Day 4: Today, the group and I spent a lot of time outside in the heat and the sun. First, we walked around and ascended the tenshu of the Osaka Castle. Inside was converted into a museum (which provided much-needed air conditioning) due to damage sustained during World War II. We saw good views of the surrounding city and some pretty good photos as well. Afterwards, we took a ride on the bus to the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine. Dating back to 711, it is situated on the side of a mountain and is famous for its Shinto Tori-i gate pathway. After walking through the path and down the shopping street, my friend and I got good ice cream and then left for the next major landmark, Nara Park. In this park, the deer come up to you and you have the chance to feed them crackers or acorns. Although we didn’t have much time in the park itself, our free time was spent in the giant Todai-ji Temple, with a Buddha statue reaching 50 feet tall. To end off our day, we enjoyed freshly made Takoyaki, which we constructed ourselves, and had some free time in the large Hep Five Mall (the churros were great).
Day 5: This day was spent all around Kyoto. We first drove north to the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. It was very easy to get lost in the paths between the bamboo, but it provided good views and photos. Nearby, there is a temple and a nice town where we ate lunch and shopped for a bit, before leaving to go northeast to the Golden Pavilion. At the Kinkaku-ji, a path takes you around a lake where the Rokuon-ji Kinkaku (Golden Pavilion) sits. I saw a small waterfall and another pond with a stone statue on it, and many small Buddhist-style buildings. The last major stop of this day was to the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple and the surrounding Gion District. The temple gave a good view of the city, but my friend and I spent the free time there taking a forest walk to a lesser-known temple, the Seikan-ji Temple. Inside was a man who was selling his artwork, and I bought a notebook for 300 yen. After the free time at the Temple, the guides took us on a walk through the Gion District to the Kodaji Temple (so many temples), but we only walked through it. Afterwards, we had some free time around Gionmachi Kitagawa and that main road. We ate at a fancy restaurant, which had a return to normalcy for me, because the menu was reminiscent of normal American fancy restaurants. That was mainly the end of the day, except for the hour-long subway ride we took to get back to our hotel.
Day 6: Today, we finally left the Southern portion of our trip. We started with a three-hour Shinkansen Bullet Train ride to Mishima and another hour’s drive from Mishima to Saikonishi. We explored the reconstructed Traditional Feudal Japanese village, and had a good meal at the tea house in the village. The next location might have been my favorite, because it got about 30 degrees cooler when we got there. We stopped at two of the Aokigahara Forest caves, the Fugaku Wind Cave and the Narusawa Ice Cave. Both caves, as we descended into them, got a lot colder. Both had ice, and the Narusawa Cave had a portion where you had to crouch down just to fit through. My height didn’t help here… After this, there weren’t any more activities. We still had a 2-hour drive to our hotel in Tokyo, and we ended up eating dinner at our local Daily Mart.