After a 7-hour flight, we're finally in Japan!! After a few hiccups in finding our hotel, we made it to our room and wasted no time in exploring the nearby Ameyoko area for dinner!

Woke up really early to find that its a public holiday and the fish market is closed!!?!! As it was too early for anything else, we trudged slowly via Shiodome to the Imperial Palace Gardens and then to the ultimate queuing experience in the Tokyo Tower!

This time we double-confirmed that the market was open before making the trip down. heh heh. Lots of live and frozen seafood, and uber long queues for the freshest sushi in town! We then headed for a short roam to Odaiba where we found the mini statue of liberty and got a good view of the rainbow bridge. Last stop for the day was Sensouji temple and its night market!

The morning started with a visit to the Meiji Shrine -- seemingly a popular spot for weddings? We then attempted to seek out cosplayers at Harajuku, but it RAINED!! Contended with the Rockabillies at Yoyogi Park instead. :) Check out the MENTOS MAN near Takeshita Dori!

Arrived in Hakone after a short bus ride, with a first glimpse of blooming cherry blossoms! Did the standard round trip on train to Gora Park, on cable car and skyway to Owakudani and then a boat to Hakone Machi. Rushed back to the hotel via Moto Hakone for our dinner!! :)

We've arrived in Kyoto! The train station was enormous and it took us quite a while to walk to the end of it. Our map to the hotel was alittle wrongly labeled but we found our way in the end, just a short walk away! Tried going to Sanjusangendo but found that it was closed by the time we reached. :( We'll be back!

Ventured in search of the famous zen rock gardens and ended up with really cold feet.. eek! Kinkakuji looked really beautiful, most memorable to us was the "ONE BY ONE" when the ticket attendant refused to let me hold the tickets for both of us. -.-" We then headed to the flea market at Kitano Tenmangu, nice cherry blossoms nearby too!

A morning trip to the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine! Its the headquarters of about 30,000 Inari shrines in Japan and well know for its thousands of torii gates donated by companies across Japan. You can also find lots of fox statues here, the Emas here are shaped in the face of a fox!

It took some rounds of contemplation to decide to take the trip down to Hiroshima and visit the Miyajima island. 3 hours by train and ferry from Kyoto, but its worth it! The place has wild deer walking about, and we suspect that they're responsible for the litter-free island! We had some fresh oysters for dinner too, yummm!

Visited the Nijo Castle and its gardens with peeks of cherry blossoms in the compounds! It was followed by an interesting walk in Higashiyama towards Kiyomizudera. Seems that we didn't need to stake out in search for geisha as a group appeared before us while we walked down Hanami-koji! hur hur

Revisited Sanjusangendo coz it wasn't open when we came on the first day, and found another wedding procession going on! Kinda skipped Ginkakuji as it was under renovation and strolled through the glorified longkang (aka Philosopher's Walk) and managed to get views of some full blooms! Ended the day with a quick visit to Nanzenji and Heianjingu, and our very first ramen meal for dinner!

Short trip to Himeji to visit the castle. Since there's nothing but the castle, you'd find lots of pictures of the same tower from every angle we went to. lol. Pan and Pen had more fun taking photos too~

Last day in Kyoto! Made a brief stop to Toji Temple which was just a few minutes away from our hotel, before hopping on the shinkansen back to Tokyo. Roamed Ameyoko for some shopping and visited Ueno Park for a round of night hanami!

Final day in Japan! What better way to enjoy it than a full day of hanami?? Trooped down to Ueno Park to have our own bento breakfast under the cherry blossoms and fully charged batteries. Expect alot of sakura here!