Well another quick update on the happenings of my travels. I’ve since been to and now through Shizuoka, a nice little waterside village, much like Otaru in the north only bigger but either way quite friendly and not too cold just yet. Here we met a friends friend who showed us around to a few sites including a famous set of fish markets where we sampled extremely fresh sushi (holy crap amazing). After this we headed to the Kuno-san Toshogu, a temple dedicated to the spirit of Tokugawa Ieyasu (the greatest shogun in Japanese History, though this may be argued). Also dedicated to in the shrine is Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Oda Nobunaga.
The shrine itself sits a top of Mt Kuno at the peak. To get up to it is a giant stair case of 1159 stairs (according to an old man climbing with us this had a special meaning in Japanese though I’ve yet to find any other proof of this). The shrine itself is quite fantastic and we were lucky enough to see it in the fading light of the sun going down which made for a very impressive sight.
After the shrine we headed back into town to get some food at a local Izukaya followed by nomihodai at a local pub (basically all you can drink for 2,000 yen in two hours), dangerous stuff.
And that leads into this morning (well yesterday probably when this post goes up). We headed off to Kyoto around midday after a quick lunch then checked in at our fantastic hotel and headed out on the town for a while to wander around and explore. Eventually we were finished and we headed out to dinner at a all you can eat Brazilian bbq in Kyoto named Estrela (seriously if you are ever here go, its fantastic) followed by heading in for an early night.
Also news on the travel/work front. Looks like I’ve been asked to stay on till early February to do a project here in Japan. Will post some more details once its a bit more set in stone. For now, photos!
