{"id":8070,"date":"2017-05-05T09:35:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T13:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=8070"},"modified":"2019-07-15T17:38:21","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T17:38:21","slug":"japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2017\/05\/05\/japan\/","title":{"rendered":"JAPAN!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my last adventure here in Hong Kong, I would say this one was by far the best. Not only is Japan the coolest place ever, but I met my mom and David there which made it 1000 times better.<\/p>\n

We hit the ground running! On our first day in Kyoto, we went to the see the cherry blossoms (or what was left of them) at the Nijo Castle. While the cherry blossom trees were shedding the last of their flowers, we still caught some nice sights. It was incredible to think that this impressive castle was built in the 1600s and is still standing strong.<\/p>\n

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The next day, we headed out to Arashiyama, a suburb of Kyoto that is known for its many temples and preserved bamboo grove. David booked a rickshaw tour for us so we were “riding in style” \ud83d\ude09 I couldn’t believe that these drivers lug around people all throughout the area every day. Our driver said that his record was 17- one hour tours in one day. That’s insane! First stop was the bamboo grove.The stalks were soaring up above and all around, leaving you submersed in a field of green. Our driver then took us off the beaten path to a tiny temple that had the most beautiful garden. The ground was completely covered in moss and flowers were blooming bright reds and yellows.<\/p>\n

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The following day, we jumped on a bullet train to Hiroshima and spent the day at the Peace Memorial Museum, dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. While it was a bit of a somber day, it was humbling to recognize the role that this event played in our history and to learn how we can make sure that such a horror\u00a0never happens again. What was even more incredible was to see how the city had rebuilt, alive again with a spirit and a beauty that was unmistakeable.<\/p>\n

Our last day in Kyoto was probably my favorite. Risking the chance of rain, we spent the day at the Fushimi Inari Shrine, one of the most important Shinto shines in Kyoto. While the shrine itself is beautiful, the true magic of this place was the path of over 5000 vibrant orange torii gates that wind through the hill behind the shrine. The gates symbolically mark the transition from the profane to the sacred. Each one of the 5000+ gates at Fushimi Inari were donated by individuals and companies as a way to wish for future prosperity and good fortune. I could have wandered through the trails for the entire day. That night, we got sushi! Even though my mom doesn’t like it, she said my sister would ridicule us if we went to Japan and never had sushi. Fortunately, not only was the food good, but there was free entertainment: our sushi came out on a conveyer belt! I mentioned that Japan was cool, right?<\/p>\n

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Well, this has been a nice study break. I am in the middle of finals week, which means in a short amount of time I will be coming to a state near you! Stay tuned \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my last adventure here in Hong Kong, I would say this one was by far the best. Not only is Japan the coolest place ever, but I met my mom and David there which made it 1000 times better. We hit the ground running! On our first day in Kyoto, we went to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hkbu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15186,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions\/15186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}