Travel diary

26th June 2002

Wow, can't believe I've been here over 2 weeks already!

Left Tokyo last Thursday, then went up north-west to Nagano, which has a huge temple, managed to drag myself out of bed at 5am to go to a service there aswell, which involved lots of wailing! Went up into the mountains to a monkey park, they were soo friendly, got some (well lots) of wicked photos of them!

Then spent a few days travelling down through the valleys, which was cool - stayed in a youth hostel in the middle of nowhere for 2 nights, I was the only guest there for the 1st night, so I got the best service from the youth hostel woman, including an amazing dinner!

Stopped in Kyoto for a few days, where I stayed in a dodgy hostel which had thousands of little passages and stairs everywhere, oh and lots of mozzies which I'm still recovering from! Still, it was under 10 pounds a night so I cant complain too much... Kyoto's got a a really nice city, lots of restaurants, a castle, some shrines (no place in Japan would be complete without some shrines), an onsen (hot spa) with a weird electified pool (very weird feeling!)

Spent a day in the old captial from 700AD of Nara, with it's nodding deer that get quite violent when you run out of food, a 15m high Buddha, an over-enthusiastic old Japanese guy who spent 2 hours showing me around, and attempting to find a place to watch the England v Brazil game (some palces we tried, and were suggested: the window of the electrical store, the city hall, a little shop in the arcade with a TV in the window... hmm). Luckily eventually found an English bar without his assistance - was on the verge of heading back to Kyoto it was looking that unlikely of finding somewhere!

Then went down to Hiroshima, which was quite an experience. It's a cool place, wish I'd spent more than a day there to explore some more. I spent the time there in thePeace Park and the museum there, a very humbling experience.

I then made the mistake of wanting to do some walking, so went down to the south island of Kyushu to do some hiking around the volcanoes down there - not a good idea it turns out! It was rather rather rainy down there (admitedly we are in the rainy season, but it wasnt that bad where I was). After 30 minutes of climbing a volcano in the Aso area, it started hailing so I decided enough was enough and gave up! With no sign of the bad weather relenting down there, I headed back up to the central island of Honshu...

Today I'm heading up to a little peninsular with some fishing villages, spending a few days cycling around them, then back to Tokyo for the game in Sunday. Gonna climb Mount Fuji early next week with Nobuko.