A little Japanese get-away!

We made it to Japan! We left on Friday and arrived at our hotel at 6 pm on Saturday, so exhausted. We got a quick meal and went to sleep. Early Sunday morning, we watched BYU football win their game against Iowa State. Later, we went to church in Tokyo at the English speaking stake conference, which was held at the church next to the Tokyo temple

Then we went to explore. Our first stop was the digital art museum, teamLab Borderless. What a cool place. We explored every inch of that place, continually amazed at what we found. Here is a interesting room we found....

First, you are handed an image to color. Here are Chad's and mine. We handed the images to the operator, and the pictures became part of the images on the walls around us. You can see mine and Chad's in this picture. It was so fun following our pictures around the room.

 It was always fun when they were near each other, but they had totally different random paths around the room.

 Later, as we were exploring another exhibit, Chad's fish showed up on top of another art work outside the fish room. That made us laugh!! How funny to see the BYU fish swim the museum!

Here are a few images of the other rooms, you really had to be there!!

These are waist high images to walk through, so fun!!

We also explored the shrines and other things around Tokyo. 

The nightlife was pretty intense. 

We found this store for Rachel, we couldn't go in because the reservations for entry were already used up.

We found Godzilla!

On Monday, we went to see Mt Fuji. We talked to Kate while looking at this beautiful lake and mountains. Then we caught a tram ride to the top of a hill.

 

Here we are at the top of the hill with Fuji behind us. It is being shy, so we mostly just enjoyed the hill. We rode the swings, we hiked behind to a shrine, beautiful day!

We found Mt Fuji! As we headed to the bus stop, we Mt Fuji was clear and visible.

On Tuesday, we rode a train to Kyoto. There, we went to the Imperial Palace, the seat of government power until modern history. In Kyoto, we also experienced beautiful shrines and lots of people. 

We got out and hiked a little in the foothills around Kyoto.

This was a shrine we found at the top of the 4 mile single track trail up the mountain. What a discovery, and we had the place to ourselves. Wednesday was glorious!

Thursday, we caught a train to the Himeji castle - the same one that we have a Lego model for. It was pretty neat to be there and we learned so much about the ancient Japanese castles. For one thing, the "castle" was actually a military fortress, the people lived in other buildings on the site, inside the moat and gates. We then traveled to Hiroshima and toured their peace museum there. That was so touching. It was very good at making that experience feel real.

Friday, we were off to Osaka. Osaka castle was similar to the Himeji castle, but not original, it had burned down. Instead, it was more a history museum. Interesting. The same ruling families were connected by the marriage of a daughter of the Himeji Castle family and the son of the Osaka castle family. The Osaka family's moat, gates, fortress, etc were much more extensive and we got to tour many parts of the castle grounds. 

Here is Chad looking at the moat at the Osaka castle.

Night life in Osaka was pretty great! The fishing restaurant was epic, though I was too nervous to actually catch a fish and eat it. 

On Saturday, we traveled to Nara and went on a day long hike. We were excited to have the deer bow to us for food!!

Pretty waterfalls

More deer

Always, shrines at the top of mountains

The beautiful hike back down.

We had dinner our last night in Osaka, by the river. Crazy busy nightlife, good food.

This was the food that moved - and I ate it!

Our last day in Japan, we went to church and then headed to the airport for our trip home. We left at 2 pm Osaka time and landed at 2 pm Utah time. Crazy! It felt like we had two Sundays!!