Japan!

Hello there!
It's been a while since I wrote a blog - the main reason being internet access in Japan cost an arm on a leg, so I was never on long enough to write one! We are now in the beautiful city of Auckland in New Zealand staying with friends of Jake's parents. It's been so nice staying in a proper hosue eating proper food for a change.
Anyway, I feel a quick overview of Japan is in order. When we first arrived in Tokyo 3 weeks back it was a culture shock to say the least. Their train system is extremely efficient but extremely comlicated so it took us a while to work out how to get around. The hostel we stayed in on our first night was disgusting so we were glad to get out of there. Overall, I have to say Tokyo was a little disappointing. I expected it to be as good, if not better than Hong Kong. But really it reminded me of London, except without the sights. In other words it's a massive bustling city without many things to see. We did have some excellent meals out there though - my favourite being a teppenyaki restaurant where they cook all the food in front of you. Yum!
Next we spent a night in a little place called Nikko which has a famous cluster of beautiful temples and shrines set in the hills. Then we took the train up to the Japan Alps where we spent a few days touring around Nagano, Matsumoto and Kamicoche. The scenery was beautiful in the Alps and we did lots of hiking - plus Matsumoto castle was a real highlight. Whilst in Nagano and Matsumoto we were lucky enough to stay in 'Ryokan' which are traditional Japanese Inns. You basically sleep on a futon and you get your own robe to wander around in ... fab! We also visited a couple of 'onsen' which are basically natural hot spring baths. Only draw back is you have to go in naked!!
The train to Kyoto was long and tiresome - it took about 6 hours to get there in the end. But once we got there it was worth it as it's a great city. Much better than Tokyo in my opinion! We stayed near the train station which was convenient so we could see the sights quite easily. Once again Kyoto was temples, temples and more temples - but some of them were just incredibly beautiful. The highlight for me though was when we visited the Gion district, we managed to spot 11 real life Geisha! Apparently it's really rare to see just once, so we were incredibly lucky.
After spending three days in Kyoto we went to Nara for a day. What a wonderful, quirky place! Here we saw Todai-ji temple which is the biggest wooden building in the world, and inside is the larges enclosed Buddah in the world. It was awesome! The best thing about Nara though is the deer! There literally hundreds of them everywhere and they are so tame. We also visited an absolutely idyllic Japanese garden . But Jake had an accident while we were there... he opened a bottle of coke and for some reason the lid flew off the bottle and hit him in the cheek! All I saw and heard a loud bang and Jake shouting "SHIT"... I thought he has been shot! Luckily it only cut him a little bit. Good job it didnt get him in the eye.
Next on the list was Hiroshima - probably the place I most wanted to visit in Japan, obviously because of the history. What really struck me about Hiroshima is how green and modern it is and the people seem so happy and positive! For some reason I expected it to be all doomand gloom. We spent at least 4 hours looking around the amazing Peace Memorial Museum, which told the history of the atomic bomb and told stories of the aftermath. The museum was set in beautiful grounds in the epicentre of the bomb, and there were lots of memorials to the dead. The most famous building there was the so-called 'A-Bomb Dome', the only building in the whole city that has been left in the state it was in after the bomb. I spent a bit of time sketching it from the other side of the river.
The following day we took a boat across to nearby Miyajima which is famous for its bright orange floating tori shrine. Then we went to Matsuyama for a night which is actually not on the main island of Honshu, it's on the island of Shikoku. It's a really pretty city and we went up to see the castle thats perched on a hill right in the centre. That evening we went in another onsen... bliss!
A couple of nights were spent in the mental city Osaka. We visited one part of called 'America-Mura' where teens parade around in American gear. I'm afraid some of them look rather silly with their orange skin, fake blonde hair and hot pants. It doesnt look quite right somehow.
Our last stop (before flying out from Tokyo) was Mount Fuji! We got a bus up to the 5th station which is about half way up the mountain last Thursday afternoon. Then we started to climb it. It was gruelling to say the least, and at some points we were pretty much rock climbing! That evening we stayed in a mountain hut about 2,500 metres up. Then we resumed climbig at 4am the following morning having had roughly zero hours sleep. The views were incredible though cos the clouds had cleared - you could see all the way down the mountain and across the landscape to other distant mountain and towns. We arrived at the summit at 8am absolutely exhausted, but then the only way was down again! I know it sounds strange but the journey back down was about 10 times harder. This was because the path was made of rubble, was quite steep, and zig-zagged really repetitively down the mountain. I found it physically but mostly mentally draining. By the time we reached the bottom at noon, we all almost collapsed.

So that's Japan in a nut-shell! Will try and write about Kiwi-country soon
Miss you all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx