You know, Japan is pretty much like Vana'diel. Well... it's possible the resemblance isn't quite as obvious to others as it is to a FFXI nerd like me, but you can judge by yourself while you take a look at selected highlights from my journey:
A beautiful garden (belonging to the Higashi Honganji temple) in Kyoto brought to mind dear old Windurst: beautiful greenery ond some houses and buildings scettered aroud the area, with winding paths leading trough the garden. They even have some of the huge, beautiful flowers that also grow behind the Rhinostery in Windurst Waters.
We didn't get a chance to check if they glow in the dark, because the garden is only open during daytime, but I kind of suspect they don't... only tarutarus create such interesting experiments... I hope. I guess I would've been a bit worried if these started glowing... although I wouldn't have missed the opportunity to snap some pictures!
Kimonos are something you're supposed to see in Japan, and we watched a kimono fashion show at the Textile Center in Kyoto. The outfits were really beautiful and demonstrated kimonos suitable for the summer.
Hmm... what should Pasifika wear for this year's Sunbreeze Festival.. How about this one..? Oh, we could really use some more variation here! :O
In every moat, pond and stream in Japan there are carps, it seems. o_o They quickly gather around as
you step close to the water. It couldn't be that some tourists feed them, could it..? ;) They were actually quite creepy, because they're pretty big and they like to come up to the surface with their mouth wide open... o_o; How can they be so huge, aren't they supposed to be cute little decorative fishies? Maybe the moat carps eat intruders...
We just watched, but I bet it would've given a great boost to Fishing Skill to pull up all those moat carps, gold carps, goldfish and whatever they had. x)
In Kyoto, we celebrated the real-life Celestial Nights, aka tanabata. Well, we didn't actually do that much, but we visited a shrine that had the bamboo grass decorations and we saw the natives flock there to celebrate the event. I think the Vana'diel versions of the decorations are prettier, though, because none of the ones we saw in Kyoto sparkled. :o
Like we've all come to know and expect, some areas are under maintenance just at the most inconvenient times, and so we had to skip the visit to the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Maybe some other time, when they've fixed all the bugs...
The same day we also found out - the hard way - that the Nijo Castle is closed a couple of days per month. Luckily we had the chance to see it the following day, but they didn't allow taking screenshots, I mean photos, inside the castle. Meanies~!
In Tokyo we stayd at a NIN hostel. :o The theme idea was interesting and fun, but the place wasn't quite ready yet, and the worst part was that their kitchen is in the stinky (literally -_-;) basement. Lousy NIN... >_> We managed anyway, and used the hostel as a base for exploration . We had really good time in Tokyo, naturally.
The main goal in Tokyo was, of course, this... XD
We'd been adventuring all day before going there, so it was pretty dark when we finally reached the Tokyo Teleport Station. That didn't prevent me from attempting to take photos of everything, including the strange constrtuction that apparently is the local telepoint. Yes, of course I touched it, but... for some reason it's really hard to get a (Teleport-Tokyo) around here. :o
Oh well, someday in the unforeseeable future I'll take the airship there again...
Oh, oh, and we took the manaclipper, erm, the water bus to the island where the Teleport Station is located, and we came back to the mainland - if you can call the main island of Japan "mainland" - with a kind of roller coaster, which doesn't have a driver at all. And earlier on, we
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