Travel
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Come in if you've been to Japan
We're going in June for 10 days and I'm starting to look at where exactly we should go while we're there. We're flying in and out of Tokyo and do want to spend several days there, and we're definitely seeing a baseball game there. Kyoto looks cool but also quite touristy and I don't know if our time would be better spent in smaller cities/towns. We've pretty much ruled out the Japanese Alps because the scenery looks quite similar to what we have around Seattle. For example:
Kamikochi:
Lake Serene, WA:
So any advice anyone has about cool towns they visited or fun things they did I'd love to hear about them!
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
Re: Come in if you've been to Japan
I have been- D and I went last May for 3 weeks. I have a ton of info on it in my travel blog.
Thepiggly-wiggly travels.blogspot.com
Go to the beginning (2011) posts and you will see it all there. Feel free to email me if you have any questions too- sarairie3 at gmail dot com
Rikki has been there too, and was immensely helpful when we were planning our trip.
Have fun!
Kyoto, Nara, Kinkakuji, etc are all touristy, but they really are great places to visit if you're into culture, architecture, etc.
The only places I've been that are really off the tourist path are the small town of Yukuhashi and the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi, and I wouldn't really recommend either unless you know someone there.
The Japanese love to be tourists, so they explore just about every worth-visiting inch of their country. If you're just trying to avoid the foreign-tourist market, some of the hot springs areas are nice. I found that the places we visited around Shikoku didn't seem to have many non-Japanese. And I had a great time staying at a traditional ryokan in the interior of Kyushu, where we did some day hiking in the volcanic hills nearby. Definitely not Seattle landscape since Kyushu has a much warmer climate.
We were in Japan for 10 days a few years ago and did a week in Tokyo and 3 nights in Nikko. We did do some hiking but it was the shrines in Nikko that were just amazing. There were absolute hordes of Japanese tourists there but we rarely saw any Western tourists. There were a lot of Japanese school groups which was actually a fantastic experience - all the kids got really excited when they saw us and would come running up to practice their English and hand us origami. They all had a set script to practice so we ended up having the same conversation a couple dozen times :-)
We took the train and there are buses running around Nikko for the tourists so it was a really easy few days. We stayed in a traditional ryokan which was it's own interesting experience which I definitely recommend you do at some point!
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
I have been to Japan several times for work. I visited Osaka and Kyoto but had a local friend as my tour guide. I do recommend Kyoto. The US made a point not to bomb this area during WWII due to the cultural/historicalsignificance.
Kamakura was a nice day trip for us from Tokyo.
Also recommend Hakone. It is an area near Mt Fuji. You travel around the area in a loop using bus, incline rail, gondola, boat, etc. and end up eventually where you started. The gondola goes over hot springs area. There is a trail where you change gondolas but I was not aware of it when I was there. The trail goes to some hot springs. It was a long day trip for us from Tokyo but absolutely worth it if the weather is good. Part of visiting Japan is just experiencing the different culture. (I recommend you see the movie lost in translation. you will beter understand it after your trip but seeing it before will be informative too.)
In tokyo: Hirajuku District on sunday morning when the kids are there dressed in wild clothes. Also the Oriental Bazaar store there is great for tourist gifts (they have a stall at the airport too with same prices as their store). Kabuki theater in Ginza (they have half price or cheaper tickets in the balcony available the day of. The line is on the left of the center of the building best I remember. Their website has details. Boat ride from Hama Detached Palace Garden to Asakusa (Sumida River Trip). Coworkers raved about going to the fish market but I was never up that early. (Tsukiji Fish Market). Visit lots of temples and shrines.
Candy: I always bought blueberry gum and pucca (pretzel like "goldfish" with chocolate inside them.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
My Travel Blog
If you like katsu, you MUST try Coco's Curry! They are a chain and should be easy to find but they have the BEST curry in Japan.
Also, if you'll mainly stay in Tokyo, probably best to see a ball game in Yokohama, it's only a 20-30 minute train ride depending on where you're coming from. If you need any food recs, I've got quite a bit in mind!
If you PM me your email address I will send you loads of information I sent to Clevebride.
We are going again next week. I'm so excited!!
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
My Travel Blog