Miyajima

Miho and I took a day trip from Hiroshima to Miyajima Island for my 27^th birthday on the 10^th to see the floating Torii at Itsukushima Shrine. Most people have probably seen pictures of the Torii in airline and tourism adds for Japan, they have been designated a world heritage site and one of Japan’s top three views (the designation of three views is a very Japanese thing), for further info check out Wikitravel at http://wikitravel.org/en/Miyajima.

The island itself is very beautiful and fun to visit, at the time of our visit they were holding a big festival for oysters which are grown in the surrounding waters, they had huge crowds of people waiting in line to eat the oysters prepared many different ways.

As you can see in the photos below the Torii and the rest of the island are quite nice, you can see the full set of pics here:

Miho and I with the famous Torii:

The shrine is actually built on stilts over the water:

The pagoda shown below is very famous because it is square at the bottom and round at the top which is very rare:

For reasons that I can't explain Miyajima is famous for rice scooper's, meaning the tools you use to scoop rice out of rice cookers, they sell them all over the island, they have usable scooper's and also decorative scooper's like those shown below:

The island is also home to a large number of tame deer like in Nara, Japan:

Since there is no rabies in Japan you can pet and touch the deer, they generally cooperate:

One of the temples on the island has spinning prayer wheels on it's stairs, prayer wheels like that tend to be Tibetan rather than Japanese, I've never seen them in Japan before:


More prayer wheels at the same temple:


When the tide goes out the Torii is no longer under water, while we were up the hill the tide started going out:

Miyajima has ski resort style gondola's that take you to the very top of the island where you can see the inland sea, the surrounding islands and back to Hiroshima which is shown below:


Some of the oyster farms in the surrounding waters:


When we got back to the bottom of the hill the tide was completely out, as can be seen the Shrine was no longer in the water:



With the tide out visitors can walk on the tidal flats out to the Torii:


I'm not sure why but visitors have been piling rocks on the Torii as can be seen below:


A huge rice scooper, it's about 12 feet long:

Nagoya Shinkansen Trip to Start the Southern Japan Side Trip

On Friday night (2/8) Miho and I took a Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagoya and spent Friday night into Saturday afternoon there on the way to Southern Japan to visit Hiroshima, Miyajima and Nagasaki. Riding the Shinkansen is always exciting. It snowed on Saturday (2/9) so the Shinkansen had to slow down, here’s some pictures and videos from the journey (you can see the full set here and the full video set here):

Shinkansen in Tokyo Eki:


Shinkansen in the Snow on Saturday:


Shinkansen Arriving at the station, it always amazes me how long the trains are:



Another video:



Snowy Japan as seen from the Train:

Tokyo the First Few Days

Since I have lived in Tokyo I am not in much of a rush to play tourist so for the first few days after I arrived I took it easy, relaxed and spent time wandering around the city at a very leisurely pace. I was still adjusting to the time zone and also getting used to the fact that I don’t have to go to work which has been very nice. I took a few random photos in those few days, see below:

The Golden Gai in Shinjuku:

A funny bumper sticker:

One of Tokyo's city parks:

Siberia and the North Pole from the Air

When you fly from New York to Tokyo the flight goes very far north, depending on the winds the plane will fly anywhere between southern Alaska to very far north to the point that you end up hundreds of miles off the north coast of Alaska fairly close to the north pole(see my photos of Alaskan mountains from a flight last year here).

When I flew to Tokyo last week we ended up taking the extremely far north route which put us quite a ways north of Alaska. Given that it’s winter we were farther north than the sun shines, when you look out the window on the south side of the plane you can see the glow of the sun as though it's about to rise from the south except that it never does it just stays that way for hours. On the north side of the plane you get an even stranger view, you can see the night on the far side of the planet. The sky to the north is purple fading to black close to the horizon where it’s night time for the far side of the globe (which is not so far away up there), it’s very odd to look at.

