Spring greeting from Kyoto, Hiroshima and Kurashiki

I think I have the most active spring in Japan this year (not so active in blogging though). My friends came to Japan recently and we went to visit many places in Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima. Just found that I'm actually keeping so many photos but not posting them. So now thinking to categorize them, pick some of it and post it here and see whether it could give you some clues of what to eat and where to go when u visit Japan.

These are some of the spring flower photos that I took at different places. Love spring the most among 4 seasons.  Many signs of spring already on their ways. 

At Kyoto (京都)

At Hiroshima (広島)

At Kurashiki (倉敷)

Hometown of Detective Conan （柯南的故乡）

If you're a fan of Detective conan, you definitely know this catchphrase which always  used in the opening themes of the series.

"たったひとつの真実見抜く、見た目は子供、頭脳は大人、その名は名探偵コナン!"

(Perceiving the one and only truth, the appearance of a child, the intellect of an adult, his name is Detective Conan)

Familiar?

 Last summer vacation, I went to Tottori. I went to the Sand dune, Shigeru Mizuki no machi (another anime spot) and hometown of detective conan.  This was the second visit to Tottori ( You can click on these link:Tottori flower park and Tottori-daisen, for my previous post about Tottori)

 To go there,  I got off at Yura station which also named as "Conan station"

It's excited to come here and feel the existence of Conan kun just beside you.

 On the way walking to the Gosho Aoyama Manga Factory (青山剛昌ふるさと館）, you can see many bronze statue of Detective conan's members

 It was really a nice day.

 Shinichi and Ran chan

Heading to the Gosho Aoyama Manga Factory

Beautiful sky and beautiful himawari

That's the manga factory!

The car which often involved in cases, Agasa's Volkswagen beetle. This reminds me of the red Volkswagen beetle that my father owned back in 90's.

Inside the manga factory

These are some photos submitted by people who joined the photo contest before.

Haha, in the souvenir shop I found the toilet paper printed with Conan and his friends.

Here you can see the raw drawings from the author hanging on the wall.

What I can said about this place is, it is really an ordinary small town, not bustling with people. It's relaxing as you walk along the road.

 Is that the reason, small town can breed people with great creativity?

If you're Conan's fan, it is worth to pay visit here, may be not special for those who are not Conan's fan.

Walked back to the station, time to say goodbye

Fireworks at Miyajima （宮島煙火大會）

Having been here (Hiroshima) for more than 4 years, this is the first time I went to Miyajima for Fireworks festival. Most of my friends who went there before said it's to crowded and might not be able to catch the last train to go home etc.

This year I decided to go, at least one time.

So many cameramen already standby in the afternoon, though the fireworks started at night.

We were able to reserve a place in front of the shrine, yay.

It was a very hot and humid day, people were soaking their legs into the water.

The sky was getting dark.

Start of the fireworks display

The fireworks display is divided into 7 scenes, more than 5300 fireworks were set up on the sea. The Itsukushima shrine looks splendid under the spectacular fireworks.

It's too beautiful, but I couldn't catch some nice photos of the fireworks.
you can refer to these blog, the photos taken were marvellous!Miyajima Fireworks Display
 I found a video from youtube, they did a very good job in recording the gist of the fireworks festival. I was amazed by the fireworks display from 03.25 and the finale from 06:53.

Okay, the nightmare started right after the fireworks. There were about 30,0000 people rushing to take the ferry ride back to the train station.

After a long queue, we've been able to get on the JR ferry, it was full of the people.

 Still need to queue in front of the train station.

The fireworks ended at 21:00, we reached home around 24:00. It took us 3 hours to go home, anyway it's a wonderful night.