The last night in Japan!! Well Japan has been amazing and the 18 odd days has flown by. Tomorrow we board a ferry to Beijing, which leaves at 8pm Tuesday to arrive 9am Friday. Word on the street is that we will be forced to sing Karaoke which apparently is a tradition for any westerner on the ferry! No doubt the next few days will be full of blogs as we try to kill time. We have loaded up the kindle with free books, downloaded all the Ricky gervais Freecasts an...

Just sat in mister donut again, quite possibly the greatest chain of coffee shops in the world! 2 donuts a day is the average, and unlimited refills on the coffee (sadly not on the doughnuts!) The day in a nutshell.... It was so warm last night I woke up covered in sweat, Japanese heating appliances are not as straight forward as you think, and Claire had her meat on a stick stolen off her by a baby sparrow!

Last day in Sapporo today before catching the overnight train back to Tokyo. I didn't think this place could get any colder then last night it started to snow....and when I say snow.....I mean proper snow! Not the stuff that falls in Preston and gives you false hope of a white Christmas!!! This is a major covering of thick aunt bessy icing sugar!!! But all is could because we had a heated blanket at our coach surf stay with Anna. However, body warm, head freezi...

To save a little money over night train it was then. And to be fair, a lot better than what I expected! Heated...mat...thing, curtain, cushions....quite comfortable. John loved it, so much so he slept in only his boxers!!! Every now and then I was woken by major banging, train coming to a dramatic holt, at some points it felt like it had left the tracks!! But we arrived safely at 6am in Sapporo in the freeeeezzzzzziiinnnnggggggh cold! I'm not joking, the ladies a...

On board the bullet train (another thing ticked off the bucket list for a train geek!) watching the teams clean the trains is like a military operation. The red coats run on, clean everywhere, turn the seats around and all done within 5 minutes. Impressive! To save on pennies we are off to Aomori before getting the sleeper to Sapporo, although we had a food fail this morning and had a double sausage egg mcmuffin! In our defence we have been up since 5am as it w...