lot of civil & engineering projects, so I am seeing far more than most of the passengers on the bus & when I point out a couple of things there seems to be elements of misunderstanding or a vacuum of real thought of what was involved. Anyway, I’m bloody impressed!!

You can see how vital these road tunnels are for getting to the other side of these mountain ranges & for villages to be connected. My last blog advised it would take about a week for someone to transverse between each village in past times. This bus journey had the least amount of places worthy of a photo being in a different region with more landscape of farming areas & extensive hot houses .

Today is an optional tour day in the afternoon but I won’t be partaking in it as per my Blog 1. Our first morning stop on the way is Kinkaku-ji Temple on the NW boundary of Kyoto encompassing some 132,000 square metres or 13.2hectares. This site would have to be one of the most recognisable landmarks in Japan & a must do visit. Entrance fee is just 500yen ($5AUD) & included in our tour. It’s a bit of a challenge to get an uninterrupted shot with the volume of people at the vantage spots so you must use a lot of patience … many travellers have none. This landmark is an absolute gem for your eyes

This is a Zen temple of Shokoku-ji School of Rinzai Buddhist Denomination. It was originally the home of the Saionji family. In 1397 Yoshimitsu, 3rd Shogun of Ashikaga Shogunate took it over & built the Kitayama Palace centring around the Golden Stupa, Kinkaku. This stupa has burnt down a few times (previous wars) with the latest fire being 1950 by a zealot monk but rebuilt & opened from 1955. It became the centrepiece of politics & culture for welcoming Emperors of Japan & trade with China (Ming period).

After Yoshimitsu passed away it became a temple & a very special religious place. It was ultimately registered as a World Cultural Herutafe site in 1994. It was a beautiful day to see this amazing place but a bit more sunshine would have seen the Kinkaku more glowing of gold. Notice the gold phoenix on its roof crest.

There are 3 floor levels in the Kinkaku & they are off limits to the public & all built of differing architecture. On the Ground floor (Japan always call this level, 1st floor) The Yoshimitsu statue. 2nd floor has the statue of Shitenno with its 4 protective warriors. The 3rd floor Chinese Zenshu butsudan style of cremation vault as per the below left photo.

The top centre Japanese sign was translated using my Google Translate app with a screenshot when entering the Tori gate. This vertical sign informs us of the 5 Precautions or Precepts (Title). First line #1 Do not deliberately kill anyone or anything #2 Do not take what is not given to you. #3 Do not engage in immoral desires. #4 Do not utter false words. #5 Do not become intoxicated with alcohol and neglect your daily activities. I pretty well align with the first 4 out of five with #5 not truly aligning myself with to be honest. How many do you align with? My life has always been centred around the Ten Commandments & that has kept me in good stead.

The gardens in Autumn are a mixture of colours & even with snow white cover in Winter the area is amazing when looking at the range of wall photos available. Unfortunately, our tour time does not allow for us to walk the loop pathway that extends up above the flat area of the Kinkaku. What a shame, for it would be worth the viewing even if one crawled up there.

Sadly, the commercial side is now partaking these sacred grounds up near the Observatory Platform with street stalls & vending machines along the pathways, but I hope it contributes to keeping the landmark’s operational & entry costs to a minimum.

Boarding the bus we quickly arrive at another great hotel, La’gent Hotel Kyoto – Nijo with another superb room but as usual we can only store our bags there till the 3pm check-in time however we managed a 2pm entry while the other half of the bus was on the optional tour. DS (another sole traveller from Blog 1 & 2) & I bought a beer or 2 at the 7/11 shop opposite & wandered around a few streets till we found a planter box to sit on. There are virtually no bench seats along the streets in Japan. Seems people are always moving, never sitting. The hotel would not allow us to drink in their waiting area & foyer. Japan has rules that must be followed.

