April 21, 2014

When I woke up I was in my awesome room with the TV still on since I fell asleep. I watched a movie in bed. Then we went down to breakfast. We went shopping from the 16th floor and down. It was crazy so overwhelming! Our tour guide picked us up and went to the oSaka Castle. The Osaka Castel had been burned down before so it is fairly new. Inside they had at the tallest level a an overview of Osaka. On all the other floors they had history about the castle and the Shogun. A Shogun was like a General in the military. If a pedestrian killed a Shogun than he became a Shogun. There big doors that would be hard to get into and a big moat around the castle.

We walked back and went to lunch. Our tour guide Marie took us to traditional Japanese pizza. It wasn't like pizza at all. On my pizza it was egg, then noodle, lettuce, more egg, special sauce, mayonnaise, and bonitos. Bonitos are little parts of a fish that taste like fish food they moved on hot food. They cooked it in front of us like tepanyaki. It was only ok, it wasn't the best "pizza" I had had.

We went to the airport. Our tour guide helped us out and we walked in and went through security. We took an 9 hour flight to San Francisco.

Japan was such a great trip. I am so glad that I got this experience to visit all these cities: Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and Osaka.

April 20, 2014

April 20, 2014

It was Easter! I woke up my mom told me to look right by the door. I looked and I got a present. It was a letter from my mom saying happy Easter and I got more of my favorite candies. We headed downstairs to get some breakfast at the breakfast buffet. We headed to the Peace Memorial where we got an audio tour around the museum. It was sad. The atomic bomb killed almost 200,000 people. The hydrogen bomb is 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. There is fusion and there is fission. The Atomic bomb used fission where the atoms were split into many other elements. The hydrogen bomb uses fusion where it pushes atoms together to get a big explosion. It was so hot that it even melted a little girl's trike from 3.5km away. They had a globe showing all the nuclear weapons and how many each country had. The country that had the most was Russia, then America. I don't remember the rest. The atomic bomb went up to 3000 Celcius and around 600 miles an hour wind. 30 minutes after the bomb went off there was fire and big smoke clouds on the ground. The watches stopped exactly when the bomb went off at 8:15.

After the Memorial we headed to church where it was a small but sweet church. We were able to find church because there were two missionaries standing out front. Sacrament meeting was in Japanese but there was a translator what everyone was saying into English. We had a little ear phone that we could listen to the translation. Then after church we took a train, then took a ferry to Miyajima Island.

At the island we walked around and saw the giant orange gate in the water where we also the shrine. The shrine was all on the water. The aquarium there was especially cool. It had such cool fish like eels and penguins walking through the halls, even octopuses and sting rays. They had the biggest sea lions I have ever seen in my life. After the aquarium we started to head back. This time we took a boat all the way to the A Bomb Dome instead of taking the train back and taxi. When we got back to the hotel we picked up our bags and headed to the train station where we hung out and got onto the train.

When we got to the hotel. It might have been even cooler than the Ritz Carlton.  We are on the 54th floor and we have a sweet room. I have a whole room to myself. There are huge panorama windows and heated floors and jet bath. For dinner we went for Tepanyaki on the 57th floor of the hotel. Tepanyaki was so delicious. The beef and mushrooms were so good! We played a little pin ball game also. My mom won once, I won the other. When I got back to the room, I just chilled in my room.

April 19, 2014

April 19, 2014

When I woke up we weren't in the joint. We were in the New Wakasa hotel room. The breakfast luckily didn't have any fish heads on my meal. The breakfast was pretty good. My favorite part was miso soup. We wandered around Nara for a while. We went to a cool temple where there were lanterns everywhere. There were 3000 plus stone and copper lanterns leading up to the Kasuga Shrine. We saw some pagodas. The top level meant Sky, the second level was Air and Wind, the third was Wood, the fourth was Water, the fifth was Earth. Today we also saw a lot of deer and cool ponds. There was a screaming girl at one of the ponds we went to.

Then we headed back to the hotel and grabbed our luggage and headed to the train station. We took a 40 minute train to Kyoto. We took an earlier train so we could look for my favorite candy (it is only made in Kyoto) and conveyor belt sushi. Surprisingly we found both right next to each other. I was so happy! I got one of every flavor. The conveyor belt sushi was also good. It was so cheap and good. We sat at the bar so that we could take off the sushi we wanted. After all that, we headed to the bullet train station where we could wait for our train to Hiroshima.

