Saturday, 10th March 2018

In our infinite wisdom we booked a Snowmobiling and Ice Cave tour for the morning after our late night Northern Lights tour. Getting to bed at 3am and then having to get up for a 7:30 pick up was an interesting test of our ability to get ready and not forget anything while half asleep.

Since snowmobiling requires snow we had to get to Langjökull, the second largest glacier in Iceland, which was a couple of hours drive away North East of Reykjavik. The “minibus” we were picked up in was a souped up beast perched upon 4 massive wheels and equipped with some very nicely padded seats with wings to protect your head when bouncing around.

Our guide was a young blonde guy with medium length messy hair - he looked every bit the kind of guy to take you on a thrill seeking, snowmobiling adventure. He was also really funny and gave a running commentary of where we were, and told (hopefully made up) stories of getting stuck on the glacier.

It was very impressive the way he knew where to weave through the rocks, ice and snow so that we wouldn't get stuck and would eventually arrive at a basecamp with 2 large wooden huts and a menagerie of snowmobiles waiting outside.

The first thing we needed to do was suit up in a bright orange warm jumpsuit, gloves, balaclava and helmet. I wish I wore the gloves I had brought with me because the ones they supplied were way too big for my tiny child hands. I assumed the bright orange was so it would be easier to find us if we got lost.

After a brief safety talk we split into our pairs, picked a snowmobile and the guides checked we were all sitting comfortably.

Ben and I were the last to set off and within 30 seconds of moving we saw one of the guides crash spectacularly. This made us even more cautious than we already were since it looked like it hurt... a lot. We stopped to ask if she was OK, but she got up quickly and waved us on.

It was terrifying and I spent the majority of the trip to the ice cave screaming at Ben to slow down, not knowing that he couldn't hear a thing I was saying. When we got off, he told me he'd been driving slowly since he saw the instructor crash!

Inside the Ice Cave

Our destination was an ice cave at the bottom of a steep hill, a rectangular hole in the ground was cut deep into the snow, wide enough for us to descend single file into the cave. It was hard getting down since the steps were made from compacted snow until near the bottom they were made of wood. The wood was worse as it was wet and slippy but we all made it down in one piece.

The ice cave is a natural cave that moves every year as the glacier expands and pushes it along with the ice. Looking up at the (quite low down) ceiling, it is a thick layer of clear ice.

The cave gradually sloped downwards towards one end, and the ceiling was pretty low at the top of the cave. We all sat on the floor whilst the guides told us about what we could see and how the cave formed.

You couldn't explore too far in the cave before the ceiling got too low, but we were allowed to crawl around and investigate a bit.

You could clearly see the layers in the ice produced over the years.

A carefully-placed spotlight lit up this ice column very nicely.

Heading back

Once we were out of the cave, everyone mounted up and headed back up the hill.

From where we stood next to the cave entrance, everything was blindingly white; the ground just merged with the sky.

For the trip back to base camp, Ben and I switched places so I could drive the snowmobile. This was much more fun than being a passenger but still a bit scary when going over solid ruts in the snow. We were still the last ones to get back even though Ben thought I was going far too fast - I think this is a side effect of being a passenger.

We posed for some photos before heading inside the hut to give back helmets, gloves and the jumpsuits.

Then it was back into the vans with massive wheels for the trip back to Reykjavik

Friday, 17th November 2017

Today was our second day at Tokyo DisneySea! (First day was here)

Our main aim for today was to get on all the rides we didn't get on yesterday. Of those, the Indiana Jones Adventure was the one we most wanted to try so we headed straight there as soon as we got into the park.

Of course, we weren't the only ones, and the queue was already really long.

The ride was great though. We were loaded into a jeep which barrelled its way through a temple with rickety bridges, blow-dart corridors and giant flame-spitting skulls!

Next on our list was the newest ride in the park (at the time), Nemo & Friends' SeaRider. This was a simulator ride like Star Tours where we were shrunk down to fish-size for a tour around the oceans with Nemo.

Just next-door we went on Aquatopia where these hovercraft-like bumper cars scoot & spin around a shallow lake.

One of the fun things about the Tokyo Disney parks is that it's really common for groups of friends or families to dress up for the occasion in matching outfits, or matching Disney accessories.

We saw loads of people doing this around the park, and most of them were Duffy Bear or ShellieMay themed since those characters were originally unique to Tokyo DisneySea.

Next, we got on board the Electric Railway to take us back towards the New York port area.

From the railway, we got a great view of the themed buildings in New York Harbour

We skipped the Tower of Terror ride, since it wasn't one that Alyssa would have enjoyed.

Once we were off the Electric Railway, we were next to the SS Columbia which was staging a show staring Duffy Bear & friends.

After our first day, we had a better sense of where things were in the park, so we were doing a lot more zig-zagging between different areas as we tried to best use our FastPasses.

