The orange gates of Fushumi Inari are one of those classic sights like the Parthenon or the Eiffel Tower. For months now I've been walking past Michael's Camera Shop where they display such a photo and anticipating seeing them for myself. Well, it lives up to the photographs - though how those photographers got the shots without crowds of tourists in the way is a mystery. Fushimi Inari Shrine is a bright orange Shinto shrine, with multiple sub-shrines around it. The drawcard is walking through some of the 1000 orange tori gates leading from the shrine up to the top of Mt Inari (or all of them if you have the energy). It's a very impressive sight, the orange stands out against the surrounding green forest and within one feels cocooned by the colour. I can ... read more

Despite my ferocious planning of our trip, I know there are times when serendipity delivers the best experiences. Today was one such occasion and what a fabulous experience it was. We only heard about the Inuyama Castle Festival when chatting to another tourist in a queue at the airport. When we checked our itinerary we discovered we would be only an hour away the weekend it is held so this morning we took the train from Kyoto to Nagoya and on to Inuyama castle. We had a small mishap en route: we were briefly separated when train doors closed on us and I had to get off at the next station and backtrack to retrieve Danny! The festival was a something we will remember all our lives, with the colour and vitality that seems to be ... read more

Saiko Iyashi no Sato Nemba, the healing village of Nemba on Lake Saiko, is a traditional village which was destroyed in an earthquake in 1966 and has been rebuilt as a folk village to display the crafts and way of life of the people who have lived here for hundreds of years. It is a charming village of about 20 bamboo-thatched cottages nestled under Mt Fuji. (Unfortunately it was hidden by cloud today but we can't complain. We had great views yesterday and it's common for visitors to this area not to see Fuji at all because it is often wrapped in cloud.) The cottages display different aspects of life in the village including ceramics, paper-making, silk-making, wasabi-cultivation and a water wheel mill. There is a little museum with a clock that stopped when the earthquake ... read more

The aesthethics of traditional Japan ranges from the lavish gold and ornate fine work of aristocratic traditions to the powerful simplicity of Zen Budhism but it is coherent in a tremendous attention to detail and awareness of the messages that lie beneath material culture. Today we visited the Tokyo National Museum where we experienced some of the best of traditional art. The museum is actually a complex of six buildings set in beautiful Ueno park, with avenues of arching cherry blossoms now in full bloom and attracting huge crowds of celebrat locals. In the museum grounds there was a stunning grafted cherry with both white and red blossoms flowering simultaneously. The gallery we visited covered Japanese art from the prehistoric the Jomon period through to 19th C. It was extremely well laid out with a few ... read more

We arrived yesterday after a good flight and spent the afternoon in the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. The palace is closed to the public as it is home to the Imperial Family, who were moved there from Kyoto in 1868 after the fall of the Edo regime. The area has massive moats, impressive guardhouses and beautifully landscaped gardens. Much was not yet in flower but there was one magnificent early cherry blossom which was absolutely swamped by people taking photos with it. I gather taking your child's photo under the cherry blossom is a Japanese ritual akin to Australians photographi their kids on Santa's knee. It's certainly much more photogenic. After that we found our accomodation without problem and then had quite a story getting our bags. They had been sent from the airport ... read more