Wanderings and Musings: You never see a motorcycle parked outside of a Psychiatrist’s office…
Osaka Aquarium is one of the largest public aquariums in the world and has a tank called the Pacific Ocean with two whale sharks and multiple other species of large fish.
An aquarium is an aquarium, but I’ve never seen two whale sharks up close like that, so it was worth it. 
Gallery below.
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After seeing Himeji Castle, Korakuen garden and Okayama castle, I didn’t arrive into Hiroshima until late. Too late to see any sights; I attempted to book a cheap hotel.
Having booked a place through hostel world and marked it on my map, I headed to find it. I walked around for maybe two hours in this neighborhood before giving up. Being sure of the map location given by the reservation sight (but apparently not sure enough), I didn’t write down the address or phone number so no-one around me could even help.
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Trains are a part of life in Japan. In the big cities you take the subway trains, to get between towns you take the long distance express trains called ‘Shinkansens’. I’m sure most everyone had heard about Japan’s bullet trains.
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Himeji Castle is an amazing example of Japanese architecture from the Edo period, and one of the few castles that was never ruined through war.
Unfortunately for me, they are currently undergoing repairs on the interior and I couldn’t see inside. But even worse for visitors in the near future is that they will soon be fixing the whole outside and it will be draped in cloth and unviewable at all. The price of keeping it looking like it does though.
See the gallery of pics below
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After the Golden Week tour I planned to stay in Tokyo for a while, but had no real plans on where to stay.
I put in a few last minute requests for couchsurfing and Byard from New Zealand, who has been living in Japan for the last 10 years, answered to say yes. We set it up to stay Thursday and Friday nights, but in the end I also stayed Saturday night too.
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I really wanted to see two Japanese cultural events while I’m here in Japan. Sumo and Kabuki. And I got the chance the other day to go to a Sumo event. This is actually harder than I had initially thought it would be, as there are only three Sumo festivals per year and then each of the festivals only have 15 days of Sumo.
I was very fortunate for the spring event to be being held while I am here in Tokyo and then to have a group that I met be going so I wasn’t completely clueless about where to go and what was going on.
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When I planned my trip to Japan I wasn’t even really aware of the Japanese holiday called ‘Golden Week‘. I chose my flight dates based both on the approximate best time for my walking pilgrimage and also to be back in time for my daughter’s birthday, but soon after I discovered that Golden Week began the day after I arrived and that there was a couch surfing group that was going on a trip together.
This sounded like a fun introduction to Japan, and would give me an opportunity to meet local Japanese people and practice some Japanese myself.
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I made it to Japan with no mishaps.
A long flight, but almost completely empty! I’ve never seen a plane so empty and the flight attendant I talked to said she hadn’t either except maybe 15 years ago on a New Years eve or something.
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Kyoto was for a long time the Imperial city of Japan, thus it has quite a bit to see and is supposed to be a beautiful place.
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Here I am - Life adventurer, father, artist and more :). Want to know more? Here ya go.