We stopped for a bit to check out the Disney S.E.A. (Society of Explorers & Adventurers) Fortress and the self-guided Fortress Explorations

The introduction to Fortress Explorations was via ghost Leonardo da Vinci in a magical mirror, but this was only in Japanese, so we didn't really have a solid grasp of the plot; but we could certainly follow pictographs and arrows!

The fortress is a great space to explore, it's got loads of staircases and cubby-holes with different sights and architecture.

We wandered around to find the different rooms and objects which matched up to the symbols and then solved some simple puzzles at each location.

At the end, we keyed in our answers and presented our map to ghost Leonardo again which rewarded us with.. averting the eruption of the volcano and saving the town! Hooray!

We'd grabbed FastPasses for Indiana Jones' Adventure when we rode it the first time, and we went back for another ride.

By the time we came out, it was getting dark again, and DisneySea really does look fantastic at night.

We were feeling pretty pleased with our time in DisneySea; we'd managed to go on almost every 'big' ride in the park, and several of our favourites more than once.

One ride we hadn't been on yet was Toy Story Mania so we headed towards that area of the park.

Unfortunately when we got there, the queues were just as long in the evening as they had been all day; so we decided to give it a miss (rather than spend our last few hours in a queue)

On the plus side, we tried on some more hats, and Alyssa bought an awesome Toy Story hoody.

We went with the flow of the crowd back to the front of the park for the evening fireworks show.

And with that, it was the end of our last day in Japan! Our wonderful holiday was almost over, and tomorrow morning we'd be catching our flight home.

We aren't a particularly sporty couple, generally what we know about sportsball is that "the thing about Arsenal is, they always try and walk it in".

Japan considers baseball to be it's most popular national sport, even more popular than traditional sports like sumo wrestling. When we were in Hiroshima, we saw posters advertising the Hiroshima Carps everywhere, and even special manhole covers!

Unfortunately the baseball season was pretty much over and so we couldn't catch a game in Hiroshima (even if we had the time); but then we learned that the first match of the first ever Asia Professional Baseball Championship was taking place while we were in Tokyo and we decided to get tickets for the Japan vs South Korea game.

Ticket Quest

In Japan, you can buy tickets for a huge number of sporting events or concerts at special ticket terminals which can be found in corner shops.

Our attempt at this was a barrel of laughs; we stood in a Lawsons corner shop for ages trying to find and buy the tickets on their ticket terminal. The trouble was that, of course, everything was in Japanese and we had no idea what we wanted to buy. There were so many different venues, and so many different events. We could have asked the shop assistant but Ben was convinced we wouldn't be able to explain what we wanted.

After being defeated we went back to our hotel and I did a lot more Googling and found the site to buy your tickets from Lawson online. This was a lot easier, since we could use Google Translate to translate the page, and so we successfully bought two tickets on the home supporters side. But to actually get the tickets, we would need to collect them from our old nemesis... the Lawson Ticket Terminal!

Off we went again, back to the ticket terminal. Luckily, redeeming a pre-bought ticket was a lot more straightforward!

Game Night

We'd left DisneySea early and caught the underground trains back into Tokyo towards the Tokyo Dome stadium.

The Tokyo Dome is a massive air filled stadium, with an inflatable roof. The inside is kept at a slightly higher pressure than outside to keep the roof up. If the doors are held open (as they are at the end of the evening) there's a huge funnel of air blowing continously out of the doorways.

There are shops around the outside which we visited and kitted ourselves out as Samurai Japan supporters before we went inside the stadium.

Both teams stood for their national anthems at the beginning.

.. and then the game began!

Both teams had their own set of cheerleaders. We were supporting Japan, so we might be biased, but Japan's were definitely better. They had much catchier music to dance to.

In fact, the fans even made their own music. Somewhere over in the opposite side of the stadium, we were sure there was a group of fans with brass instruments. They were playing a different catchy tune for each individual player when they came up to bat, or when something particular happened in the game. Of course, we had no idea what the words meant, but the tunes got stuck in our head and the whole stadium sang along.

During the game, Ben went to get something to eat from one of the fast food places around the edge of the stands. He said they'd run out of hot dogs, but he came back with what he thought were chicken nuggets.

Surprise! They weren't chicken nuggets. So Ben finally tried Takoyaki (octopus balls) by accident! He didn't like them at all.

The game was really close, we were on tenterhooks for the 7th & 8th innings as both teams got 0 runs. Then in the 10th inning, South Korea scored 3 runs and Japan had to match them to stay in the game.

It was really tense, but when Japan's turn came up, Japan managed to get a 3 runs, and then a home run to win the match!

