We awoke this morning and headed down to Tokyo station to pick up our Shinkansen train for the 4-hour ride to Hiroshima. The ride was very smooth and before we knew it we were pulling into Hiroshima Station. After talking to the information desk, we headed over to our hotel to check-in and drop off some luggage before we headed out to Miyajima Island for the day. We bought our 2-day tourist passes and got on the streetcar for the 60-minute ride to the Miyajima f...

We decided to get up REALLY early this morning to head down and see if we could check out the Tuna Auction at the Tsukiji fish market. We knew that they were only letting 140 people in, so we got up at 3:30 and were at the market by 4:10. We were already in the second group and by 4:20 they had reached their maximum and were turning people away. They must have turned away 75+ people while we were there. Finally, at 5:40, we got to head into the auction area. The...

We awoke early this morning to join the monks in their 6 am prayer service. The service was basically the monks chanting a set of devotional mantras. It was about 40 minutes long, but Kent only stayed for about 15, as the smell of the incense was giving him a bad headache. Christine stayed to the end and enjoyed it. After the service, breakfast was served and again, it was a vegetarian meal. Kent struggled this morning as none of the food was tasting very good t...

A bus, three trains, and a cable car (5 minutes up a 50-degree slope!) brought us from Kyoto to Koyasan, for our stay at the Buddhist monastery (Rengejô-in Temple) on Mount Koya. We met up with our local tour guide (Taruko) after getting off the cable car and headed out for our tour of the highlights of Koyasan. Koyasan was founded by a Buddhist monk, Kobo Daishi, in the early 800's as a place for Buddhist monks to study and work away from the distraction...

We had a little surprise to start our day today as Japan was hit with a small earthquake. It woke Kent up, but he wasn't sure what was going on, just that the bed was shaking. Christine thought she was having a dream. We didn't realize that it was an earthquake until we got downstairs to meet the group and people were talking about it. Another experience we were not expecting to have during our vacation! We had an addition to our group today. Saki, one of th...