I visited three cities during my trip to Japan this past spring: Tokyo, Kyoto, and Kinosaki. I’ve been to Tokyo and Kyoto before, but Kinosaki was a new destination for me. In terms of size, Tokyo is the largest city in the world with a population of 37 million people! Hard to imagine. Kyoto is…
Category: Asia
Japan Spring Flowers
I was unaware of this, but Japan has over 100 different varieties of cherry blossom trees. Some are wild to the forests of Japan, but most have been cultivated for decorative use in parks and gardens around the country. I started to notice there were different varieties when I was taking close-up photos of the…
Cherry Blossom Season in Japan
Hello! So I’m finally getting around to sorting through my Japan pictures from March. I thought my first post should be a little intro into the timing of cherry blossom season, which is the most popular time to visit Japan. It’s hard to get the timing right on a trip to Japan during cherry blossom…
Israel and the Palestinian Territories
After a week in Jordan, I headed to Israel and the Palestinian Territories for my last week in the Middle East. I will admit that as much as I loved the history and site seeing in Israel, I found it hard to relax due to the intense political situation in the area. Our guide warned…
Petra, Jordan
After spending time in Wadi Rum we headed to the ancient city of Petra. It was named one of the new seven wonders of the world in 2007 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985. This ancient city dates back to 3000 BC and was a booming trading site between 400 BC – 100…
Wadi Rum Jordan
From Egypt, I took a short one-hour flight to Amman to start my week-long tour of Jordan. There is a noticeable difference as soon as you land in Jordan after spending some time in Egypt. To name a few things, it’s more expensive, it’s more modern and it’s not as conservative. It was not as…
Universal Studios Japan
For our second day in Osaka, we headed to Universal Studios to check out the new Super Nintendo World theme park they opened in 2020. Since this park opened during the COVID pandemic we are some of the first foreigners to enter the park which is cool. Joe and I played the Super Mario Bros…
Osaka, Japan
We spent three days in Osaka (the second largest city in Japan) after our time in Kyoto. One day at the aquarium, one day at Universal Studios, and our last day was spent doing some shopping before we headed home. Accommodation We stayed at the Cross Hotel in Osaka, I booked this with Booking.com. I…
Nara, Japan
During one of our days in Kyoto, we ventured to the city of Nara to visit the famous deer park. It took about an hour by train to get there. I’d heard about this deer park where hundreds of deer roam freely. Joe visited here when he studied abroad in Japan 13 years ago. It…