pre-Japan

Welcome back! Did you miss me? ;) 

I have great news! In 37 days I'll be flying to Japan together with my dad to start a new adventure. I've been dreaming of going to Japan for more than 3 years now and I'm very very very excited that my dream will finally come true! My dad and I will be going to make a tour through many cities, villages and places in Japan. 

We will start our trip by flying from Amsterdam to Tokyo on the 5th of July. The flight will last for 11 hours and I honestly have no idea how I'm going to go through 11 hours of boredom... We will spend  2 days in Tokyo and we have already decided which cafés we're going to visit. In day 3 we will travel to Kawaguchiko by train where we will climb up the volcano Mount Fuji. After that we will travel to Matsumoto where we will visit the black crow samurai castle. On day 6 we will travel to Takayama where we will be staying for 2 days. Then we will go to Shirakawago, the heart of the Japanese Alps. The next day we will travel to Kanazawa where we will be seeing a Geisha neighborhood. On day 10 we will travel to Naoshima, which is an island full of museums and we will have to go there by boat, which is the only thing I'm not looking forward to, because boats freak me out. We haven't decided yet what we are going to visit in Naoshima, but I'm sure it'll be fun! On day 12 we will travel to Miyajima, which is again an island (yay, more sailing...) where we will visit the Utuskushima Shrine. The next day we will go to Hiroshima and we will visit the Peace Memorial Park. On the same day we will travel to Mount Koya. In the morning after we arive there, we are expected in the zen garden, where we can go meditate with real monks. After that we will travel to Kyoto and spend the last few days in the big city. On the last day we travel to Osaka and fly back to Amsterdam and again I have to go through 11 hours of boredom. 

While we are staying in Japan, we have to travel a lot (as you've probably already read just now) and we will be doing this by train or bus and sometimes boat. We will be spending the nights in traditional Minshuku where there traditional bathrooms, dining tables and sleeping matrasses. The bathrooms are very interesting, because the toilets are sometimes western and sometimes there are squat toilets, which is not what we have in the Netherlands. Also we sleep on matrasses called Futons, which are placed directly on the ground, so we don't really have a bed, but that's fine. I think I'll get used to sleeping on the floor after a few nights :). But the toilets and the beds are not what's most interesting about a Minshuku. The baths are waaayy more interesting. In our house, we only have a shower, we used to have a bath too though, but we got rid of it a few years ago. But anyway, the baths in Japan are weird, because you are not allowed to wash yourself in them. WHICH IS THE SOUL PURPOSE OF A BATH!!! Apparently it's usual for Japanese people to wash yourself outside the bathtub before you go into the water, so that the water in the bathtub stays clean. It is very usual for people to go into the same bathtub after eachoter, which is why the water needs to stay as clean as possible. The soul purpose of a bath in Japan is not to clean yourself, but to relax. 

Japan is really really weird...

ANYWAYS, I can talk about Japan all day, but I'll spare you the details. I will come back to you in 37 days and hopefully you'll enjoy my adventure as much as I will :)