Last Day in Japan

Our last day in Japan was very fun and very long. I have to warn you, I have a ton of pictures on this post, so it might take a few minutes to read! Anyway. We of course had to pack up all of our things and check out of our hotel but the problem was the check out was at 11AM and our plane didn't leave until 5:30PM. The hotel offered to hang on to our bags for us between check out and when the shuttle from the hotel to the airport was going to leave. That left us with the entire afternoon to do whatever we wanted. We had heard of a temple in Narita (near where we were staying) that was supposed to be really impressive. So we got a ride into town and from there we had to take a rather long walk to the temple. The walk to the temple was all down hill and the road was lined with shops and restaurants. Though walking down the hill I already was dreading the walk back up because the street went on forever...

We saw these guys sitting in the middle of a restaurant getting eels... it was actually kind of cool to watch, they were extremely fast at their job...

When we made it to the temple it did not look at all impressive like we had been told. 

But once we entered the gate things got cooler and cooler and the grounds of where the temple was located just seemed to go on forever with tons of buildings. See we though that what you see here was the temple, but it was just another gate. 

Once we got through the second gate we found this cool pond area with hundreds of turtles swimming around and sitting on top of a turtle sculpture. There were also big goldfish in the water but you couldn't really see them...

Everywhere you went there was symbols carved into everything! Walls, fences, floors, ceilings, just everything, it was actually very beautiful. 

Once we walked up even more stairs we got to one of the temples on the grounds. I thought there was only one when we got there but we found out that there were many. This temple was holding a service at that time. The big smoke thing that you see, well, I'm not sure what it means but the people were trying to get the smoke onto them and over their heads so I was assuming that it was a cleansing process that you must do before you entered the temple. 

The picture below was of the service taking place. We didn't go in and I didn't want to get too much closer because I didn't want to be rude, so I zoomed in as much as I could and took pictures that way, hence why the quality is crummy. During the service we heard a lot of drumming and 'ummm' from the people. 

My handsome men!

So in this wall there were a lot of people enshrined. They were members of the Fudomyoo Acalanatha family and these Buddhist are believed to be able to save people from the worldly desires. It was kind of weird being there and knowing that people were buried right on the other side of the wall... I'm the same way in grave yards... like I'm walking on people or something... anyway...

One of the older buildings...

Scary dragon...

The guy that built the temple is enshrined in this place...

Gabe had no interest... he is a baby after all:)

So in this temple...

... there was this shrine. I didn't go in because they wanted you to take off your shoes because it was sacred and I didn't really feel like it was my place because I don't believe in it so I stood at the door and took a few pictures...

I thought this was pretty cool. It was on the side of one the buildings.

The buildings were very beautiful though!!

In this temple...

...there was this very mean looking shrine... he's one that you had to offer money to too like at the temple in Asakusa... if I believed in him, I would give him all my money too, he's freaky looking!

So after we got to the last temple we found that there were trails leading everywhere on the grounds. It was so beautiful! This is when we started hiking around...

The paths leading everywhere were just beautiful...

We found this very cute little hut just tucked away in the woods off the path...

Then we found a fountain below the last temple and found a nice lady to take a picture for us! 

The paths ended up leading to an absolutely gorgeous lake!

They had these huge (though not as big as when we went to the beach) goldfish swimming all around the lake. I saw someone actually touch one but when I tried they swam away...

We never made it further then this, we wanted too but we needed to get going...

We then got a little lost because the paths by the lake went in many different directions and we ended up going past a grave yard and ended up on a little street a couple of blocks away from the gate that led to the temple. I ended up really hating the walk up the hill because by the time we left the temples it was very hot and I had Gabriel strapped to my chest in my Moby Wrap and he was fast asleep so I was very roasting hot by the time we made it up the street. But we got some ice cream and head back to the hotel and waited for the shuttle to come and get us. That is when we took these pictures....

So the trip home was pretty miserable. I'll give you a brief overview... So, first we were supposed to take a shuttle to the airport... it didn't leave until about 20 minutes late. We get to the airport, the line is loooong so they tell us to get in a 'special' line because we had a baby... well the line we got it took 300 times longer then the line that was 50 times as long as ours. Then, they tell everybody that was going to Seoul to get in yet another line. So we did. We stood there for about 30 minutes before we finally got to the counter which in the mean time Gabriel got very crabby and would not stop crying. We get to the counter at 4:35 and check in, the lady then tells us we need to hurry because they moved up the flight and it was leaving a half hour early. I look at the ticket and they were already boarding and they were going to close the gate in about 15 minutes. So, we run to the security check point at which point Gabriel has still not stopped screaming and they decide to stop us because first, they told me to not take off my belt when I went through the security scanner, then when it went off I was told to remove it and go through again and then I needed to be present for them to go through my bag just because we had an empty juice bottle in it. Then we run to immigration and were the last in line and it seemed to take forever... meanwhile Gabriel is still screaming. We finally run to our plane and jump on with seconds to spare. 

When we get to Seoul, well the awfulness continued. First, because Korea is paranoid, we need to fill out a form saying we haven't so much as sneezed in the past week and get our temp taken. Then we were last in line for everything! Immigration, customs, baggage, you name it we were last in line. We are then forced to take the subway into Seoul because we couldn't catch the bus. The subway line doesn't go straight to the train station, we had to transfer which wouldn't be so bad but we had luggage and a crabby baby and not all subway stations have escalators or elevators but still have a million flights of stairs. Sigh. Then, when we finally make it to the train station after being on the subway for about two hours (the airport is an hour away from Seoul and with all the stops it takes awhile). It's 10:35 at this point. We had no idea what time the train left but we were hoping we didn't miss it because I was almost positive that there was not an 11 o'clock train or any train after that until the next morning. So, we get there, I run up the 3 flights of stairs with Gabriel so just in case there was a train I could get tickets before it left and run for it. Unfortunately this did leave Josh to carry the two suitcases with the backpack up the stairs by himself:( We ended up not missing the train, it left at 10:40PM! 5 minutes to spare is not a lot though when you have to then take all your luggage back down 3 flights of different stairs and your train car happens to be the last one at the far end of the platform. We didn't get home until after midnight because though the train may only take an hour to get to Yongmun we then had to walk a few blocks to the taxi station with all of our stuff and get a ride home! Sigh! It was awful! Gabriel was crabby for days after that! 

Ok, so that wasn't a brief overview, sorry! So the beginning of our last day of vacation was wonderful and peaceful, the second we started to try to head back to Korea, well things went miserable. In the ends we are so glad that we went to Japan and even if things were crazy getting back it was still a wonderful trip!