Thursday, 16th November 2017

We planned for the last few days of our holiday to be back in Tokyo; so we could revisit anything we'd spotted at the beginning of the holiday but didn't have time for, or in case we wanted to buy any bulky souvenirs to take home on the plane.

My plan was to go to Tokyo DisneySea!

Getting there

Tickets in hand, we left the hotel and made our way to the Shinjuku Express Bus Terminal, which is built above Shinjuku station.

The weather was beautiful this morning, and we didn't have long to wait before a coach arrived to take us to the entrance to the parks.

At the park

Tokyo has two Disney parks: Tokyo Disneyland which follows the same Magic Kingdom layout as the other Disneylands around the world (and has most of the same rides) and Tokyo DisneySea which is unique to Tokyo.

We decided to skip the Magic Kingdom park and spend our two days at DisneySea.

DisneySea is built around many different 'ports of call' which are the different themed lands; from New York to the Arabian Coast, deep jungles of Lost River Delta to Ariel's Mermaid Lagoon, and in the centre is a large volcanic caldera from Jules Verne's Mysterious Island.

As you walk into the park, you find yourself in front of the large lake, with Mediterranean-style buildings to your left and right. Looking across the lake, we could see the volcano, which we headed around towards.

Venturing into a huge tunnel through the rock, you emerge into the Mysterious Island's caldera. The buildings and structure around the edges of the crater are full of steampunk details, surrounded by bubbling water and spurting geysers.

I love looking at all the little details in the parks.

Our first ride of the day would be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

After we'd been to the bottom of the sea on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, we headed back into the tunnels around the caldera towards the entrance for Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Journey.. was fantastic! The finale turned out to be a little more dramatic than we were expecting, for Alyssa especially! When a giant lava monster bursts out of the rock, the ride takes a couple of fast, sharp turns through dark tunnels to escape.

I'd been reassuring her that it wasn't going to be a rollercoaster, and it wasn't really.. until those last 30 seconds of the ride.. Oops.

Walking out of the caldera through another tunnel, we emerged next to an explosion of colourful shells and twisting spires.

The Mermaid Lagoon was a large enclosed indoor area with lots of smaller rides and play equipment so that smaller kids could run around relatively unimpeded. It was fun to look at, but the rides weren't really our size.

We carried on walking around the park towards the Arabian Coast.

Next up, we found Sinbad's Storybook Voyage; a boat ride with animatronics that illustrate various tales from the many adventures of Sinbad. It was just a nice, quintessential Disney ride.

We came back to Sinbad's Storybook Voyage several times over the two days we were here and we were humming the music for days after.

Continuing on our way, we left the Arabian Coast and arrived at the jungle foliage of the Lost River Delta.

Alyssa took some photos of the Raging Spirits roller coaster while I queued up for a ride.

As the sun started to set, the lights came on.

The caldera looked particularly good when it was lit up at night, with the glowing (and smoking) volcano looming above.

The crowds were gathering around the Mediterranean Harbor for the evening's big firework display.

We threaded our way through them, all the way back to the entrance and nipped into some of the shops there while they were a bit quieter.

But it was getting late, and tonight we had somewhere else to be! We left the park and caught the monorail from DisneySea to the main Disney train station where we could head back into Tokyo.

(The Christmas decorations in the monorail station reminded us how long we'd been in Japan for. On the day we arrived, Tokyo was full of Halloween decorations, and now on our last day they were starting to put up Christmas ones.)

Wednesday, 15th November 2017

I did not plan these few days very well. After our mission to get to Hakone last night we worked out that we had to be up and out very early to catch an early morning bus if we wanted to be in Tokyo in time for Ben's Kintsugi class at 1pm.

While we were standing at the bus stop, Ben managed to nip down to the lakeside to take some photos before the bus arrived and we found a vending machine selling snacks to eat for breakfast.

This was our last travel day of the trip; from Hakone to Tokyo.

Once we were back in Tokyo, we headed straight for the trains that would take us to our Kintsugi class.

Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer and gold. Each piece takes weeks or months depending on the complexity, but Sensei Showzi-san teaches a four-hour course to show you the basics. (Here's a link: Kintsugi in 1 day)

He provided small cups with v-shaped chips on the edge to the students. Since it was a fairly expensive experience (gold!) we only paid for Ben to take part. I felt a little guilty being there too but Showzi and his wife were very welcoming and let me take photos of the process.

The gold dust is sprinkled over the black lacquer and then blended together by dabbing it.

The cups are the fired to melt the gold and burnished by rubbing a smooth gem over the area once cooled.

The freshly lacquered cups were placed in a curing cupboard. The curing process takes too long for a half-day session, so the cup that Ben lacquered is different to the one he put gold onto and can take home.

While waiting for the cups to fire and cool, Sensei Showzi performed a tea ceremony in the style of a samurai and showed us other examples of his work. Delicate pieces of kintsugi with different mediums, and photos of larger pieces that were on display elsewhere.

