WTF?

We walked around the imperial palace grounds and bit, and then headed towards Yasukuni Shrine. It's a Shinto-style shrine commemorating Japanese war dead with a military history museum on its grounds (Yūshūkan War museum):

A few pictures taken by others:

The museum itself had a some nice displays, but the main reason we found it interesting, is because it depicts the last 150+ last years of history, as written by the Japanese. To be honest, it was a bit troubling at times. While they did mention some things that are known to be true, and not always mentioned on the western side. For instance:

On the flip side, the entire museum was sadly very devoid of anything hinting that Japan had every done anything wrong, or was responsible in some ways for the wars it got involved in. Or other things like:

Some displays:

cruise missile that used a poor kamikaze pilot as pilot

a submarine/torpedo (the pilot took it manually to its target where it would explode)

sadly, this probably contributed to the number of war heroes they had

After much longer than planned at the museum (3H30 when the long tour was meant to be 2H), we went to the nearby science museum in a non descript building:

Demo on how to limit the effect of earthquakes in buildings:

Watch the demo with the balloons in the video, it's super "cool" :)

We used the rest of the afternoon to spend a bit of time in Akihabara which was nearby, and went to Google to meet Eric for dinner:

capsule hotel inside the building, cool :)

We came around 19:30, the hedgehogs were alert and active (they are nocturnal animals, so it's not surprising that they are sleepy during the day). The staff did have some that they left alone so that they could rest, and let us chose amongst the ones that were awake and active.
Now, let's be fair, hedgehogs are not really meant to be furry pets, especially with strangers. The 2 I got bit me, not to attack me, but because they confused me with food (their sight is poor, they work by smell), but on the plus side their teeth are not sharp so while I was convinced they'd draw blood, they did not. One of the 2 also pooped on me repeatedly (but they have baby wipes for that).

Was it fun? Yes.
Are hedgehogs really the best animals for petting cafés? I'd definitely say no, but eh, we had to go check it out :)

That being said, they're still cute and make for good pictures:

it's a small breed, hedgehogs can get much bigger than that

mine was both inquisitive and a bit mischievous

it bit the crap out of my Tshirt but the teeth aren't sharp, so it didn't make a hole

I got another one after that. It didn't bite, but it pooped a lot :)

Erik-San was there with us :)

it was much less trouble :)

One floor up, there is a bunny café, where some bunnies are a bit crazy, while others are very cuddly.

this bunny was so soft and cuddly :)

Jennifer got a crazy hyper active one, so I gave her mine

Good fun was had :)

spider protein fiber

squid harnesting device :)

flexbile 3D printed hand

Then, we had a nice dinner at Aoyama Esaki

On the way back, we walked around Shibuya, for its fun crossing as well as the shopping streets:

The weather had not been good (mostly rain almost all the time), the next morning we walked around the nice Chinzanso hotel grounds before my conference started:

During lunch break, we went for another nice meal at another Michelin rated restaurant (2 stars): Narisawa:

sucks to ride a bullet train like this

Kodai-ji

fresh water cray fish

after our hike, we arrived at Shoren-in's Seiryu-den with a nice view of Kyoto

and we arrived at Kiyomizu Dera

On the way back to our bike, we managed to get in Kodai-ji just before it closed:

with a view of Ryozen Kannon next door which had already closed

we were lucky enough to see our first real geishas in the wild :)

Last, but not least, for the first night of Gion Matsuri: Yoiyama which is the viewing of floats in the streets. I figured it would be viewing of floats with a bunch of street vendors and that it'd be all nice and good. In real life, it was an insane sea of people, it was super hard to get anywhere, streets were randomly closed even to pedestrians by making them pseudo randomly one-way.
The amount of crowds made this less fun than it could have been, and Jennifer really did not like the huge crowds:

it got bad

then I went to bike back to our room (Jennifer had left earlier)

After the huge crowds of the first night of Gion Matsuri, we went to see the float procession the next morning. We found a decent enough spot away from the huge crowds and thankfully the rain stayed away in the morning. It was fun to see those huge floats (the big ones are called hoko), some with a mast that went way too high up (probably not good during a thunderstorm), and because they are not designed to turn (the wheels are fixed), each 90 degree turn is a huge 10mn enterprise involving bamboo turn (the wheels are fixed), each 90 degree turn is a huge 10mn enterprise involving bamboo turn (the wheels are fixed), each 90 degree turn is a huge 10mn enterprise involving bamboo slats, water, lifting a flats that's way too heavy (over 10 tons), chanting, and entertainment :)

turning this takes a long time, almost like watching paint dry :)

10mn later, we're good :)

oh noes, another one showed up, it'll take a while to turn :)

During the day, we went to see a few things and hide from the oppressing wet heat. We started with Higashi Honganji and Nishi Honganji:

Next, while I didn't have high expectations, I had a quick look at the Kyoto Aquarium because it was indoors and had AC. It was barely worth an hour though.

