Kyoto & Nagano

After packing up my things I travelled over to Kyoto, and I have to say that out of all the cities I saw in Japan Kyoto has to be one of the prettiest cities along with Hiroshima. I visited a few temples while in Kyoto which were just amazing, especially the sand sculpture (see photo). I also had a spare bit of time while on my way back to catch my train and happened to be going past the Kyoto Zoo, so surprise surprise I went to check it out and boy was it a shock!!! The animals were in tiny little concrete blocks with no enrichment at all. I just could not believe my eyes. I did take some photos, but more as evidence of the crap conditions that they were kept in. I just felt so bad for the poor animals, and couldn't help them.

After Kyoto I took a long train ride up to Nagano where I went to visit the monkey part where the Japanese Macaques live and bathe in the natural onsens up there. My gosh I spent HOURS just watching them and also taking hundreds of photos. The little babies were funny to watch as well with all the mischeif they got up to, such as pushing each other into the water.

Nagano was a very pretty city/town and there was a festival up at the local temple. Unfortunately I missed the actual event however decorations were still up the next day so I was able to check them out.

Near Nagano was a small town that I travelled to with a Spanish couple from the States, and while there we visited some Japanese Onsens, the natural hot springs. The temperature that day I think was about 37 degrees and so going for a dip in a hot spring was very hard to do, however when we came out into the open again it was amazing how much more we could tolerate the heat and felt so refreshed. We also found a genuine little Japanese restaurant where we had a lovely Japanese meal, and even were able to order it in Japanese, although we had to as noone there spoke a word of english.

After Nagano it was another long train ride back to Osaka airport where I caught my flight back home to little old New Zealand.