Diller Parents Visit: Kyoto

We can now say we have had visitors from the States!!! Joel's parents came to visit us for nearly two weeks at the end of April. It was AMAZING to have them here and they have proven themselves to be very brave and savvy travelers! From their plane landing unexpectedly in Fukuoka and having to figure out the Bullet train back to Iwakuni to exploring Hiroshima for two days and a night with only a PAPER map (old school, LOL!), they were AMAZING! I'm super impressed with their seeming lack of jet lag too - those two are first class world travelers. :)

The first thing we did was to take them to Kyoto to see the sights. This is definitely our favorite city in Japan - endless things to do and amazing restaurants!

First stop: Nijo Castle!

Exploring the castle grounds

We walked practically everywhere - good exercise plus it kept us hungry for all the good food!

Mr. Diller found a knife shop that has been in existence for over 100 years and the family continues to make their own blades. Both of us bought the one on the far left. And let me tell you, it cuts like no other.

The knife maker himself!

Ok, how to explain... this was the BEST ramen we have ever and will ever eat in our lives at a cute little restaurant called Gogyu. It's known in English as "burnt ramen" because they fry the noodles and somehow impart a burnt texture and flavor to the soup itself. It was a miso broth with black sesame and pretty much the most amazing thing I've eaten in Japan so far. LOVE.

This is Ginkakuji, known as the Silver Pavilion.

The grounds around the Pavilion were BEAUTIFUL.

Giant Torii Gate... I ran into the middle of the road to snap this shot

Hanging around the grounds of Sanjusangendo Hall... couldn't take pictures of the interior of the Hall itself but it was loaded with over 1000 life size statues of Buddha. 

Spring is such a great time of year!

So we took the Dillers to Tofuiro for dinner - if y'all recall, this is the tofu restaurant we went to the first time we traveled to Kyoto. Their set menu was entirely different this time (I think our first experience was better) but the Dillers were very brave in trying all of the tofu concoctions and sitting on the floor Japanese style! This was course number one - each item is made with fresh, made that day in the restaurant tofu!

Mastering the art of chopsticks

Yup - that's where we sat! Your legs definitely do fall asleep, ha ha!

The Rest of Nagasaki

And here we have it: our big day in Nagasaki! We started out by heading right to their Peace Park, to include the epicenter of the atom bombing.

After you climb a ton of stairs, there's a beautiful fountain meant to look like angel wings. And from all angles it did! (token Japanese "peace" picture!)

Inside this structure were strands and strands of peace cranes - so beautiful and such a wonderful way to express remembrance for a horrific incident, but also the peace and cooperation that can exist today despite it.

This sign explains the meaning behind the statue in the picture below - we really appreciated all of the symbolism!

It was a stunning statue, and really quite large.

In the center is Urakami Cathedral, a church that was severely affected by the bombing. And unfortunately, it is reported that 8,500 of the 12,000 Urakami Christians were killed as well, so the fact that it has been rebuilt and continues to have a strong influence in the area is a tribute to their resilience.

This is a monument to the 26 martyrs - 6 foreigners (Portuguese missionaries I believe) and 20 Japanese Christians were put to death (by crucifixion) for their faith in the 1500's, ten years after Japanese law outlawed Christianity.

We were hiking up to see a shrine and a giant cemetery, then what do we spy, but a GIANT statue!

  

We wandered around and around, up and down really confusing and not very logical alleys to try to get a closer look. Never could figure out how to get to this shrine but I managed to get a slightly closer picture. Have NO idea what this is for, but it was GINORMOUS.

This statue resides in the epicenter of the bombing.

This is the actual epicenter.

Joel and I found a cool mall for lunch. I swear, the train stations and the malls have the BEST restaurants in Japan! Not quite what you expect in these places in the States.

Here were the instructions on how to cook our food on the giant hibachi grill in the middle of our table. After being cold outside, the heat felt good in the restaurant.

The food before...

The food on the grill! It turned out great, so I guess we did it right.

This is a damaged Torii Gate that survived the blast when the entire neighborhood around it was reduced to rubble. It's missing one pillar and the top piece apparently rotated, but it's simply amazing that it survived at all. The fallen pieces were collected and placed nearby.

Yay dinner! Joel and I had already scoped out a bunch of the restaurants in the area during our ramblings the night before, so we decided to go back to a really refined looking sushi restaurant, and what a good choice it was! The evening began with soup - fresh and delicious!

Then we moved on to the sushi. We are still in awe of the crazy knife skills that must have been involved!

Yup. That's my man.

Yum! Some of our favorite sushi rolls EVER! Salmon, Tuna, Cucumber, Roe, Wasabi, Ginger, White Fish... it doesn't get any better really.

The sushi sampler - actually, this is sashimi as it's simply large slices of fish and no rice and OH man, it was excellent.

Nagasaki was a beautiful, welcoming, and engaging city. It'd be nice to go back in the warm weather and take in the sites when we're not freezing, LOL.

The City of Nagasaki - Day One

As Kirk mentioned in the last post, we had the opportunity to spend a 3 day weekend in Nagasaki in January. It was actually on our way back to Iwakuni that we stopped by the Bio Park, but Kirk couldn't wait to post the animal pics. So here's what we did the first two days.

Here is the hotel we stayed at - Nagasaki is very Dutch influenced as it was one of the only cities permitted to do outside trading with Europe during Japan's Isolationist period.

But, here. Allow me to let the signs tell you the history.

Our hotel room. Really cute and cozy.

The hotel restaurant (that was too expensive so we didn't use it - breakfast for 2100 yen each? I don't think so!)

Since Kirk and I drove up on Saturday and didn't get in until check in around 1600, we actually didn't have an entire first day, so we explored the area surrounding our hotel for the night.

Again, you can definitely see the European influence on the architecture of many of the buildings near the harbor area.

Kirk walking up the famous Hollander Road - known for its heavy usage of foreigners back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. In fact, all of the non-Asians seen in this city were labeled as Dutch by the locals because most of them were in fact Dutch sailors.

We came across some really neat buildings (the one on the left reminded Kirk of a Southern plantation) at the top of the Hollander Slope.

 

About a mile from our hotel, you walk down into Nagasaki's own Chinatown.

These snacks are a favorite in this region. It's basically a slab of pork belly with a wasabi mustard sauce on a sticky,dense bun. Delicious! 

Kirk made me do this.

We went to Butajiro for dinner! We didn't realize that it's a chain restaurant because we have one in Iwakuni too. It's a great Japanes/Italian fusion restaurant where they serve only tapas style dishes. No one speaks English, the menu has few pictures, but EVERYTHING is only 290 yen, so we were brave an randomly picked things off the menu and of course it was all delicious!

On our way back to the hotel from dinner, Kirk climbed a ridiculously old Camphor tree. It dates between 500-800 years old. It was a beautiful old tree and HUGE. Kirk is sitting between three branches that were more than big enough to be their own tree trunks. It was dark so unfortunately, we weren't able to get a picture of the whole tree, but trust me on this. It was MASSIVE.