No idea if pictures were allowed at the concert or not, but sometimes it's not, and if it had been allowed, I would be too busy jumping up and down to actually take any. I was in fact too busy jumping up and down to care nor find out.

Still though. I managed to snap at least a few shots in Hokkaido, so let me just dump them out here. You know, as proof I actually ever was here ;)

First things first: We are definitely not in Osaka anymore.

Following this is my hotel-room at the Sapporo (North) Toyoko inn. I managed to find it, by foot, just fine, except I found the one in the south. That's what you get for forgetting to copy the map to your cellphone ;)

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I'm not the best guy ever when it comes to taking pictures, so after all the touristy things were taken care of, I mostly had fun. Still I managed to snap a few pictures, so I'll be nice to at least post these.

First picture is a picture of some crazy Osaka-chicks, which I for some reason decided to snap after a visit to that Rock pub.

Following this is the famous crab-building from Osaka, near Dotonbori, the river going trough the city. In the street to the right there were lots of restaurants, and while those certainly was awaiting me, I headed for a specific takoyaki-shop, recommended to me by Yuki.

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So I have finally gotten some pictures from Eelco and I thought I'd post them. Hope you don't mind ;)

As you can see from the pictures we start from the top, with the Japanese forest. Then we move on further down, where we can see all kinds of interesting life-forms.

Including some wicked huge fish and crabs. No zoom were used. They were just that big. I would probably fail hard if I were to try to wrestle these things, for the time being ignoring the issue that is lack of oxygen.

You also see the lucky guy who has the job of cleaning the aquarium windows from the inside, in the room where you have stingrays and sharks. Whee :D

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To finish off today's updates, I'll post some pictures from Osaka castle. They pretty much speak for themselves, when it comes to size and grand scale of things.

I'll even include a silly picture of me as a geisha! :P

Anyway. At this point, my camera was down to zero battery, and I need to get pictures from Eelco before I can make any more posts. Besides it's 2am in the morning here.

I'm in Tokyo, the city that never sleeps (but might allow for some downtime every now and then if maintenance is needed on stuff like roads and such). I should have better stuff to do than post stuff on the web! :D

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Osaka being a far less traditionally centred city than Kyoto, the posts here will more resemble the ones from Tokyo. That at least means one thing: Pictures of food is coming up :D

The first four pictures shows the food we decided to feast on at Christon Cafe. Remember how I mentioned that they seemed to have taken ideas and stuff from all over, and just reassembled it into something which only makes sense to the Japanese?

First picture shows what I had for dinner: Deep fried cheese and a hamburger. Served on cheese-gratinated rice and with a soft-boiled egg to top it off. The Japanese are crazy about eggs and rice, and I think I'm starting to join them in that egg-thing :P

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Our final destination in Kyoto was the Sanjosangen-do temple, located south-east. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take actual pictures inside the temple, so the one I took outside will have to suffice. I also added one small picture I grabbed on the web, just for the sake of illustration.

What I can do, to provide some useful context, is explain what it is all about, why we went there and what we saw.

The temple was originally built for the retired emperor back in 1164, so it's a pretty old building. What it features is 1001 statues, that is one thousand and one, of Kannon, a central Buddhist diety.

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In Kyoto there was is this area called "Gion", marked as a tourist destination, which to me and Eelco was all we had to go on. This was however located east in Kyoto, in between the Ginkakuji temple and Sanjusangen-do temple which we were headed at, so we decided to stop by here as well.

The Gion-area is comprised of several traditional temples, small shrines, grand gates and since this was festival-time, we even encountered someone in the traditional Japanese outfits, including a lady in kimono, something we definitely had to get a picture of.

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After seeing the Kyoto Aoi Matsuri, Eelco insisted we should go see the Ginkakuji temple, not to be mistaken for the Kinkakuji temple. Like the Kinkakuji temple this is located outside the main city central areas, up in the mountains. This one however is located north-east.

The main difference between the Kinkakujin and Ginkakuji temples is that the Ginkakuji temple is covered in silver, not gold. Maybe less impressive, but still impressive none the less.

Sadly enough our timing was bad, and the temple was under some structural maintenance, so there was really not much to see. It was however located in a beautiful natural environment, with a good view out over Kyoto, so I took some pictures anyway.

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Kyoto Aoi Matsuri, meaning Kyoto Blue Festival, is one of the three big festivals in Kyoto, enacted outside the Kyoto imperial palace. As can be seen in the pictures, we were not the only ones there.

We had earlier on gotten a (English) guide, explaining the festival, its purpose and what to expect, so despite getting a non-grand place to view the festival from, we were somewhat able to follow.

As legend has it, some time long ago, there was a terrible storm, and crops were suffering. The emperor wisely concluded that this was the deities' punishment for the people neglecting them.

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Pretty central in Kyoto you have Nijo Castle, the home of visiting feudal warlords in ancient times.

Just look at the pictures. Spend a few seconds and let it sink in that this was in fact a home for a person. Very grand.

In the select pictures I've chosen you can see some of the thoroughness put into the construction and decoration of this building.

Unfortunately you were not allowed to take pictures inside, but it was very much the same. Every single room had doors with golden doorknobs. Even the servant's rooms. Each made differently and unique.

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