#mytriptojapan

BUT we weren’t spending the first part of our trip in Tokyo, we had to travel to Kyoto. So after a 3 hour bus ride from Massachusetts to New York, a 14 hour flight from New York to Tokyo, we had to travel 3 hours from Tokyo to Kyoto (The bullet trains are super nice!). 

Also, Japan definitely has Starbucks

If only I liked coffee....

Stop off in Shinagawa

Had to find our train to Kyoto (Hikari? Nozomi? We took one of them, I don’t remember which lol)

Oh! Kyoto~ We finally found you! Wait? We have to drag our luggage onto more trains in order to find our hotel!? 

Have we made it yet? 

ooooh a nice car~ 

We finally made it to our hotel for the next 4 days or so. Luckily, my friend and I were able to share a room together! Our professor was super nice, as long as we did what he wanted during the morning and part of the afternoon, we could do whatever we wanted in the evening and at night lol. 

FYI, If you’re ever staying in Kyoto, this hotel is really nice! I have no idea how much it costs b/c hotel stays were included in the price we paid for the trip~ 

Look at this cute turtle

Here, you can see the backs of my fellow classmates taking pictures of the same things I am. Random buildings and cars~

The people of Japan drive on the opposite of the road than what us Americans do. Will this lead to everyone not knowing which direction to look first when crossing the street?? Will we all just rely helplessly on the crossing lights to guide us? 

Both, both are correct. I swear I have never looked back and forth so much as I have while I was in Japan (Should I look left first? Should I look right first? AHH look both ways like 5 times!)

oh hey there McDonald’s. I definitely missed you (in 2010 I was working at the McDonald’s in my small town). 

My classmate with the bleached blonde hair in this pic specifically dyed his hair this bright b/c he’s tall and knew we would be able to spot him if we started to get lost.

Our professor walked very fast...not cool 

We visited many shrines and temples on this trip. I, unfortunately, am unable to remember each one individually

We also visited the Golden Pavilion which was beautiful 

Sorry that it’s a bit blurry....

The rain started coming down harder as we made our way to the Peace Museum. 

At this point, everyone had their umbrellas out. As I mentioned before, we came here from the United States so we were really feeling the somberness as the US were the ones to drop the bomb back during World War 2. We did NOT want to be disrespectful. 

So naturally, our professor opens his umbrella and it’s a giant American flag umbrella! The entire class took a collective step back to make it seem like we weren’t with him due to sheer awkwardness. 

This last photo was one that really stood out to me. It was drawn to depict people searching desperately for water after the bomb went off, their skin peeling off. 

I, personally, believe that everyone in the world (especially our world leaders who talk big) should go and walk through this museum to be reminded of the horrors of nuclear weapons. 

We did a lot in Kyoto during this trip. We saw the old palaces where emperors lived back when Kyoto was Japan’s capital city. We went to so many shrines and temples and we even climbed up a hill where monkeys ran free

From atop monkey hill 

We also went to the Kyoto manga museum (yes! This was on our schedule to do! Our professor was so nice) 

We also traveled down to Hiroshima and surrounding areas for a rainy day trip. We spent some time at the Hiroshima Peace Museum, which I will post about in a separate post as there are a lot of pictures and words to go along with it. 

So we also went to the Floating Shrine 

Very beautiful

Then we went to Nagoya, which was a last minute addition to our trip b/c we suddenly had a chance to check out the Toyota factory

We got to sit in the cars too which was awesome!