More interestingly, the kyoto railway museum next door was quite good:

first bullet train

I wish we got to use those seats

I found some new orangina flavours I didn't know :)

From there, we went to the Kyoto national museum:

It then time to head back to our room, return our rental bikes and towards Yasaka Shrine for the evening procession of mikoshi:

poor guys, they were sitting under torrential rain

After the festivities, we bought some yummy meat that Jennifer cooked in our rented apartment, and we got an early night due to our next day starting around 05:50 due to long travels.

connecting to our shinano

shinano is pretty nice inside

finally arrived in Tsumago after being dropped off by our cab (there were busses but they would have taken too long)

I found this little guy on the ground , turns out it could fly fine

we stopped for hot tea on the route

you're supposed to ring the bell to scare the bears away

The hike was pretty in parts, and followed the road in other parts, but still, just seeing the beautiful flowers, rice growing fields and nice little towns of Magome and Tsumago was worth the trip. Sadly, despite my early research, I didn't find out that they could have sent our luggage from Nakatsugawa to Nagiso, the train station after Tsumago, so we had to take a rather expensive cab ($60, 30mn) from Tsumago back to Nakatsugawa (and wake up a taxi driver since there were none at the taxi station they were supposed to be at). Thankfully I built in enough buffer time (50mn, including a 30mn drive) that we got back to Nakatsugawa in time for our hourly express train to Matsumoto. In hindsight though, we could have gone to Nagiso, picked up our luggage and take a crappy slow train from Nagiso to Matsumoto, and have arrived around the same time.

Matsumoto was recommended by the guidebooks for an original Japanese Castle. It's not the biggest, or the most famous, but it's one of the 12 Japanese Castles that hasn't been destroyed and rebuilt. Actually it's Japan's oldest existing Castle, more than 400 years old. We got super lucky to have Takayama-San from ALSA (Alps Language Service Association), the local volunteer guide group, who was super nice and met us at the Castle after I called him to enquire when we were in the train and found out that their guides who are usually there, are only there until 15:00 and we were going to arrive at 15:20. Takayama-San very nicely offered to come personally to the Castle to give us a tour, and with his explanations our tour of Matsumoto Castle was much more instructive and enjoyable than if we had been on our own.

Takayama-San, explaining the castle's history to us

oh noes, poor fish

After the tour, we had enough time to catch out last train of the day at 17:55, and arrive at Kurobe View, a very good ryokan in the Shinano Omachi area (so that we could start the Alpen Route the next morning). The room was spacious and the food for dinner was both excellent and plentiful (and then some). Breakfast the next day was not too shabby either.

nice beds, great room

After all this food, I went to brave the onsen:

And then time for bed, since we had to start our Alpen Route traverse at 08:00 the next morning, not too bad...

nice view from our Ryokan room

it gets expensive when you add the fees

The weather is finicky, and we got super lucky that day, but they had nice displays showing the weather along the route and on the other side of the mountains (where it can be very different):

Now is a good time to mention that we got super lucky with the weather as in mid July, we could have been greeted by thunderstorms, and low cloud obscuring the view everywhere. During the busy season (in April/May just after the route opens and you can see the crazy high snow wall), people can wait 1h+ between each mode of transport, making the whole thing a lot less fun:

but we missed out on this :)

Then came the time to take an electric bus through a long tunnel to Kurobe Dam:

we got a funny ticket guy :)

Kurobe Dam was worth almost an hour to walk around and take pictures from different angles:

then we connected to the ropeway after a very quick 10mn stop to take a few pictures

