So if you’re looking at www.fly.com and wondering what part of Japan to visit, let me persuade you – Tokyo isn’t the only destination if you want a good handle on Japanese culture. Their temples – and Buddhism, for that matter – are very important to them, and their maintenance of these locations demonstrates this very well. But some of the temples seem mysterious at first, so it’s important to do some research to fully enjoy their majesty.

According to Wikipedia:

This temple is one of the most well known in the Kant region of Japan and is only surpassed in visitors during the O-shogatsu period (lit: New year period) by the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The temple grounds are composed of a main gate, a steep stairwell and the main buildings (including a couple of five-story pagodas), and a garden area with large pond. A very small zoo is also within the temple grounds.

One of the many temples at the Shingon Buddhist temple.

Cute turtle. There were hundreds of these all over the place.

Garden area at the Shingon Buddhist temple

Statues at the Shingon Buddhist temple

Nice view from behind one of the temples

I must have been hungry as I ate a whole bunch of these fish, eyeballs and all! They had a nice ginger taste to them and washed down well with a cold glass of coke (which was necessary as it was darn hot there).

Eel spines, apparently they're a chewey snack!? No I did not try these, they look gross.

I also tried authentic Japanese sushi and a few other generic local foods, but I won’t bore you with photos of those.

Despite everyone’s insistence that we would be blown up the moment we reached Tel Aviv, we ‘braved’ it anyway to make our way to the ICCC38 (International Coordination Chemistry Conference 38) in Jerusalem.

Hong Kong

The heat walking off the plane was extreme. We quickly noticed that there was no air conditioning in the airport, so we headed outside to enjoy the sunny weather … except it turned out that there was air conditioning in the airport afterall! The heat and humidity outside was incredible. Our attempts to take photos of the scenery failed, as the lenses fogged up immediately due to the extreme humidity.

The only reasonable photos I managed to take were from inside the terminal. Below is my first real attempt at creating a 3D parallel view image. If you look through the page and merge the two images into one, you will see the view in 3D. Don’t go straining your eyes too hard though :p

Amsterdam

Our trip to Hong Kong was short and sharp, just a brief stopover before heading to Amsterdam for what was supposed to be another short visit in transit. Except it turns out we got confused and in fact had a day and a half there, so had to quickly arrange accomodation! The photo below is another 3D image, this time of a random Amsterdam canal (they have lots of them). More photos of the Netherlands will be coming later as we went back there for a proper visit later on.