Hello again!

First of all thank you very much for your nice and cute comments to my last entry. 　I was really happy to read them all
I finished sorting out my photos, so I can finally start my summer vacation travel entries. This time it was not so much work compared to spring. In spring I used both cameras, my old digital camera and my brandnew DSLR camera. I came back with over 5000 photos, that was just crazy.　
This time I mainly used my DSLR, so no doubles, sorting out went much smoother.
Some of you might have noticed, there's a small change in this travel entry. So far I've been uploading all my travel photos to my Livejournal Scrapbook, but I decided to create a new photobucket account and try to upload them there instead.
There are many reasons. I still don't have a permanent LJ account, so the travel photos might vanish once I decide to not continue with my paid account. It's a hassle to upload to Scrapbook with Windows 7!
Usually I'm a fan of photobucket, just the bandwidth limit scares me. I've had problems with it in the past (too many people reading my entries / looking at my photos).　
The good thing about photobucket is that it's easy and comfortable to upload tons of photos at the same time.
If any of you know a better alternative that is free, has at least 1GB of storage, easy multiple file upload option and unlimited or huge bandwidth limit, then please let me know I really appreciate it.

Anyway, back to the actual entry.
My last day of work was Saturday, so I took off quite early on Sunday morning. I went straight to Nagoya where I intended to stay the whole week with day trips and - of course - the trip to Mt. Fuji.

Nagoya Day 1 (August 8th, 2010):



Sunrise viewed from my apartment.



I arrived in Nagoya around noon.
As you can see it was quite cloudy, it also rained a little bit. That was completely different from what the weather forecast had promised ...　



After checking in at my hotel, I went straight to the subway (Nagoya has an awesome subway system) and headed towards my first destination for the day.
At the entrance I saw this very funny llama(?) XD



Anyways, my first destination was: Osu Kannon Temple
It's a small, but a very nice and beautiful temple, right next to a cool and huge shopping arcade!!! :D



Right next to it was this cool graffiti! (*_*)



Close-up!



Really cute statues ^-^;





As you can see the temple is really IN the city, surrounded by skyscrapers and apartment buildings.



One of the streets next to it (not the shopping arcade street obviously) was decorated nicely.



There were quite a lot of people praying and then afterwards entering the shopping arcade. Maybe they were praying for forgiveness for spending a lot of money in a few minutes? XDDD







I think I'm healed from my "fear" of Inari Shrines and gates! XD



Super cute van I saw on my way to the shopping arcade :3



The shopping arcade!! Really huge with many side rodes. Interesting!! I wish I had more time to discover everything there!



Just thought the name of the shop was funny! XDDDDD



The cool thing about the shopping arcade was, that you always could turn left or right and within only a few steps there were temples or shrines, so it was a shopping as well as a sightseeing tour! XD
Some of them were boring and small, so I won't post all the photos here. I liked this fountain, though :)



Back in the shopping arcade I found a T-Shirt with a German text printed on it.
I heard that German on T-shirts is quite popular in Japan right now XD Basically because they can't understand it - unlike English not everybody (or rather nobody) knows what is written there, so it's mystical or whatever XD ....
"Der Denker" means literally "the thinker" XD



That was the weirdest thing I ever saw (not really): between all the shops in the shopping arcade there was this temple!!!! It was loud from all the shops, such a weird feeling!
And they sold Hello Kitty o-mamori there XD Of course I had to buy some! XD
The temple was called "Banshouji" (萬松寺) (here's info in Japanese).



In the middle of the shopping arcade there was this huge Maneki Neko. Pretty awesome! XD





Unfortunately I didn't have that much time to spend in the shopping arcade.
Random photo on my way back. These were almost EVERYWHERE in Nagoya. Looks like a dragonfly or something. Anybody knows if that's some kind of mascot of Nagoya?



My next destination was Atsuta Shrine (熱田神宮).



