Oh my God, do my feet ache or what? It's been the most unexpectedly amazing day but as always, there's a price to pay for our fun. Today's adventures took place in Miyajima, an island not too far off the coast from Hiroshima. Our day began with a short train ride followed by a 10 minute ferry trip across the bay. All of this was included in our Japan Rail Pass again so nothing extra to pay :-) The island itself is quite mountainous with lush green vegetation and plenty to see and do. When we arrived at the ferry terminal, [View Full Entry]

---

---

Just a small selection of photos from Hiroshima. I'll be doing a separate one for our island adventures on Miyajima :-) [View Full Entry]

---

---

The third stop on our tour of Japan is Hirshima. We arrived yesterday after another very comfortable and lightning fast ride on the bullet train (God bless that Japan Rail Pass we bought in the UK, it has saved us an absolute fortune!). Our Hotel is the Hotel Flex - all the hotels have odd names over here it seems - which is close to the train station and only a 15-20 minute stroll to the main drag. It's another small but comfortable room but this time we have a lovely view over the river - the first time we've had [View Full Entry]

---

---

HI Everyone Here's a collection of photos from the first couple of days of our stay in Kyoto. Hope you like them! [View Full Entry]

---

---

Here's a few more pics to keep you up to speed... [View Full Entry]

---

---

It's been a laid back kind of day today. We started the day with a walk up to a temple near to our digs. Now normally this would be quite a quiet, calm affair but throw in about 1000 secondary school kids and you've got bedlam! It was fun watching the kids get all excited about seeing foreigners and we enjoyed being interviewed by different groups as we walked around. It was the whole 'celebrity for a day' feeling again :-) At one point we headed down a deserted path, then noticed a small group of girls were following us. For [View Full Entry]

---

---

Before I go headlong into today's blog, I would like to let you all know that Jish is alive and well! He is being cared for by the nice people at the Kyoto bus company and tomorrow we get to pick him up. How happy are we? We honestly didn't expect to see him ever again but our wonderful guesthouse owner, Eimi (pronounced Amy), phoned up for us this morning and gave us the good news when we got back. I guess it's testament to the honesty of Japenese folk. When I told our fellow guests about it last night in [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our first day in Kyoto has shown us that there is much, much more to Japan than just Tokyo. Kyoto has a very laid back feel and it's steeped in history so there was lots of exploring to do. Junko, our guide, met us at the hotel and took us to our first temple of the day. Kyoto has a whopping 1400 temples and shrines according to our taxi driver yesterday and everywhere you turn you bump into one! The temples we visited today had beautiful buildings and even lovelier gardens - very tranquil and calming. We also visited Gion, an [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well it is with a heavy heart that we left Tokyo today but the journey continues. We boarded another bullet train this morning and in a matter of just over two and a half hours we arrived in Kyoto. Having left Tokyo on the quietest day of the week, we were surprised to find Kyoto station an absolute hive of activity. We had planned to catch a bus to our next hotel but after taking one look at the queue and another at our luggage, we quickly decided that a taxi was in order! We are now in a small guesthouse [View Full Entry]

---

---

Just a quick blog today to fill you in on what we've been up to. Yesterday we decided to have a bit of a lie-in and rest our tired, aching legs. When we got the energy to head out, we had intended to visit Ueno park which is not far from the hotel. As it turned out, we finally uncovered the location of the Sega Joypolis theme park and before you can say sayonara we were on the metro again heading to Obeida where we were on Monday. Joypolis isn't quite as exciting as it sounds but there were lots of [View Full Entry]

---

---