Kyoto, 3 nights

11 hours from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur, 5 hours of waiting (middle of the night and 30 degrees, equator'd), further 6 hours to Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan. Hello Zombie.

My friends met me at the airport and took some of my luggage off of me, while I'd travel around the region for the next week. Buggers haven't changed at all since I last saw them a year ago, but the first thing they both said when they saw me was that I had gotten fat.. I like pizza, so?


Keihanshin – the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan region is a sprawl of people and people-related things, total population around 18.5 million. It took me one hour to get to Kyoto on my express train from the airport, and during the whole trip the only holes in the mess of buildings were forced in by the rivers snaking through the region, their banks spotted here and there by the shanties of homeless people (there are no such things as social security or unemployment benefits in Japan). Funnily enough, these people often seem to have such items as televisions, radios and fridges in their little makeshift tents. It pays off to rummage through people's garbage in this country of hyper-consumers, I guess. :)

Funny thing. After getting off my train in Kyoto I was standing on the platform checking my map. All of sudden the seats in the now empty train next to me jumped up halfway towards the ceiling of the cars, yanked around 180 degrees and dropped back down. Right, train returns to the airports, need to keep people facing forward to minimize vomiting...

Kyoto.

It's pretty much impossible to pass wind in this city without ending up farting on some god/spirit/sage/ghost or another. There are temples everywhere, and it doesn't take long until you stop reaching for your camera after spotting a new one.

Had a coffee to keep me awake until I'd reach my hotel. Visited the bathroom of the cafe and Lo! It had one of those funky toilet seats with more knobs and switches on the side than your average car has on its dashboard. Seat heater, ass massager, some other type of massager (that I wasn't sure about and was too tired to really try out), different kinds of water-spraying apparatuses, etc, etc. Like I said, funky. :) The water tap was another thing. It was one of those models that activates automatically, when you place your hands underneath it. Fair enough, everyone and their mother has those these days. But. Before it would give you water, it would squirt soap on your hands. All they need to add to that is a touch of TheHoff.

Got to my hostel, about 5km's walk from the Kyoto Station. To my surprise, it was right in the middle of the Geisha district, Gion. I hadn't really looked into this, while booking my stay, I was more interested in my hostel having the highest rating of all hostels in Kyoto. IchiEnSou Guesthouse, no private rooms, but I really recommend it to anyone visiting the city. Great place, great staff, great location, great fun. Old, traditional style house with tatami floors, horigotatsu(a table with a hole in the floor underneath it), and some doors only one meter tall: have a taste of how it feels to be a tall guy like me all the time. Saw plenty of Geishas and Maikos around the hotel. Personally I think they look rather ridiculous, but it was fun to watch the old Japanese guys gawking at them so longingly, whenever they saw them walking around (usually in pairs).

Had some sake with these guys, players of the traditional Japanese instrument, Shamisen.
Then it was time to start touristing.

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion Temple. Something of a must-see for all the tourists coming to Kyoto.
Koi carps. They put these fishes into every mass of water that can be somehow considered sacred or imperial. I guess people feed them, since all they do is look at you, opening and closing their mouths.
Money, money, money.
Temples are nice and have a lot of pretty things, but...
...for me it'll always be these wünderful vending machines. (yes, this one is *inside* the temple grounds)
Looks like they burned a big house and used the remains to build a smaller house. Actually quite common sight here, keeps out the bugs or something.
Nijo Castle and some pink flowers. Alas, no cherry blossoms. I was about 2 weeks late for those.
From top of the Nijo castle walls into the castle grounds. It's a very charming place, even if it doesn't look like much.
Aren't these things supposed to be used, when there isn't any sunlight around?
Letters on the mountain sides... There are 5 of these huge pictograms around the city.
How can you charge 6 euros for a single tomato? Answer: Carve it into a rose.
Monjayaki. Looks like vomit, tastes really good. Traditional dish from Tokyo-area. Mostly cheese.
Funny thing I noticed: there's a tiny graveyard right outside my hotel room. No wonder I slept so well in there, like the dead. (yes, I actually enjoy staying next to that place now that I know of it)
Going up to FushimiInari-Taisha. 4km of pathways up and down a mountain, lined with thousands of torii gates. My favourite place in Kyoto, I'd have to say. (by the way, the girl entering the gates in the picture, she had "soul sound" written on her ass. :) )
I'd *love* to come here in the night time. I really like spooky places. :)
Panorama.
In the forest.
Shrines.
This guy looks hungry.
"First they lock me up, then they worship me, what's up with that?"
This stuffed raccoon (tanuki) looks a bit worn down.
Whereas this one has some serious balls.
I know it means that you shouldn't leave your handbrake off, when parking on the slope, but the (somewhat) literal translation makes me laugh and sounds more like some too-deep-to-understand-zen-thing: "Cars that take off flight, will not come down in a hurry."
Busy little street and a pagoda.
Looks like a tree house all the way from here.

