For the 1st time on our trip we stayed in a youth hostel (6 days in can't be bad). The must see sight here was the Atomic bomb site. The A bomb had hit the city in 1945 6th August ( almost 62yrs to the day ). For someone who has little interest in history (Matt), I was captivated by the story and sites that we saw. Seeing the A dome, the former promotions hall - a centre piece for pre-war Hiroshima - we were in awe of the destructive capabilities of an atom bo...

From Tokyo we ventured towards Mt. Fuji. We started from the 5th station (at approximately 2200m) at 7:15pm. We were to climb in the dark!We bought wooden poles for walking sticks and hard cleverly bought head torches before we left (thank god for ebay!). Despite this we were under prepared.Night set in and we scrambled up. The temperature was dropping and we found it tiring. When stopping at mountain huts to catch our breath the chill started to creep in.After 2...

Tokyo Full of confidence we left Osaka and our fluent Japanese resident behind (Ben), whos house we`d been staying at. Despite one little hiccup of boarding a terminated train, and being the only ones sat on there for 5 mins, we eventually made it to Capital Tokyo. We had managed to stay in a hotel for cheap using a similar web system to last minute.com. It was fab, with the main highlight beinhg a BIDET in our room and a OSEN (Japanese style sauna). The Japan...

I have added two blog entrys at once, so I could get two photos in (so check out the out the previous one also)! When I figure this thing out a bit more hopefully we`ll get some of our own up. This photo is of a temple in Kyoto, which we are going to visit next week, but I popped it in as it`s similar to what we saw today at Nara. Nara is a nearby city (8th century capital infact) that contains temples, shrines, gardens and free-range deer (complete with antler...

We have now spent 3 full days inOsaka. Day 1 (friday) Matt and I decided to be brave and venture around on our own. We went on a ferris wheel (like the London eye), did some shopping and visited a castle. Wandering round the shops the thing I found most interesting was the fashion. The japanese dress so well?especially the women,?although they very often wear heels which makes their knees point in, we have noticed! In the shopping mall we also visited an arcade ...