Koi fish (Japanese Carp)

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During the school day trip to Kyoto, around the Todaiji temple, there was this pond, and in it there were a lot of Koi fish (which were bigger than I imagined and very difficult to capture, because they moved a lot.)

A little pond with lots of colorful fish

Koi aren’t always orange and white.

But sometimes they are.

A lonely fish (the colors were much more vivid in reality)

The most popular type.

 

 

 

 

Nara and its deer

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Other than the temples, Nara is famous for its deer (Even the city mascot “Shikamaru-kun” (which is a play on words since shika means deer) is a cute rounded deer)

A large sticker at the information desk in Nara station.

And the live version. I never thought a person in costume was anything but creepy, except for this one.

In Nara park, the deer roam freely among the visitors, and you can feed them special cookies, and pet them.

Deer aren’t scared of visitors, they don’t mind them at all, even the kids.

If you have the magic cracker, they’d come running to you. (Literally, they can recognize them from far away.)

The little feathery friends live peacefully with the deer.

They just get so close and don’t mind cameras.

 

First steps in Japan

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So, I arrived to Kansai international airport. Also a huge airport where everyone spoke… Japanese? Everything in this airport went really faster and smoother than I expected. Registration went fine and so did customs.

Now came the great challenge, I have to get to my home, in a place I know nothing of but maps. So…. time to play foreigner. I already knew that I had to take the Nankai line, then switch to the subway (Which is another story by itself.)

Image courtesy of Wikipedia, but that’s the train I got on.

Nipponbashi station courtesy of Wikipedia

Well everyone was very friendly, and I managed to get into that train above (with the huge luggage that is), and then I got out in Tengachaya subway station. The next step was to take the subway, which took me some time to find, but in the end I managed to get to Nipponbashi station, which is a nice station and is one of the entrances to a very large shopping area, only to be met by another challenge.

THIS

Remember I had two large suitcases…. Credit to Panoramio user DVMG

But then, out of nowhere, a middle aged salary man offered to help me carry them, which really creeped me out in the beginning, but I had no choice. He was stronger than I thought he would be though (thanks Ojisan ^_^ )

In the end I managed to meet the land lord and get to my room, which is small and Japanese styled, with tatami mats and futon and all, but it’s not as bad as I thought. I also like that it has some nice facilities (microwave, air conditioning, free internet)

Here is the old building 🙂

Kitchen, everything in one place…

And that’s all there is (except the futon)

Now I’m almost settled in, I’m starting to like the place, but still can’t get used to the tatami mats, but that isn’t causing me much trouble either.

The trip that was….

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(This post isn’t exactly about Japan)

Well, It is a fact that I didn’t get to Japan in the blink of an eye. Of course there was a flight involved, and a long one that is.

I was lucky to find a flight that took off from my city. But there was a catch since I had to change the flight date because of some minor problems. And that catch was that I had to sit through 11 hours of transfer in Dubai’s airport. That was good news and bad news, but I had no choice.

Now the Dubai Airport isn’t at all what I knew about airports, it’s huge and very…. extravagant? Well, I don’t know a bigger word to describe what I was met with when I arrived there.

First of all. to get to the terminal I was supposed to depart from It took me a 15 minute bus ride inside the airport, then I landed into what seemed like a mega mall of exclusively expensive brands of whatever you can imagine.

This is only one part of one the 3 tobacco and spirit specialty areas.

Here is the other side. And that’s only one shop.

Of course I didn’t manage to get around this huge place so easily, this is where those came in handy. Dispersed among all the 3 elongated floors of the terminal, were these advanced touch screen maps. Very helpful if you are looking for somewhere specific, since just stumbling into what you are looking for is nearly impossible.

There are maps and there are maps…. and then there is this.

I used them only to find out that I have to take a train to a third terminal where my flight will be (yes a train). I admit I wanted to take photos of many things, but I was somewhat busy studying, because I had a test the next day, also I felt a little embarrassed of taking photos of the impressive bathrooms they have. So I will leave you with the rest of photos I took (Which weren’t all that much.)

The Ferrari shop….

One isle of one of the candy shops scattered around.

This Audi was advertised as a prize.

So was this Jaguar….

And for something different, this Harley-Davidson was part of a Jack Daniels contest.

There was also a small heritage museum

An M&Ms specialty shop

A Heinken lounge

And an electronics shop that puts all the ones I saw before to shame.

I wish I could have taken more photos, but I was so overwhelmed an worried to do anything.

The photos didn’t really show how big the thing is, but I only realized this when I saw them in Japan.

Also, there aren’t any photos of the Osaka airport, which is a real shame but I couldn’t really take any while lugging my huge bags, and finishing my paperwork.