Japan

My first impression of Japan was weird. I was tired, since I hadn't been able to sleep on the plane. So it seemed like I was experiencing everything through a veil. But the language... it all seemed so familiar and strange at the same time. I realised that through anime I knew more about Japan than I had thought I would and at the same time, the experience was totally different from what I had expected. Like driving a car for the first time, for example.

I had arrived at Tokyo Narita airport and had to go to Haneda for my connecting flight to Sapporo, which was a chore. I had to take a bus that took over an hour. The weather was foggy, but hot and humid at the same time and my sleep deprivation gave me weird dreams.

At Sapporo I tried to talk to a Japanese guy, to try out my limited Japanese I had taught myself over the last few months. Since my pronunciation was pretty good, he just assumed that my Japanese was as well and replied to me in rapid fire fashion, which was scary. I had to tell him that my Japanese is not good at all and felt a bit ashamed for talking to him and not being able to maintain a conversation. I took the bus to the city and then just crashed at the hotel for a while.

In the evening I went to Tanukikoji shotengai (shopping street) and had some ramen at a ramen restaurant. It was a restaurant where you needed to buy a food ticket at a vending machine first. The ramen was really good! I don't know what they put into the soup, but it was absolutely delicious and made the eggs something of a miracle! They also had free tea, which I learned was something of an institution at ramen restaurants.

Later on I also had a Cremia ice cream, which I can only recommend.

Some people have strange jobs here, like walking around with information signs (why not just make a signpost?), or waving people to places, like down the stairs, or along a road, or over an intersection. On the cuter side: platform staff bow to buses when they leave the platform and ground staff wave air planes goodbye.

Everything talks to you here. The stairs say "watch your step", the ATM greets you, and so on.

I slept in, since I was tired.

The guy in the hostel was really nice and gave me details on how to get a SIM card. He even showed me the exact location and showed me a picture of the shop where I could get a two month prepaid Internet only SIM card.

The first thing that I noticed was that Sapporo is really quiet, the cars are quiet, the people are quiet, the streets are quiet. It was a relaxing change after the hustle and bustle of South-east Asia. It took me actually a while to realise that the calm on the streets was mostly because there where absolutely no motorcycles here.

I walked through Odori Park and to Sapporo station to ge the SIM card.

I wanted to go to the botanical garden, but, since it was past 4pm by the time I got there, it was already closed. So, I went to the former Hokkaido Government Building. There was a market there. A lot of people gave me small treats for free for some reason. I wondered whether it was because I was a foreigner or if that's just the way it was done here. Everybody was really nice, warm, and welcoming and no one spoke any English, so I had to work with what little Japanese I had. It was fun. I had some drinkable water diluted vinegar as a taster and when I bought some takoyaki I got mochi for free. I sat down to eat in the park close by.

Also, can I just mention that takoyaki is my favourite food? I love it.

Next, I went to the Clock Tower and then to the Sapporo Tower. The latter is a TV tower like the Tokyo tower, with the same colours, but smaller.

After the tower I went to the Sapporo Factory Mall and tried to purchase a dumpling with my fragmented Japanese.

In the evening I went to the Susukino area and watched the interesting and colourful people pass by. There were these guys that looked like they were anime bishounen (beautiful boys, with nice hair and make-up) at the corner of one of the malls. Later someone would tell me that they were there every night to recruit ladies for jobs at strip clubs or similar shady businesses. I don't know how much of that is true, though.

It's interesting that bikes and pedestrians share the side walk, similar to Germany. There are no distinct lanes, so things become a bit more chaotic, but bikes are mostly supposed to ride on the side of the side walk that's closer to the street.

There are these small stores all over the place: Lawson, 7Eleven, FamiliyMart, DailyYamazaki etc. that sell nice bentos (Japanese meal packs) and good salads as well as comics, porn magazines, and fast food and all sorts of small amenities.

There are practically no trash bins, but Japan is not the only country with that problem. A lot of South-east Asian countries are the same.

Japanese people seem to sleep everywhere. On the train, at the pachinko machines, in parks. I think I read somewhere that sleeping is deemed as a good sign, because it means that you've been working hard.

I travelled to Shiraoi. This was my first time using the Japanese train system and it appeared that you have to use the exact ticket for the exact train. I missed my train, because I didn't figure out fast enough which platform it was on, so I had to do something called "fare adjustment". It cost a small fee, and changed the ticket to a different train. Later on, I would find out that this had only been such an issue because I had made a reservation with my ticket.