A very quiet and nice place with not sooo many people there. And because there were a lot of trees, it was not sooo hot there :3







It suddenly started raining, but luckily the trees protected me and especially my camera XD





The rain got stronger and I decided to just quickly take a few more photos and then put my camera away before the rain could kill it! XD



Random: Prum tree! Oh, Japan! XD

It was around 3:30pm when I left, I guess. My last destination of the day was the awesome port of Nagoya!!~



Finally the sun broke through the clouds a little bit.
The port of Nagoya is really interesting with lots of things to do and see. I didn't have that much time left and thus just did a hand full of things.



Like visit that huge ship that once went to the Antarctic(?!)



Just to prove that it was raining just a while ago I took some photos of flowers that were still wet XD



Close-up.



Entrance to the ship. (btw. the ships name was Fuji XD)



They're not real, but stupid me thought while passing by rather quickly that they were!!!! XD *headdesk*



Basically the whole ship was full of them! XD





Arctic ice vs. Normal ice. See the difference?



From the ship you already had quite a nice view over the port.



There was also this tiny helicopter on board :D



Was wondering about what that is the whole time. Didn't have time to find it out ;o; (looked like an European village or something)



Cloud-sun-mix offers some nice shots :D



Cute doggies, only statues though XD

Next, I went to the high, white Port Building you saw in one of the previous pictures.
It's expensive to go up there, but I still went up there XD



Unfortunately the windows there were not clean at all and so it was difficult to get nice shots. The light reflected in the windows as well x_x







Here you can see the ship again, this time from above.





Well, the good thing was that the building offered a 360° view.



The inside was not sooo interesting. I liked these stairs, though.



Cute ships in bottles :D





I left the building and was on my way to the aquarium. Expensive, but definitely a highlight. It has been a while that I've been to an aquarium, so I really wanted to go :D



Cute dolphin! XD



In front of the aquarium you still can see the Antarctic ship.



This was the first time that I actually used my DSLR in an aquarium. Actually it's the first time that I had a DSLR when going to an aquarium XD
And when the light is not so good the DSLR shows its real power like WOAH!!!!! Or what do you think???
You can also go back and compare with some of my old aquarium entries! :D



The dolphins there were really cute and one of the highlights (I live dolphins!!! I mean, who doesn't, right?)







But the real highlight was this:



Tornado fishies!!! Really awesome! I also took a video, but it was too dark and my camera couldn't handle it in the end ;o;



But I think you get the idea?! :)



Very colorful. Makes me wanna go diving :D



And that rather keeps me from doing so! XD





And then it was time for the dolphin show which was OUTSIDE!!! The sky was really beautiful at that time and there was a huge Ferris-Wheel next to the "stage" which was illuminated in different colors :D



7pm: the dolphin show was about to start
Actually this was the largest "stage" I've ever seen for a dolphin show so far and I've been to many aquariums in Japan by now!!



The dolphin show itself was pretty cool. I enjoyed it a lot :)
I do have a short (19s) video, but it's not that good, so I won't upload it. There will be more interesting videos in the future, so I want to save storage space and time for those :D



My camera was said to be good for taking "sport" photos and I think this photo proves it. AWESOME SHOT!! Don't you think??
I'm not praising myself, because all I did was press the shutter, but my awesome camera!! (*__*)v



Shortly after the dolphin show which was quite long the aquarium closed. At around 8pm I wandered around outside and took some more photos.



The port at night looks quite nice as well. I really liked the illuminated dolphins!





I was really hungry so I decided to eat something first before moving on. I went into the nearby Food Market thingie there and ate Chinese style food XD
ChaHan and soup.



On my way back to the subway station I spotted a REALLY cute café!
But as I just ate dinner, I decided not to enter and go to my hotel instead.



And that was my first day of summer vacation.
Cloudy, rainy and not really eventful, but still nice! Especially the aquarium visit was nice and relaxing.

The next day I had to get up early, because it was time for my first day trip. My destination for day 2: Ise (where a rainstorm surprised me in the end and I got completely soaked down to my shoes/socks and underwear ...)
Hope you're looking forward to the next entry.

Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
Bye☆⌒ヽ(*'、^*)chu