at the Nagoya airport...

Kim and I are currently at the Nagoya airport waiting for our plane to Hong Kong. We have about an hour before we board, so I thought I'd update this blog.

I booked the flight from Nagoya because it was cheaper and I figured we would get to see another city before leaving.Actually, until a couple days ago, I had forgotten that I had booked the flight out of Nagoya and thought we were leaving Narita in Tokyo. Not that it mattered much because we checked in time to make sure we went to the right place.

We up super early this morning because I thought we would try and visit the Robot Museum in Nagoya. Unfortunately, when we got there a guy told us that it was closed. I think he meant that it was closed permanantly. Oh well, no robots for me.

I did have sushi for lunch though, and here they did give me wasabi with my sushi (it's been about 50% - whether or not sushi comes with wasabi). The sushi was ok, it had barbequeue eel which for me is hit and miss and today it was a miss.

So we are boarding in about an hour - the things I haven't posted about are Kyoto and Kobe.

Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan. It is packed with temples, though it is also very urban. If you look at any pictures of Kyoto, they always show the temples so you might get the idea that it is only gardens and temples. Rather it is gardens and temples on the outskirts of a very urban city. Kyoto also has some pedestrian only covered malls which Kim and I both enjoy.

Because Kyoto is super close to Kobe, we decided to take a short trip to Kobe to splurge on a Kobe steak dinner. The kobe beef is super marbled (Have a look at this picture -see how much fat there is!). The whole dinner was prepared in front of us by our own chef. We also bought a bottle of wine which made it all fun. For me, I found it to be too rich to enjoy as a steak. More to be enjoyed in small quantities as a delicacy.

Of the cities we visited (Osaka, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Kobe, Tokyo again, Nagoya) our favourite was Osaka. This is because we had alot of fun on the market street ordering ramen from a machine, getting photos in a photo booth, visiting our first temple and discovering our first Manga Kissa (called Popeye's). The same things exist in all of the other cities, so it's hard to tell if we just liked it more because it was our first time or if the Osaka market streets were more fun.

So, that leaves 30 minutes till we board the plane to Hong Kong. Woo woo!