If you want to experience a tradition that has lasted over 1000 years, come to Osaka on 7/25 and stay by the river. The Tenjin Matsuri - Wikipedia is famous for the river floats and huge bonfire into the night! Also you can experience great street vendors of various foods. This year we even see Geshia accompany their guests on the street. Frankly, if you are in a popular tourist place in Japan and see people in Kimono or Yukata, 9 out of 10 that would be a foreign tourist. But in the Tenjin Matsuri, normal Japanese people came out in Yukata and other traditional cloth. 

The street vendors are not all about food, there are also entertainment stands you saw in Japanese anime, including a full-blown ghost house! In a tent!

The key attraction is certainly the river and the floats on it. They got a bonfire boat and two people who will pour gasoline on the fire whenever other floats passed by. Is this OSHA compliant? Come on, this is Japan, it is better than OSHA!

After the river parade, people still pick up food from the street stands. Yakitori is the classic!

It is time to get back to Kansai. First a visit to Hiroshima Castle. The original one apparently has been destroyed by the atomic bomb (you can see a photo of the site in the castle), this one was built in a similar design. They have a pretty cute mascot also.

The day we drove back to Kobe turned out to be extremely hot. We were only able to snap a few quick pictures in the Kobe harbor. Instead, we did a lot of local people do, going up to the nearby Rokko Mountain where it is at least 5-8 degrees lower temperature than Kobe. Plus you have a great view of the Osaka-Kobe harbor. There is a western style garden and shops up there, also great local snacks😊After driving for hours, and visiting the Cup Noodle Museum near Kobe, the day ended with a Ramen near Uji.

This is the famous Torri gate in the ocean. It is on an island just outside of Hiroshima, which you have to take a ferry. There are deer freely roaming around on the island also, but not as many as in Nara. I had always wondered if the Torri was made of wood. Now we will see…

The Torii is part of the Itsukushima Jinja Itsukushima Shrine - Wikipedia, which is, no surprise, another world cultural heritage site. There are a TON of people there and the walk from the ferry to the shrine building is very commercialized with vendors and shopping street. Apparently the entire shrine complex was built in a tidal zone where the water will be rising and falling daily. It is clear that the wooden posts have to be replaced due to water, but Japanese people keep using wood for this structure.

On the island, there are other temples that are very cool, like this temple built completely out of original tree trunks on the top of a hill by the pagoda. It is nice and cool in there because of the wind coming from the sea. A lot of people take shelter from the heat in there. There are large wooden spoons in the temple, and it is basically the guardian of this place, I guess. Definitely worth a visit, probably even more than the Itsukushima shrine building itself!

Just when we were about to head off to the ferry to go back, we suddenly realized the low tide is here and the path to the Torii is open. For sure I will go and take a look at the structure up close!

A 5 min walk from the shore, I am at the base of the Torii. Yes, it is mostly made out of wood. But the foundation is made of concrete shaped like a wood trunk. Mystery solved!

Driving back from Hita, we bought a watermelon from local farmer (did not taste too good 😓 ), stopped by an interesting wood shop on the way. They sale plank of original rare wood for thousands of dollars, and have really large wooden statues 😎 

In the end, we stopped for dinner at a very nice restaurant in Shimonoseki just across the strait from Kyushu. This is supposed to be related to Taira clan which welded supreme power around 1100 AD, before they were defeated by Minamoto clan in the Genpei war. There have been some famous people coming to this restaurant, including the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. No wonder… the view is so great!

Anime is a huge soft power of Japanese culture, it is like Hollywood to the U.S. My family started watching Attack on Titan (AOT) during the Covid lock down as a pass time, but soon realized it is much more than some random kids show. If there is one anime show you will ever watch, AOT is a pretty good choice. It is not a great anime show, it is a great TV show period. I think it is at the same if not higher level as Game of Throne (the first 7 seasons, 8 is garbage) or Breaking Bad…

Part of the reason why we drive all the way to Kyushu is to visit the hometown of the author of AOT, this small rural town called Hita. To see the museum on AOT and some statue sites.

Going from Hiroshima to Hita, we pass another park where they have a statue of the Spear of Longinus from Spear of Longinus | Evangelion | Fandom  Neo-Genesis Evangelion, another Classic Japanese anime series that re-defined big Mech genre. If you know you know, just a picture here. We also passed some lovely little rest stop along the way. Japanese rest stops along the highway is always cute! You got convenient stores for food, and typically a super market with local produces! And a cut board for photo op!

Under the large hydro dam in Hita, the iconic scene was re-created of three protagonists looking at colossal titan emerge on the top of the wall that protected the city for over 100 years. You can also find the signature of palm print of the author of AOT on the base of the statue.

Then you can move to a separate site that houses the AOT museum (just a small building near a local park), with many original sketches of many classic scenes in the anime. They have the author’s childhood drawings also… about some tooth paste hero protecting your teeth, which is kind of funny. The museum has props you can do the classic “dedicate your heart” pose 😀 

There are actually 2 locations for the AOT display. The other one is also worth going as they have a short emersion video experience which is good, and more systematic display of different chapter and timeline of the story. Finally before you leave Hita, make sure you stop by the train station for the statue of captain Levi.

If there is one photo that needs no explanation, this is it.

Hiroshima Peace Museum has very detailed description of the entire history and aftermath of the nuclear bombing event in 1945. It is a very educational and emotional visit, definitely not for fun. You will go through and realize the impact of war to its fullest degree, cherishing the peace we have today.