There was also another reason why I had missed my train. My SIM card had not been working so far. So when I explained my problem to the people I had bought them with, the relegated me to a service hotline, where I had a service lady talk and someone translating what she said to English and what I said to Japanese. Needless to say that meant that this phone call took about three times longer than it would have normally taken. Plus, it resulted in nothing that would have helped me.

Went over Tomakomai, and arrived at Shiraoi perfectly on time (also there was a cute house with a face on the way... which was awesome). The reason I wanted to go to Shiraoi in the first place was the Ainu Museum there. The museum is basically a set of different houses, each showing an aspect of Ainu culture. One showed music, with a demonstration of instruments and dance, others showed various different crafts. You could even take courses. There were even cages with bears and wolves. The patterns and colours reminded me of Maori culture.

I went to a house where they showed how to weave with grass. There was a lady there who was really interested in me, since I was the only European looking foreigner around. We talked for a while, I tried my best in my broken Japanese. When words failed, we used gestures and drawings. It turns out that she had been travelling through South America, namely Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, as a guitar player who played traditional music. She's a single mother. She also told me that, no, unfortunately she can no longer speak the Ainu language, her grand-mother spoke it, her mother still spoke a few words, but she doesn't. For some reason, even though the conversation was about trivial things, it got very emotional by the end. I almost cried and she started crying, too. It's hard to explain why. She ended up giving me a reed woven bottle holder and a woven key chain as a gift, even though I initially refused (in part out of politeness, in part because I was so taken aback by this gesture that I didn't think I deserved it) but she, of course, insisted. We literally parted in tears and I realised that I really liked this woman. I can't really explain it, but it was all very moving.

I was hungry and went to a restaurant at the museum. I met another Japanese guy called Kenji there. He was in his fifties and spoke English, since he had taken American conversation classes. He seemed like a nice guy and he offered me to drive me around in his car. He showed me the ice stadium of Tomakomai since he really likes ice hockey. Then we had tea in a really cute tearoom lead by an old lady. It was full of bricabracs and nice water colour paintings. I took picture if him and his yellow car and he gave me his meishi (business card).

Later on I went back to Sapporo.

Toilet seats are often heated and toilets have all kinds of buttons and functions here. Sometimes I have trouble finding the flush button, especially since toilets for women have something that's called otohime (sound princess), a button that makes the sound of flushing so women can mask the sound of their peeing with it. It had to be installed, because most woman would constantly flush their toilet out of embarrassment of making other people hear their defecation sounds. I am not kidding.

In Japan, most of the areas on the open streets are non-smoking, but restaurants and rooms are still smoking areas`. Here, the smell of cigarette smoke is much more prevalent than in any other country I've been to on this trip.

I had to change hotels and had to get my last rabies vaccination today. I had organised a clinic the other day, going through about four of them (they had to speak English and they had to accept people without a doctor's notice, so that narrowed it down). On my way to the clinic I found two shops that I immediately loved. Kinokuniya, if you have been reading my blog at all, you already know about this one, and Yodobashi Camera. Yodobashi Camera is basically all electronic gadgets and accessories, plus board and video games, music, plastic anime figures, and toys and so much more! I love it! Since my USB cables break every other month, I went and bought a new one there.

I bought an ekiben (train station meal pack) at the train station and took the train to Otaru.

I met a Colombian named Rafael on the train. He'd been living in Japan for the last 15 years and owned food trucks in Tokyo and Okinawa and a restaurant in Sapporo. He had originally come to Japan for his ex-girlfriend and ended up staying. As we talked mostly about food, he offered to take me to a really good sushi place and I agreed. I would meet him after a meeting he had in Otaru.

I walked to the Otaru canal and along the waterfront for a while.

Then met up with Rafael again, to eat on of the best sushi I have ever had in my life. The fish was the freshest I have ever tasted.

We went back to Sapporo together and he took me to a Belgian beer festival, that had been co-organized by one of his friends and I met a few Japanese people there, who were very curious about me. I more and more get the feeling that Japanese people are a bit more curious about strangers here than in other places. At least more interested than what people told me. I could not say much in Japanese, but Rafael did most of the talking anyway.

