We were blessed with some free time in Kyoto before we left for Hiroshima today. I woke up, feeling a lot better than yesterday, my sore throat has gone at least - although my nose now alternates between running like a tap and being so blocked I cannot breathe, whilst my ears feel like I have left some ear plugs in. Still, I feel better rested than a few days earlier, there wasn't anyone having a loud conversation outside my door at 6am for a change, so I slept solidly through the night.
After leaving out luggage to be forwarded to Toyko, where we will be tomorrow night, and having the hotel staff hold our day packs, we ventured forth to the Toei Kyoto Studio Park, a place famous for having a number of classic Japanese TV shows and films. We arrived there before the park opened and even once it opened, there was still no one around; probably because it was moderately raining and it was 9am on a Saturday. Our first stop was a looking through the anime museum there, which was incredibly interesting and reminded us of a number of our childhood TV favourites including Sailor Moon and Digimon. The Samurai Sword Fighting School presentation at 10am was cancelled, which was incredibly disappointing, so we wandered the park and saw a monster in a lake, as well as a number of cos-players.
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| Fountain at Park Entry |
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| Digimon! |
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| Sailor Moon |
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| Anime Statues |
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| Dragonball |
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| View from the high arch bridge |
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| A slightly different angle |
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| Looking towards the Ninja Theatre |
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| Monster in the Lake |
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| It was snowing! (bubbles) |
We decided to visit the Superhero museum and were treated to a fantastic display of various Japanese TV shows from the 1950s onwards: including my personal favourite - Power Rangers! It was awesome to see the costumes used and the history of one of my favourite shows when I was a kid, but hilarious how different the show is in its native country, without the American re-filming and dubbing. The introduction credits are completely different and the theme tunes aren't even remotely similar.
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| Entrance to the Superhero Museum |
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| Photos on the wall |
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| Some costumes |
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| Demonstrating our capacity to be Power Rangers |
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| Busting out of Prison |
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| All the red rangers |
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| All of them! |
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| Photos of each set of Power Rangers til 1999 |
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| Some of the Villains |
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| More Red Rangers |
After the museum we went to see the live show and had an absolute blast. Whilst the entire show was in Japanese, we could very clearly understand the plot and were treated to an authentic Power Rangers experience, with overdone explosions, epic fight scenes and incredible feats of gymnastics. We were even able to interact with the show as the actors came down during the performance to work the crowd. I got a high five off both the pink and yellow power rangers, which was awesome!
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| A shot from the live action show (thanks Steve) |
With limited time until we had to leave for Hiroshima, we were able to view another comedic show about ninjas, which was equally hilarious and allowed crowd participation - although not as exciting as Power Rangers. Finally, we went into a ninja trap based house which whilst aimed at children, still provided a fun, if short, experience finding the tricks to exit the rooms. We all agreed that an adult version of the house would have been incredibly entertaining.
After coming back to Kyoto Station we had about an hour and forty minutes until we left, so we quickly grabbed take away - shamefully McDonald's, which is a lot nicer here in Japan than Australia - before heading our separate ways for some shopping. I first went up Kyoto Tower, just as the rain-clouds parted and enjoyed an incredible view. Thanks to the Hotel we were staying at, the ticket up the tower was completely free, so I was able to purchase my souvenir photo instead - something I would not normally do. I then did some quickly shopping at the fantastic toy store I found on the first night and bought a few Pokemon items, before rushing to the station to get on board the Shinkansen.
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| A bit of the view |
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| Someone's Rooftop Garden |
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| A map of Kyoto on the lift door |
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| My commemorative stamp |
The trip was about 2 hours long and on arrival in Hiroshima we went to dinner and had Oknomiyaki, which is like a crepe with savour food piled on top. Here in Hiroshima, it involves a lot of noodles as well. After that we went to see the street full of Christmas lights. It was truly beautiful. I unfortunately did not have my camera with me, so was reduced to my phone for photos.
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| Found Mazda on the way home |
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| The view from the bridge was pretty |
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