The second stop of our Japan road trip was Nagoya, unassuming town according to guides- but, as we learned by experience, nothing in Japan is unassuming.
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Japan road trip: two days in Takayama
In spring, we visited Japan again. Even though Japan was never really a place I dreamed of visiting before our friends moved to Tokyo and invited us to stay, what we experienced there was so intoxicating that we wanted to deepen that experience, or at least re-live it.
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A day trip to Kyoto
Deciding on what to visit in Kyoto in just a day can be overwhelming, so we simplified things by heading to eastern Kyoto and simply wandering around Nanzen-ji temple complex. A walk from Keage Station to the temple grounds is a romantic one- it starts with an abandoned railway track lined with cherry trees, where we were not the only ones taking photos of the blossoms.
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Getting to know Osaka
Osaka ended up on our itinerary as a more affordable solution to staying in Kyoto, whose temples and shrines we wanted to visit in the peak of the cherry blossom season. We stayed in Osaka for 4 nights, making day trips to Kyoto and Nara, but ultimately we got to enjoy the city more than we expected, considering it our temporary home, and deciding on first soaking in the atmosphere and then sightseeing when we felt like it.
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A day trip to Kanazawa
Have you ever heard of Kanazawa? A small Japanese town on the shore of the Sea of Japan, with a population of about 500.000? I haven't, until I started planning our trip to Japan, and it turned out to be one of the sweetest surprises and highlights of our trip! It caught my attention when I read that one of Japan's three most beautiful landscape gardens was actually in Kanazawa, 3 hours train drive west of Tokyo.
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