Throughout Japan one of the most popular tourist destinations is a shrine. A lot of shrines are amazing works of architecture and art reflecting the vibrant culture of the country. One of the most popular places to visit shrines is Kyoto. It has over 400 beautiful shrines and temples, and I’m going to tell you about some of the shrines I visited.
In my opinion, every good vacation needs a hike. For Japan the choice is almost a no-brainer, Mount Fuji. The climb for Mount Fuji is a two day climb where you can spend the night at one of the many stations dotted over the paths up the mountain. Some people do a single day bullet climb but it’s highly recommended against. We would be using the Subashiri Trail which starts with a tree-lined forest before turning into a rocky trail up and has a gravelly sliding path down. We chose this as it is one of the less crowded paths, with a fair option of mountain huts, and amazing views. The trail would take us to the 8th station in about 3.5 hours where we had planned to stay and then the second morning, a 100-minute climb would get us to the summit. There are some other trails such as Gotemba and Yoshida and I recommend the https://www.fujisan-climb.jp/en/ website if you want more information (my understanding is at the end of this blog).
To begin my series on my trip to Japan, I want to talk about a smaller slightly lesser-known part of Japan, Nara. This place was once the capital of Japan and is filled with a rich history.