Next up, Nara.

Rotorua

Rotorua – 1st day

The road from Wellington to Rotorua was long and windy, but offered a whole range of stuff to gawk at. The Lord of the Rings -esque countryside rolled along seemingly endlessly, a slightly lusher version of what I saw on the way to Queenstown on the South Island earlier -- only there weren't nearly as many roadkills, I think I only saw a couple of flattened rabbits on the way. There are also a lot more Maori on the North Island. Coincidence? One might think so.

At times the road also snaked its way through forests and steep ravines, or wandered endlessly through barren fields with towering, snow-topped volcanoes in the middle. All in all, very nice views. It took 7 hours to reach Rotorua, but I think I actually played with my camera more than I did with my DS.

Traveled by Naked Bus. Unfortunately everyone wore their clothes; Australia might be the new US, but nature isn't the only thing in NZ still offering good things to stare at.
Passing Mount Ruapehu, the largest active volcano in New Zealand (2797 m) and one of the most active volcanoes in the world.

Lake Taupo right after Mount Ruapehu. It is actually an enormous crater of one of the few known super volcanoes in the world. (Remember all the fuzz earlier this year over the seismic activity in Yellowstone in US?)

After arriving to Rotorua I walked briefly around the town (it's a tiny place), had dinner and decided to settle in early into my dog house sized hotel room to compensate for all those early mornings of sightseeing and traveling so far. Fat chance. The walls were made of paper and in the next door, another pair of idiots with their 2-year old, who finally stopped screaming his lungs out around 11pm. Good parents, nice parents. George Carlin really said it the best.

Here's a little panorama of one of the intersections in Rotorua central. Tiny tiny place.

Subtle little hint at my hotel for the visitors to use the toilets instead of pissing in front of the reception?

Rotorua – 2nd day

At the check-in the day before I had also booked a trip to two volcanic spots near the town: Wai-o-tapu and Waimangu. They both involved a good deal of walking, but it was definitely worth it: both places featured a lot of never-seen-that-befores to me. Just check the photos below. Rotorua and central New Zealand in general aren't exactly the kind of places that can be well described in words alone.

Boiling lake of mud. I bet I could sell that stuff for 50 euros a bottle for the women and metrosexuals of the world. The air in that place smelled very heavily of pea soup.

Lady Knox geyser. It erupted soon after I took this picture, but it wasn't all that cool. Just turn your shower head to point upwards and imagine what it would look like, if there was enough pressure to send the water up 10 meters.
There were several craters like this in Wai-o-Tapu, apparently the ground caved in into an underground river. There was a constant churning, bubbling sound audible from below, as well as frequent eruptions of steam.
Path over a hot lake. There are no railings, because the water at that point is very shallow and quite cool to touch. The steamy place in the corner of the picture on the other hand...
Hot waterfall, never popped into my head before that there might be such a thing in this world. :)
Champagne pool and me. Very pictoresque, but unfortunatelly the steam kept covering it all.
The pool is nice, too, of course.
More colors.
Devil's Bath, they call this one...
Onward to the Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley. The mountain in the background is Mount Tarawera (1111 m). It erupted in 1886, destroying everything visible in the picture below, making the Waimangu valley probably the youngest ecosystem like this in the world.
Me, Frying Pan Lake and the Cathedral Rock. Frying Pan Lake is the largest hot spring in the world, created by the 1886 Tarawera eruption, and very active, having erupted itself many times, reshaping the neighborhood, hurling around water, mud and rocks, occasionally killing people. Next to this place the largest geyser in the world was active for some years in early 20th century.
Inferno Crater. Seems peaceful, but is hot and highly acidic. The surface level of the lake varies by several meters over a period of some weeks.
Lake Tarawera and mount Tarawera.

