Nara and Kyoto

Nara was the former-former capital of Japan.
There you can see a lot of temples, Shintoist and Buddhist I think

This is a priest doing... Actually I don't know...

But what makes Nara very nice is that there are dears in liberty
They are everywhere, you can give them some cookies
they are so cute!

One of the temple

And this cute Bambi waiting for food

And in one of the main temple you have a giant Buddha

These are heads of protecting demons

And this one is an old Buddha

As I said you can feed them and for the nicest ones you can even touch them!

And on the way back we had the famous Pocky!

and these ones have pumpkin taste (not bad), yes this is halloween soon!

The next day was the visit of Kyoto, with first the Nijo castle

Beautiful decorations on the door

And then the amazing Kinkakuji temple, with it's golden pagoda

After a small visit of the kiyomizu temple

But especially the shopping streets where you can try a lot of cakes!
And you can see many people in kimono

Talking about kimono we were very lucky to see many Geishas in Gion!
But you have to be quick they disappear in one second

And finally the Kyoto tower and now dodo (sleep well I am exhausted!)

New blog

My old blog is full…
So I have created a new one, you can see it on the menu, the name??? Newer Blog :-)
But you can still look at the older one!!!
Have fun!!!

Kumamoto!!!

Where was I? Oh yes Tokyo!!! In between we went to Shin-Osaka, because we wanted to visit Kyoto (yes follow please) but there was a Typhoon so everything was close, so on the next day we stopped at Fukuoka, and now we are in Kumamoto (ok we have a pass so train all you can use!!!)

In Kumamoto (40 minutes from Fukuoka) they have strange statues.
Look carefully

This one too, I let you admire:-)

Otherwise you have the more classical on

The city is quite nice, with a lot of trees, shopping areas and the weather was god again, Thanks!!!

the emblem of the city is kumamon, this black bear, you have him everywhere

oh that's the castle, yes no order, but just to see if you follow!!!

Samurai

me, yes I like this kind of things :-)

strange cats...

and the bear, yeaaahhh

and again youpi!!!
Ok otherwise ww have an hotel with an onsen, really nice one, so see you!!!

End of Hokkaido and back to Tokyo

On our way back to Tokyo we have made a stop at Aomori

This is a small city but they have done some very nice things there.
A big museum about Nebuta festival ( a traditional festival)

a beautiful bridge with a wooden pathway, very nice

This is for Nebuta festival

And you have some very nice views from the sea and the mountains

In the city itself you can also see funny things

And houses where I am not sure I would like to live...

Again the nebuta festival

In the evening we went again at an onsen, as you see some things are not allowed like tattoos (only bad people have tattoos :-))

After this stop back to Tokyo and as you can see you can find very relaxing places there too!!

with a lot of small shops all around

old trees

:-)

But you still have some moderns buildings

and very traditional streets

and modern again

and very crowded!!!!

After that we went again to the Mongolian restaurant in Ryogoku and for those who know Kakuryu was eating there!!!! (just one of the best Mongolian sumo), wouahhhh so great!!!

Ainu

So we are in Sapporo and like in every big japanese city there is a tower!

they have also an old clock tower!!!

But Sapporo is well known for the beer so we went to an old factory to a "beer" restaurant, but actually had no beer, quite expensive :-), but I will survive!!!

And Sapporo is in the north, so there are some advice of how to dress. This is also written that there is 10degrees difference with Tokyo, and that's really true, they also could have said that this is always raining :-(

But we are visiting and went to an Ainu museum. Ainu is a very old folk with its own language and culture.
There are still Ainu people in the Hokkaido.

They have their won type of dogs and bear as well.

the museum has some reconstruction of their houses

 made with straw

and we can also visit the inside.
We can see how they dried their fishes.

A very nice view on a small lake

and very surprising they had some shoes made of the skin of salmon.
I don't know if this is very resistant...

The nice part there is that there is a show with some music and traditional dancing:

a kind of harp

and a mouth harp, actually like in Mongolia

this is a famous picture of an Ainu, what I notice is that most of them had a big beard, very funny thinking that japanese have usually not a lot of hair :-)

Some inside of the house

and a song for a baby

you see the beard???
After that and so much rain this is time for a great onsen in Sapporo :-)