landscapes

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The cherry blossoms - reason for the whole trip

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Previous post in this series is here..

It was 3PM when we came out of the Shinkansen to Osaka station. We were seeing on social media that we were already a week late and the Cherry Blossoms were already on their way to falling off. By the time we reached Kyoto and Tokyo, there would be no blossoms. So if we wanted to see them in Osaka, there was one place on the hill to go see them. The Katsuoji temple!

It was an hour by car and they closed on the dot. We decided to grab two taxis again and just made a dash to the temple. An hour later we were dropped off outside the temple. There was a line for tickets. Yet again, Jr. came to the rescue by buying the tickets from her phone as we were going to the place. We went straight in with the “web tickets”. The temple is just beautiful. The cherry blossoms were still there. The whole place was surreal and immaculate. There were cute mini versions of the shinto gods everywhere.. placed on rocks, trees, in the water..

There were six locations which had stamps in different colors. You got a card at the entrance. If you put all stamps on them, you got a nice composite picture with the stamps. We made it to all the spots in the map, got the stamps and were literally the last visitors to be kicked out of the temple complex. We were all tired but happy. It was nice and cool in the hill. There were still a few taxis waiting. So we were lucky to get two taxis to go to our next destination.

Way too many photos post edit. Have created two galleries..

Portrait gallery

The final image after we stamped the card in all six locations.. The best one is mine as I used multiple alignment marks like a real integration engineer would!

Here is a short video of Katsuoji temple visit..

We were all happy at the end of the entire trip that we decided to go up to this temple even after an all day Hiroshima visit. We never saw Cherry blossoms like this after that day in Kyoto or Tokyo.

Our day was not over. The temple closes at 5:15 sharp. We got out at 5:14 PM. There was an hour plus drive back towards busy streets. Will pick it up in the next post..

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Teamlab Botanical Garden - Osaka

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The previous post in this series is here..

Right after checking in at the Tokyo Inn in Osaka Namba, we went to the room, dropped our luggage and came down in 20 minutes. We had booked tickets at 7PM to see the light show at the Teamlab Botanical garden. It was supposed to be a short train ride but we were still new to the train business in Japan. You come 20 seconds late and the train is gone! These guys are very very very very punctual.

Also the same train station has many entrances and exits and if you don’t listen to your smart kids and haven’t figured out Japanese coins, buying tickets can take time at every machine.

We did barely manage our ride to this place and walked a good 20 minutes to the entrance of this Ngai botanical garden. We thought we were late but turns out everyone gets a 7PM ticket for night light show. There were 200 people ahead of us in the line. We joined the moving line and walked through the light show.

It was fantastic! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Here are the pictures..

After the light show our jet lag started to show. So we walked back to the train station. It was a beautiful and pleasant evening. We took the train back to Osaka Namba. There was still leftover food from what we had packed. So we ate that and went to sleep.

A video clip of the Team lab visit..

The next morning we had to wake up early for breakfast and catch a train. Every day was going to be packed after this..

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Dragon Mountain hike

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In what seems to be an eternity ago (in reality exactly two weeks), a bunch of us hiked Dragon Mountain aka Thien Long Song in Milpitas. We never knew about this place till some recent facebook posts. It is not a tough hike or a long hike, but an amazing hike. All said and done we walked or hiked 2+ miles from a parking lot at the base of the hill instead of driving up all the way.

It was peak allergy season and I had a 102 fever the previous day and had actually come home from work early to lie down after taking Tylenol. I was sold on “prayer” on a mountain. When we got to the base and started walking (mask on) I was not exactly sure what the prayer was for.. my cold to pass or for me to pass on to the next world with the Buddha.

The sunset did not disappoint though. After huffing and puffing through the mask, somehow I felt better on the way back. It was either that or the maggi noodles I made to cheer myself up after reaching home. Maybe it was my wife and her happy smiling face. Either way, a win-win.

Here are the pictures. San was very happy that I did not protest too much and went with the flow.

More photos..

A very short video highlights reel

Definitely recommend this place for a sunset view.. It is not that far away. So if you expect a lot of clouds and a glorious sunset, drive up and start hiking..

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.