In 2018, I had friends living in Hiroshima, Nara, and Kyoto. As I usually visit Tokyo for flight transfers, Hiroshima is an unusual destination for me. Weirdly, I somehow missed the chance to visit Kyoto. So, I decided to make a trip from Hiroshima to Kyoto to explore the areas.
Sadly, I didn’t have that much time-off at hand to cover the whole trip. After discussing with friend whom I planned to visit, I decided to go to Hiroshima first in August 2018.
The first half of the Hiroshima trip basically followed the usual tourist spots, like Itsukushima and Peace Memorial Park, with my friend who lived in Hiroshima. Then, my friend from Kyoto later joined the party for a day to visit Onomichi and Fukuyama, including Tomo no Ura. Then, we wrapped up with a full-day travel to Iwakuni in Yamaguchi and a meetup with my friend in Kyoto before flying back to Bangkok.
Then, the trip to Nara and Kyoto was planned originally to ensure that I could hang out with my friends without having them taking a day off. As I search for the right timing, I found a Japanese holiday for the “Coming of Age” ceremony (成人式). Since my friends’ kid was just a year old, it was a good time to visit. Originally, since I haven’t met my friends in Nara for a couple of years, I only allocated time for talking and not so much for sightseeing. So, I decided to make a Nara-Kyoto trip in January 2019.
However, after talking to my friends in Nara, we ended up visiting Taima-dera, Nara Centennial Hall (for the “coming of age” ceremony), and Kasuga Taisha (for Bugaku Hajime Shiki).
After that I spent the rest for the trip visiting various temples, including Kurama-dera in the North of Kyoto.
This trip is somewhat memorable to me. Not only it required coordinating the trip between people living in three different cities, but it made me flying to Japan twice in order to complete the original plan. Also, due to various reasons, it took me one year and four months to make the video journal. It is the longest and technically difficult project I have had so far.