Hotel Okura Okayama

... p.m.--last night it was noodles and a bowl of rice, and tonight it was a plate of rice with hot curry sauce. Not a huge amount of food, but combined with all the walking I'm doing for sightseeing, the effect is a spa experience that others pay a fortune to get! Toyoko Inn has mastered the design of the small hotel room, fitting all the amenities into a tiny space, with not a square inch squandered. Their major innovation was the bed ...

... I have my hat off to them. Dropped my **** off at Takamatsu before heading to Marugame which apparnetly makes 90% of the fans (uchiwa) for Japan. They also has a castle which I visited and doesn't really inspire much. Even the view, though expansive, is of cranes in the harbor and the sprawl of humanity approaching Takamatsu. The other main sight there is the fan museum which has demonstrations of how they're made. I was ...

... which I found out was packed to the gills because there had been a Kabuki parade that day. Not a parade of Kabuki characters, but famous actors in palaquins. Even the TV crews were there and JAL and JTB had stands with food and beer at the kabuki theater. And here I thought a lot of people wanted to climb to the Shinto shrine on top of Kompira-san. I arrived at Kotohira at 3:30 and after getting lost for half an hour (never follow Japanese tourists anywhere ...

... br>
More train transfers to get to Miyajima island, near Hiroshima (which I avoided like a plague because I just don't have it in me...) Miyajima is 'one of the three most famous views in Japan' and for that reason I was doubtful about how much it would really match the hype. The actual view that people talk about is the floating torii, which is basically erected on a mud flat and appears floating in the water at high tide. Though the torii is nice to look at, as well as ...

Kotohira-gu Shrine In Kagawa is one of the largest shrines in Japan, also known as Konpira-san. My Japanese friends told me Japanese should visit it at least one in their life time. My husband and me went there on the New Year day and drove from Okayama-Ken.We also pass the world's longest two-tiered bridge system -Seto-Ohashi Bridge. It was nice to drive aound ...

... the 24th of November all of us 'KUINEP Kids' settled into our special tour bus. The sympathetic staff from the FSD held a quick introduction speech and really it was not much different from the school trips we used to have when we where......11. Nostalgic memories aside the trip was very, very nice (kudo's to FSD!) . Our first stop was Himeji-jo (attentive readers might realize that I already visited this castle however ...

Dopo qualche giorno a Kyoto si riparte , il riposino ci voleva perche` e` propio una bella citta` con tanti posti da visitare. Il viaggio di oggi e` stato qualcosa di tremendo sono passato attraverso Nara la vecchia capitale del Giappone , Osaka , Kobe , Okayama fino a fermarni a Kurashiki che ...

... stalo, v kazdom pripade sme sa tam motali pekne dlho. A to sme mali GPS navigaciu... Bez nej by to bolo v Japonsku na ceste velmi velmi zlozite aj pre samotnych Japoncov. Niet preto divu, ze navigacia dnes svieti v kazdom aute a patri k uplne najzakladnejsej vybave tak, ako klimatizacia, spatne zrkadla alebo volant. Svoj podiel na neprehladnosti, hlavne na velkych krizovatkach, najazdoch a zjazdoch z dialnice, maju hlavne smerove tabule. Na rozdiel od nasich, su ...

... be the current big thing over here. I`ve read the comics it`s based on, and that fact coupled with my bearly-nearly-sort of functioning Japanese meant that I managed to follow the plot and conversations pretty well. It`s worth mentioning that any big budget Japanese film worth its salt has many pretty people in it, so had I not understood, it wouldn`t be so bad. In England, arcades are usually dodgy looking establishments which serve to show what games were ...

... beers and nibbles so we chilled about at the top for a few minutes. Unfortunately, standing still meant getting very cold so we headed down again after taking many shots of the amazing view. As the two religions in Japan are Buddhism and Shinto(ism), the latter having one of four affirmations being the love of nature, nature is sacred, to be in contact with nature is to be close to the Gods. Natural objects are therefore worshipped as sacred spirits, so ...