Julie Mao

Four Days in Okinawa

February 21st, 2012

Finally, I’ve reached the end of my study abroad posts. The last bit of my trip was a short visit to Okinawa with a friend from 2009/8/20 to 8/24.

Flying In

For this trip, we flew in to Okinawa from Taipei, Taiwan, which I believe is the closest airport outside of Okinawa. Tickets are about $300-400. The flight took about an hour.

Activities

For activity planning, I resorted to one helpful website, Okitour. This website lists the things you can do on the island: bus tours, snorkeling, diving, parasailing, etc. For each activity, the site lists all companies that hosts the activities, and includes details such as pricing, departing time and location, event duration, and even lets you make reservations.

The activities I decided to do were:

Northern Okinawa tour bus, booked through Okitour
Kayaking and snorkeling with Nagi Marine Club
Uninhabited island with Sea World

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No Comments by Julie on February 21, 2012

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Sightseeing in Hiroshima

June 5th, 2011

It has been about 3 months since the 9.0 earthquake in Japan. From those who have traveled to Japan recently, I hear everything is pretty much back to normal in Tokyo. So if you are planning to travel to Japan in the near future, there’s no reason not to!

After school ended (in August 2009), my friends and I visited Hiroshima on August 6, 2009. This happens to be the anniversary of the tragic event in history. We had unintentionally chosen to go on this date, and booking hotels was a pain due to the crowd.

Hiroshima is a beautiful city and I highly recommend visiting. It has a convenient local transportation system, unique food, a shopping street, and historical significant heritages.

How we got there

Since my friends and I wanted to save money, we went from Kyoto to Hiroshima using the Seishun 18 tickets (青春１８きっぷ), which allowed us to travel on local trains only. It took about 8 hours to travel one way. I used Yahoo JP (http://transit.map.yahoo.co.jp/) to figure out exactly what trains we needed to take at what time. We did this to save money so I would recommend taking the Shinkansen when traveling to Hiroshima, as it would take much less time.

Our hotel

The anniversary

Our first destination was Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. On this day, the park is filled with people and activities literally all day. We woke up to a speech at 7am (saw it on TV) delivered at the park. When we walked to the park, there were many visitors walking around as well as people holding signs, exhibitions, and activities.

There were also people handing out flyers on talks about world peace and demonstrations against nuclear weapons. Even though we saw some foreign visitors in the crowd, they seemed to be from Europe. One of the speakers for the speech in the morning is also a European. I’m not sure if local residents want to see American tourists on this day. Since my friends and I are Asian, we blended in perfectly with most of the crowd.

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No Comments by Julie on June 5, 2011

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tagged hiroshima

Gion Fesitval in Kyoto

May 26th, 2011

Gion Matsuri is an annual festival in Kyoto and is one that I highly recommend attending. It technically spans the entire month of July, but the highlight of the festival takes place on July 17 in the form of a parade. For three days immediately prior to the parade, there are carnivals at night. Traffic in downtown Kyoto is closed off and the streets are filled with (tons of) food stands and game booths. Each night gets more crowded, and by the night of July 16 it gets really difficult to walk with a group of friends without losing them at some point.

The blocks near downtown gets so crowded with people and booths that I could not recognize them as the same streets that I walk by everyday. Since I stayed close to the area (thank you wonderful UC staff), there are things to see right in front of my apartment.

My favorite parts of the festival are the nights before the parade. There are so many things to see, eat, and play. Other than food stands and game booths, a number of traditional stores that sell kimonos or crafts actually open up and exhibit their stores and products to the public. In addition, since many floats are set up on the streets, they are cool to look at close-up. For some floats you can also walk up to the top and see people play instruments. One other cool thing you can do is wear yukata’s with friends.

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No Comments by Julie on May 26, 2011

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Sightseeing in Himeji and Osaka

January 11th, 2011

Himeji Castle

My friends and I decided to visit Himeji because of the famous Himeji Castle. It’s a must-see! It’s gorgeous, gigantic, and well-kept — meaning it survived WWII. While there are lots of steep staircases inside the keep, I’d be happy to tour the castle on foot than to ride an elevator.

It takes two hours by train to get to Himeji from Kyoto, so this was a day trip. The entire castle took 3~4 hours to tour, and our legs were pretty much busted afterwards. The castle is about 15 minutes by foot from the JR station. Since we headed straight to the castle, we didn’t really check out much of the city of Himeji itself.

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1 Comment by Julie on January 11, 2011

filed in Kyoto

tagged himeji castle, osaka

Sightseeing in South Kyoto and Nara

October 11th, 2010

Fushimi Inari

The last place I have to mention in Kyoto is the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is located in South Kyoto. I took the Keihan to the Fushimi-Inari station instead of the usual Kyoto subway line. I absolutely loved this place for its nature and tranquility. Its location at the base of a mountain makes walking through it feel like a hike. You get to walk through (literally) thousands of Torii’s. Also seen in this shrine are fox statues. Apparently, some scenes in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha were shot here.