In the evening of day 7 we decided to go to the Chidori ga Fuchi part of the moat around the emperor palace. We have  seen some spectacular pictures of beautifully lit sakura trees at night and wanted to capture something like that.

We arrived during a day time, though the sky was overcast and not pretty. Yet right after exiting the subway station the atmosphere looked quite different from the rest of Tokyo. We immediately saw a lot of sakura trees and people with cameras taking pictures.

Moat during the day.

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So we finally have been to Japan. The trip we dreamed about for so long finally happened.

We started our preparations long ago. Acquired plane tickets in early November 2009 in exchange for frequent flier miles. Then in January we got our Japanese visas.

The Japanese visa process turned out to be quite easy, after I called Japanese consulate in Nashville, they sent me list of documents to provide (nothing special really, the usual form with questions, passports, photos, description of a visit) and asked to send the documents to them. No need for interview in person, not even a visa fee.

We booked our hotels in early February, two months before our trip and even then a lot of good hotels were already sold out.

So on April 4th finally the day came and we went to the airport. There was a bit of worry since our flight was delayed for an hour due to missing crew but all worked well in the end and we arrived to Atlanta in time to board next flight to Tokyo.

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