The lake is a paradise for many strange birds.
Next up, Japan desu.

Wellington

Wellington – 1^st day

The 5-hour train trip from Christchurch to Picton went through some very pretty places, to say the least. Just too bad that after less than 3 hours of sleep the night before my brain had the consistency and cognitive capabilities of a bucket-full of mashed potatoes. In fact I think I probably would have lost to the said bucket in a game of tic-tac-toe. Repeatedly. Without seeing anything strange about it.

I also had the pleasure of sitting opposite and next to a double-family-whammy of Indian tourists, whose two constantly screaming kids didn't really help my mood. I will probably never know, what kind of mental sickness makes some people think that taking kids under school age to a holiday with you is a good idea. Or to a restaurant. Or to do shopping. Nor will I understand, what's so wrong about punching a kid that stares at you for hours on end in the face – the parents don't seem to appreciate me doing it, not that I'm going to let that stop me.

One of the definite highlights in the train was one of the staff members, who was constantly explaining the history and other interesting tidbits about the places we passed along the way. He would for example cheerfully ramble on about how a certain large boulder of an island was named after a whaler's wife, who would always escape her husband's drunken beatings there by swimming, whenever she saw his boat appearing in the horizon. When we were just arriving to Picton (a pesky village of 4k-people at the end of a very pretty fjord), he would also suggest us not to forget anything onboard, because he wasn't in a habit of returning lost things, as proven by the filthy ragtag of kids living on garbage in the freight car of the train. He also wished us good time in Wellington (why the hell would we come to Picton, if not to continue on the ferry?), and in general “on the largest off-shore island of New Zealand that the locals call 'North Island'.” Guess he was from south himself.

The 3-hour ferry ride over the Cook Strait from Picton to Wellington was interesting. I've read that it is one of the most unpredictable and even dangerous waterways in the world, but as we were making our way over it, it seemed anything but. Beautiful columns of light pierced the clouds above and reflected of the ocean surface, and dolphins were bouncing around on both sides of the 100-meter long ferry.

And then the captain told us to hold on to something, as the going was about to get rough.

What's this, then, I asked myself and turned to look out through the window of the bar I was in.

And was greeted by a wave smashing against it.

Window that was on the 8^th deck.

It was a roller coaster ride after that, and I enjoyed it heaps. :)

It's very windy in Wellington tonight. I'm hoping that it will calm down for tomorrow, as I would love to get on top of some of the hills surrounding this rather pretty city for photographs. The wind is making a huge ruckus outside, and the weird wall contraption outside my room's window is not only blocking all of my view, but also funneling the winds down to my window so that there is a near-constant whistling and rustling sound in my room. There are also some paper cups stuck behind the slab of concrete, rolling loudly here and there in the current, like flies looking for a way through a window.

On the north-bound train along the stormy coastline.

Arrived to Picton, population 4000-ish.

Picton's exciting past-time hits include such extreme sports as growing very large pumpkins.
So this is what happens to pineapples, when you don't eat them quickly enough.
Leaving Picton and South Island behind.
It's sunny, kinda...
My first dinner in Wellington, lamb-teriyaki pizza. So-so.
A room with a view...

Wellington – 2^nd day

I'm a lucky dog. :) Waking up in the morning around 8am, there was none of the wind orchestra to be heard, and peeking through my window at the narrow slip of visible sky, I was greeted by bright blue. Up up and away!

The best place to take in the whole city at once is apparently from top of Mt. Victoria, a 200m hill close to my hostel. Finding the correct way to the top, with all the roads crisscrossing, doubling back on themselves, sometimes even running over houses chipped into the rocks below, wasn't that easy, but made for a very interesting walk, the sun all the while creeping higher and starting to warm up my sore throat (damn the leaky windows here). This city, in many ways, reminds me of Busan in South Korea, with all the bays making it seem like the ocean surrounds it on all sides, with all the hills making it seem like a hidden valley in the middle of a mountain range, with many of the roads seeming to run in 30 degree angles and with the swarms of small apartment buildings piled on top of each other. Even the English they speak here is sometimes only marginally more comprehensible than Korean, and I don't think you would have to go far before you found yourself a hot spring – another Busan speciality.

The view from the top of the hill was fantastic, like promised. It was also very windy, though, so I didn't stay for too long. (I've seen many places already that insist on being the sunniest location in New Zealand, but it's easy to believe Wellington's claim for the windiest locale. Thank you Cook Strait, you mouth-breathing behemoth.