We walked a few streets & found a quiet laneway & just as we sat down & took a few tastes of beer we heard police sirens & DS started panicking thinking a resident has seen some strange men sitting on a pathway drinking in the open. LOL!! The sirens were getting louder and even I started thinking that may be the case. We had better hide the drinking a bit more. Haha!

Come 5.30pm DS (getting increasingly frustrated in finding a good food place) & I finally found a place to eat & low & behold my favourite bus couple, Ted & Maria had a booth & so did Fay & Dean. It was such a relief to have a conversation with others besides DS’s constant verbal most of the time on the bus & being by my side like a clinging twin. Really enjoyed having dinner respectfully in a restaurant & with great people, unlike eating consumables from our pit stops in my room alone. Today I did 6,623 steps or 4.97klms so it’s helping my fitness & my daily eating of processed foods I usually don’t consume like sweets & pastries.

Time for an early bed for a 6am brekky & another timely checkout & bus adventure. Seeing I stuffed up on Day 3 departure I am quite diligent now in handing in my room key into reception. Don’t wish to be another passenger failure. Once is enough; however, my failure was only a 5mins delay after much banter from fellow travellers.

Day 6 12/11

Out the front of the La’gent Hotel Kyoto – Nijo we are pressed to load & board the bus, for the bus driver can be fined taking up the outer lane of a busy road. With that in mind, we speed packed within the required 20mins allowance much to my amazement. We then headed further into Kyoto due to the time mix up from yesterday to visit the Fushimi Inari Shrine not far from the Golden temple of Kinkaku-ji of yesterday.

This Shrine has a thousand plus vermilion painted Torii gates which straddle a network of trails in this vast park. I would have loved to do the full loop trail but again, frustratingly not enough time (2hrs). Apart from the vermillion gates we could not help but see the volume of schoolchildren at this temple on school outings. The youngest were by far the cutest & followed a strict 2lane walking & holding hands, boys to girls. So different than what you see now in Australia. Even the older students were impeccably dressed in high quality school clothing and displaying good manners & respect.

This temple has a religious activity and first, you must wash your hands in a bamboo stream trough for cleansing, then line up in turn & do a respectful bow & lift one of the 2 round stones. The scripture says if the stone is too heavy the person has a lot of burden & if you lift easy then you are unburdened & happy in life. I was thankful the stone was quite light for me. Some of our passengers couldn’t lift them & said they were heavy, so that confirms a few things for me. Now our hands are cleansed we can then enter the Shrine from the left (leave by the right). One MUST NEVER enter via the middle as this is for religious elders, etc but unfortunately, a lot of tourists have never been advised of this type of respect. Trend, our guide, is very conscious of many religious procedures & etiquettes & she explains it very well & we all feel better knowing we are doing the respectful etiquette.

With a quick walk through the ‘tunnels’ of the Torii gates (left photo above), basically doing a U turn at the end Y junction back to the exit gate for the bus after we are recommended to buy food in these street stalls with a bit of free time. I had a noodle dish of sorts & it filled the stomach gap.

We left the Kyoto region & drove for about 1hr southwards to Nara Park where there are about a thousand roaming deer (Japan refers to deers as Messengers of Gods) all looking for anyone with food .. they can smell it & will follow you until they get their reward. Most of the deer have even learnt to bow for food from the volume of Japanese & tourists that bow to them out of respect. You can buy the crackers feed for 200yen ($2AUD).

Within Nara Park is the Todaiji Temple, one of Japan’s most famous & historically significant temples built in various stages since 752AD. The photo above is the Shrine Entry Gate & even that is huge!!! I asked Trend & others how such an enormous structure could be built back then, plus do more extensions & enhancements to it, but no answer was forthcoming. I can’t get my head around how this building could be constructed back in those ages. This building still reigns as the largest timber building structure in the world, thereby giving you some idea of the size including the size of the people in the photos.

When walking up to this huge structure you encounter a very large Chinese bronze octagonal lantern (one of two ever built, but only one here at this temple & can be seen in centre of top right photo in front of the temple). On very special religious events this lantern is lit and would be done a few times in a year especially in their religious lantern festival.

