Travel

Where next? We’d have our Meditation Retreat early September near Kyoto, and wanted to catch a day of the World Exposition in Aichi on the way down there. Other than that, we were free as birds and decided to take a break in Nagano, without knowing much about it. It turned out to be a really plesant stay in the nicest Ryokan so far, and we visited the famous bathing monkeys from Yudanaka.

The last few days have been amazing, and it feels like being worlds away and not having been home for years. The last days we spent on Sado Island at the 2005 Earth Celebration by Kodo.

Maha described our trip to Sado and created a great report of our experiences on Sado: http://mahabu.com/japan.html – we hope you’ll enjoy it!

Istanbul to Tokyo, arriving August 16th, 2005 – This is my second trip to Japan, for Maha it’s the first trip. But then again, Tokyo is hardly a culture shock for somebody born and raised in San Francisco who loves New York City. So Tokyo turned out as a place where we both felt immediately comfortable. This didn’t make the Subway ticket machine easier to use, and exactly as last time, a friendly Japanese came to the rescue to help us buy the correct ticket. And the fact that there was an earthquake just fifteen minutes before our delayed landing didn’t seem to upset anybody either.

A stop in Istanbul wasn’t really planned – it happened by accident. Flights to Japan from Germany are expensive, and the cheapest flight had a stop-over in Istanbul. A 24 hour stop-over. So instead of hanging around at the airport, we went on and spent a night in Istanbul.

You receive this email either because you signed up for travel news at https://jastram.de, or because you followed my Asia Trip in 2000. Either way, you’re on my Travel Mailinglist which has been quiet for a long time but will get busy shortly. From mid August until mid October I will explore Japan with my…