2012 New Year's Trip to Koya-san/Mount Koya (高野山)

On January 1, 2012, during my winter trip to Kansai, I went to Koya-san/Mount Koya (高野山). One of the reasons I choose to go to Koya-san on New Years is because nothing is open on New Years Day in Japan and going to a commerce-free mountainous temple town seemed to be a good idea and it would be interesting to soak up the atmosphere of a temple town.

Koya-san is the centre of Shingon Buddhism which was introduced in 805 by the monk Kukai (空海) (Kobo Daishi, 弘法大師) and Koya-san was first settled in 819. Koya-san is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name of the "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range".

The main gate of Koya-san, the traditional entrance to Koya-san before the advent of modern transportation means.

Kobe: New Towns, Arima Onsen (有馬温泉) and Mt. Rokko (六甲山)

On December 31, 2011, I visited Kobe, Japan (神戸) again as part of a trip to the Kansai (関西) area because luckily I had a Japanese classmate who was going back to his hometown in the Kansai area for the New Years Holidays and I could share a ride in his car for the 4 hour journey from the campus of Hiroshima University to the Kobe suburban town of Kakogawa (加古川).

I actually arrived in Kobe the previous day at around mid-afternoon and I stayed at a hotel north of the main Sannomiya (三宮) railway station called the Hotel Area One. In all my travels around Japan, it was one of the worst stays I ever had in a hotel. The hotel was located right behind a shrine and in preparation for the new year, the shrine was open for some sort of festival the entire night and because buildings in Japan generally have poor noise insulation, from the room, the noise was so loud that I could hardly sleep!

Generally in my opinion, there are not a good range of easily accessible hotels in Kobe, it is often better to stay in a hotel in Osaka and just take the 30 minute train ride to Kobe as there is a large selection of affordable and cheap hotels in Osaka.

One of the reasons for visiting Kobe (again) was to see the areas of Kobe that I had never seen before this was mainly the Kobe new town suburbs, Arima Onsen (有馬温泉) and Mt. Rokko (六甲山).

One of the interesting things I saw by chance in Kobe, the Gigantor (鉄人28号, Tetsujin 28-gō) statue.

The Many Visits to Miyajima

Miyajima is famous for being one of Japan's three best views and is also the home of the iconic floating torii that is usually featured in the travel books and pamphlets on Japan.

I have now been to Miyajima too many times. Four times in fact, first in 2004 on my first visit to Japan, and then two times in 2010, one time for a school field trip and one time when I went with a visiting friend, and then one time in 2011 for a travel survey. That's quite a lot of times going to a place whose sole tourist attraction is basically the floating torii and shrine!

In this post, I will show pictures taken during my 2010 and 2011 visits.

The famous floating torii.

Kure (呉) - Imperial Japan's Naval Past

On February 19, 2011, I visited Kure, Japan (呉) as part of a travel survey I was paid to do by a consulting company. Because the local government wanted to increase the number of foreign tourists visiting the area, they hired a consulting company to look at and to asess the tourism facilities, mainly the transport facilities. As a result, the consulting company contacted our university and asked a couple of foreign students from a couple of different countries to take part in a survey of the transport facilities around Kure.

Basically I was paid to follow a set travel route and to take pictures and note down any difficulties in using the transport system to get to the tourist spots.

Kure is about 31 minutes by train southeast of Hiroshima and is famous for its naval past in Imperial Japan.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force Kure Museum with the giant submarine in the entrance.

Nagasaki - The Birthplace of Champon

After arriving in Fukuoka from the trip to Okinawa on March 17, 2011, we stayed in Fukuoka for one night before taking a bus from Fukuoka to Nagasaki on March 18, 2011.

This was the second time I had been to Nagasaki. I first visited Nagasaki while I was an undergraduate short term exchange student back in 2006. I posted about that visit here and here in 2006. (Note: it is interesting to see what I wrote back then as a someone who was new to Japan compared to now where I feel like an old Japan hand)

Nagasaki, in recent history, is infamous for being the second place ever to be bombed with an atomic bomb. The first place was Hiroshima, also in western Japan. However, long before the atomic bombing, in the pre-modernization era feudal era, Nagasaki was one of the first and only places where foreign influences entered Japan. Especially Chinese and other European influences.

One of the modern symbols of Nagasaki. At the Peace Park. I personally think it looks really weird.

Okinawa Island: The Land of American Military Bases in Japan

Previously, I posted about the first 2 days of my trip to Okinawa in 2011. This post covers the last 2 days of my trip on March 16 and 17 in 2011.

We went to Ryukyu Mura, the Chatan/Mihama area and Okinawa City.

Okinawa - Naha: The Most Foreign Looking Place in Japan

From March 14-17, 2011, when my mother visited me in Japan, we visited Okinawa, sometimes known as "Japan's Hawaii". Having been to Hawaii a long time ago, I was interested to see how Okinawa compares to Hawaii.

This post covers the first 2 days of the trip (March 14-15) when we flew from Kobe, Japan to the Okinawa prefectural capital of Naha.

The shopping street aimed strictly at tourists in Naha, Kokusai-dori (国際通り). The most interesting thing is that almost everything in Okinawa, unlike on mainland Japan, was aimed at tourists. More precisely, Japanese domestic tourists, for whom, Okinawa feels like visiting a foreign country, yet everyone knows how to speak standard Japanese.

Toyama Study Trip - City Revitalization Through Light Rail Transit

On Dec. 10-11, 2010, I joined a study trip to Toyama, Japan with other foreign students of our laboratory to see an implementation of the "Compact City Development Using Public Transport" that Japan's Ministry of Land, Transport, Infrastructure and Tourism had been promoting as a means of revitalizing hollowed out (due to suburbanization and excessive reliance of private vehicles) cities in local areas.

In the case of Toyama. Japan's first implementation of light rail transit (LRT) was used as a catalyst for urban redevelopment.

Kanazawa (金沢)

I went to Kanazawa two times, once on Dec. 10, 2010 on a school field trip to see the "compact eco-city" of Toyama and once again approximately two years later on Jan. 5, 2012 while on a trip to visit the Historic Village of Shirakawa-go. Therefore this post this is a compilation of the two trips.

Because of it's remote location, on the two times which I visited Kanazawa, I used the city as a stepping stone or transfer point to visit other cities (like Toyama or Shirakawa-go) because the cost of transportation was too expensive to justify a dedicated visit.

One of the main attractions of Kanazawa was because it was the second largest city (after Kyoto) which escaped bombing raids and destruction during the Second World War and hence you can still feel a lot of "traditional Japan" that is long gone in most of the country.

One of the historic Chaya districts in the city where geisha perform in teahouses.

The Historic Village of Shirakawa-go (白川郷) - UNESCO World Heritage Site

The historic village of Shirakawa-go (白川郷) is one of the UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites and is featured prominently on one of the many promotional brochures for tourists coming to Japan.

I went on this trip almost one year ago on Jan. 6, 2012 and the original purpose was to share a ride with a Japanese classmate who was going back to his hometown in Hyogo Prefecture (near Kobe) so I could go to the Kansai region (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe) for sightseeing.

Since I had mostly visited most of the mainstream tourist attractions of Japan and I wanted to find some place "off the beaten track" to visit, I figured it would be convenient to combine my visit to the Kansai region with a trip to Shirakawa-go and Kanazawa.

The main attraction to Shirakawa-go are the traditional "gassho-zukuri" (合掌造り) farmhouses that were built hundreds of years ago in response to the snowy winters and the deep isolation from the rest of Japan.