This structure is amazing with a 25m high ceiling & yet to get the giant 15m high Buddha transported through the back elevation at a later date is still doing my head in. The entrance is guarded as usual by fierce warriors & again, never walk through the middle.

The 15m high Buddha (left above photo) takes centre stage but the photo doesn’t show the clear larger scale to the smaller idol on the right, accompanied by other large religious beings & they appear to be some 8-9m high under this 25m ceiling. To see the structural engineering of this building it is best to look at the corners of the ceiling and see how there are no mechanical fixings in the beams & columns. A truly amazing structure.

The temple entrance has enormous lockable doors that can be closed & about 4m high x 1.8m wide each with huge hinges that are surprisingly from ancient times. Everything here is massive in scale but again, I feel like I’m the only one seeing this side of the landmark. Most people are viewing the Buddha.

Behind the large Buddha there are scaled models of some stages of construction to the temple of 300 & 800 yrs ago. Also at the rear is a large cedar tree structural column with a small square hole chamber cut through it near the floor & children are encouraged to crawl through it as a test of courage & belief & a sign for a good future & education. It was fun to watch & see their happiness & thankful I could get a couple of photos in between their teacher taking the prime spot for photos & to see the children so happy when they completed this test.

It was a 15mins walk back to the bus & had a great chat with Trend after I bought her a sweet snack to which she was extremely thankful & surprised by my offering. She enjoyed the company and to talk about other things other than tourist stuff. Off on the bus again eventually, when everyone arrived (very late as usual for the main offenders) for an hour’s drive to Osaka & our Hotel Crystal where we stored our bags till the 4pm check-in. Our hotel location wasn’t too bad considering it is heavily recommended for tourists & tours to do the walk through to Dotonbori & Shinzabashi where there must be over a thousand of shops, stalls, etc you can imagine. Of course, every tourist in Osaka must be here. So many people.

Our bus group had the option to wander around as free time to shop & eat or follow Trend as she had kindly  donated her free time to take anyone or all to visit the Osaka Castle for the sunset & night viewing in the opposite direction well past our hotel, but I chose to eat & shop & return on my own to the hotel, knowing I cannot get lost & also more free time from DS who appeared to be walking straight back to the hotel (more on this in my next blog). Quickly, everyone scattered so I found myself absolutely on my own but with about 5.000 people around me, if that makes sense. I had a great Tapanyaki dinner for $22AUD (my first opportunity in Japan to date) & lucky there was a table for 2 ready. Some places you must book or arrive extra early due to the volume of people here. In the above photos can you pick me out in the crowd. Hint … I’m on the big screen from a wall way above the street. I’m the old guy in the blue jacket.

I wandered around for ages, bought a few small gifts for my 3 grandchildren that would fit in my backpack. In my 2^nd store of purchasing, I was helped by a young lady with a strange accent unbeknown to me. She was my first Ukrainian I had met & when I asked about her family (Russia/ Ukraine War), she became quite reserved & troubled, so I quickly offered my prayers, and she began to smile again. She was a most beautiful caring person & so helpful.

I easily found my way back to the hotel for check-in & to my Room 1312 & what a room!! Ultra-modern & new with even its own laundry & clothes drying fan room built into the ensuite. King bed, refrigerator, gas stove & room electronics everywhere. I’m very comfortable for this 2-night stay. I’ll get the 200yen laundry detergent tomorrow from reception for my well-needed laundry of clothes.

Today took 15,801 steps or 11.83klms & with my room being so comfortable I will no doubt recover quickly. Early to bed for 7am brekky & a big optional day touring Hiroshima via the much-awaited bullet train (55,000yen or $550AUD) for the full day tour. Bullet train is expensive to use & will form the bulk of the money involved.

Stay happy, healthy & safe for my next blog & thank you immensely for reading & hope you like the photos. I trust the stories and photos will get better.