Merry Christmas! Today we went to Nara, a smaller town about 30mins by train from Osaka. We did a 3 hour walk amongst the temples, shrines and deer and enjoyed the drizzling rain and nearly empty walkways. We had both been to Nara on our previous visits to Japan so it was cool to go back there and remember everything. Some of the famous landmarks in Nara are the Todaji temple with giant Buddha inside and also the 3 and 5 storey pagodas. We got our fortunes at t...

This morning we were up fairly early and after showering and bundling up we headed to the train station to make our way to the aquarium. It was pretty chilly today and the icy wind was face numbingly cold. The aquarium was packed (we think it was a public holiday) and we slowly bustled our way around the exhibits. The cutest was by far the otters who were great swimmers and showed off for the crowd. One guy in particular exclaimed "Kawaii!" (cute) at everything....

We have arrived in Japan! We had a fairly uneventful flight over with just a few turbulence issues at take off. Thankfully international Jetstar is much better than domestic. We arrived at Osaka at around 8pm and made a quick escape out of the airport and into the very brisk winter air. This may take some getting used to! After validating our rail passes we hopped onto the train only to go a few stops and having to get off due to a problem with the train (or s...