The day after the program ended, my parents arrived from the US so we could do some sightseeing as a family. Before heading off though, we had one final celebratory dinner with my host family and my sister's host family.
After leaving Hakodate, our first stop was Sapporo. While there we visited Odori park, a long strip of greenery running throught the center of the city and featuring this awesome slide/sculpture which I want to transplant to my hometown.
Next stop was the old capital of Kyoto with its scores of shrines and temples. We stopped as some of the more famous ones, including the lovely Golden Pavilion.
My final days in Japan were spent exploring Tokyo, with its strange mix of modern and ancient. A trip through the culinary district revealed a shop selling nothing but the plastic food reproductions that are used in restaurant windows, answering for me the niggling question of where all that plastic food was coming from.
From a maze of shrine gates created to bring good luck to business to a floor-to-ceiling Hello Kitty, Tokyo has it all.
Great, great blog. =)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the summer seems to have gone so well.