For some reason Rafael convinced me to go to this club called King Xhmu. I usually don't go to clubs, since I don't like crowds and loud noises, but I thought it may be a good experience. It was... interesting. First of all, I got a Hello Kitty balloon at the entrance. People were really crazy there, dancing and laughing almost like they were mad. All the Japanese wanted to dance with me, I guess because I was a foreigner. I was pushed and pulled onto a high dancing stage more than once. Also, people want talk to you, some even made conversational sexual advances. One such advance was from a guy who was 10 years younger than me, which really surprised me. Most people who talked to me spoke good English though. The previously mentioned youngster who was making advances had been studying in Toronto for 3 years.

Another guy who made advances was Rafael, even though I had told him that I was with someone. It became uncomfortable, so I did something I usually don't do, because I think it's rude. I ditched him and left the party.

There are a lot of announcements everywhere and they are usually long and tell you what you are not allowed to do. You don't talk loudly on the train for example, and phone conversations are frowned upon. It's also best to keep your phone in silent mode.

On some trains the backs of the seats or the entire seat row are moveable. This means you can make them all face the same way or make compartments of four. I think that's rather ingenious.

The hostel I had changed to is rather nice. Unlike in the other one, where there was absolute silence in the rooms, people actually talked to you. Getting up today was difficult after yesterday's clubbing experience. The breakfast was delicious though. Thick, soft toast and a square of the most wonderful butter.

I was going to Asahikawa today to visit Amiria and Kaz. I met a Thai girl living in Russia at breakfast and we were sharing a taxi to the train station. We went shopping at the mall with our luggage while waiting for the train and I showed her Daimaru, a mall chain that has an underground floor with local delicacies and food souvenirs. She bought some fine food to bring back to her family and I bought some chocolates for Amiria and Kaz.

Asahikawa has a really nice train station. All made from wood. Amiria and Kaz got me from the station and we went back to the apartment.

In the afternoon and early evening we walked a bit through the city centre. We went to see a small gallery in one of the upper floors of a building. Kaz knew the guy working there. Then we went to a ramen place and to a bar where we could try different beers. We also watched a few people at a calligraphy course we just happened to stroll by.

In the evening, we went to a concert of a band that Kaz knew. They were called the Zoobombs. Their concert was very, very loud. We tried to stuff our ears with tissues, but it was still almost unbearable. Literally, so loud that my ears started hurting when I uncovered them. The music was ok. Rock with bad English or Japanese.

After the concert we talked to the band members. It turned out that they had been playing music for the last 25 years, which is pretty amazing.

Amiria and Kaz's apartment is really pretty. They have one room in the traditional Japanese style with tatami mats and a futon. The smell of the tatami is really interesting. It's almost like sleeping a hayloft.

We went up in the morning to get to a small festival in Higashikawa. It was rather cute. Kaz played the guitar there. They had an artisan market as well with jewellery, plushies and a place where kids could do wood cutting. It was rainy and we didn't stay long. Again Kaz knew a lot of people.

We went to a soba restaurant for lunch, and I had tempura (fried-battered food) soba. It was very good.

In the afternoon Amiria and I walked through town. It was still rainy, so we went to a mall. We bought pens at the stationary and looked for books at a bookshop. They had lots of interesting books, even bilingual ones. I ate haskap ice cream at the food court there, which I really like and had a cocoa. Then we bought sushi for dinner and went back to the apartment through a small local street festival that was on that day. We saw a guy who did yo-yo tricks, a girl who dressed up as a cat girl, sorta, and sang on the street.

Back at the apartment we just sat there, watched TV and talked.

Japanese TV is mesmerising, everyone is so happy and lively. Most shows are about food, hobbies, and vacation and there are game shows, too. Lots of times you have a couple of hosts discussing things or reacting to something that's happening.

When Kaz came back, we watched two cartoons, associated with Japanese Sunday afternoon culture: "Chibi Maruko-chan" and "Sazae-san", then a house makeover show called "Before-After", I think.

In the evening Kaz's sister Kazuki came over, we talked some more. I was surprised to learn that going to the pachinko parlour is actually rather common these days and that a lot of people, even young ones, do it.

I had breakfast with Amiria. Then I packed and said my goodbyes. I was a bit sad to leave, since I liked the two.

I locked my bags in a locker at the train station and took the bus to Asahikawa Zoo.