We finally got to Murodo, the top, by a respectable 11:30, giving us time to hike up to the top (Mt Tateyama). The hike up is about 800m of climbing, initially on ok trails, but then it turns into sheer boulder hoping and rocks and gravel that slide down as you try to walk up. Let's just say it was more difficult and took longer, but we made it up:

we got lucky and saw a local grouse with 2 little chicks :)

evntually we got to the rest house at 2700m before the trail turned into rock hopping for the last 300m

almost there

yeah, got to the top

the peak had a small shrine at 3003m

damn, should have brought my snowboard :)

now we only need to walk back down to the building where our next bus was going to be

sadly we didn't have a lot of time to go check out other parts of the top plateau, like the volcanic section

to the next bus

In hindsight, it was a mistake, but we got a recommendation to stop at Midagahra and Bijo-daira on thw way down. They are likely both worth visiting, but I'm guessing they are mor impressive during a different season. When we went they were just ok. We shoud have spent more time at Murodo and done more tails up there. We managed to rush both the boardwalk (40mn in 25mn or so, and the caldera climb (25mn instead of 50mn), and caught the very next bus out, putting us a bit ahead of schedule. The caldera climb itself was pretty underwhelming, sadly:

this was supposed to be the caldera view, mmmh, ok

Next, we took the bus to Bijo-daira for a forest walk:

big waterfall visible from the bus on the way down

we did the short loop, pretty muddy and hilly, but sadly we didn't see any of those birds

multiple trees merged, and some trees seemed to split off into multiple ones

After a 1h hike for the loop, we took the last transport back down, a cable car to Tateyama:

bits from a former lava flow

almost there

And we finally made it to our hotel: Morinokaze Tateyama, where we enjoyed another nice onsen and an ok buffer dinner and breakfast:

this is where we climbed up

our first train out

Finally we arrived in Takeyama, and went to Matsuri no Mori, the museum on the big float festivals they have. The floats are kept in a temperature controlled room, and on animated display once an hour. They were quite impressive:

the big door allows for the floats to get in and out a few times a year

Next, we went to the Hida Folk Village, which was an interesting tour showing how old houses were in that region (turns out in Shirakawago where we went the next day, they had more houses still like this):

we learned about raising silk worms

they make little white cocoons like those, and they are unwrapped to make silk threads

Next, we took another cab to Takayama Festival Float Exhibition Hall and Sakurayama Hachimangu Shrine next door, which has a fantastic replica of Toshogu Shrine in Nikko:

From there, Jennifer was tired of walking with the long hikes we had done the last day, so she went back to our ryokan, while I did the very well marked Higashiyama Walking Course, a very nice walk that takes you through more than 10 temples and shrines, and to the forest where they have castle ruins, and deer like animals that I sadly was not able to see during my walk:

aqueduct that allowed a water stream to cross another water stream, cool :)

this honda fit, did not fit :)

the walking course was very well marked and easy to follow

nice forest walk (although a lot of uphill to the castle ruins, but no animals :(

I then went back through town to our ryokan for the night. It was held by a nice family and we got a yummy custom dinner :)

all houses used to have access to the water, but some just gave it up now

it had big koi fish and ducks

our ryokan had a very old cat that was half deaf and blind

After a night in Takayama, we went to see a few more things before heading out. We started with the morning markets by the river, and went to see Takayama Jinja, a former government outpost and walked through old town a 2nd time after it opened. That gave us a good chance to get hilda beef sushi and hilda beef on a stick (a local high quality beef):

lots of big koi in the river

lots of little birdies living in old street :)

We then had just enough time to get the train station by 10:50 and take the next bus to Shirakawago, and old town village:

we got to see live silk worms

We ended up only spending 2H in Shirakawago to having to make a bus reservation for our bus to Kanazawa, and honestly I wish we could have spent 3H but the next bus was another 2H later, i.e. 4H there. 4H wouldn't have been horrible, but leaving after 2, we got hte highlights and had more time to visit Kanazawa where were were going next after a 90mn bus ride. We started with the Suzuki Museum on his life and the pursuit of Zen, but sadly it explained very little about Zen and was generally a waste of time:

So next, we went to the move interesting 21st century contemporary art museum, which was much more fun and has an expo about fake olympics in a city sounding a lot like a big chinese capital :)

the fuck you olympics, very funny :)

3 way ping pong

fun race :)

Some of the other expos were interesting too:

The swimming pool was cool too :)

We then found a nice steak restaurant where we had expensive beef prepared by the chef in front of us :) (I even managed to make a reservation on the phone in Japanese)

nice view from our room

After a good night and great breakfast in Kanazawa, we went to the famous Kenroku-en, one of the 3 most famous gardens in Japan, so we started with a tour there. Needless to say that it was fantastic:

