Japan 2014 / 15

Japan! That was a des­ti­na­tion we had always thought about. An oppor­tu­ni­ty arose, when our elder daugh­ter com­plet­ed a 3-month intern­ship with a com­pa­ny in Osa­ka as part of her stud­ies in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing. We decid­ed to “pick her up” there after­wards and trav­el through Japan for 2 weeks togeth­er. We met her in Osa­ka and then vis­it­ed Kyō­to, Hiroshi­ma, Tokyo and the Fuji-san. Below I present some pic­tures that were tak­en dur­ing this won­der­ful trip. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion and trav­el tips can be found in our detailed Japan trav­el report.

Osaka,Japan

Osaka

With a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 mil­lion, Osa­ka is the third largest city in Japan after Tokyo and Yoko­hama. With its approx. 17.5 mil­lion inhab­i­tants in the Kei­han­shin conur­ba­tion (around Osa­ka, Kyō­to and Kōbe), Osa­ka occu­pies 14th place on the list of the world’s largest met­ro­pol­i­tan regions and, with­in Japan, forms the oppo­site pole to the Kan­tō area around Tokyo. 

Kyōto,Japan

Kyōto

Kyō­to, the for­mer cap­i­tal, is world-renowned for sophis­ti­cat­ed cul­ture and noble plea­sures, while the pre­fec­ture offers the charm of rur­al Japan The city of Kyō­to attracts mil­lions of Japan­ese and inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors who want to learn about tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese cul­ture. Tem­ples and shrines like Kiy­omizu-dera and Kinkaku­ji as well as the bam­boo groves of near­by Arashiya­ma attract mass­es of tourists. 

Hiroshima,Japan

Hiroshima

Found­ed in the 13th cen­tu­ry, Hiroshi­ma became sad­ly famous when the atom­ic bomb was dropped on August 6th, 1945, destroy­ing 90% of the city and killing about 140,000 peo­ple by the end of the same year. After the recon­struc­tion from 1949 onwards, Hiroshi­ma devel­oped into an impor­tant indus­tri­al loca­tion and today, with over 1.1 mil­lion inhab­i­tants, it ranks 11th among Japan’s largest cities. 

Tokio,Japan

Tokio

With near­ly 10 mil­lion inhab­i­tants, it is not only the country’s most pop­u­lous metrop­o­lis, but also the cap­i­tal of Japan being the seat of the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment and the Ten­nō. The pre­fec­ture of Tokyo is the cen­tre of the Tokyo-Yoko­hama met­ro­pol­i­tan region, which is home to more than 38.5 mil­lion peo­ple (as of 2019), mak­ing it the world’s largest met­ro­pol­i­tan area. 

Sagamihara,Japan

Fuji-San

The Fuji or Fuji-san is a vol­cano and with 3776m height the high­est moun­tain of Japan. Its sum­mit is locat­ed on the main island of Japan Hon­shū. Fuji has been con­sid­ered sacred in Japan for cen­turies. In order to paci­fy its erup­tions, the deity Sen­gen ōka­mi was shrined and adored by the impe­r­i­al court.