Travel Journal 2024

I’m sure everyone has seen one of those golden cat figures in a shop at least once, raising its paw and waving at customers. These figures are called Maneki-Neko, literally “beckoning cat”.

Today we visited the Gōtoku-ji temple in the south-western part of Tokyo. The waving cat originated here. Legend has it that the lord Naotaka Ii once sought shelter from a storm under a massive tree near the temple. There he saw a cat raising its paw as if to beckon him over. He left his shelter and went over to it. Shortly afterwards, lightning struck the tree. Out of gratitude that the cat saved his life, the lord declared himself patron of the temple.

Today, tourists flock in to buy a figure of the famous cat. You can get them there in different sizes. Some take the figure with them as a souvenir, others leave it at the temple.

We decided to take it easy today. So we headed over to Kamakura, where we sat on Yuigahama beach for a while and watched the windsurfers. We enjoyed some matcha ice cream from Kamakura Cha-Cha, this time at the maximum matcha level (“for connoisseurs”).

Afterwards, we made a quick detour to Yokohama, but unfortunately picked a bad time. A music festival was going on at the Red Brick Warehouses. It was pretty packed and noisy as a result.

Today we travelled to Nagano, where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held.

The Olympic venues are spread all over the city. The short time there wouldn’t have been enough to see them.

Instead, we walked from the station down a long shopping and food street to the Zenkōji temple. Our taste buds really got their money’s worth here. There was all sorts of stuff to try and we got full way too quickly.

The timing of our visit was spot on, as the autumn leaves were in full swing. Deep red maple leaves put on a gorgeous splash of colour.

Further out there’s also the Togakushi shrine, which is well worth seeing, but unfortunately requires a longer drive and so had to be skipped as well. That means we’ll just have to visit Nagano again on our next trip and bring more time with us. 😉

Tōkyō has a lot to offer for photography fans.

Want to go high up? The Tōkyō Sky Tree has an observation deck at a breezy height of 450 metres. From up there, the other skyscrapers look like miniatures.

Prefer nature and bright colours? The Rikugi-en garden offers gorgeous scenes, especially in autumn.

Fancy a light show? The Tōkyō Mega Illumination definitely isn’t exaggerating with its name. Where horse races normally take place, a colourful course of lights, tunnels, laser shows, music and nature sounds has been set up. The splendour just can’t be described in words.

Sadly, this brings our stay in Japan to an end. The suitcases are packed. Tomorrow we’ll have a few more hours for a farewell tour in Tōkyō, before the plane takes us back home.

Our flight back home isn’t until late in the evening. We took the opportunity to have a bit of a look around the Tokyo Skytree. There’s a little Christmas market there where Jingle Bells plays on an endless loop and you can get “typically German” Christmas market stuff like beer, hot dogs and (cold) chips for high prices. The mulled wine was really tasty, though!

After that, we paid a visit to the Sumida Aquarium. It was a lovely place where you could chill out to some quiet music and watch the fish, penguins and jellyfish.

It’s with a heavy heart that we’re starting our journey back now. This was our fifth visit to the Land of the Rising Sun, and once again we’ve experienced great things, seen interesting places and met friendly, open-minded and curious people. It definitely won’t have been our last trip to Japan.