We then met meeting Atsuko-San at 09:30, our nice volunteer guide from GGN (good will guide network), and she took us around famous samurai houses in the area as well as the Higashi Chaya geisha district (not unlike the one in Kyoto, just a bit smaller):

*Higashi Chaya District, were geishas perform (less so nowadays, but still)

I was a fan of Atsuko-San

At the end of the tour, she nicely walked with us to Myoryuji Templa (aka Ninjadera) for our tour reserved at 13:00. Sadly no pictures allowed inside:

From there we walked back to the castle which we hadn't had the time to visit yet, and found another nice volunteer guide who gave us a tour outside (we did the inside on our own, it's not as impressive):

our friend from that morning was back

On the way out, we went to check their garden:

And we finished our day in Kanazawa by going to the Omicho Market, before catching a cab back to our hotel and heading to the train station for a long-ish trip to Okayama (3h30 via Kyoto):

the JR500 looks bad ass :)

but we took a nozomi instead of waiting 1h extra for a slow hikari

After a good night in Okayama, we went to Korakuen, part of the top 3 best parks in Japan, and its adjacent castle, because... well... it was there :) The castle looks nice from outside, but the inside isn't essential. Still, we went in since we were there:

lot of hungry koi fish :)

Then, we crossed the bridge to go to the castle, which had a helpful "no pictures inside" policy :(

From there, we went back to the train station to catch a Sakura train to Hiroshima. For a change, we didn't have to take a Nozomi we weren't supposed to be on as the Sakura was almost as fast and only got us there 10mn later, If the JR pass worked like this all the time, it wouldn't be as bad (but on multiple trips it would have caused us 1h delays and that's not ok)

sadly we didn't get to ride this train

After dropping our stuff at the hotel, we went directly to the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Distance and schedule-wise, that was not the right choice, but Arturo recommended that we got a volunteer guide for the museum tour, and I figured we should start with the Peace Museum in case guides were only available early in the afternoon (as is often the case). Due to the fireworks that night, there were lots of tourists in Hiroshima and the museum was packed (they also ran out of audiobooks), so having the guide worked out great (turns out, you have to know to ask for a guide at the museum information desk, not at the TI).
He was a very nice man and he gave us his own take on the displays, which definitely was a big plus:

welcome to Hiroshima, this is the famous building that partially survived the blast

before

after

graphic display showing how some people actually were after the blast, with their skin half burnt out and hanging

little boy

a lot of people don't know the bombs were designed to detonate in the air, for a longer reach

this poor lady got her kimono patterns burnt into her skin

many paper cranes to make those patterns

Thanks to Yokoyama-San, our guide, it was a very interesting tour of the museum. My take on the museum itself: sadly half of it is currently closed due to renovations, but what we saw was informative and to the point. The museum did avoid controverial topics like the events that lead to the bomb, or looked at whether the very sad and very high civilian casualties can indeed be considered to be fewer casualties than if the war had had to continue until US troups made it to Tokyo with most of the Japanese fighting to the death like they had been doing until then, or whether the emperor had a decent chance to surrender between the 2 atomic bombs, or whether the US was a bit too eager to try both bombs and didn't give he Japanese long enough to surrender after the first one.
To its credit, the museum does mention the 20,000 Koreans that were killed in Hiroshima (and that were there as forced labour, although that "detail" isn't really mentioned).
If you care about more details on this part of history, this post on Why didn't Japan surrender after the first atomic bomb?. this other article, claims 'The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties. On July 16, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert.', which sadly sounds about right.
This other article mentions 'The Supreme Council met at 10:30. Suzuki, who had just come from a meeting with the Emperor, said it was impossible to continue the war. Tōgō Shigenori said that they could accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, but they needed a guarantee of the Emperor's position. Navy Minister Yonai said that they had to make some diplomatic proposal they could no longer afford to wait for better circumstances."

According to wikipedia: In the middle of the meeting, shortly after 11:00, news arrived that Nagasaki, on the west coast of Kyūshū, had been hit by a second atomic bomb', which strongly implies that Japan would have surrendered after the first atomic bomb, given a bit more time than the meager 3 days they were given
I realize those are controversial topics, but they are are important in my opinion. Going back to the main topic of the effects of the bomb, and how it was horrible on the civilian population, the museum does a great job.

