Well not really, we're really doing a bit of Seoul searching more than anything else............. Meanwhile back at the ranch............. So Seoul huh, that'll shock your system, for sure (as my new dutch mate says, all the time. I dinnae ken his name so I just call him 'Dutch Guy', he doesn't seem to mind). We were speaking to some dude in Australia about Korea, he said he went to Seoul and lasted a day before getting the first flight out, his reason was that it was dead big and busy and noisy and polluted and that but we though that [View Full Entry]

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I couldn't put it any better than the Vapors 'hit', what a marvelous place and what a mental trip this has been, three weeks have just flown in and we've enjoyed every fleeting moment of it. We wanted something completely different and by-heck-as-like we got it. From the bustling city of Tokyo to the tranquil hills of Nikko, from the temple-tastic Kyoto to the river lounging Matsue and finally from the harsh realities of Hiroshima to the chilled out Buddha of Nara and everywhere in between. We've loved every minute of every place, amazingly different at each stop but surrounded by [View Full Entry]

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We didn't realise quite how close we were to Nara while in Osaka. Most of our journeys between places have taken around 3-4 hours and involved at least one change of train, how lucky we were this time that the local train station next to out hotel, in the middle of dodgesville, had a direct service to Nara that took 42 minutes, cash back. So we arrived here around 10am and as per usual we hit the tourist info looking for accommodation, there are two Youth Hostels here and we went for the bigger one as it's was recommended by the [View Full Entry]

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After a real busy 2 weeks we came to Osaka to do pretty much nothing, just lounge about and catch up on some further trip planning, we go to Korea and China in the next fortnight and don't have a scooby as to where we're going. Osaka is a big city, nowhere near as big as Tokyo but far bigger than anything else that Japan has to offer. It's a port city and home to the biggest selection of fish in the whole country. I think the place was a real indication of 'working class' Japan, there's no special attention for [View Full Entry]

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As scary as that title sounds it doesn't even begin to tell of the horrors that happened at 08:15 on August the 6th, 1945. Firstly, before I get on to my rant about the A Bomb, Hiroshima is a really nice place, the way the city has been transformed in the last 60 years is amazing, it's now a thriving metropolis and has a population of 1.1 million, more than 3 times than the population at the time of the bombing. It's well planned, walkable and has loads of beautiful monuments that you'd expect to see in a city that was [View Full Entry]

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We've taken a side step from the temples of Kyoto to the canal lined city of Matsue on our way down south to Hiroshima. Matsue is a beautiful wee city on the Shinji-Ko river, it's a really sleepy wee place with a huge castle and is famous for being the home of Lafcadio Hearn, or Koizumi Yakumo as he's know around these parts, who was a British writer who came to Japan in 1890, he was the first person to write about life in Japan from a foreign perspective and the Japanese love to know what other people think about them!! [View Full Entry]

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We're on the road again, or more accurately the rails, as we head south from Nikko to the temple crazy city of Kyoto. Kyoto is Japan's favourite city, the cultural home of Japan, it was the captial for more than 1000 years until the Meiji Restoration moved the Imperial Family north to the present day capital of Tokyo. Kyoto was only settled for 150 years before it became the capital so you can see that it's pretty special. The city is UNESCO World Heritage region with 17 Kyoto sites having priceless historic value for visitors and the Japanese public alike. There [View Full Entry]

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So we left Tokyo with a new found excitement for everything Japanese, next stop Nikko. Nikko is a small town up in the hills about 2 hours North West of Tokyo, it's a huge draw for the Japanese population as it has some of the countries most important shrines and temples. It was completely different from Tokyo, think somewhere like Fort William but on a lot smaller scale than the Scottish town, a lovely place to spend a couple of days, in fact we could have spent weeks here as it was beautiful and the hospitality fantastic, they don't get many [View Full Entry]

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Now that's what I'm talkin' about, Japan baby, yeah!!!! We've been in Japan for nearly a week now and it's totally amazing, unlike anything we have experienced on this trip so far, or in any of our travels to date come to mention it. The number of temples and shrines are breathtaking, the countryside beautiful and the friendliest people we have ever encountered. Everything is so efficient, the trains run to the dot, and do so at 180 MPH (300KM/hr). We have never seen anywhere so clean, believe it or not there are wee wimmen hoovering the streets, the actual pavements [View Full Entry]

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Has it really been 6 months we've been here? Yeah, well almost, we landed here on March 8th and leave on August 30th for Japan, and although I don't think the time has flown in still find it hard to believe we've been here nearly half a year, we've done so much, seen so much and made many friends and it's hard to believe that we're leaving on Tuesday. Now I personally can't wait to get to Japan, and it's nothing to do with Australia in a negative way, I've loved it here but after 9 months on Easy Street with [View Full Entry]

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