We were off to a slow start this morning. We had such a big day yesterday, the motivation to move was low. We headed down to the station and bought some bakery items. We ate this on the train trip to Nara, which took 45 minutes from Kyoto on the JR line. It was another hot and humid day today - summer in Japan. I think it was hotter than yesterday. When we got to Nara I could not find the bicycle hire place so we began to walk. But it was hot and nobody really wanted to walk. But we [View Full Entry]

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Well today was the highlight of our trip. We are so very tired tonight but very happy. Today was the day we met with our volunteer guide from the Good Samaratan club in Kyoto. This is a group of university students who guide foreigners around the city of Kyoto. Today we had a lovely fellow named Hideaki who brought along a trainee, Ryo. When you have a volunteer guide you must pay for the bus fares and lunch but no other payments are made. So the boys met us at our Ryokan at 9am. They gave us some one day passes [View Full Entry]

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We loved everything about the Hotel Senkei except for the sleeping. The mattresses were too thin for us and we could feel the floor below. It was quite uncomfortable. But the rest of the experience in this little ryokan was superb. We opted for the western breakfast this morning rather than the Japanese one. We went to a little diner style restaurant and were served our food. Justin has missed his coffee as the ryokan only served tea. Rebecca ordered for us and did a good job of making herself understood. We then checked out of the ryokan and waited a [View Full Entry]

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The Tsukiji fish markets didn’t stand a chance this morning. We had planned to get there about 7am but none of us could wake up in time. And we don’t eat sushi so we gave it a miss. And you can’t be disappointed about something you didn’t see. After a leisurely breakfast downstairs we were off to Asakusa to the temple. It was about 10.30 am and we took the subway to Asakusa. At the station we line up in an orderly fashion as previously, but when the train arrived it was already packed but we managed to get on. The [View Full Entry]

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We were up at about 8am today. Good for us. We had breakfast downstairs in our hotel. A japanese take on a western breakfast. Interesting. You take your food on your plate then on a tray to eat at your table. When finished they clear your tray. Although it was "buffet" we seemed to be the only ones going back for more. Today was for Bec to have a look at a few different neighbourhoods in Tokyo and use the language. Firstly we were going to go to the Japanese Government building in Shinjuku where there is a free observation deck. [View Full Entry]

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Well today has been a long day. It was 5am when we left the Coast and had an uneventful (thank God) trip down to Brisbane airport. The flight left pretty much on time at 8.45am and we were pretty impressed with the service of JAL. We checked in using the web the day before and picked our seats. Justin got to sit by himself. We were fed a few times on the flight and generally well looked after. We arrived at Narita airport about 5.15pm and had to take a airport limousine (read bus) to the terminal. Once through customs we [View Full Entry]

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