(Pictures to be added at home) My trip to London was uneventful. It took a transfer in Copenhagen which ended up being slightly delayed, but I arrived in the United Kingdom intact, though looking like a hobo in off the street since I hadn't showered or slept for over 30 hours. With my small travel bag, I made my way from Heathrow via three public trains across the entire city to my hotel. It wasn't actually until the next day that I realized I had forgotten to swipe my Oyster - the pay as you go train card- at one of the stations, as there are sometimes no turnstiles and the reader is easily missable. This confused me, because not even Japan trusts people that much. But I had no problem and was not checked by ... read more

The last full day of our trip began as we got ready to leave the Chen's farm and then had to wait about thirty minutes for someone to show up to drive us to the bus stop. We chatted a bit with the Chinese family staying here, the father knew some English and was translating for his shy 12-year-old daughter. She wanted to tell me that my blue eyes are very beautiful. (There was also a Chinese boy on the subway who was pointing at me and then to his eyes and talking to what I assume was his grandmother in Chinese about them. People here STARED, pretty blatantly, the entire time. I never notice this in Japan, unless it's really, really young kids, and it was at times really unsettling, like when it was a ... read more

My trip to Beijing started from Narita Airport with a half hour flight delay, but it ended up being fine because I had a longer layover in Shanghai. Kelly had gone ahead of me to visit Xian and met me in the Beijing Airport. The first thing I noticed was how loud everything was, because in Japan people are generally pretty quiet in public spaces and on public transportation. This was just the beginning!! Rather than form quiet, orderly queues like Japanese, Chinese shove and push and budge right in front of you. On EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Quite the difference! We took the train into the city and made an educated guess on the station we needed for our hostel via the kanji for the name. The guess was right, and we managed to track down ... read more

These are very late, but I realized that I had never posted pictures of this year's sakura in the travel blog. I got lucky because peak season was while I was still on break from school - the break between school years here - so I could pick the nicest day and go out at my leisure to see the blossoms. We were also concerned that they would fall quickly because of the rain, but they stayed up just fine! This year I went to two locations: Naka-meguro (which I had never been to) and Shinjuku Gyoen (which I went to last year before peak blossoms were out). Both were beautiful, and I was pleased with the choices this year. I like going to new places so that my pictures don't look the same every year. ... read more

Miyajima Island is called "shrine island" because of the bulk of its fame resting in the "floating" torii (red gate) and shrine built into and on the water on the beach. It's not far from Hiroshima - only a 40 minute train ride and a 10 minute ferry - and tends to shut down completely after 5 pm. There are some ryokans to stay in on the island, but I did the commute thing for a day trip out to see the famous sites. It was easy to get to the ferry and from there, easy to get around the island itself. Deer roam freely through the streets, and I took some funny photos of them trying to get into a shop, and hanging out in a toilet on the mountain (later), and I made a ... read more