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Japan – Day 23 (Tokyo)

For some reason I woke up early all by myself before my alarm even went off today. That’s fine, because I wanted to get out early to Tsukiji Market. That place was a BLAST back in the day, super fun, but you have to get there early. Except when I got there only the outer market was open, the inner fun part was shut down and I found a sign that said it had relocated to a brand new building in another area. After looking it up, turns out the old market shut down last year…I can’t say I blame them, that place was madness and chaos and fun and health code violations and an accident or fire waiting to happen, but that’s why I liked it so much! I guess the new place is super modern and all of the 100 year old charm is gone, so I didn’t bother heading across town to see it. Instead I picked up a couple things from the outer market then went back to the hotel to shower.

Once I was clean, I headed to Kabuki-za Theater to see a Kabuki show, something I had wanted to do when I was younger but didn’t have the money for. The full show can take around 4 hours and I didn’t want to dedicate that much time, so I opted for one of the longer opening segments in the morning. It’s not the flashiest segment, but you do get into the story and it was an opportunity to see if I could figure out what was going on with my limited Japanese refresher. I was able to figure out the gist of it, the rest I asked one of my English speaking neighbors who paid for a translator box.

After the show I hopped on a train to Gotokuji Temple, a temple with hundreds of beckoning cats (maneki-neko) and cat themes carved into the old historic structures. It was pretty adorable, so SO many cats! Sunset was approaching by then and since it was a clear day I wanted to get up high to watch the sun set behind Mt. Fuji. I went to the Shibuya Scramble building, but there was a huge line for it, so I jumped on a bus to Roppongi Hills instead and ran up to their observation deck. I hung out up top until after the sun set, and watched Tokyo light up. Once it was dark, I went back down and walked around the Roppongi illuminated streets and garden, then stopped at Hard Rock Café for my pin and to get a salad because for some reason I was craving a salad and no Japanese restaurants have them. At least not like the ones in America. Japanese salads tend to be made of mostly cabbage and snotty runny dressing. While eating, there was a bit of an earthquake, but although the Japanese folks didn’t seem to notice my foreign friends and I certainly did and eyed each other while it was going on, then laughed about it after. I was debating on whether or not I wanted to check out more Christmas lights or maybe go to Akihabara, but it was almost 8pm by that point and I had been up since 6am so I decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. I have one more full day tomorrow, and most of the day on Friday to wrap things up!

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Japan – Day 20 (Kyoto)

I woke up to a gorgeous sunny morning and sat by the window drinking coffee and watching the sunrise for a while, then booked hotels and stuff for the next few days in Tokyo and rearranged hotels for the Iceland trip. Once all the adulting was done, I showered and dressed and headed northeast to Mt. Hiei known as the birthplace of Japanese Buddhism since the oldest buildings are from around 800 A.D. Once again the Kyoto buses failed me and I ended up walking to the trains and lost about an hour, gah! But the trains are almost always on time, so I made it up to the cable car and ropeway to the top of the mountain. I took the bus (that only does a loop so no way to get the wrong one) to Enryaku-ji, a Tendai monastery towards the top of the mountain. I didn’t know that the main temple is undergoing massive reconstruction for the next 12 years so it was completely covered. You could still go inside though, and it was funny because you could see where they had removed the metal decorations because the paint still looked fresh underneath versus where it was exposed to air and people. The whole mountain has temples and shrines scattered across it, but I mainly focused on the two bigger areas including Konponchudo Temple (the one that was covered up), Daikodo Temple, Amidado Temple (which has a really cool golden Buddha inside but you can’t take photos of it) and Hokkesojin-toto Temple. Supposedly there’s a monkey temple up there somewhere, but the sun was setting and I wanted to get to my next stop. I made my way back down the mountain and watched the sun set from the ropeway and cable car, the sky was pink and orange and the mountains were blue and purple so it was really beautiful.

Once down, I hiked about 20 minutes further north to Nyan-Nyan-ji. For those that don’t know “nyan” in Japanese is the equivalent of “meow” for us in English; it’s the sound a cat makes for them. Nyan-Nyan-ji isn’t actually a temple as the name suggests, it’s literally this guy’s house with the front part of it converted into a little tea house, gift shop, and in the back a shrine he built and dedicated to his cats. He is head over heels in love with his cats, and decided everyone else needed to worship them too so he built his shop and dresses his cats up in little monk outfits and lets them play with guests. I thought that they also took in shelter cats, but that turned out to be a rumor. They do take donations for the local shelter though, and they support local artists by selling their original cat themed artwork in their gallery. The owner’s son is also a very gifted artist who’s basically an art prodigy and won his first major award at 12 years old, and he painted all the cats everywhere in the interior of the building. The son was there today, so I bought one of his art books and had him sign it with his pen name. Who knows, maybe it will be worth millions one day? I picked up some other original art from the commission gallery, and sat with the cat of the day named Lon for a while until it was time to catch my bus downtown. I was a good hour out by then, so I just sat back and relaxed until it was time to get off then grabbed some food and went back to the hotel. Man, I love these deep soak bathtubs I’m really gonna miss this when I go home after this week…I can’t believe it’s already December!

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Rome – Day 2

I got up early and headed out towards the Colosseum. Since it was early, I made a quick stop at Trevi Fountain to get some pictures when it’s not so crowded first. After I made my way to the Colosseum I met up with my tour group and we went inside at ground level, where the gladiators would have fought. From that vantage point you could also look down into the sublevels where all the preparation and background work happened, which was pretty cool. After the Colosseum we made our way through Palatine Hill and to the Forum, at which point we were given time to do as we pleased. I wandered around for a bit, looking at the ruins, before making my way to Piazza Venezia and walking up to their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where they have two armed guards always standing by with a lit fire in memory of those lost. The views from that building, the Altar of the Fatherland, were pretty nice too.

I continued along my way to Largo di Torre Argentina, an excavation site that they’re still working on which also happens to be next to a large TNR cat rescue, sanctuary, and adoption center. They welcomed guests, even tourists to come in and pet cats so of course I did because as I’ve said before that’s just who I am as a person. After taking photos of all the free roaming cats I went inside and donated $30, so the lady told me to pick out one of the hand-painted rocks one of their volunteers made to sell. I took a happy looking ginger painted cat.

The Pantheon was just up the road so I walked over there, but didn’t go in, I was getting hungry. After grabbing something to eat, I headed to Triton Fountain where I met my tour group for the next activity, a tour of three underground ancient buried locations. The first was one of the first Christian catacombs in existence that upwards of 150,000 people had once been buried in. The second was a 12th century church, which had been built on top of an 8th century church, which had been built on a 2nd century rich person’s house, which had been built on a 1st century regular house. You could go down all the levels to see the changes which was pretty cool. The last stop was a church run by Franciscans where they had taken the bones of some 2,500 Capuchins and decorated several rooms with them. Not quite the same as the catacombs in Paris, but odd nonetheless. No photos were allowed in there though. After that tour was over, I jumped in a random pizza place for an okay pizza then headed back to the hotel. That was a lot of walking!