Day 6 we left Kyoto for the last time at 7:50, traveling by bus and train to Iseshi, home of a bunch of Shinto shrines. We dropped our luggage off at our ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese hotel, then visited the inner Ise shrine.
This place is the most sacred Shinto shrine in all of Japan; kind of like visiting the Vatican. People aren't allowed inside the inner sanctum, but it was still a pretty cool experience.
After that, we checked out the shopping area in Iseshi, which was basically a tourist trap. From there we went to the outer Ise shrine, which is dedicated to kami of the harvest. This was also pretty cool.
We then returned to our ryokan. We had the entire place to ourselves, and it was a really interesting building. The inside, with little lighting and all, looked like something out of Ninja Gaiden. I wish American hotels looked more like this. We all wore kimono-like outfits (I wore my sword as well) to dinner, which was a traditional Japanese feast; it was pretty good. That was pretty much it for the night as we were all tired.
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Yesterday we ate a traditional breakfast at the ryokan, which was also good. We left around 8am and went to Toba, where we visited the Mikimoto Pearl Museum. It was all about how pearls are formed and cultivated and used. There was some crazy expensive stuff on display, as well as a gift shop with jewelry that cost more than two years' worth of college tuition. We also watched a pearl diving demonstration, which was interesting because the divers wore little gear, including no gloves or flippers, even though they were diving in freezing cold water.
After that, we went back to Iseshi. We visited the famous site with the two large rocks in the ocean tied together by a giant rope. It was a little smaller than I expected, but impressivce nonetheless. There was also a rock behind it shaped like a frog.
From there, we returned to the main city. Myself and a few other guys went to lunch at what turned out to be a really good Japanese restaurant. I ate sashimi, which was pretty good, even the raw octopus. After lunch, we went back to the ryokan, collected our luggage, and departed for Nagoya.
We arrived at Nagoya around 6:15pm. The hotel we're staying in is pretty nice. Me and three other guys decided to go look for food around 8pm.
We wandered the city streets for a while, taking in the sights. Nagoya is one of Japan's largest cities, so it was pretty cool.
Eventually we discovered "Things on Sticks," a hotel restaurant. It wasn't really called "Things on Sticks," but since that was what was being advertised, that's what we called it. We went in and ate there, and it was a great time. Basically, you sat at a table with a fryalator and you fried things on sticks to eat. Or not eat, in the case of the fried and battered grapefruit. We were there for about an hour, and when paying time came, we were handed a bill for about $135 (about $30 for myself). It was worth it, though.
After eating, we needed to find an ATM, so we went back to wandering around on the streets. We checked some convenient stores to no avail. Things got strange when we were approached by a man on the street asking us if we wanted "all we could drink and beautiful women for 17 minutes." We politely declined and continued onwards. Somehow we'd ended up in the Red Light District. At one point, a pimp came rushing across a street towards us, asking if we were "looking for anything...special." I enthusiastically replied, "Yeah, we're looking for an ATM!" The look on the guy's face suggested that this was not the answer he expected, but he told us about a 7-11 we'd overlooked. We thanked the nice pimp and went to the 7-11, where we finally found a working ATM. On the way back to the hotel one of the guys tried to stealthily take a picture of an obvious prostitute. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn the flash off. We also saw some Japanese kids dancing in front of glass windows and breakdancing and stuff, which was pretty cool, but one of the guys started to wander off in search of a bathroom so we just went back to our hotel and called it a night.
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Today we're checking out the Toyota factory and then traveling to our ultimate destination for the trip: Tokyo.
