Yesterday at 17:35 local time, I arrived back home in the Netherlands after my three-week trip to Japan. Thanks to ~shadowwaker for coming to pick me up at the airport! (Now you just need to drop by to claim your gifts sometime )

First of all, I have to say that this trip was probably just what I needed as motivation for my final year before my bachelor's degree in Japanese.
On the other hand, it also pointed out that I don't want to live in Japan in the future or study there for an extended period of time; the lifestyle in Japan is too stressful for my taste (I still want to move to the UK).

anyway: I got to see a lot of the country and all of it's aspects. From spectacular views of the countryside to the colorful crowds at the matsuri (festivals) or the extreme fashion of the youths at Harajuku, Tokyo.

It was very handy to have some knowledge of the language and I had enough chances to practise my Japanese.

Aside from that, Japan is the ultimate country for buying souvenirs and presents, which is one of my favorite things to do. So I bought quite a lot; most of which I'm going to give away, but I got myself a very pretty yukata (cotton kimono) with dragonfly-pattern and an obi (belt), a kanzashi (hairpin) with flowers like the ones you often see on geisha and maiko (geisha apprentices) and a maiko doll from Kyoto, amongst others.

My time in Kyoto was definately the favorite part of the whole trip. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were also very impressive and interesting to see, but because of the history of those places I found the atmosphere was a bit too overwhelming.
Kyoto is a charming place with also a very interesting (and long) history and although it is a big city, it doesn't feel that way. It was very easy to get around by public transportation and the street-plan is very straight-forward. So now that I know my way around there, I will definately return there some day to try and spot more geisha and make a tour past various historical sites (probably Shinsengumi-related ), because this time I didn't exactly have time for that.
Maybe I want to spend some more time in Tokyo too, even though it is too big for my taste. At least the subway-system was easy to figure out once you have the hang of it.

I did not take as many photos as I thought I would because it was very inconvenient to carry my camera around everywhere, and besides: if you have one photo of places like temples, you get a pretty good idea of what the others looked like. That being said, I do have some nice ones and I might upload some of them.

That's all for now!
I still have 2 weeks before my classes start again and I hope I'm not all too jet-lagged so that I can still have some fun, too.

List o' links
My 'to do'-list: [link]