From Shimonoseki we headed to Himeji - a beautiful castle featured in "You Only Live Twice", stopping along the way to pay homage to the god of Japanese fast-food - Yoshinoya (ah, memories of Sydney). Then we caught another lovely shinkansen to Kyoto, the ancient capital, where we headed out for yummy sushi and some beers.
Loyal readers of this blog will know that so far we've been travelling at a pretty relaxed pace. So that first hectic day in Japan took it out of us. So it is a bit of an understatement to say that we were horrified when we learnt of the cruel evil practice of Japanese hostel owners kicking their guests out between the hours of 10:30 and 16:00!! Someone tell the UN! It's not right. You can imagine yours truly, after not enough sleep, being turfed out to sightsee on demand. I wasn't happy and neither was Pete. Dutifully we joined the hordes of tourists at one of Kyoto's temples but our hearts weren't in it - although I did find the main hall beautiful and was highly amused at being interviewed by a group of Japanese kids for a school project. That evening we revived ourselves in a yakitori (stuff on skewers) bar, knowing full well that the copious amounts of beer would not help us get up in time for the anti-curfew the next day.

Feeling better than expected we headed to Japan's most famous zen garden - which was nice but didn't have the impact I was expecting. Far better were the amazing noodles topped with yummy slices of roast pork that we had for lunch.

After a quick look around a food market packed with unrecognisable foodstuffs we then visited the peaceful Inari Shrine - somehow omitted from the Rough Guide but really really lovely. It has hundreds and hundreds of red torii gates lining the paths and in the late afternoon sun the colours and the light were beautiful.


The next day we'd had enough of history (doesn't take long) and hopped on the train for the bright lights of Tokyo, with a quick spot of Fuji along the way.
We had our first taste of sleeping Japanese style (futon mattress rolled out on the tatami-mat floor with a pillow filled with rice husks) and now I understand why the Japanese are so punctual - no one could ever be late for work as there is no risk of sleeping in on the most uncomfortable bed ever. To forget the pain we went to the New York Bar in the Park Hyatt (of Lost In Translation fame) to meet Pete's mate Ian and enjoy what turned out to be the most expensive night of our entire trip so far - we spent in one night a third of what I spent in an entire month in south-west China! It was pretty fantastic though. The views were stunning and we even managed to spot some celebs (OK, OK, not A-list but Vernon Kay and Tess Daly are still a good spot in my book!)


Unfortunately the pace of the preceding days seemed to catch up with Pete and he fell ill on day 3 in Tokyo. Possibly the most hygienic country on the planet and Pete manages to get a stomach bug. Unlucky!
I kept myself busy scoffing sushi at a sushi train (mmm, so nice but some of it is much scarier than the stuff at home) and replenishing my dilapidated wardrobe at Gap and Zara (it had to be done - my jeans, may they rest in peace, had needed repairing twice in the last two weeks). To be closer to the bright lights we moved to a hotel in Shinjuku (one night = roughly 10 nights in the average Chinese hotel for most of our China trip). In Shinjuku we spent a couple of nights just people-watching and trying to spot the most elaborate hair-sprayed bouffant hairstyle... on the boys!
Tokyo really grew on me, I really love it. It's a fantastic place with a real buzz. It has the style of New York crossed with the kookiness of London. My favourite day consisted of a walk in the park in Harajuku, where we saw crazily-dressed teenagers and teddy boys showing off their rock and roll routines , followed by a lunch where I played Wagamama-chef in the cook-your-own yaki soba joint and then we met friends for dinner at a ninja-themed restaurant. Marvellous stuff!


Sadly, Pete was still not feeling 100% but we decided to move on. In search of peace and quiet we headed to the port of Onomichi where we didn't see much but managed to sniff out the liveliest bar in town where we munched on lovely squid and prawn tempura and played scissor- paper- stone with the waiter to get discounts on our drinks.
The next day we went all upmarket and caught a ferry to Miyajima - a shrine island peppered with some lovely expensive Japanese guest houses. Upon arrival we hired bikes and sought out a deserted beach for a dip before lugging our packs past the tame deer around the shrine to our ryokan guest house.

We'd really pushed the boat out here and it was worth it. Our Japanese room had paper screen doors and a low table and we were served a full Japanese dinner in our room. Suitably fish-based, the dinner, which we washed down with chilled sake, consisted of fish & squid sashimi, prawn & fish tempura, fish-flavoured egg custard, strange jelly-type thing topped with fish roe, fried fish, tiny fish-roll aperitifs, octopus salad, little tiny pickled fish, salad, beef & onions cooked on a stove at the table, rice and miso soup. We tried everything but the squid sashimi (raw squid? Maybe next time after I've had more sake??)




After dinner we plucked up the courage to finally brave the sento bath. These are segregated public baths where you strip off, scrub and shower yourself at the side of the huge bath (in view of strangers) and then pop yourself in, all clean, to soak in the bath with the afore-mentioned naked strangers. That is so not British! But, buoyed up by the sake, we went for it and were highly relieved to both find our baths completely empty. Phew!
On our last full day in Japan we woke to heavy rain - quite fitting for our trip to the A-bomb dome and peace museum in Hiroshima. We spent hours in the museum, which was very sobering, and I am now being kept awake at night by the fear that fundamentalist terrorists ever get their hands on an atomic bomb, but enough of that talk. After Hiroshima we caught our last shinkansen back to Shimonoseki. Tired and hungry we went in search of a yakitori bar where we were immediately befriended by the decidedly drunk but totally adorable Yukie, who told us that the cow gut was "AMAZING!", tried to get us to drink sake with a fugu (deadly blowfish) fin floating it it, somehow got us to sing 80s classics to her in the bar (the memory of Pete's rendition of Toto's "Africa" will stay with me forever) and then took us to her flat where we sang to Culture Club, drank more beer and snooped around her Hello Kitty and Miffy-cluttered lovely little flat. Yukie, you're AMAZING!



I really enjoyed my trip to Japan. I loved the quirkiness (girls walking pigeon-toed, railway conductors bowing to everyone as they enter or leave the carriage), I found the cleanliness refreshing after China (toilets you could eat your dinner off that spray water up your bum, beautifully litter-free streets) and I adored the food (sushi, squid tempura, miso soup with clams, tonkatsu, octopus balls, yaki-soba, liver yakitori, mmmm). I won't miss the prices though nor the stress of thinking how much we've spent. So it's a good job that I write this from our beloved China - it's definitely not clean but the food is pretty fantastic and boy is it cheap! It's good to be back!