In Yatta We Trust

Nara was the first capital of Japan. There are loads of georgous temples here...with their terrible guardians :

The Tōdai-ji is one of the oldest buddhist temple of the city and is the largest wooden building in the world!

Inside it there is a huge 15 meters high and 500 tonnes bronze buddha statue, massive! Funny fact: There is a hole inside one of the wood columns of the temple, its meant to be good luck if you manage to squeeze and to crawl all the way to the other side of the hole

We played with deer again, they were hungry for biscuits! and they follow you as a group everywhere:) Run fools!

We had Shabu-Shabu, its a japanese fondue with beef and vegetable. It's so good, you cook your meet and veggies in hot water and here you go! We were looked at by old grannies in the restaurant, waiting for us to make a mistake that was really funny. But we managed to look not so stupid! Oishi Desu!

We stayed in a classic japanese Ryokan (Matsumae)

More photos about Nara here and here!

Miyajima is an island of the coast, east of Hiroshima, famous for its temples and a big red tori on the beach.

You can see deers walking free here! They became our friends for the day

When we came up to the top of the mountain, there are monkeys! They tried to attack us, but some of them were nice enough to pose for us

The view up there is wonderful! ...exept when it rains!!

More photos about Miyajima here and here!

Hiroshima is a very attractive city, full of life and animation. Which denotes with its sad past. We visited the Bomb A museum and memorial for peace, sad but interesting. Grom touched radioactive stones by the way...

To put a touch of joy after this dark moment, we went to play UFO games (machine where you loose your money trying to get a crappy toy). Grom was a big looser in Hiroshima, he lost 2000Y trying to get a crappy pink shit from some manga he knew! I managed to get a maid in mini skirt on my first try with only 100Yens! Sugoiiiii!!

My biggest disappointment in this trip was about my feet!! i was wearing my converse for the all time, and this is not a shoe to be wearing when you walk like 10km a day! so my feet were like dying everyday, and i was fearing the amputation! at one point my knee got hurt as well and i had to walk like a zombie. So i tried to find shoes in my size (45Eur or 11US) but i think i must be some kind of monster in Japan, they don't have that size here!! We tried loads and loads of shops, with nice staff but they couldn't find my size. And they didn't have a clue of English too, they spoke like 2 or 3 words!! Even young people don't know much of English in Japan. It was not easy to get understood, so it can bring to funny situation sometimes

At night, we went to 2 pubs. Spoke to a depressed Steven Spielberg lookalike guy who paid us cheap japanese cognac. He sent us to Barcos bar, where we met 2 salary men : Mike & Keta. They were really cool and paid us tequilas sunrise while talking about frenchy-japanese stuff (Montmartre, sushis, samourai and red wine). Later Grom showed us his salsa skills with sexy Midori! Groovy baby!!

Stayed in J-Hoopers hostel, waking up was difficult!

More photos from Hiroshima here!

Went to see the most majestic feodal castle of Japan: Himeji-jô .... under the rain!

Terrible weather but the visit was nice. The castle is huge, made of wood and stone, it was built in the 14th century.


The city itself, is not very interesting, and not really worth staying for the night, thing that we didn't know
Anyway we could tried our first yukata in the hotel that evenning! very ehmm.... japanese !


We took the shinkansen to Hiroshima the next morning...

More photos from Himeji here!
to be continued...

Konitchiwa my friends !!

Time for me to tell you a bit about our crazy awesome trip to japan in april.

First Osaka! Osaka is a big city, young, busy, modern, crazy, lots of people everywhere, a good start for the trip Fashion is crazy here. For the girls: mini shorts, mini skirts, crazy haircut, long painted and customized nails, lots of different styles, from the classic salary girl look, to the excentric kogaru look (blond and taned).

Food was really good, we had sushi bar with octopus sushi! you pay by the plate, 100, 200, 300Yen the plate, it depends of the colour of your plate Of course the 300Y are better sushis, the price of your pile of plates rise quickly, so watch out! But still, its way cheaper than in Paris
We tried the Okonomiyaki there too, some kind of omelet with cabbage and eggs and sometime noodles. Someone cook it for you in front of you on your table, its really fun to see and really good!

We went to the world's largest giant wheel! Very kewl view of the city up there at night time!

We went to the top of a crazy scyscrapper to take a 360 look at the city. Went to huge mega shopping centre (for girls only!) ^^, kicked some ass at SEGA center.
Discover the pachinko: it's a slot game with iron ball (a bit like a flipper) each one of them make a loud noise, but they are hundreds of them in a pachinko room. You just cant stand here more than a minute, its insanely loud!! ...but they don't seem to mind seem to stay in these places for hours!
We tried the purikura, a machine that take photos of you and your school girl friends, that you can customize. Very girly kawaii thing, you only see girls in these stuff. It's very popular for the teenagers there. We got kicked out of some of them that were forbidden to guys

We stayed 2 nights at Carpe Diem House, a japanese style house with a nice garden.

Grom had his moment of glory speaking japanese a few times.

More photos from Osaka on my Flickr here
And all Japan's Grom photos here

to be continued...