On April 26th, my friend Sebastien arrived. He stayed until May 4th. We hung around Nagoya for a few days. Went to a neato motorcycle show in Nagoya port with tons of motorcycles, interesting Japanese people and live tatooing!! Then took a road trip across Shizouka prefecture, up into Yamanashi prefecture and around Mount Fuji. Then we (he) drove down Izu peninsula through big forested mountains. It was a really fun trip… The story is in each of the photos, so click ’em!

So that was pretty much the first part of Sebastien’s trip. And now the road trip pictures: (click for details)

And that was the end of the Sebastien trip!!!� After all of that driving we just kind of hung out in Nagoya and relaxed until it was time for him to go back to the states. It was lots of fun, filled with all sorts of strange Japanese things, beautiful nature and scenery, and delicious food too!!!!

And right after mom & gramma left, the cherry blossoms started blooming! I went to a park near Toyota City called “Suigen” that has a bunch of cherry trees that are lit up after dark. And the house right across the street from the apartment had beautiful trees in their front yard. I hope they didn’t mind my taking photos of them.� :-)� (no extra text in the photos this time….)

We woke up on day three to a spectacular view of the mountains in the distance and were really surprised to see snow on them!!� We rounded out our Kanazawa trip with a stroll through the extremely fishy smelling morning (fish) market, a lovely stroll through the samurai village in the Naga-machi area, and last of all we took a train to the coast of the Sea of Japan! (click the pics for more details)

The samurai house was definitely one of my favorite places in Japan. I’d love to own a duplicate of it. In a warmer climate. We then prepared to leave Kanazawa and go to the coast….

We took the train back to Nagoya and goofed off for the latter part of the trip, doing our best to be annoying foreigners. I’m pretty sure we succeeded.� :-)

And thus ended the Kanazawa trip! Mom and gramma went back to the states and were socked pretty good with jet lag. I went back to work and took my super sweet time to get all of these photos up…..better late than never I guess. At this rate, I should be back up to date before I leave Japan!� Hahah.

We started day two with the main intention of going to Kenrokuen, a famous garden in Kanazawa. And also to go check out Kanazawa Castle too. Of course we made a few stops along the way….click the pictures for further details!

And thus we finally left Kenrokuen Garden!!� I know it seems like a lot of photos, but just imagine how many I actually took!!!!!!!!� This is just a small percentage..� I guess I’m just photo happy.� :-) We were getting pretty chilly by this time but pressed on to Kanazawa Castle which is just across the road.

We were basically frozen at that point so we retreated to a Kanazawa sweets museum. Which I can’t remember the name of. But they had interesting displays and we all bought some sweets at the end of that.

So that’s the end of day two! I still can’t believe all of the stuff that we did…. And there’s MORE to come!!!

And on we went! We took a train to Kanazawa on the morning of April 29th. I slept most of the way there but mom & gramma took pictures and chatted. We had decided to go to Kanazawa because after Kyoto we had seen plenty of temples and shrines. Plus, Kanazawa is famous for handicrafts, which all three of us really like. They make paper, gold leaf, pottery, yuzen kimono, lacquer ware, and all sorts of other stuff I can’t remember. It was really a fantastic trip but quite a bit colder than we had expected! Please click on the pictures to read the story behind them.

And thus ended our first day!!� As you can see, we didn’t slow our schedule down at all once we reached Kanazawa. I think we were determined to set some sort of record for the most sightseeing crammed into the shortest amount of time possible. Both mom & gramma did a great job of keeping up as I dragged them around the country!

SO, after we cleaned off all the maiko makeup we made our way to the last few sights in Kyoto that we intended to see. We already had a shinkansen ride scheduled back to Nagoya so it was just a matter of filling in our time. We walked from Studio Shiki towards Yasaka Jinja which is one of the older shrines/temples in the area.

After that, we jumped on a bus and headed back towards Nijou Castle. We had enough time to see it today! It was absolutely beautiful…. Most of the floors were “Nightingale Floors” that had little metal supports under them. They squeaked like little birds when you walked on them! We had a lot of fun jumping up and down on them to listen to them but there were far too many people so we couldn’t test our stealthiness and see if we could successfully walk down the corridors without making a sound. Hahah. Not likely…� There was also a beautiful garden with many varieties of camellia (“Tsubaki” in Japanese) which I absolutely loved….

We made our way back to Kyoto station which is a HUGE contrast to the traditional architecture of Kyoto. And it’s also just a huge building too.� :-)� It’s very modern looking and full of glass and steel. A bajillion escalators too.

Wow, and that was the end of Kyoto!!!!� We took the train back to Nagoya and relaxed for a whole day and a half before we were off and running again to Kanazawa!