A very long day! I was up not long after 5 am to get ready for our day trip to Hakone. Since my flight was leaving at around 2 am, I had decided just to take my stuff with me as we would be going to Hakone via Shinjuku and it would be too much effort to return to the Asakusa area to collect my bag. I'm glad I was only traveling with hand luggage. It was pretty cold as I walked down to Ueno station. The streets were really quiet. I met my friend at Ueno station and we took the train to Shinjuku. Shinjuku station was busy as always. We headed to the ticket office and bought the Hakone Freepass, this covered all our transport for the trip, so we didn't have to worry ... read more

Back in Tokyo! My flight had arrived the previous evening, so I had just made my way to the hostel I was staying at, got some dinner from the convenience store and relaxed in preparation for a busy few days. My friend came to meet me at the hostel and we set off to go to this Michelin starred ramen place that I wanted to try. I forget the name now, but it had only recently got a Michelin star and was ridiculously cheap. We walked to the station and had a good catch up as it had been about six months since we had last seen each other. We got on the subway and my friend had a thought, we should check that the restaurant is open. That turned out to be a good idea ... read more

I took the train to Shanghai around lunchtime. The train took about two hours and was comfortable. I alighted at Hongqiao station and took the subway a couple of stops to my hostel. I had picked this hostel as it was one of the cheapest I could find and was close to the subway. It was about a five minute walk from the subway. I got checked in and headed up to my room to drop off my bag. The hostel was a little weird as the ground floor was the hostel entrance and reception area, and then the next floor was some random business and then up to the next floor was the hostel. I was in an 8 bed or 10 bed dorm, there were already quite a few people chilling in there. I ... read more

8th Oct: Since we had the whole day ahead of us, we decided to head in a different direction to yesterday. Instead of going to the main area, which has all the gardens in it, we took the subway in a different direction, near to where the Tiger Hill Scenic Spot is. Looking on the map, we figured out that we could walk there via Shantang Street, which is another walking street, similar to the street we had been on the day before. I had expected this street to be more like the one we had visited, however it surprised me as it was quite different. While the street yesterday was definitely geared towards tourists, this one was more for the locals. The shops sold normal everyday things and we able to get some fruits and ... read more

We left Ningbo early in the morning, around 8 if I remember correctly. The drive took a couple of hours. At first it was interesting as I got to see parts of my new city that I hadn't seen before, but after a while I became bored. This was due to the bus driver not really having a clue where he was going, which meant we took a few wrong turns and had to double back on ourselves. This was hard on some of the small and windy country roads that we encountered. One highlight though was passing a bus of people all done up for a wedding. They were all dressed in lots of red and looked beautiful. Me and my friend were looking at them and wondering and they were doing the same to ... read more