Another sobering thought I learned was that the bomb in iroshima only yielded 1.5% of its potential. This is another way to say that it could have made 66 times more damage if the fission of its uranium had gone to completion! Wikipedia says When 1 pound (0.45 kg) of uranium-235 undergoes complete fission, the yield is 8 kilotons. The 16 kiloton yield of the Little Boy bomb was therefore produced by the fission of no more than 2 pounds (0.91 kg) of uranium-235, out of the 141 pounds (64 kg) in the pit. The remaining 139 pounds (63 kg), 98.5% of the total, contributed nothing to the energy yield

The museum also roots for a world without nuclear weapons, but in my opinion, with the threat of new nations that are happy to kill others no matter what the cost to them, I'm afraid that a world without nuclear weapons is sadly a pipe dream. That genie isn't going back in the bottle unfortunately, let's just hope that only responsible nations can be left with them, and the fewer the better.

Nonetheless, despite the museum not being perfect, overall I thought it did a fair enough job, especially in a country where historical truths are apparently not exactly free, and needless to say that no matter what side you might be on, the death, pain and suffering people of Hiroshima had to endure, is very painful and touching.

Next, we walked to Hiroshima Castle, which obviously is not original but does look nice. As a bonus, it has an elevator inside, and AC :)

Next, we went to Shukkeien, another beautiful garden, just next door to the castle:

By then, it was just past 18:00, and we went to find a descent viewing spot for the Fireworks that were going to start at 20:00. This meant we eat dinner on the go instead of finding a nice restaurant, but with a forecast 400,000 people trying to go to the same place, I knew that we had to find a good viewing spot early (with the official best viewing spots likely being full many hours before the official time). The place I opted for was out of the way and required a bit of walking, but we had a superb unobstructed view, while sitting down the whole time:

smiley faces

awesome fireworks

Getting back to our hotel was sadly not a piece of cake as we waited for a bus that was cancelled without notice. In the end, we had to walk a fair bit and miraculously stumbled on a cab that took a while to get out of the mess of a crowd we were in, but we made it back to our hotel and I got this picture from our room:

Considering that this was my birthday, I thought it was very nice for Hiroshima to have that big fireworks show just for me :)

After a half day in Hiroshima, we went to Miyajima, a small island about 30mn away and easily accessible by Ferry:

Miyajima is famous for its famous tori gate in the water, as well as semi wild deer, which are very nice and not trying to beg for your food:

There are lots of things to see there, more than enough for a full day:

Itsukushima Shrine os the main attraction on the island, a very nice shrine with its floating tori gate in the water, depending on the tide. It's not like quite Mt St Michel in France, but the tide goes pretty far in and out:

Lots of wildlife happy fishing in the marsh sands during half and low tide:

Mid vs high tide:

The tori gate during mid and high tide:

During low tide, the whole temple was on stilts without water underneath anymore:

We went to the treasure museum:

Then, we went to visit Tomyoin temple:

Next, we went to Daishoin, which was super nice and well worth a visit:

there was a half hidden entrance to a pitch dark tunnel under the temple

the dark tunnel had a few dim lit figurines

From there, we took a hiking path to the bottom of the ropeway up. Sadly, by then it was 16:00, which I thought was fine, but turns out in a great moment of stupidity, they close the top observatory at 16:00, and the rest of the temples close at 17:00 (not as bad, we had time to get there before then). We took the ropeway and the following gondola to the top, and had just enough time to see the temples at the top before they closed. We then made out way to the very top, where the observatory was closed, but somehow I slipped, fell, and found myself on the other side of the closed fence, talk about luck... Since I was on the other side, I went to the top to get nice pictures :)

the temples at the top were still open for another 15mn when we arrived

closing the free observation point at 16:00, what stupid idea is this?

when the view was quite good from it

We eventually hiked back down (1.5h or so, ok but not great hike), and went to see the great Torii gate at low tide:

and got a few more pictures at night

nice new miata

Sadly the museum is inside the factory, so you cannot visit it at your own leisure, and we were rushed through it. I had to take pictures of the displays to read them later, kind of sad. I hope they find a way to fix this later.

the original miata, I had the second generation of this

The RX7 gen2 was a beautiful car

Mazda is of course famous for using rotary motors in several of their cars

I didn't know about lock up automatic transmission

Then, we got a tour of the assembly line, where as usual no pictures were allowed, and on the way out, we got to see a few technology demo cars:

dual fuel: hydrogen and gasoline, interesting...

dual fuel system

hydrogen RX8, cool :)