Once the cups had cooled, we could take them home.

It was nice to think of how some previous guest of Showzi had worked carefully on these before us, and that the cups we'd worked on earlier would go to future guests in turn.

When the tea was finished and the class was over; we packed the cups carefully in our rucksack, and headed back out to the streets.

We found our way to Pokémon Center MEGA TOKYO, the largest Pokémon Center in Tokyo!

Now that we are back in Tokyo, we are also in our last hotel of the trip, so we can stock up on gifts without worrying about how we have to carry them around the country! We bought lots of plushies for Christmas gifts (and one or two for ourselves)

Then something to eat.

Tuesday, 14th November 2017

I had planned on visiting Tower Knives since the beginning but so far hadn't actually had the time to go. We had used some Osakan made knives in the Eat Osaka lesson and I wanted to purchase the same or similar to remind me of our travels when I cook.

Since this was our check-out day, it was now or never to get a 'Handmade in Osaka' knife from Osaka. The knife shop didn't open until 10am so we didn't have to rush to get there early - which was good because we were very slow. We had a nice breakfast at our Osaka hotel, and headed out.

We were greeted by a very nice gentleman who spoke excellent English, he showed us around the shop, explained about the different purposes, handles, lengths, steels, prices, edges...! There were a lot of options!

We told him we were after a general purpose knife, similar to the one we used at Eat Osaka and he picked out several for us to try on a lot of carrots and tomatoes. In the end I decided on a shorter santoku (although still longer than my current knives) with a Japanese style handle.

When we chose our knife, they engraved it for us.

It was getting quite late in the day now and we had a long way to travel to our next hotel in Hakone. On our way to the train station we stopped at the Food Hall underneath the station to queue up for a famously wobbly Rikaru Cheesecake.

These cheesecakes are very light and fluffy in texture, totally different from the rich, thick slices we get at home.

We also picked up some lunch/dinner from a Seven Eleven and some more Western style chocolate cheesecakes (which were also delicious). We ate our very late lunch on the Shinkansen to Odawara where we arrived in the evening.

When we got off the train at Odawara station, we knew that we'd have to travel a bit further to the hotel at Hakone. Since we arrived later in the day and had no cash, we missed the last bus to our hotel whilst trying to find a cash machine to pay for it.

While waiting for Ben to talk to the Information desk and find an International cash machine, two Japanese ladies came and spoke to me using Google Translate. They wanted to know if I was enjoying my stay and if I would have dinner with them. After they found out we had to be somewhere they invited us to breakfast instead, which we also couldn't do. It was quite a strange conversation, but I think they were just very friendly.

Ben finally found a cash machine in a Seven Eleven around the corner and we had to take a taxi to the hotel instead. We finally arrived at the hotel after 9pm! Even though it was late, Ben took advantage of the spa and had a relaxing bath in the hot spring pools before bed. Not wanting to use the "public" baths, I stayed in the room and read a book in bed.

The Prince Hakone Lake Ashinoko Hotel was meant to be one of our relaxing days, when in fact we barely spent 12 hours there since we had to be up, out and on the bus to Tokyo. Ben had a session booked in the afternoon for learning the ancient art of Kintsugi in Tokyo and to get there on time we needed to be up bright & early for the long-distance coach.

Monday, 13th November 2017

We got some snacks for the train journey to Nara, the egg mayo rolls are really delicious and Ben picked a ham and cheese wrap that needed microwaving. One of the nice things about the convenience stores in Japan, is they have microwaves!

After getting off the train we bought a Nara Bus Day Pass which came as a cool printed wooden ticket on a lanyard. We could have walked to the park but we were on a tighter schedule so taking the bus was much quicker.

Deer here:

Deer there:

Deer everywhere!

Walking through the park gates you are greeted by hordes of deer and a small manned cart selling deer biscuits. We don't know what's in them, but apparently it's 100% of a deer's healthy breakfast. When the deer know you have the treats you are suddenly their best friends.

The deer show no loyalty. As soon as they've eaten the proffered biscuit they abandon you in search of another one. They're not here to chat.

Feeding them was an exercise in balance, getting low enough to the ground for good photos whilst trying to avoid stepping in or falling on to mounds of deer poop.

The park was really lovely, and we could see the first colours of autumn starting to show in the trees.

Apart from deer, Nara is famous for Todai-ji, a buddhist temple that houses the world's largest bronze buddha. The temple was very impressive housing many large statues.

The side-pillars of the gateway (in the photo above) held huge statues.

Another gateway on the path to Todai-ji:

Finally we reached Todai-ji temple itself.

And inside, we see the reason for the giant temple building, the giant bronze Buddha.

