Hello Europe...

...and good bye Japan. We're in a hotel 15 minutes from the airport. The kids are asleep. Our bags are almost packed, and we're soooo ready to go home. Flying tomorrow morning.

Whenever Kristian is around Selmas legs are tired...

It's been a fantastic trip in many ways, but our heads are filled up with impressions, our tongues are longing for rye bread and cheese, our ears can hear no more japanese, our eyes need to see familiar faces and our noses are longing for the smell of...hmmm...the smell of 'home sweet home'. It's time to go home!!!

It had snowed on Mt. Fuji, or Fuji-San as it is referred to here, since we last drove past it a week ago.

We left Kyoto bright and early this morning. Shinkansen took us to Tokyo, from where we took a local (bumle)train to a small city near the airport, Narita. We really only wanted to stay here to be able to get to the airport early tomorrow, but since our guidebook recommended a stroll down to see the temple here, we figured, why not??? Well, actually we didn't really want to see another temple. Yesterday, we went to see two beautiful temples in Kyoto, but as we got there, we couldn't really be bothered going in - talk about being templed out...we did take some photos though, in that way if we didn't really enjoy the beauty as we were there, we can at least enjoy it later.

The golden temple, one of the most famous and frequently visited temples in Japan. It was almost as crowded as Shinjuku Station during rush hour.

The Bamboo grove or forest behind one of those temples on UNESCOs world heritage list that we looked at from the outside, exclaimed WOW and couldn't be bothered going in to...

Coming back to today and the nice little stroll down to the nice little temple...The temple might not be on any fancy UNESCO world heritage list, but it was pretty amazing. And as it is often the case here in Japan (and probably many other 'temple-countries') a temple is not just one temple. In this case it was at least 8 impressive buildings, one more beautiful than the other.

5-storey pagoda in Narita.

Behind the main temple another 4 impressive buildings (the one on the left didn't fit into the picture).

The front gate...

On the way back to the hotel, we suddenly found ourselves sitting in a western looking pub with sweet promises of dishes such as burger and fish and chips. We've had many grand food experiences here, but we've had enough sea weed, pickled vegetables and rice for a while.

See you all soon.
Rikke