We’ve been traveling a lot and our internet access hasn’t been as good, so this will be less themed and more a smattering of what we’ve been up to in the past week or so.

After the chilled beauty of Koyasan, we made our way Kinosaki, which is a hot springs town. Most of our time there was spent relaxing in gloriously hot water, especially after being quite cold in Koyasan. Then we made our main base of operations Osaka. In many ways, it has been much more of what I expected Tokyo to be like – more crowded, more neon.

This is part of the a 3 km long walking mall in Osaka, pretty much all of it is this crowded with people.

people!

And some neon: signs

Interesting stat we looked up after being so impressed by the volume of the public transportation system here. Back in 2010, rougly 13 million people a day go through the extended Osaka railway system and subway.

We also made the relatively short by shinkansen (high speed train) trip to Hiroshima. Where we had, what is most likely my favorite meal of the trip thus far (i’m a sucker for street food and its cousins): okonomayaki, a savory pancake like pile of deliciousness that you can slather in sauce and mayo.

cooking food okonomayaki

The peace park, memorials and museums and all worthwhile and nicely done, but quite intense and not a particularly easy way to spend a day. The best weather we’ve had so far and the deliciousness of the okonomayaki helped though:)

We’re headed to Thailand tomorrow, where it will be really nice to be in one place for awhile. It’s been great to visit Japan, but will enjoy traveling quite a bit less. Here are a handful of images that didn’t make it into previous posts here that i want to share before leaving:

Bamboo forest in Kyoto: bamboo bamboo_path

Japanese Cedar in Koyosan: japanese_cedar