Around the corner from the Buddha was this angry looking guy and a cute woden model of the Todai-ji temple. I spent a lot of time trying to get nice photographs of the statues in here as it was fairly dark inside. It involved a lot of patience and a steady hand.

One of the pillars had a hole through the middle, and a huge crowd of students were queued up to try and squeeze through it. I watched one man trying several times before succeeding as it was a very tight fit for him.

As the day went on, the deer got pushier. The deer mafia cornered Ben and nipped at his clothing to show him they meant business, until he coughed up the rest of the biscuits he was hiding in his backpack.

Head-height for them was Ben's belt, so he quickly made peace by offering them the last of the deer biscuits.

Since the shrine was shutting as well as the shops we caught the bus back to the station and the train back to Osaka.

Yodabashi-Camera Umeda

We didn't want to spend a huge amount of time looking for somewhere to eat so we headed for Yodabashi-Camera. We knew they had a whole floor of different restaurants and there would be plenty of choice without walking too far.

After our meal, we finished off the evening by perusing the vast selection of cameras and electronics that make up the other floors of Yodabashi-Camera.

(I think this is where we bought a camera case for Alyssa's new camera, and some more camera memory cards)

Street musicians

Exiting Yodobashi we ran into a group of musicians on a street corner singing covers of various pop songs. We stood and listened for a while and a groupie offered us a beer which was very sweet. Ben wanted to buy the CDs they had for sale but we only had a 10000 yen note which they couldn't give change for. He wasn't deterred and ran off back to Osaka station to use some of the cash to top up his Pasmo. Cash in hand he bought both CD's - both solo albums by the lady and the man singing in the photo.

Our feet were definitely feeling a bit tired by now, and we were really glad when we got back to the hotel.

Sunday, 12th November 2017

We woke up to another beautiful day in Hiroshima, packed our bags, and headed to the station to catch the Shinkansen back to Osaka.

Hiroshima was the furthest West we were going to get on this holiday. From now on we'd be heading East, back the way we'd come and back towards Tokyo.

Since most of the day was spent travelling, we didn't take many photos of the actual travel part; so here's a photo of the Shinkansen before we got on it...

... and now it's dark, and we're in Osaka!

Here's a photo looking back at the massive shopping centre which sits on top of Osaka Station. (You can just see the slanted roof of the station off to the left)

Next to the Osaka station is Yodobashi Umeda, another shopping centre that has 6 whole floors of one massive shop called Yodabashi Camera

This was the camera tripod section:

This was just one of the Gundam model aisles:

We saw a lot of different collectible sets.

They started with the usual; cute sets of cats, sets of dogs, your favourite anime characters, anime characters eating sushi, anime characters dressed as sushi, cats representing different countries, dogs crossed with different types of sandich, anime characters crossed with kitchen appliances, poseable skeletons doing household chores...

Words just can't do justice to the sheer variety and inventiveness. You name it, you could collect it.

Also, none of these were one-offs, there was always a whole set of them to collect.

We headed up to the top-floor to look for a new restaurant to try.

Before heading off to a must-see shopping destination: Osaka's Pokémon Centre!

There were Pikachu rucksacks, Pikachu luggage covers, Pikachu noodles to eat in Pikachu ramen bowels with Pikachu chopsticks! It seemed like anything you wanted with Pikachu on, you could get here!

We left the Pokémon Center and headed back to our hotel.

On the way, we stopped off at a corner shop to buy more snacks for tomorrow.

Saturday, 11th November 2017 (Part 2)

We'd visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorials in the morning, and for the afternoon we wanted to visit the island of Miyajima in Hiroshima bay.

To get there from the Peace Memorials, we took a river boat. The boat ride was very pleasant; smooth while traversing the river and just a tad bumpier when out in the ocean. There was a video screen and commentary in both Japanese and English telling us of the different sights we could see out of the window.

We passed the boat's twin heading back the other way.

Miyajima is an island off the coast of Hiroshima; known for it's great torii gate that is surrounded by the ocean during high tide and on dry land during low tide. and Itsukushima Shrine.

The boat docked, and we headed onto the island.

As was Nara, Miyajima is a very popular tourist destination.

It also has its own resident population of friendly deer; though unlike Nara, the deer aren't in a park, but roaming around the island streets and the shore. There were a lot of signs warning against feeding them or trying to touch them.

Itsukushima Shrine & the Great Torii Gate

The main draw for Miyajima is Itsukushima Shrine, an UNESCO World Heritage site.

The torii gate is an exceptionally popular sight for photographers, the promenade was full of people setting up tripods and jostling for the perfect angle.

Plenty of photographers made it easy to find someone to take our photo too:

Mt. Misen Ropeway

After we'd walked through the shrine, we continued further through the streets and made our way to the foot of Mt. Misen.

We wanted to go to the top of the mountain; and for that we would take the ropeway.

