The Journey Home

We arrived at Nagoya International Airport an hour before check-in. We changed our clothes and relaxed a bit before lining up for check-in. In Japan, you can only check into an international flight 3 hours or less before departure time, but the time that check-in was supposed to open came and went. We waited in line to check into our flight for over three hours! Megan asked the airlines staff what was wrong and if the flight would be canceled. They reassured her that the plane was already at the airport, the flight would not be canceled, and it was bad weather in China.

Nagoya

Our final city in Japan was Nagoya. We took our last JR trip to get there, and saw many rice fields, towns, and a few shrines and graveyards along the way. It was starting to rain with the arrival of a typhoon.

Hiroshima

We arrived in Hiroshima on August 5th, one day before the 72nd anniversary of the first nuclear act of war. As we neared the ending of our trip we realized we had the opportunity to be in Hiroshima on the anniversary; while we had seen a few other locations with somber histories, this was our first chance to see a memorial ceremony. 

A Temple and a Forest

We started our day be hoping on the train and going to see Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, about 20 minutes outside of Kyoto. This Shrine is known for its Senbon Torii, or Shrine Gates. The shrine is considered the head shrine of the 30,000 Inari-sha shrines within Japan. It is located at the food of Mt Inari, which is the southern tip of a mountain range.