Tokyo, vol. 3

Our flight home to Finland was through Tokyo, where we spent one whole day and one night in a capsule hotel. Here we also had a reunion with our favourite snack: onigiri (the sushi triangle)!

Even though we didn't have much time we still did quite a lot. We visited the gardens of the imperial palace:

The Sanja-sama shrine in Asakusa:

The gaming district of Akihabara:

And in the early morning before our flight, we also strolled around the Tsukij outer fish markets - a famous fish market that is going to be closed in Oktober. Here we bought a japanese kitchen knife and some sushi and saw an enormous fish head.

After that we hopped on a Finnair flight back to Helsinki and our amazing 5,5 months abroad had come to an end. We saw so many amazing places and experienced so much that it's hard to pick out the real highlights of our adventure. Perhaps we'll see things clearer when a little more time has passed. For now we'll just so happy we went!

Japan, part II

Next up in Japan was Kyoto - the old capital.

Here we had a lot of must see attractions we wanted to visit. Some of them were:

Fushimi Inari Shrine with it's 10 000 orange gates.

Bamboo Forest

Japanese Tea Ceremony

Then is was time for another castle in the city of Matsumoto. Matsumoto castle is known as the dark sibling to the white Himeji Castle.

Our last stop before returning to Tokyo was the Snow Monkey Park in the Japanese alps. Here monkeys have taken over an onsen bath (hot spring bath) and the area has been made into a park. Could there be anything more cute than bathing monkeys?

The town itself was also very nice and filled with cute details and onsens for humans.

Although... Are we really that different?

Back in Tokyo we didn't have much time to explore more sights. It is a huge city with a lot to see so there's still a lot to be explored another time.

Some of our hightlights from Tokyo were the statue of lovely Hachiko and some Karaoke!

Japan, part I

After three months of travelling around Southeast Asia it was finally time to go to Japan to meet up with Jaakko & Anna and Laura & Juuso for a two-week adventure together.

The first part of our trip in Japan was all about cherry blossoms. They were everywhere and it was so beautiful! We started by admiring them in Tokyo in Shinjuku Gyoen National Park and around the Meguro river.

Then we moved on to admire them in wonderful fairy-tale land Nara, where you can pet wild deer in the park. Could there be anything more romantic?

In Nara we also visited a sake brewery and had a sake tasting.

And what would an adventure in Japan be without a samurai castle? Therefore we headed out to magnificent Himeji castle - also surrounded by beautiful cherry blossoms.

Did we already mention that we saw a lot of cherry blossoms?!