The rest of Obon- Nara & Nagoya

To wrap up our Obon holiday, we went to Nara to see a beautiful Buddhist temple and pet some extremely tame deer, called Sika deer, that are believed to be messengers of the gods in the Shinto religion. We fed the deer special deer cookies and then we all cleaned off our shoes before we got in the car!

Todai-ji is a beautiful Buddhist temple, home to the Daibutsu-den (Great Buddha Hall), which is the largest wooden structure in the world. This temple was built in the 700's, but after some fires, wars, and earthquakes, the current building is from the 1700's.

The Great Buddha is one of the world's largest bronze structures. It weighs about 500 metric tonnes, which I'm pretty sure is a lot! The Buddha is 15 meters tall and is quite an impressive site in person.

Outside the temple there are the Nio guardians.

To wrap up our last day of holiday, we went into Nagoya and visited Nagoya-jo (castle). This is a resconstructed castle, as it was destroyed in WWII, and you can see the Nagoya skyline nicely from the top.

As the day started getting cloudy and a storm seemed to be approaching, we checked out Oasis 21 in the Sakae neighborhood and there is the TV tower in the background. For some reason TV towers are sightseeing locations here in Japan:)

When we picked up Kelso and his friend Beamer from the kennel, they felt just like we did after Obon. Wow, time for a nap after all that sightseeing!

Obon Holiday Week

On Friday, Aug. 8th, Aaron and I departed for Tokyo to meet up with our friends Kit & Jody Bishop. They came all the way from TX to spend the week with us and were our first visitors so far. We saw a lot during this week and this will be a long post! Please click on my Shutterfly link on the left side of the blog to be able to see all of the pictures.

Tokyo: we spent the first evening catching up and trying to find the Olympics Opening Ceremony. We went to a local sports bar and then ended with a fabulous dinner (minus the weird tofu appetizer I insisted we order). Sat. morning we were up at 4:30 am to head to the Tsukiji Fish Market for the tuna auction at 5:30. A single tuna regularaly earns several hundred thousand dollars, with some selling for up to $15M!

Next up (after a nap), we explored the beautiful Imperial Gardens

In the afternoon Jody and I did some shopping, and discovered that there really is Hello Kitty everything here!

We also saw a cool virtual aquarium show via HD at the Sony Building. We ended the day by going to the Sky Room at the Asahi headquarter to taste some Asahi beer and admire the view from the 24th floor and then heading to a local Italian restaurant.

Sunday morning before we headed out, we went to Meiji-jingu, a beautiful Shinto shrine in Tokyo.

Our last stop for the day was to see the waterfalls near Mt. Fuji. Otodome and Shiraito Falls are very beautiful and the cool water and air were refreshing in steamy Japan!

Kyoto: Monday afternoon we headed south to Kyoto, got checked into our hotel, and headed out for local cuisine and Japanese homestyle cooking. It was an interesting meal, featuring everything from duck to sashimi to yuba (a starchy product from tofu). I drank my meal:)

Tuesday I tortured us all with a walking tour. It was in the upper 90's and very humid, but we saw a lot of great things. Kyoto is home to 17 World Heritage Sites!

Kiyomizu-dera temple:

Kodai-ji temple:

Maruyama koen (park):

Yasaka-jinga shrine After all that walking we got cleaned up for a relaxing dinner in Ponto-cho, a traditional Japanese street chocked full of restaurants and bars. We dined along the river on an elevated patio and even enjoyed unagi, a delicious eel dish. We finised the night with cocktails at a cool little bar called Side B. You had to ring up to get buzzed into the little place.

Fukui: Wednesday we hit the road again, arriving in this smaller city near the Sea of Japan (the western side of Japan). Our first evening we went up to Tojinbo cliffs for a beautiful sunset, and then had a yummy dinner of yakiniku (basically Korean BBQ)

Thursday we got up and headed to Mihama town to visit the beach. The water was very nice, but the beach was very rocky. We also went on a cruise of the 5 lakes that make up Wakasa Bay.

That night we dined on local sushi. I prefer the sushi rolls, and Aaron found a fried rockfish dish

I will finish the Obon week entry later, including the fun from Nara and Nagoya. Thanks again to the Bishops for visiting us in Japan, we had a blast! Also, thanks to Jody for some of the pictures in this blog!

Okazaki Hanabi 8/2/08

Aaron and I were invited by a very nice Japanese couple to attend an awesome fireworks display in the city of Okazaki. We sat on a tatami mat right along the river, dined on sushi rolls and other delights, drank a few Asahi, and watched the show. We have never seen such a show. They take their fireworks, known as hanabi, very seriously here! My pictures don't do these justice at all and we forgot to bring the video camera.

This next picture shows a sign, but the sign is done in fireworks. They call it art fireworks, there were signs, advertisements, moving features, and some were even lit by arrow!
They also had all kinds of shapes and colors. Some of the fireworks almost looked the planets with their rings. There were also smiley face fireworks, and I heard a rumor that sometimes there is a Hello Kitty firework!

There were a couple other fireworks that I didn't catch on camera. They had goldfish fireworks, which were little fireworks that somehow floated on the water. There was the Niagara Falls display, which was a whole series of 100 fireworks that looked like a waterfall. There were 20,000 fireworks, so the show lasted about 2.5 hours. We definitely recommend attending a hanabi festival if you're ever in Japan in the summer!
We also found The American Bar here in Toyota City that weekend. They have jalapenos, Corona, and ladies drink specials! We are seriously excited about this development.