Between the town and the ropeway cable-car station were some lovely gardens in the grounds of a particularly fancy ryokan.

Now in Ben's rush to catch one of the last few cable-cars to the top of the mountain, Ben hadn't realised that the last car down from the mountain wouldn't be too long after. When we got to the cable-car station we found that it was packed with scores of people queuing to go back down!

We barely had time to admire the view before we joined the queue ourselves.

By the time we got to the bottom again, the sun had set. We walked back through the gardens we'd seen on the way up. At night they were illuminated with subtle mood lighting that mostly came out terribly on camera.

Back at the bottom of the mountain, we carried on along the streets towards the ferry terminal. All the shops and restaurants were shut now as everything seems to shut earlier on the island.

At nights, the torii gate is illuminated by floodlights from the shore. It practically glows against the black of the bay.

Boarding the ferry that would take us back across the bay to Hiroshima.

Walking back to our hotel, we passed this very long queue outside one of the shops. It had been out the door and around the corner when we walked past it in the morning, and it was still there now late at night. We decided we had to stop and investigate whatever they were selling that was so popular!

The shop was dedicated to a single item. Tray upon tray of identical, golden cheese tarts.

We bought a little bag of four, and ate them almost immediately. They were hot and fresh out of the oven, and absolutely delicious.

Saturday, 11th November 2017 (Part 1)

It wasn't planned, but the day we spent in Hiroshima was also Armistice Day back in the UK. Hiroshima is different, it is a memorial to all of those who died in a single indiscriminate attack, and a symbol of the desire for peace.

A-Bomb Dome Memorial

This building was located almost immediately underneath the atomic blast, and while the surrounding area was flattened the steel dome and thick walls survived although heavily damaged.

Children's Peace Memorial

This memorial was built to remember all the children who have lost their lives due to the bomb. It was inspired by a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the bomb hit and ten years old when she passed away from Leukemia. During her long illness she folded paper cranes which have become the symbol of peace. People from all over the world send paper cranes to the monument.

There were a lot of groups of school children and we were interviewed by several of the older ones for an assignment, wanting to know how foreigners felt when they came to see the memorial.

There were also several anti war and denuclearisation campaigners and a survivor who was not yet born when his mother was exposed to the blast.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Visiting the museum was very emotional, the panorama showed a 360 degree view of the destruction. A Japanese lady stopped us and offered us more information and talked about what we were seeing. She explained she was one of a group of volunteers who strive to teach people about Hiroshima so it is never forgotten.

After visiting the museums and having damp cheeks we caught a boat to the island of Miyajima.

I wish we could have longer than a single day in Hiroshima Prefecture so we could visit other areas of the city, but the plan is to be in Osaka tomorrow.

Friday, 10th November 2017

We got up today ready to leave Osaka and head to Hiroshima; but we caught an early Shinkansen so that we could stop at Himeji on the way and visit Himeji Castle.

Getting to Himeji

It's very easy to get to since you can see the castle at the end of a long wide street the moment you walk out of the train station.

On the way in to the castle we were greeted by several performers who were handing out leaflets for the food festival across the road. We made a note to visit this after the castle. There were lots of signs saying don't eat, drink, smoke or graffiti dotted around the castle grounds.

Himeji Castle

Himeji Castle is known as the White Egret Castle, eluding to it's stunning white colour and supposed bird-like shape.

The long corridor

The main keep

Alyssa could once again demonstrate that this whole country is sized perfectly for her, and I'm freakishly tall by comparison.

As we entered the castle, we of course had to take off our shoes and carry them with us as we went around. The lady at the door also lent us cute little knitted socks to put on our walking sticks.

Getting to the top of the keep took quite a while as it was really busy, it was mostly just one long queue going up and down again. The view was lovely but I wasn't too keen on the stairs, especially in socks on wood. Even I had trouble not bumping my head on the floor above when descending so I'm not sure how Ben managed!

This is a wooden model of the keep, showing the wooden structure that supports it.

We had seen most of the castle and were getting pretty peckish so we decided to go to the food festival we had been told about on the way in.

Himeji Food Festival

The food festival had over 40 stalls selling different delicacies, we were given a map with information entirely in Japanese so we had to do a lot of 'Nan desu ka?' and pointing at items. It was fairly funny because I think it confuses a lot of people; we're pointing at a sandwich and asking "What is this?" - "A sandwich...".

Though the funniest was probably when Ben went to a shop selling nothing but takoyaki (octopus balls), with a giant sign above saying "Takoyaki" and tried to ask "Kono tako wa?" ("Is this octopus?"). The lady definitely looked at him pretty funny.

What food festival would be complete without a samurai?