Back down from the hill, I walked directly to the Te Papa national museum a couple of blocks from my hostel. This place is for New Zealand something like Louvre is for France, only with free entry for all and not quite so many tourists swarming the place, there only so that they could later brag to others how civilized they are. It's really a cocktail of and art museum and a historical museum, a science fair and even an amusement park. If you ever come to Wellington, reserve Te Papa the half a day it deserves, you won't be disappointed. Come on, it's free you bastards!

Returned to the hostel around 3pm, had a quick bite to eat and rested my legs, then headed on to the hills on the opposite side of the city. On them: botanical gardens, astronomical observatory (was closed now, unfortunately), a cute little cable car running up and down the hillside, and kilometers of paths and roads zigzagging around and up and down the hillsides under a thick canopy of trees. Spent hours walking around there, taking it all in.

It's a very beautiful city indeed. The population of the city itself isn't much larger than that of Tampere in Finland, but it has the feel of a city twice the size of Helsinki, the busy downtown riddled with stuff and buildings that are actually pretty – as opposed to the horrible Soviet relics in Finland... To loosely quote my Lonely Planet guidebook: there are more cafes in Wellington per capita, than there are in New York. I'm liking it here a lot based on these two days, and if I had, say, half a million euros, I would definitely consider quitting my day job and retiring to a place like this..

Also, I got a couple of second-hand games for my DS. The upcoming flight to Japan shouldn't be too bad now. :)

Climbing up towards the top of Mount Victoria.

A nearly vertical bicycle path for crazy people.

I've never seen a swing with a view this nice before... :)

Top of the world, baby!

This silly maori art is everywhere.

The building regulations in NZ leave some room for improvement.

On the hill at the opposite side of Wellington from Mount Victoria. There seem to be cannons on every second hilltop here.
You can take a cable car to this hill.
Though the station can be a bit hard to locate.

Next up, a 7-hour bus trip to Rotorua tomorrow morning.

The road goes ever on and on

Going traveling tomorrow morning, here's the plan so far:

Monday, 20th of April:
The northbound Tranz-Coastal train leaves Christchurch at 7am towards Picton, where I will arrive right after noon. There I'll board a ferry that will take me over the Cook Strait to Wellington. Both the train and the ferry apparently pass through some pretty awesome locations.

2 nights of mucking about in Wellington.

Wednesday, 22nd of April:
"Naked Bus" from Wellington to Rotorua in the northern parts of the North Island, about 7 hours on the road.

2 nights of random volcanic expeditions in Rotorua.

Friday, 24th of April:
Again with the Naked Bus, this time from Rotorua to Auckland, where I'll stay one night, waiting for my flight the next day. Hopefully I will have time to hunt for some extra games for the Nintendo DS that I bought yesterday.

Saturday, 25th of April:
Spend my birthday flying, as I head over to Japan, making a 5-hour pit stop in Kuala Lumpur.

Sunday, 26th of April:
Arrive to Osaka, Japan, early morning, meet up with my friends there, offload some of my luggage to their place and jump on Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto.

Stay in Kyoto for 3 nights. Temples, parks, temples.
Temples.

Wednesday, 29th of April:
Quick switch to the next temple-ridden city, Nara, where I will stay for 2-3 nights.
Temples, parks, hopefully some cherry blossoms, feed cookies to the deer roaming the parks.

Friday, 30th of April:
Make a day-trip to Iga-Ueno, visit the ninja museum and laugh at the silliness.
Head back to Nara in the evening, stay there for 1 or 2 more nights.

Saturday, 2nd of May:
Beginning of Golden Week and a stampede of Japanese tourists desperately trying to enjoy their big holiday.
Return to Osaka and spend a few days visiting my friends.

Thursday, 7th of May:
Shinkansen to Hiroshima. 2 days of visiting different memorial parks and museums, and perhaps half a day at Miyashima.

Saturday, 9th of May:
Take the morning train back to Osaka airport and return to New Zealand, again via Malaysia.

Sunday, 10th of May:
Auckland. Spend here maybe 1 night before flying back to Christchurch? Not sure, haven't booked any tickets yet. I guess I should be back to work on Monday, but I'm sure they can wait for me one day longer. :)