The last full day in Japan, and the Osaka Castle 3D illumination was a pretty spectacular way to end it. The day started off, again very slowly. In general, unless you're a businessman rushing to catch a morning train, days begin much later in Japan than they do in Australia. Shops seem to start their trading hours around 10am, and even at that time there is still very few people at the shops. We've slowly become accustomed to these hours too. Unless we're trave...

We had grand plans for shopping, Osaka aquarium and a visit to Osaka castle for the 3d illumination after dark, but once again temperature and motivation were barriers to getting everything done that we wanted to do. I think our ambitious schedules, which worked at the beginning of the trip, are just starting to catch up with us a little too much, and we're actually having to make a conscious effort to slow down now. We actually had a slow and fairly relaxing ...

Today was the inevitable, but sad day where we moved on from Kyoto, and made our last city hop of the trip. Back to Osaka, where this all began, almost 3 weeks ago. We packed up our belongings, and walked out of our spacious apartment for the last time. The Sakara Apartment was a fantastic find, and is probably the most comfortable place we've stayed in Japan. All for less than the cost of the average twin bed motel room per night. For anyone with children consi...

Again, there was no fixed agenda for today, so the first item of business was to plan today's assault. Since we'd done a fair few of the major temples and shrines on the east of the city, we thought we'd head somewhere different. On the first trip in 2008 we saw Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, the Gold and Silver pavilions respectively. The weather on the day of Kinkaku-ji was stiflingly hot from memory, and Ginkaku-ji was covered in scaffolding in the middle of a f...

Today was designated to be a quiet day. It is now 10:45pm, and I'm just sitting down to write the blog entry. Things never go to plan on our holidays. After the massive day of walking and sight-seeing yesterday, nobody had sufficient ability or motivation to rise at our normal time, which meant that we actually got a small rest on our holiday. A concept which is a little alien to us, and to be honest, feels a little like wasted time. By about 10:30am we were d...