Tottori and Matsue

After Osaka we decided to go north and visit some of the smaller cities in Japan. We choose Tottori for our first destination and decided to take a chance and look for accommodation when we arrived. This turned out to be easier than we feared. Friendly people at the "tourist information" office helped us get a room in a local Ryokan. It turned out that this Ryokan was actually mentioned in the Lonely Planet. Hotel Matsuya-so had a big, nice and simple japanese style room for us when we arrived after being notified by the tourist office that guest where on their way. Tottori is famous for their beautiful sand dunes.





After strolling around the area of Tottori for a couple of days we thought it was time to move on again. This time we choose Matsue to be our destination. We had very nice weather both in Tottori and Matsue. We enjoyed the sun although Japan is really hot these days. The news are full of stories about people having problems with the heat.





We have now arrived in Hiroshima and plan to stay here for a couple of night to view the sights of the A-Bomb and the Miyajima Island

2 Days in Osaka

After Kyoto we did the short trip to Osaka to let the kids have some fun in the Osaka Aquarium and Universal Studio Park. The aquarium gave us the chance to see some really nice fish up close. They even had a whale shark swimming around in the tank. I can not help feeling sorry for the fish that is out in a tank for us to watch. Hopefully it will excite children and others to maybe seek more knowledge of the ocean and all the living things out there. This makes it a place to learn and inspire instead being a place for entertainment. We even had some time for a visit at the well known Osaka Castle.





The next day we used a whole day at the Osaka Universal Studio Park doing various rides with the kids. What more can I say?

Queues, Rides, Queues, Rides and more Queues...

We stayed at a very nice guesthouse; Bonsai Guesthouse, but very unreliable internet connection in the room.

Monkey Business outside Kyoto

Just outside Kyoto there is a small area where you can see monkeys that are not put in a cage. You are the one in the cage actually if you want to feed them!

Last Few Days

Just a quick update on our travels. We are now in Matsue after being in Tottori and Osaka for a few days. We have been without internett for a few days and I am lucky to be able to connect to the net in this location. More to come with pictures later when we go south again and have a reliable internet connection.

Kyoto

We have arrived in Kyoto after a few hours on the train from Fukuoka with a quick change at the shin-Osaka station. It was really easy travelling with the Japan Rail Pass and we got to reserve seats and all for free at Hakata station in Fukuoka.

Ginkaku ji
Beautiful nature mixed with several old buildings built in the style of the Muromachi period. This was a great place to visit and was only a short bus trip from where we stay at Khaosan Guesthouse Kyoto


Nanzen-ji
This place was a great place for me to take a breath after walking a couple of hours in several small temples along our philosophic path from Ginkaku-ji. It was not crowded in any way and I felt almost alone sitting at the old floor looking on the beautiful garden.
Imagine doing aikido in setting like this with beautiful nature on all sides. The mats in the main house was softer than the tatami we have in Fukuoka!

We also planned to visit the Kyoto Zoo, but we were out of luck as it closed 30 minutes before we got there.

Since we still have not managed to experience all the sights we wanted to experience, it looks like we have to stay for another night or so. The things still on the list is:
Arashiyama: Tenryu-ji (There is a lot of things to experience here)
Kiyomizu-dera (Walking distance from where we stay!)
Kinkaku-ji
Yasaka-jinja

Japanese Garden and Onsen

We did a bit of sightseeing today at Dazaifu and also visited a great hotel where we were greated by the president of the company as he is an aikidoka and has good relationship with our sensei Bjørn Eirik Olsen in Norway. This was a very special arrangement for us and we did our best to fit in while bathing in the steaming hot water. The hotel was a short distance outside Fukuoka and near to the airport. We checked the prices when we left and a double room was a bit more than 50000 yen per night including lunch and dinner! Japanese people are some of the most hospitable people I have ever encountered in my travels and I feel very lucky to experience Japan in this way. The home stay is working out great and we are learning more Japanese every day.

Dazaifu


Daimaru Besso Hotel


We also made plans to leave for Kyoto in a couple of days.

Home Stay

Today I am moving from Access-Tenjin to home stay at an aikido friends house. She has a "big" house and can have us all in there as my girlfriend and her two kids are coming down to Fukuoka for a couple of weeks. It will be less training, but more sightseeing in this period. I hope to get to go to a few classes during this time anyway. I will probably long for the aikido practice now that I have been at it almost every day for two weeks. I do think that my knees probably have a need of a few days off as well. When the mats are as hard as they are down here it is funny to notice that I now know where the little softer mats are. There is a couple of "softer" ones in Takasago near the middle of the dojo. In Fukuoka dojo the hardest ones are the ones close to the entrance.

There is said to be internet access at the home stay so I will be continuing with the blog posts and maybe I finally can get some pictures up too. A big thanks go out to Toshiro Nishida that managed to get posters out in all dojo's for home stay!