Monday, April 16, 2012

Japan

There hasn't been much activity on the blog recently, since we've gotten settled in Ulm and the weather in the winter here isn't that great for taking trips. Maybe no one is even reading this anymore. :-)
Anyway, we went to Japan on vacation for two weeks at the end of March/beginning of April. That worked out quite well, because we were able to take advantage of the Easter holidays in Germany and catch the cherry blossoms in Japan. Actually, due to the long, cold winter in Japan, the cherry blossoms were about a week behind schedule compared to the average, so we only saw them towards the end of our trip (in Kyoto, we kept saying to ourselves how impressive this must look with cherry blossoms...). We covered quite a lot of ground in those two weeks: We flew into Nagoya, then stopped briefly in Okayama to see the famous Koraku-en before continuing on to Hiroshima and the famous floating torii at Miyajima. We then backtracked to Kyoto, where we spent several days, taking small side trips to Uji and Hikone. From there it was off to Nara, before heading to the Japan Alps, where we stopped in Matsumoto and then visited the snow monkeys and hot springs in Shibu Onsen. We then traveled to Tokyo with a brief stop in Nagano. Tokyo was again our base for several days, with a side trip taken to Nikko, before flying back home.
We had a fantastic time, and I'll let the pictures do the talking instead of commenting on everything. Unfortunately, I did manage to fracture my ankle after getting out of a hot spring in Shibu Onsen, which meant that I was on crutches the entire time in Tokyo. Therefore, we didn't see as much there as we would have liked to, though on the bright side, that means that there's a definite reason to go back in the near future!

2 comments:

Mike Zuk said...

one reader. (I forgot about this blog until our NYE conversation.)

Kristen said...

According to google, 6 people have read this post, not counting anyone who saw it by scrolling through the main page.