After all this we had to head back to the train station to catch a train to Hiroshima. We arrived in Hiroshima fairly late but our accommodation was only a short walk away and check in went smoothly. We had booked 'Hiroshima Hana Hotel' which turned out to be 'Hiroshima Hana Hostel' instead, our room was on the top floor and was very basic but suitable for the 2 nights we were staying.

Like in the more traditional houses we had to leave our shoes at the door, we decided to forgo the sandals and just walk around the hostel in our socks.

Thursday, 9th November 2017

Our first full day in Osaka, with 2 prebooked activities meaning we don't have to think much today.

At 10am we had an Osaka Walking Tour with Ichiro, the owner of All Star Osaka Tours. He kindly came and found us when we arrived at the station and got a bit lost. Arriving from the subway, we had a bit of a mix-up with which of the 'South' entrances we were meant to be meeting at. Osaka station had a choice of 'South', 'Upper South', and 'South-Central' entrances!

Our tour had 3 other people on it, all from California, although only 2 of them had actually come together.

The tour showed us the different levels of Osaka Station, including the Japanese gardens at the top and the posh department stores underground. We saw some large Pokemon Center signs and made a mental note to visit when we were back in Osaka.

We learnt about how the diagonal roof of Osaka station is only attached on one side! The other side is on rollers so it can move around slightly if there's an earthquake.

Heading out of the station, we took a quick subway trip to the Shinsekai district of Osaka. Ichiro taught us some local Osakan slang for 'Hello' and 'Thank you' which we then practiced on a waiting shopkeeper who gifted us origami cranes.

Ichiro told us about statues of a figure called Billiken, who is the 'god of things as they ought to be' and is a very popular good-luck charm in Osaka. There are a lot of large golden coloured statues of him in the street and it is thought to be lucky to rub his feet. We found out later that he's not originally Japanese, but the Shinsekai district seemed to have adopted him as their symbol.

Out of the covered alleyways, the main area of Shinsekai was really bright in the sunshine.

He then took us to get a typical Osakan snack of fried things on a stick called [???]. I chose cheese and potato which we then dipped in the communal sauce - described as 'like Worcestershire Sauce'. We also tried a lemonade that came in a old-fashioned-style glass bottle with a round ball in the top that you had to push in to release the pressure and be able to drink.

After the brief pitstop we got back on the underground to Dotonbori, a very busy area, ending at the famous Glico man poster.

We bid farewell to our tour guide and fellow tourists and went to find something to eat. We were spoilt for choice in Dotonbori (it's a modern busy shopping district), and we settled on a Hawaiian themed coffee shop for tasty pancakes with coconut cream.

When we came out of the coffee shop, there were huge crowds gathering for some kind of event on the river. We couldn't figure out what it was, as it didn't seem to have started, but there were loads of discreet security guards patrolling the crowds and looking serious.

We gave up waiting for something to happen, and wandered around some of the shops instead. One shop sold tiny papercraft buildings:

We were flagging slightly by now, so went back to our hotel for a nap before we had to go out for our cooking lesson.

The cooking lesson is at a place called Eat Osaka and we were late again after taking too long of a nap. This meant we had missed the meeting place meet up, but luckily a guy was just locking up the Tower Knives shop and took us round the corner and down an alleyway to a small house equipped with a large table and 6 place settings.

We had a lovely time learning to cook an authentic Japanese meal. We learned to pickle carrots, make miso soup with tofu, rolled omelets, cook delicious pork and create balls of chewy mochi from special rice flour.

There were 2 other couples there, one from Germany and the other from Australia.

Back outside in Shinsekai and the lights had come on:

This building was something to do with sumo wrestling, it was covered with portraits and names of different fighters.

Wednesday, 8th November 2017

It was time to check out from the lovely Toba International Hotel, but not before we devoured copious amounts of their delicious breakfast. We ate more of the same from the previous day, I had Brown Rice Flakes cereal, yoghurt, cinnamon buns and two slices of toast; unfortunately without the Black Cherry Jam. Ben wanted French Toast again but it wasn't on the menu today so he stuck with sausages, bacon, rice, croissants, a Japanese-style omelette, followed by 'breakfast desserts' of Pear Tart and a small cup of set custard.

We packed our bags and left them at the front desk while we continued to visit Toba. It was quite a wet day and we immediately regretted leaving our umbrella with the rest of the luggage.

We took the hotel shuttle bus to the station and then had to leg it over the railway bridge to the other side of the tracks to catch the CanBus to Meoto Iwa. The CanBus is the tourist bus, it travels between all the major tourist attractions in Toba & Ise.

Meoto Iwa

Meoto Iwa are two large rocks in the ocean that are wedded together with a long length of rope.

Near the rocks was Futami Okitama shrine where we could get our shrine book stamped and we bought a votive to hang at the shrine wishing for happiness in marriage. The wall of votives was pretty impressive, this was a popular spot.

