Japan Trip Day One

First things first before I write anything about my trip, I'm going to apologize for the bad quality of pictures and maybe some grammatical errors up ahead. I do not have a good camera yet so I took most of the photos from my iPhone. 

This is going to be my first post on this blog and I hope that you might find this blog interesting and will follow it. :)

My summer vacation starts on the 23rd of July. I landed in the Kansai International Airport and stayed at an airport hotel for the night. The weather can only be described as hot. It was even hotter than my hometown which is in a tropical country. The temperature was around 33-35 degrees Celsius. So if you are going to travel to Japan in this time of year, bring sunblock, sunglasses, a hat, and other summer wear essentials. 

For the whole trip we rented a mini bus (as I'm traveling with a group of people) and a driver. I know someone who lives in Japan so she became our tour guide slash translator. 

A small notice is I rarely see taxis in this part of Japan. But to travel to these cities you could use the JR (a train company) to go to these cities. 

Okay enough of that. 

Early in the morning (well, for me anyways) my road trip from Osaka to Wakayama city began. On the way there we passed a large outlet called Rinku. Apparently it holds some factory outlets for both international and local brands such as Nike,  Jill stuart. I did not get the chance to go in the outlet but I wish I did.

After an hour on the road we arrived in Wakayama Marina City which is place that contains several attractions to see. One of them is Kuroshio Market Since we arrived on lunch time, we went straight to the Kuroshio Market.

Kuroshio Market is a place where you could buy fresh seafood from the sea of japan and grill it outside to eat. They also have a special show to watch which is the tuna cutting show. As its name suggest you get to watch a person cut a living tuna. I did not get to watch this as I was too busy eating and wolfing down fresh seafood. Hehe. The famous thing that you have to eat in Wakayama is the tuna. They call it tuna "Maguro" and I did try this. I still remember the taste as it was delicious, soft and chewy. Here's a picture of tuna cutting.

Yep that's a real tuna head on the side. 

Other than tuna they have sea creatures such as fish, clams, oysters, shrimps, abalone and even whale. I AM NOT KIDDING. Japanese people do have a town that used to eat and hunt whales to survive. Its called Taiji which I passed by to go to another city. Don't fret they do stop hunting them regularly nowadays. 

Okay back on track, after getting my stomach full I went to a fruit market. (I don't think they have a name for it). This is straight across the Kuroshio fish market. Here you can see fresh ripe peaches that they sell in prices cheaper than in big cities. I went to Osaka and they sold the same peaches for 1,200 yen while in the fruits market it was only 600 yen for the same amount. So I do recommend buying the peaches. They were very juicy. As you bite into the peach some of the juice can drip down to your chin. It's that juicy and sweet. I am NOT exaggerating. 

This is not a picture of someone's butt okay?

Then the rest of the day is not interesting. We just went to hotel to sleep for the night. But I definitely will post about the hotel I stayed at later because it is so magnificent. Here's a peek. 

Before ending this post, in Wakayama Marina City there is still another attraction that I decided not to go which is Porto Europe, a small theme park. As it name suggest, the architecture is inspired by European designs. My reason to not go is I have actually been to Europe itself so I don't need to go to a recreated one. Sorry, no offense. It is a beautiful place though.

Sorry about the people. There was a show in front of them so yeah. 

Next post will be about day two of my trip with the hotel I stayed at and the famed Japanese Matsuri festival (If you read Japanese shoujo manga, you will probably know what this is) which is only held twice in a year. 

Thanks for reading. :)

-eva