There was no Internet DX

Wow! It's been five days since I've posted. So you all missed me, right? Right? (Ｔ▽Ｔ)
Oh well, I guess I should explain our lack of posts between the 14-16. Actually I'll recount (hopefully briefly) about what's been happening with us since the 12.

On the 13th, we decided to take a day trip to Hiroshima. Where we went to visit the Peace Memorial dedicated to the Atomic Bombing during World War 2. On the way there, due to some mishap with a tram ticket I was buying, we met a fellow traveler from Australia named Ben. He was doing a backpacking trip through Japan just like us and was going to go to the Peace Park as well. So we got a new (but temporary) member to our party.

The Museum was filled with information of the the horrible events that transpired during the A-bombing. The exhibits re-accounted the events leading to the the bomb, the destructive effects it had upon impact, the aftermath effects on survivors and the world efforts to stop production of atomic weaponry. The exhibits of the survivors of the initial impact of the bombing was the hardest to get through. Still, its a historic event that we can't forget and something we should hope to never occur again.

Upon leaving the museum (we lost our new party member along the way), we decided to go to a shrine that was located just off of Hiroshima, the Itsukushima Shrine. This is a shrine that is located off the main island of Japan, on a smaller island of Miyajima. The one big difference that makes this different from other shrine is that the shrine is located on the beach. The usual Torii Gate leading to the Shrine is actually "floating" in the ocean. When the tide is low, you can actually walk to the gate itself, but when we got there the tide was still high.

With that ends the 13th, on May 14th we traveled to Nagoya to meet with the last of Matt's acquaintances, Taylor. He's originally from America, but came to Japan to be a English Teacher. Taylor's really enthusiastic about things, and appears to be a really outgoing kinda guy. Needless to say being able to converse completely with someone who is also completely fluent in Japanese is a really nice change. ( ・ω・)

He hasn't traveled much in Nagoya so it was a new experience for him as well. We first went to Atsuto Shrine, which is one of the most important shrines in Japan. It is a shrine to the sun god, Amaterasu as well the legendary sword Kusanagi, one of the three imperial regalia. While we weren't allowed to see the Kusanagi, we did find a gigantic sword in one of the buildings, I estimate it to be 2.5-3 metres long.




With the shrine complete, we headed to the Tokugawa Art Museum. As the name implies, its a museum that hosts exhibits to the many historical artifacts of the Tokugawa family (one of the ruling families). After the museum we parted ways with Taylor after a dinner at a CoCo curry chain restaurant.







May 15, thats the day we were to part ways from our hostel in Kyoto. But before leaving, we decided to try and catch the Aoi Festival that was occurring that day at the Imperial Palace there. Many, many people showed up to see the the procession from the palace. The passing of the entire procession took about a hour's time. Once it passed, the crowds dispersed and we headed back to the hostel to pick up our luggage before heading to our next location, the Ryokan!!






A Ryokan is a traditional-styled Japanese inn. It is a place to experience everything the traditional Japanese way. The ryokan we were going to was located in Ohara, which is the northern outskirts of Kyoto, or what Matt would like to call it the "boonies" ;P


The bus ride there wasn't bad, what was bad was the treacherous uphill climb with our luggage. Still it was totally worth it. The inn was exquisite, they had two working real onsens/hot spring baths, one being a open air Cypress bath and the other being a enclosed rock bath. You can see a picture of the rock bath in Colin's recent post. A shrine was located right next to the inn, so we also visited that during our stay.

Finally, yesterday arrived. We departed from the ryokan (however unwillingly) and went back to Kyoto station where we took the bullet train to our final lodging destination, Tokyo. Even on the bullet train, the trip took over 2 hours and 40 minutes. （￣□￣；）













That plus lugging our luggage through all the stairs at the train and subways stations completely exhausted us. But we got to our new hostel, Khaosan Kabuki safely. Even if we were tired like heck, we went out to check out the temple just next to the hostel before eating some Indian food for dinner and calling it a night.







Which leads to today with me writing this post and eating Calorie Mate for breakfast.I believe we'll be checking out the city of Nikko today.