Japan, Dec 2010 – Hotels, Cities and Such

I’ve been returning home from work each day pretty dog-gone tired this week. There’s time in the evenings to write and post of course, but I’m pretty much spent when I’m at home that the last thing I want to do is anything that involves brain juices! So, all I do is to play with Hannah, farm crops in Frontierville, and maybe a couple of rounds in the just released Civilization V. And when it’s 10 pm, I’ll retire to the bedroom to attempt reading a couple more pages of the Japan books before I doze off within five minutes, bedroom lights still on. :)

There is a little progress on our planning though. We finalized the most important segment of our Japan trip. We’ll be in Kyoto for six nights. That’s enough time to do walking tours of the city and take the requisite side trips to Nara and Arashiyama. We judged that since we won’t be in the accommodations much, we went with a lower level of comfort. The hotel we chose is the Mitsui Garden Hotel Kyoto Shijo and got a pretty good price package. And at #15 of 133 isn’t rated too badly on Tripadvisor either.

The Kyoto segment of the trip though is smack right in the middle of our longer stay. We know the last segment is going to be Osaka since we’ll be flying home from Kansai International Airport. Now, what’s taking us a bit of time to decide is what to do and where to go in the first segment of about two nights. We were initially intending to go to Kobe, but now are having second thoughts given that there isn’t really that much we’d like to do in that city. We could travel further outfield upon landing on the first day of course, so we’ll see.