Aside from the historical facts and data, there are arts depicting the horror of atomic bomb. There are many artifacts on display, donated to the museum from survivors and their families. People were burnt and radiated, their belongings carbonized and building destroyed. Even when someone survived the first impact, they typically die early due to cancer induced by radiation. All from the result of about a cubic inch of Uranium fission!

Outside you can see the actual Peace Memorial pointing at the Atomic Dome. In the museum collection is also a letter to President Roosevelt from none other than Albert Einstein that started the U.S. development of A-bomb, for better or worse.

We took a road trip after the Gion Festival to Kyushu by car. The first stop was Okayama, which is a mid-size city famous for its garden: Kōraku-en (後楽園, Kōrakuen Kōraku-en - Wikipedia) is one of the three greatest gardens of Japan, built in 1700 right by the side of Okayama Castle.

The garden is pretty big with different landscapes, even some rice fields. Inside you can find many boulders that were dissembled and shipped in and re-assembled…. It is like Lego of Rock! I guess the designer really like the formation of the rocks but there is no way to haul them in one piece!

After a stroll around the garden we visited Okayama Castle (Okayama Castle - Wikipedia). This is a replica since the original one was destroyed by air raid in 1945.  The reconstructed castle is a concrete building complete with air-conditioning (you will appreciate that if you visit during summer), elevators and numerous displays documenting the castle's history (with a heavy focus on the Ikeda Clan era.) Ikeda Clan was the owner of the Castle after the warring period of Japan, they are allies of Tokugawa during the Edo period and commissioned the building of Korakuen.

Okayama is about 3 hour drive from Kyoto. A nice mid-stop if you are travel to Hiroshima. But we continued to drive for an hour to stay at Fukuyama in order to save some driving the next day, the hotel (Vessel Hotel Fukuyama) free breakfast is Super nice, putting American hotels to shame….

If you are in Kyoto during July, you can experience one of the three main festivals in Japan. Gion Festival (Gion Matsuri - Wikipedia) involves about 4 weeks of celebration in Kyoto where people construct and drag elaborate floats around the city. The origin of the Festival dated back many years and mainly was for prevention of illness and pandemic during summer.

The center of the Gion Festival is Yasaka shrine (Yasaka Shrine - Wikipedia). If you stay around during the night, there is more activities and people will even carry the shrine cart on their shoulder and dance in the street. I stayed and watched that about 15 years ago when I was traveling alone in Japan after the NEESWood project. But this time I did not stay at night, and simply watched the parade during the day.

Taking the Saga-Arashiyama line from Kyoto Station, you can arrive in another famous location in Kyoto that you might have seen on tourism ads. The bamboo forest of Aashi mountain, known for its manual rickshaw carts for iconic pictures for tourist. Of course you will see a lot of tourists here.

Walking through the bamboo trail, you will naturally arrive in Tenryu-Ji temple, which is famous for its garden (Tenryū-ji - Wikipedia). The main temple overlooking a large pond makes a great scenery. It was raining heavily when we were there and you can take shelter under the temple roof. The pond in the rain is especially beautiful. You can pay extra to enter the temple hall, but we did not do that. Natural scenery is great enough!

Getting out of the temple and walk a bit south, you will get to the Katsura river, which is beautiful in its own right. Tons of snack shops on the pedestrian street. Go across the bridge on the river, you will see the entrance to the Monkey mountain. It is actually quite a hike to get to the mountain top to see the monkeys. Do NOT rent kimono if you want to climb the mountain, make sure you have good hiking shoes!

After about 30 min hike, you are on the top and can have a nice overview of west Kyoto. And you can see monkeys…..and even feed them in a cage (you are in a cage, they are free on the outside….)

If you like food, shopping, and places full of people, Osaka is the place to be. Very lively town and much less business-looking than Tokyo. You can start the day with Takoyaki (Japanese octopus balls) which can be bought anywhere around tourist attractions.

First go to Osaka Castle park, since we already visited the Castle, this time you can go to the nearby shrine dedicated to Toyotomi Hediyoshi. He is originally a farmer, raised to samurai rank and eventually unified Japan. Still, the size of the stone they used to build the Osaka Castle grounds is truly amazing

Then you can go south on the Osaka loop line and reach Shitenno-Ji (Shitennō-ji - Wikipedia), which is a Buddhist temple sometimes regarded as the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan. The buildings and temples are definitely not old, as the site was re-built many times across history. The current buildings are actually concrete, not wood.

From the temple, it is a short walk to Tsutenkaku Tower (Tsūtenkaku - Wikipedia), designed by the same guy who did Tokyo tower. On the way we passed a wired modernistic temple that has a lot of people going in. It turns out this temple physically use the ashes of the deceased to build Buddha statues and keep them in the temple. Yeah… instead of going to a grave yard you can visit your passing relatives in the temple and offering incense…

Tsutenkaku tower has nothing to do with religion, it is just a commercial tourist attraction. The price for going up is a bit steep in my opinion, so just walking around is fine. It is almost time for lunch, so we have the classic Osaka food: OKonomiyaki

After lunch, stroll to the center of Osaka: Dotonbori (Dōtonbori - Wikipedia). There are a lot of window shopping along the streets of Osaka, from the more innocent anime gadgets to questionable maid café, to blatant adult themed contents (not gonna post it here!)… Sometimes I feel it is crazier than Tokyo. When you actually reached Dotonbori, it is actually just food, and a TON of people! This is the typical Japan you see on TV shows!

There is this penguin Ferris wheel on top of a building besides the river, I have to do itJ All in all, I really like Osaka, it is a very lively city.