Our trip on the shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto began with a sighting of some sumo wrestlers! Dressed is airy summer yukata they waited for a train on the other side of our platform! As always when travelling between Tokyo and Kyoto make sure to sit in seats D & E to try and get … Continue reading Japan 2010: Day 8 Kyoto- Kinkakuji and Gion
Having been in Tokyo on 4 separate trips before, I have already visited most of the main tourist spots. I wanted to visit some less well known places in our one full Tokyo day, starting in Nezu. Nezu is north of Ueno park, and is one of the only areas in the whole of Tokyo … Continue reading Japan 2019 Day 14: Tokyo's Cat Temple Gotokuji
Our penultimate day in Japan and our final day in Yamanashi prefecture, a sad day. We awoke at 3am as we wanted to get to the north shore of Kawaguch-ko for sunrise, and without a car this walk is almost 2 miles, so we needed a quick start. It was the darkest morning we had … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 17; Kawaguchi-ko and Narita-san
Day 12 was going to be another fun packed day of adventuring around the fuji five lakes area. On this morning we decided to pick another spot for sunrise and got up very early to drive over to the other side of Ohashi bridge, to a little spot of rocky shore line. Unfortunately no red … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 12 – Kawaguchi-ko pt 3; Yamanaka-ko, Gotemba, shrines and mountains
Today was the day to leave Kyoto, after five nights of travelling far and wide each day we headed towards Hachioji, a small area on the Western edge of Tokyo. The only claim to fame for Hachioji is the nearby Mt Takao, a popular hiking spot with a view of Mt Fuji on a clear … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 9 – Hachioji & Mt Takao
Staying overnight in Hiroshima enabled us to travel over to the very famous Miyajima, in Hiroshima bay. To get there you need to take a local train to the ferry station (JR pass can be used) and then get the ferry. There are two ferry companies running frequent boats between the port and island, both … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 7 – Miyajima island
For our next trip, getting the most out of our JR passes, we headed far to the south, our destination for a nights stay was Hiroshima. We managed to book (not by choice) very early tickets on the shinkansen with a planned stop in Himeji, as we were forced to get an earlier train than … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 6 – Himeji & Hiroshima
On day 5 we awoke in the beautiful ancient capital of Kyoto. As we have traveled to Kyoto before we weren't planning on spending much of our time in the city itself, rather using this as a base in central Japan to travel around. Today we wanted to visit another castle, after being so impressed … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 5 – Hikone castle
On our fourth day in Japan we left the capital to continue our journey across Japan. Unfortunately we left it until the late afternoon to book our shinkansen tickets (using our JR pass) and so all the trains before 10 were fully booked! We did manage to get seats D and E as this is … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 4 – Kyoto
On our last day in Tokyo we activated our 7 day JR Rail Pass- such a bargain! To start our trips outside of Tokyo we headed to Matsumoto to visit Matsumoto castle all the way up in Nagano prefecture. There is no direct train to Matsumoto so we took the shinkansen to Nagano station and … Continue reading Japan 2017: Day 3 – Matsumoto
My Nihon 