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 the same polite, yet curious locals, a great place to get lost. Speaking of lost, lost in translation is the right phrase to use, so many times you see incoherent translations of English, some of ... read more

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 foriengers here, this was real life, and a totally different expereince of Japan. After spending a lot of Yen in Hiroshima we needed to have a cheap couple of days here, no temples, no major ... read more

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!! We had a relaxing couple of days here just wandering around the town and crusing along the canals, there isn't another foriegner in town as far as we've seen and nobody speaks English so it's ... read more

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 foreign tourists up here. Before I forget I need to tell you about the stares you get here, everyone is amazed by Europeans, even in Tokyo where there are loads of tourists, well not loads ... read more

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 the language, culture, food and general way of life it will be a great shock to the system to get to Japan, and Asia in general, where out whole worlds will get turned upside down. ... read more