I have been to Asia twice in my life and I thoroughly enjoyed it both times. When I graduated from college I went to Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. It was one of the best trips of my life and when I had the chance to go to Japan, I jumped on it. At the last minute, the travel agency said that we could add Hong Kong to the itinerary and I was even more excited. Hong Kong reminds me so much of New York City and Japan was on my bucket list.

If you haven’t seen my blog posts on Hong Kong, you can see Hong Kong – Part 1 and Hong Kong – Part 2 here. It was jam packed since we only spent 3 days there and then we took a flight to Japan.

We stayed at a beautiful Hilton with huge soaring ceilings in the atrium. Very nice.

After we rested, we went down to the lobby to check out the hotel. I thought this was a bar at first, but they said it was more of an art installation made of vintage glass, tea pots, antique model cars, etc. I had to take a picture of this because it was so unexpected.

When I got into my room, I put on my Delta slippers, unpacked, ordered room service and went to sleep. It’s an extremely long trip, almost 24 hours, and we were excited but so tired.

The next day, we headed out to the Meiji Kaguraden Shrine. It’s dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who passed away in 1912, and his Empress Shoken, who passed in 1914. People come here to say prayers to fulfill their wishes. It’s a very sacred place and we were looking forward to seeing it.

Here’s the entrance to the shrine. Very majestic. To commemorate the Emperor and Empress, 100,000 trees were donated from Japan and even overseas to create this peaceful forest.

The shrine is Shinto, which is the original ancient religion of Japan. There is no Deity or Holy Book. It relies on the concept of being one with nature and having a sincere heart. There are such things called Kami, which mean divine spirits, and they can be found in nature and human beings. Since the Japanese people felt awe and gratitude towards the Empress and Emperor and their Kami, they built this shrine.

Before you go into the “Mail Hall” you have to purify yourself in healing waters because you’re about to enter a sacred place. The water basin is called a Chozu-ya and there’s a very specific way that you wash your hands.

Here I am trying to get in on this healing. It was really a spiritual occasion the way they told us to wash our hands because it forced you to focus on what you were doing.

After the healing waters, we headed to the “Mail Wall”. Here is where people write their wishes on a wooden plaque called an “Ema” and it would get you closer to your wish and it costs to participate in the prayers this way. So, we didn’t do it but there’s a bell that you can ring 2 or 3 times and then pray.

These doors to the indoor shrine were massive.

After that we drove up to see Mount Fuji, but it was so foggy that we couldn’t even see it. I’ve never seen fog that thick. What a bummer but here’s a picture of Mount Fuji so you can see what it’s supposed to look like.

We went to a park after Mount Fuji and saw this wonderful statue of a samurai.

It was a beautiful park, so we walked around, sat on a bench and enjoyed people watching. There wasn’t many people though because it was such an overcast day and it kept raining on and off. As you can tell by these two pictures, it was kind of deserted.

We took one last look at the park and made our way back to the bus to head back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, we ate, reflected on the day and got some rest. We were disappointed that we couldn’t see Mount Fuji, but Mother Nature wasn’t into it.

Onto the next adventure. Stay tuned for Part 4 of my trip to Asia – Japan.

Toodles.