The other interesting thing that happens when the plane goes that far north is that when the plane finally turns south you end up flying over Siberia. I’ve flown over Siberia a few times but it has always been cloudy or dark (when you fly in the opposite direction back to the US), but this time the sky was clear so we had an amazing view as you can see in the photos below. What amazed me was how rugged Siberia looked and the fact that we flew over mountains like this for a VERY long time and never saw any trace of people, no roads, no pipelines, no settlements, nothing (See the full set of photos here):

The river looked like it was dry from the air but it is just frozen over:

The winds must have been very high, snow was blowing in a number of places like this:

The rugged mountains went on and on as far as the eye can see:

When we reached the coast I was amazed to see that the mountains continued right up to the water:


As can be seen the ocean was frozen over in many places:



We finally saw signs of people when we overflew the Russian controlled islands to the north of Japan, these islands are very rich in natural gas, you can see the seismic exploration lines in the photo below:

Trip Prep and the First Flight

A number of people have asked me how I packed and prepared for the trip given that I will be on the road for about five months. The answer is that I have been thinking about this trip for a long time and as my family and friends know I’ve been traveling a lot in the past two years. Long story short I’ve been buying, using and testing travel gear in my travels over the past two years and I’ve built up a pretty good collection. For this trip I actually took it a step further and tested a couple of backpacks on recent trips (as you can see in the photo below I had them sitting out while I was packing).


The rest of the travel stuff I’ve been accumulating in a couple of boxes and taking as needed on trips in recent years.


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I started packing for this trip by sorting through all those items, the hardest thing about packing for this trip is that theoretically I need probably everything I’ve accumulated from the trips to various places over the past two years. I need items I've used in my Africa travel (tropical weather gear, needles/developing world first aid gear and other 3rd world gear), Asia (skype phone, USB memory keys, dedicated travel clothing from when I spent 7 months on the road, dry bags), Caribbean (underwater camera cases), cold weather skiing clothes and items from pretty much every other climate. I basically spent two days sorting through everything and eliminating items until I got to the point that I could fit it all into my big backpack and my little backpack (which I use to carry high value/non airplane check able items). I also brought an extra bag with lots of books to read due to the fact that in Asia it can be tough to find English reading materials. The books are on a one way trip meaning I will be abandoning them as I read them and then the bag will be mailed back to the US.

When all was said and done I headed to Newark airport and jumped on the first flight which was to Tokyo, I do have to admit the travel is easier than it sounds, I used miles for the tickets and was able to arrange to fly in Business class most of the time. Although after I saw how much my bags weighed when continental checked them I have to say I think I will be shedding a good deal more stuff, my big bag weighed in at more than 60 pounds, I will be mailing a number of items home before I leave Japan……

The continental 777 I took from Newark to Tokyo:

The Start of the Trip

As many of my friends and family know I have been dreaming of doing an around the world trip for a number of years. The trip is finally actually happening, I turned in Delta airline miles to get a ticket and as of this Tuesday I have started the trip. I will be using this blog to provide updates for those who are interested, I pasted the itinerary below although some of it will change over the coming months. So, please keep an eye on this page for photos and stories for my travels. I will also be posting my photos from the trip to flickr (see link below) where you can already find photos from my previous trips:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rrbhs99/sets/

The route:

NYC->Japan (2/5/08)
Japan for the remainder of February
Japan->China (approximately 2/29/08)
China for most of March traveling overland from Beijing eventually coming out at Hong Kong
Hong Kong->Vietnam (approximately at the end of March)
Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/Thailand/Singapore (full month of April)
Bangkok->Mumbai, India (4/30/08)
India (most of May)
Mumbai -> Moscow (5/25/08)
Mocow->Kenya (6/1/08)
Kenya (two weeks) (May change to another African destination due to current political violence)
Kenya->Prague (6/14/08)
Prague for about a week
Prague to NYC (6/20/08)