Futami Okitama was filled with frogs, though we weren't entirely sure why.

After seeing Mr & Mrs Sea Rock we kept out of the rain with a leisurely stroll through the nearby Ise Paradise shopping centre. The stalls there sold lots of different things and the sales assistants offered small pieces to try; we tried lobster crackers and seaweed crackers. I wasn't a fan of either, especially as I expected it to be sweet; we didn't know it was lobster and were looking at strawberry crackers at the time.

We took the bus back to Toba, but instead of alighting at the station we carried on to Toba Aquarium.

Toba Aquarium

I was slightly wary of going to an aquarium because sometimes the animals aren't cared for correctly but I read online that Toba Aquarium is instrumental in captive breeding of some very difficult and endangered sea creatures such as the dugong and the finless porpoise.

I had a really lovely time and it was a great idea to go because we were out of the rain. The aquarium is a very large building, that seems to be a hodge podge of rooms - except it seems like it was designed that way; probably to accomodate all the different sizes of tanks and enclosures.

The first thing we did was watch the wonderful sea-lion show, he was very clever and performed very dexterous feats. The 'auditorium' was very well designed, lots of seating and it was very easy to see the show. We bought some very tasty hotdogs and chips to eat while watching the show.

A nice Japanese lady sat next to Ben and quizzed us on our holiday, asking if it was a honeymoon and being shocked when we said it was our 5th anniversary. She flattered us by saying we looked 20 after we told her our ages (in Japanese thanks to Sensei Naoko-san).

After the sea-lion show we looked around a few more sections of the aquarium on our way to the other end of the building to see the walrus show.

We found a lot of different animals that looked remarkably like different kinds of Pokemon. Here was Kabuto for example:

The walrus show wasn't in a theatre but in a roped off area with 2 rows of floor level seating and some standing room. The walrus was massive and showed us his many skills kicking a football into a goal (that was less than a foot away), catching thrown rings (when placed gently on his head) and blowing bubbles with a bubble trumpet.

There were lots of school children visiting the aquarium and one of the boys was volunteered to get a kiss from a walrus. His classmates and teacher found it hilarious.

After the show they all lined up to give the walrus a pat on the head or take a photo. We had our photo taken with him when he was back in his enclosure behind his 'Walrustagram' poster.

From the roof of the aquarium we could look across the bay to Mikimoto Pearl Island. We didn't go there, but it's a whole island dedicated to the Mikimoto family business of pearls and pearl manufacture.

Onward to Osaka

We luckily caught the only taxi in the rank of the aquarium on the way out back to the hotel to pick up our bags and managed to convey that we wanted him to wait so he could take us to the station. He got us there in really good time and so we caught our intended train towards Osaka.

It was raining in Osaka too.

Our Osaka hotel was the Richmond Hotel Namba which was a high rise building near a subway station with quite small but comfortable rooms. Since it was dinner time we ventured out soon after check-in to find somewhere to eat. We had ramen again from a chain called Tenkaippin.

I had pork, onions and an egg in a thick chicken broth.

Ben had the same ramen he had before, it's a sort of spicy beef with dumplings.

Tuesday, 7th November 2017

Ise Jingu or Ise Grand Shrine is one of the most important sites for the Shinto religion, and it was definitely one of the busiest temples we visited. The whole shrine area covers a large section of forest and river, sprinkled with many smaller shrines.

To enter Ise Jingu, we crossed the wooden Uji bridge.

We weren't quite sure what this building was at the time, but we've done a bit of research afterwards and apparently this is a room to store rice for the shinto goddess.

This was Naikū, the Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu. You may notice that there are two sets of steps and two plots of land, but only one shrine building. Every 20 years they burn down the whole temple in a big ceremony and completely rebuild the temple on the opposite side.

It wasn't possible to see into these temples, or even to see the buildings themselves! As such a holy place, the public is only allowed up to the fence and gate of the courtyard that surrounds them.

We headed back through the forest and headed out of the temple complex back to the streets of Ise.

There were lots of lovely shops and restaurants here. There seemed to be an interesting mix of very long-established traditional shops & eateries and more touristy shops targeting the pilgrims to the shrine.

We found a shop selling chopsticks in thousands of different styles & materials. We spent a while in here trying to choose some for ourselves, and some as easily-transportable gifts for family back home.

How about a whole shop just for Snoopy?

This was an unagi (eel) restaurant! I loved how they'd made the entrance to their shop subtly advertise their speciality.

We didn't feel adventurous enough to try unagi, but the sign for "honey bun" sounded pretty apetising.

In contrast to the "Honeybun" we also bought what looked like a cheese stick. What it turned out to be was closer to a fish-paste/fish-stick filled with cheese and fried. The texture was a bit weird and we only ate half between us before giving up. The fish/cheese combination was a bit weird for us.