We arrived in Şanlıurfa (Urfa for short) after two flights from Van. The first leg from Van to Istanbul started boarding after we were due to take off so by the time we arrived in Istanbul we didn’t have long to wait before boarding our next flight from Istanbul to Urfa. After landing in Urfa we caught the shuttle bus into the city past the pistachio trees, olive groves, grape vines and cotton plants. The shuttle bus stops at a petrol station outside the old city so from there we caught a short taxi to our hotel. As soon as we entered the old city I was glad we had decided to visit Urfa despite its proximity to Syria and PKK activity in surrounding towns (Urfa itself seems to be fine at the moment). Urfa (best ... read more

We left Hiroshima for Osaka on our last shinkansen (fast train) of the trip. About two hours later we arrived at our guest house in the area near Shinsaibashi station known as Amerika-mura. Amerika-mura got its name as after the war a lot of shops sprang up selling American products such as zippo lighters. The name stuck and there are now a lot of funky restaurants, shops and bars (as well as a few pachinko venues too). After dropping off our bags at the guest house we headed out to grab some lunch. We, strangely, decided on a burger restaurant called Mos Burgers which is a Japanese chain. We ordered our food and sat down at a table and waited until our freshly cooked burgers (teriyaki beef for Scott and chicken for me) were delivered. The ... read more

Day 1 We left Kanazawa at lunchtime and arrived in Kyoto about 2 hours later. We managed to easily navigate our way through the station to catch the subway and then managed to choose the correct exit at Shijo station (pure skill of course, nothing to do with luck). After checking into our home for the next 6 nights we (I) sat down with the Lonely Planet to go through my temple / shrine shortlist and assign days for each area of the city. After planning our next 5 days we went for a walk. Our hotel was on Shijo-dori, near Karasuma-dori, which is the main shopping areas in Kyoto. This meant that after only about a 5 minute walk we ended up surrounded by malls and shops on either side of the street. We came ... read more

Shirakawa-go is a region in the mountains between Takayama and Kanazawa. Shirakawa-go, and neighbouring Gokayama are UNESCO world heritage sites which are famous for their traditional gassho-zukuri farmhouses. The farm houses have very steeply peaked thatched roofs which are said to resemble the hands of monks pressed together in prayer. In winter they can get up to two meters of snow in the region, hence the steeply peaked roofs. We reached Shirakawa-go by bus which took about an hour from Takayama. The trip was spent mostly in tunnels so we didn’t get to see much scenery at all! We arrived at about 11am on a Saturday of a long weekend (the following Monday was a public holiday for ‘respect for the aged’ day). We had booked a room in one of the gassho-zukuri houses which had ... read more

Our three week trip to Japan began just after midnight at Melbourne airport where we hopped on a luxurious AirAsia flight to Kuala Lumpur. The flight was very uneventful (just how flights should be!) and we both managed to get a little sleep. We arrived at the new KLIA2 airport which was slightly fancier than the old LCCT terminal which has been the base for many of our trips. The new building only opened in May and there are still quite a few incomplete areas but overall it was a huge improvement. After passing through immigration and collecting our bags we checked into our flight to Japan and then passed back through immigration. As we had a 7 hour layover we had decided to splurge and get a room at one of the airport hotels for ... read more