We've been in Lausanne for the last 2.5 weeks and meanwhile all our new buddies we had met during the trip - Satoshi-san (Japan), Abe-san (Japan) and David (Australia), have settled into their new homes and can be seen at IMD. I have appointed myself the 'IMD MBA 2009 paparazzi', so I will keep on trying posting pics once in a while.
But now it's time to recap the days we spent in Kyoto and Nagano where a little dream came true - we saw the Jacuzzi monkeys.
First of all, we had a lot of fun going on the Shinkansen and even managed to see Mt. Fuji. When we arrived in Kyoto we thought that everything would be easy peasy and we would find our hostel within a few minutes. Well...that didn't work out. Instead we were running around like headless chickens and eventually gave up. We jumped in a cab, but that didn't help much either. The driver didn't know our hostel, so we continued driving around in circles for 10-15min.
As soon as we succeeded and dropped of our stuff we walked to the first attraction, Sanjusangen-do, a beautiful temple housing 1001-armed statues. Unfortunately, there it's forbidden to take photos. But wherever we could, we photographed like crazy. The temples and shrines are really picturesque and most of the time they are located in areas full of small traditional shops and houses. It all looks like in a Japanese fairy tale.
Not only did we enjoy all the nice historical places in Kyoto, but we also spoiled our taste buds. On two nights we had okonomiyaki (a kind of Japanese-style omelette) and we tried yudofu (tofu hot pot) and cold kuzukiri (transparent arrowroot noodles) served with kuromitsu, a sweet black sugar syrup/sauce.
And in between all the food there were more temples and more shrines and more monuments and loads of other pretty things...
On our second day we went to a cultural show in Gion, where Oren volunteered to participate in a cultural tea ceremony (all the other foreigners were too shy and the rest were Japanese anyway). Other elements of the show were traditional music, comedy, Ikebana and dancing Geishas.
The day we left for Nagano we went to a food market for some more culinary adventures.
Before boarding the train to Nagano we were stopped by yet another TV crew working for a Japanese channel. This time they were looking for handsome boys in Kyoto. Had it not been our honeymoon and had we not been running to the train, Oren might have been a new celebrity in Japan by now ;-). But he had more important things to do - he had to take me to the Onsen monkeys living in Jigokudani Yaen-koen close to Nagano. And these funny creatures were really worth a visit.
After all the monkey business we took another Shinkansen and returned to Tokyo for two more nights. We meandered through the streets and had more delicious food...
...and all of the sudden 13-weeks of traveling and honeymooning were over and we couldn't believe it. We just had too much fun for it to finish. Frankly speaking, we were quite sad. Besides, we knew we'd be facing now the other extreme: after 3 months hanging out together all the time, this year we will hardly see each other from Monday to Saturday. Mais c'est la vie....
See you in Lausanne. (Yes, Lausanne, not Luzern/Lucerne) :-)
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