And after 90m, the tour was over. It was a nice visit, even if (again) it was a shame that the museum tour was rushed due to being part of the guided tour where you wouldn't wonder off or stay longer:

After spending the night in Miyajima, we had breakfast in our Ryokan and bid the island and its deer, farewell:

we took a ferry back to Hiroshima and went directly to the Mazda Factory in Hiroshima:

We then took another Sakura train (a rebranded shinkansen), and go to Osaka as quickly as with a Nozomi:

but catching pokemon from that fast a train, was not possible :)

We then checked in our hotel and went to the Tejin Festival by Tenmangu Shrine, just next door to our hotel. There were multiple mikoshi (portable shrines) carried by hand by a lot of strong men, and they were mixed amongst other parades with colorful costumes:

Tenmangu Shrine was a bit packed

Parade highlights:

After the parade had gone by us, we went to walk to the river where the parade would end up and start boarding boats. They each loaded their mikoshi, portable shrines:

it's kind of cheating if they use a crane now :)

Boat loading highlights:

Up to then, everything had been great, there were that many people being that it was monday afternoon, so I put my guard down and we didn't leave early enough or walk quickly enough towards a good viewing point for the boats going by and the fireworks. By the time we got there, the bridge I was aiming for was totally packed with people and it didn't look like we'd be able to get on it (although maybe we could have), and sadly I chose to try to get to the shore in places where the police nicely closed off all access. The next hour was a clusterfuck of us trying to get to a point that wasn't closed off and from where we could see the fireworks. Eventually after walking way too long and high pace, we got on the other side of the river at a place where we could finally access the river. The viewing wasn't great, but it was viewing at least, so we caught the last 30mn of the fireworks:

we walked by Tenmangu

this very nice bridge was entirely closed off :(

A few fireworks bits:

From there, we walked to the nearest train station that got us back to our hotel pretty quickly (thankfully we didn't have to do the long walk in reverse, and getting/using a cab would have been hopeless):

the train was busy, but not horribly packed

that cat was definitely happy to see its first customers of the day :)

While Jennifer was busy renting her lap to the sweet russian blue, I went to check the other cats:

poor thing, looks sad :)

weird those cats that keep their ears down

usually, it means they're sad/unhappy, but I guess not with those breeds

the cat carrying a cat, is carrying a cat :)

in the meantime, Jennifer was still busy with her cat :)

After almost an hour, we moved to another café: Neko no Jikan. I had been there before, but only a mere 12mn just before they were closing, so it was nice to spend a bit more time. They definitely have very exotic cats, but they are not super friendly, even to their first customers in the morning:

lion cat

another lion cat :)

It was fun to see those cats before having to go back to the airport.

For our last half day in Osaka, in hindsight, we could have stayed at the hotel and used their onsen as Jennifer's ankle was not happy after the lot of fast walking we did the previous evening during the Tejin Festival to find a fireworks viewing point.

I had a quickish look at the local museum of Natural History and Botanical Garden attached to it:

The botanical garden was probably ok, but it was raining pretty hard, so that made it less interesting:

We then went back to Osaka Namba and walked to a couple of Cat cafés before going back to Namba for an express train to the airport:

As for how this trip went:

This was also our first time with the chance to see Japanese Festivals during the summer season, and we got lucky to be able to see 3 of them:

On the lowlights:

Obviously I still believe virtually all the Japanese people I've met are good people who ask for nothing more than being helpful, and work with an honor code that many countries could learn from. Japan is not perfect, no country is, but all in all, I still think they're doing quite well, and it was a pleasure to be able to see more places we hadn't had the chance to visit so far.

I'll end with more funny signs I found:

poor phone, it looks very sad if you're about to cut its line :)

fish is sad

even the aluminum can is sad :)

the onsen guides make sense, but they're funny :)

Oh, and turns out it's also legal for cars to watch TV while driving. Mmmh, not sure how I feel about that, especially in a taxi:

Also, I feel better seeing that the cigarette vending machines now require a card that proves that you're not a minor:

'till next time.

Actually, not quite, I'll quote a summary of Japan I found and that was written by someone else. I found it pretty accurate:

On the upside:

On the downside:

I hope that Japanese people can keep their traits that make everyone love their kindness, willingness to help, and do the right thing, while growing past some limitations that are making their lives less enjoyable (working too much, being stressed due to not being able to communicate some problems and holding them back, some artificial rules that don't make sense that no one dares question or reconsider).