On our last full day in Japan, Melody and I got up early and headed to Kyoto Station, where we arrived at the main bus terminal. Bound for Kinkaku-ji, we spent half an hour on a crowded bus full of what seemed like the entirety of Kyoto’s public school system on a field trip. If [...]
With only two full days in Kyoto, Melody and I knew that we’d have to use our time wisely. I had read that Highashi Honganji was only a fifteen minute walk from Kyoto Station, so we started our day there. A Shin Buddhism temple built in 1602, Higashi Honganji was surprisingly and eerily quiet when [...]
Our third day in Japan marked my first encounter with Japan’s shinkansen, or bullet train system. After making our reservations on the Tokaido line, Melody and I navigated our way to Shinjuku Station’s shinkansen platform and awaited our train which was to take us south to Kyoto at a whopping 280 kilometers per hour.
For a [...]
On the eleven hour flight from San Francisco to Narita, I got deep into reading The Story of Sushi, a narrative of a sushi school in California interspersed with the science of fish and the history of sushi as it developed in Japan. A good deal of the book focuses on Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji fish [...]
I’m warning you now: this is going to be an epically long post. It hasn’t even been a month since I’ve returned from Japan but I’m already missing it. I spent a week between Tokyo and Kyoto with my sister Melody in December and only wish that I had a few extra weeks to spare. [...]