We arrived at Hiroshima. We first dropped our bags off at the hotel and then went to the Peace Memorial Park. At the Peace Memorial Park there was a arch that is in memory of the bomb victims. There was also The Flame of Peace where if all the nuclear weapons were destroyed the flame would go out. But now it has been going for about 50 years. There was the Children's Peace Monument. This girl was sick from the bomb.She thought if she made a 1000 paper cranes that she would be healed. But she died. In memory of her kids still make paper cranes around the world and bring them there. I saw cases of the paper cranes. Then we went to the A Bomb Dome. It was one of the only structures that wasn't evaporated from the A Bomb. The dome on the building was covered with copper. The copper was melted but the skeleton of the dome was still there. We also saw the Peace Bell. I rang the bell. The Memorial Mound was all the ashes of tens of thousands of victims it was near the Peace Bell.

The Memorial made me feel sad. But it also made me think that if the bomb hadn't gone off I probably wouldn't have been here because my great grandfather had gotten sent over to Japan but when he got here the war was over.

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant. it was good. Me and my dad got the same thing, same appetizer and same entree. My mom almost got the same thing as al of us. When we walked home I was so feeling ice cream. I had to find some soft serve! But all we could find was pre made soft serve. So I just got some Hagen Daz cookies and cream ice cream.

April 18, 2014

Day 6 Japan. We stayed at "the joint"today. When we had breakfast I was not feeling good I think I got food poisoning from the Chinese restaurant. We went with Sue our tour guide and carried on. I sat out for the first place because I was sick. I took a nap in the car while my parents and Sue were gone. We went to Chionin gate where they filmed part of the Last Samurai. Then we went to a big wooden temple where there was a bridge that people jump off if they have a hard decision to make. Around the same place I finally threw up!!! At this temple they reveal a big buddha every 33 years. 33 is the infinity number.

After we went to the temple we went walking around the shopping street and I got good candy.  The candy I liked the most looked like little stars that were blue, and purple. For lunch we went to a buffet where my mom and my sisters went years ago.

After lunch we had a drive to Sangensando Temple,  longest wooden building in the world. Inside the monument there were 1002 wooden carved gold painted Buddhas: 500 Buddhas on one side, 500 Buddhas on the other side, one big one in the middle, and one in the back.

We took an hour long drive to Nara where we first went to the monument where deer were sacred there. And, we got to pet them and feed them by the park. It was amazing! At the temple Kodai-ji by the park there were 3 big buddhas. The biggest buddha was made all out of bronze and there was a life size nostril to the size of the big Buddha where people can crawl through the nostril...I made it! So I will be able to go to Paradise is what the Buddhist religion thinks. Me and my mom painted a tile which will be put on the temple this summer and will be there for the next 500 years. This is the largest wooden building in the world. And the largest bronze buddha in the world.

When we checked into our hotel and said bye to Sue and the driver, we thought it would be a dump but it was really a great hotel. We all wore our kimonos into dinner. I asked for some rice and miso soup. When they came out with it, the rice had fish heads on top of it, but the miso was perfectly normal, I think... After dinner we took a picture in the lobby. I was wearing a fish head and my mom was wearing Mt. Fuji. Hahaha.

April 17, 2014

Day 5 Japan. When we woke up we went on a bike ride around Kyoto. We were going to go to the handy craft center but it was closed so we biked to the Heian Jingu Shrine, it was filled with orange. we went up to the shrine to get our fortune and wish. When we got our fortune we realized that it was all in JAPANESE!! I tied mine to the tree just in case it was a bad fortune. Then we went into a pretty garden where they had a river and cherry blossoms and lots of stepping stones. There was a covered bridge too.  We got fish food and fed it to the little fish and big koi and duck. There was a bride and groom getting married right there! 

After the cool garden we went to the Handicraft Center where I bought a big Samurai sword and chopsticks. I was so excited! Then the cashier gave us a little ticket to get a prize from the cashier downstairs and we got postcards. After we went to craft center we went to the water and played on rocks and I got three bucks out of it. The big rocks were boulders that were formed into a bridge. we checked out of the Ritz Carlton and checked into Hinoe A.K.A. "the Joint." We got some Chinese food while our room was being setup. When we got into our room it was on the lobby floor so everyone could see inside, even a little girl came into our room from the lobby!! We walked around our area. There were cool little streets with lanterns. My mom went into a Kyoto kitchen without knowing what it was. We walked down and said we were just looking and he said it was very rude to just walk in and out of a restaurant. It was embarrassing but funny.  Then we  got some food at this  Italian restaurant it was nice. There was also this light show that I thought was going to be a party but really they just projected Kaleidoscope videos onto a rock garden. What made me happy was getting soft serve.