Japan Trip 2011
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The following couple of pictures were taken at Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto:
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The following pictures were taken on March 4:
On the platform at the Shin-Osaka station, waiting for the 7:35 a.m. Hikari 491 Shinkansen to take me to Hiroshima...
...and here it comes now.
The following images were taken at the Mazda Museum. The tour of the factory floor was cancelled as all of the production lines were halted on account of the lack of parts coming in from subcontractors located in areas affected by the earthquake/tsunami.
A streetcar in downtown Hiroshima.
It was lunchtime by the time I got to Hiroshima, so I scoured the back alleys downtown and came across this little hole-in-the-wall udon restaurant called Kogane:
... that served the best udon I'd ever tasted in my life:
On my way to Peace Park after lunch, enjoying the scenery
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MG.....saw breaking news about magnitude-7.1 shock. keep safe!!!!
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Originally posted by littlestream:
MG.....saw breaking news about magnitude-7.1 shock. keep safe!!!!
I'm in Tokyo right now. Got here yesterday morning for an overnight stay. At about 11:30 pm last night, I was awakened when the building started shaking. It was weird--lots of sideways motion but no vertical displacement, and the whole event lasted for about a minute. The staff then made a couple of annoucements over the PA, but they were in Japanese. It would have been nice if they repeated them in English. I went back to sleep right after that.Now, I'm hearing on the news that Sendai got hit with a 7.0 earthquake at exactly the same time...
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Some new images, in no particular order:
The following images were taken at Peace Park in Hiroshima:
On my way to Okonomi Mura in downtown Hiroshima for lunch, I had time to stop and admire the local scenery...
Five floors of nothing but okonomiyaki restaurants. Paradise for some, for sure.
And my lunch being prepared right in front of me:
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Some pictures taken in the mountain town of Takayama:
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Originally posted by elindra:
Ontario grows a lot of Soybeans & CornYou have Sunflower fields too.
yup, thanks to urban sprawl, cornfields are my neighbours.
i drive by acres and acres of cornfields every workday. and then come summer, u see truckloads of sales by the roadside. C$1.99 for a dozen. but yet, i go to the supermarket to buy half a dozen for C$4.99. 
oh, we have soya beans? sunflowers? wow....i didn't know that. you visited those farms? cool. can't say i've been to like a real farm. nong nong time ago, i lived in a town with only a population of 6,000. really small like everyone knows everyone kinda thing. and we didn't need to lock our car doors. very safe. u actually leave your doors wide open during summers for the cool breeze and to air the house after a closed winter.
oh, my story was, my kitchen was backing a farm and their barn was like not far from my backyard. while i do my dishes, i hear animals making their noises like moos and neys and dun know what else lah. really cool place to live in but so far from civilization.
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Originally posted by Meia Gisborn:
I'm in Tokyo right now. Got here yesterday morning for an overnight stay. At about 11:30 pm last night, I was awakened when the building started shaking. It was weird--lots of sideways motion but no vertical displacement, and the whole event lasted for about a minute. The staff then made a couple of annoucements over the PA, but they were in Japanese. It would have been nice if they repeated them in English. I went back to sleep right after that.Now, I'm hearing on the news that Sendai got hit with a 7.0 earthquake at exactly the same time...
good to know all's good and well. have fun but still be mindful eh. btw, nice pics... especially those of the cars.
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Some images of Kyoto's ultra-modern train station:
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Love the pics. Keep 'em comin'!
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Some pictures taken on my 4/7 jaunt to Tokyo:
On the platform at the Shinosaka Station waiting for the Hikari 460 Shinkansen to take me to Tokyo.
Mt. Kilimanjaro... er, I mean Mt. Fuji viewed from the comfort of the Shinkansen speeding along at over 300 km/h.
The following pictures were taken at the JR Railway Museum in Saitama:
A shot of the surrounding neighbourhood taken from the roof of the museum.
The hotel at which I stayed during my overnight trip to Tokyo. It's a typical business hotel, with small but extremely well maintained and efficiently laid out rooms. The weird thing is that the lobby is actually in the basement, so to get to your room you had to take an elevator to the basement, retrieve your keycard from the front desk, then take another elevator to the floor with your room. It was also in this hotel that I experienced my first earthquake, at 11:32 p.m. on April 7...
And what's a Tokyo trip without the customary visit to Akihabara?
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Ah, the raison d'être for this trip: the cherry blossoms!
More to come...
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The entrance to the Shin Sekai district of Osaka as seen from the platform of the JR Shin-Imamiya train station.
Shin Sekai's iconic Tsutenkaku Tower.
And a view from the base of the tower.
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nice.. now zora and i are contemplating Osaka during year's end instead of Tokyo...
i have fond memories of Osaka
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Great pics u have there MG~~~
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Originally posted by the Bear:
nice.. now zora and i are contemplating Osaka during year's end instead of Tokyo...
i have fond memories of Osaka
I'll venture to say Zora and you will probably enjoy Osaka more. Tokyo's great to visit just once if you've never done so before, but after that the city's just too big and crowded. Osaka is, in my humble opinion, more manageably sized and not as crowded. Plus, it's centrally located and a perfect staging point for day or overnight trips to other cities like Kobe, Hiroshima, Nara, etc.
The big advantage of Osaka to me is its proximity to the beautiful city of Kyoto--merely a 10-minute Shinkansen ride from the Shin-Osaka station.
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Originally posted by ^Acid^ aka s|aO^eH~:
Great pics u have there MG~~~
10-Q belly, belly much!
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Originally posted by Meia Gisborn:
I'll venture to say Zora and you will probably enjoy Osaka more. Tokyo's great to visit just once if you've never done so before, but after that the city's just too big and crowded. Osaka is, in my humble opinion, more manageably sized and not as crowded. Plus, it's centrally located and a perfect staging point for day or overnight trips to other cities like Kobe, Hiroshima, Nara, etc.
The big advantage of Osaka to me is its proximity to the beautiful city of Kyoto--merely a 10-minute Shinkansen ride from the Shin-Osaka station.
yeah.. i think we'll be visit more than once more due to her company having their head office there... if she's due for a business trip, i'll tag along too
but maybe year's end would be just a vacation again... we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves the last time we were there, i particularly enjoyed the leisurely strolls in their temples and shrines...
here's a couple of my fave pics from the day in Kyoto
and i saw this bird stalking something so i put the camera into focus and waited... and it caught an eel
it was an enjoyable day
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Visited Kobe on an overcast April 3. Here are some images from that jaunt:
One of the archways marking an entrance to Kobe's very compact Nankinmachi (Chinatown).
The main square in Nankinmachi. Except for a profusion of Chinese restaurants, there really wasn't much to see and do there.
It's only a matter of time before Singapore adopts Japan's solution to the parking space shortage.
Kobe's iconic Port Tower.
A view from the oberservation deck of the Port Tower.
Another view.
Yet another.
WTF?
Kobe's Maritime Museum. It and the Port Tower are both located in Meriken Park.
A couple of images of the Earthquake Memorial, which commemorates the victims of Kobe's 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, which killed about 6000 people:
And wading in the water of the destroyed pier:
An evening view of Osaka's bustling and always exciting Umeda district.
Outside Yodobashi Camera in Umeda.
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Originally posted by the Bear:
Holy crap, dude. You should seriously consider selling this picture to Kyoto's Tourism Office. It captures perfectly the ambience of Kyoto.
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Pictures taken at Onomichi:
On the platform at the Shin-Osaka station, awaiting the 10:59 a.m. Sakura 551 Shinkansen to take me to Fukuyama, at which I'll transfer to a local train for the ride into Onomichi.
View from the ropeway station at Senkoji Park.
On the platform at the Fukuyama station, waiting for the 3:35 p.m. Shin-Osaka-bound Sakura 566 Shinkansen. As you can see, it was raining pretty hard at the time.
The N700 series Shinkansen at the Shin-Osaka station. The train is operated by JR Kyushu on their recently inaugurated Shin-Osaka to Kagoshima-Chū� service.
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Originally posted by Meia Gisborn:
Holy crap, dude. You should seriously consider selling this picture to Kyoto's Tourism Office. It captures perfectly the ambience of Kyoto.
nah.. they could get better pictures if they wanted to.. there seems to be a few resident storks at that little creek
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Took a side trip down to Nara on April 9:
On the platform at the JR Nara train station.
The inside of the Nara train station.
The deer that roam around freely in Nara are wild. They are, however, not beyond harassing people for food handouts, as this visitor is discovering.
More deer. Wish I had my AR-15 rifle with me...
The Todaiji Temple at Nara. This building is supposedly the largest wooden structure in the world. Don't ask me what the bloke in the foreground is doing.
The Daibutsu (Buddha statue) housed within the main building. The statue is made entirely of bronze. Please pardon the graininess of the image; it was taken under extremely poor lighting conditions.
The smaller statue next to the Daibutsu.
These two guys don't look particularly happy...
The Todaiji temple grounds. I did a bit of colour enhancement on this shot--hope it turned out okay.
Another shot of the temple grounds.
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Tuesday, April 12. My last full day in Japan. A sad occasion indeed.
The Osaka Maritime Museum, located in Osaka Bay.
Another shot of the geodesic dome housing the museum proper. It is accessed via a 50 meter-long tunnel under the seabed.
One of the exhibits.
The interior of the museum's dome. While the architecture of the dome is undoubtedly spectacular, the museum itself is a huge letdown in terms of the quantity and quality of the exhibits.
The following are some pictures of shipping I took whilst walking between the museum and the train station:
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aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh....japan japan...how i love thee.
great photos MG. enjoyed them very very much!!! ehh...can i request for softcopies of your last few ship photos??
osaka is great but tokyo is greatEST!!!! no no MG....i can go to tokyo a million times and not get sick of it. it used to be the destination of my annual pilgrimage for the last 12 years.
lemme go look for my old japan photos to share too ok?!