Buses in Japan have an interesting system. You enter through the back door and take a ticket with a number on it. The bus fare is displayed on a screen in the front of the bus. When you get out you pay the fare that is shown on the screen under the number on your ticket. You just drop the coins and the ticket into the machine at the driver's seat.

The bus driver was pretty funny. I entered the correct amount of money and he said "Safe!" (as in baseball) very loudly and made the appropriate gesture.

The zoo was pretty cute. All the animal signs were made from wood and were hand painted. But, of course, the cages were a tad too small and some of the animals were showing stereotypical behaviour, like the bear and the tanuki. So, it was pretty much like a lot of zoos I've seen in Europe. My favourite animal was the Hokkaido deer. The horns were pretty majestic. I hadn't expected that.

I took the bus back and then took the train to Yobito. It was a nice ride with rice fields glinting in the sunlight, a lot of wide and hilly landscapes, and forests and rivers. There were also a lot of hikers and people in sports gear on the train, mostly men. There were a lot of interesting sounds, too, like the dinging of the barriers, and the train using the horn when entering a tunnel. At Kitami, a lot of students boarded. It was seven in the evening and dark already, because of time zone reasons. I was quiet surprised that they had been studying for so long.

The ryokan I stayed at was really small and you could hear every sound. It was pretty old and a bit smelly, but it was alright though. The rooms were Japanese style. That meant tatamis and futons and the nice smell of dried flax. I had to check in with a nice lady at the restaurant close by. She didn't speak English at all, but I made due. Since I was tired and there didn't seem to be anything else, I had dinner there. Something called Ghengis Khan, a dish where you roast everything on a convex round plate of iron.

With Japanese getting and giving the right amount of money seems to be important. This can work in your favour or not. You will always get the right amount of money back though, and there are not tips.

Hotels are very inflexible here. You have to know what you are doing way in advance and most of the time you can't change your booking unless you do it three weeks before the date.

It gets dark so early here, shortly before eight, and it's summer! In turn it gets light at half past four in the morning.

I wanted to go on a small hike along the nearby lake, but I noticed a sign at the entrance that said that a bear had been spotted not too long ago.

I didn't have bear spray nor a bear bell with me, so I walked along the river and the road to Abashiri instead. I walked through a nice camp ground where a saw pretty flowers. And I got stung by huge mosquitoes.

I decided to go to the prison museum where I learned about Abashiri prison, known to be the prison where the worst criminals got sent to. I learned that Hokkaido hadn't been settled by the Japanese until sometime in the middle to the end of the 19th century, and that the settlement was significantly hastened by the conflict between Japan and Russia. Japan wanted to settle Hokkaido before the Russians could, so they built a road straight through the island, using prisoners. The road was build within a few short months and the work load was reported to be inhumane. Some 6 to 8 people had died every day.

Later, I took the bus to the Museum of Northern Peoples. It was about all aspects of life of the people living in the high north. It was small but very interesting.

In the evening I took the bus to Abashiri proper and walked around a bit. I tried out Mr. Doughnut. Then I walked up the hill to get a better view. I watched people doing baseball practice and drank green beer at a place called Yakiniku.

All in all it had been a fine day.

Traditional Japanese room ceiling lights have three different light stages and they are switched between by pulling on a cord that hangs down from the lamp in the middle of the room.

Apparently the best protection against bears is a bear bell, because like this they can hear you coming and get away before you can surprise them. Personally, I believe a bear spray is the best solution.

I took the train to Kushiro through lush green forests and lots of tunnels. Along the coast it was all lonely fishing villages, empty beaches and beautiful wild flowers. Then, mountains and more agriculture as we went inland. There were areas that smelled of sulphur and that were clearly onsen places. I noticed that almost everyone on the train looked older that me.

In Kushiro, I had a hotel close to the train station, but there was nothing to do here. It was foggy, too, which was a bit depressing. I looked at the option to go to Lake Akan, and realised that the buses here have stupid time tables and that I would only be able to be there for 4 hours tomorrow. So I decided on a whim to go tonight. I booked a second hotel and took a bus for two hours. The bus ride was really good. Almost only forest as soon as you got further inland and the smell of pine trees was hanging in the air.

It turned out that this had been a good decision. Lake Akan was great! So peaceful! My hotel included dinner and it was a full, really good dinner, too. With a Ghengis Khan and everything. I also came to talk to two older Koreans who shared their Korean seaweed with me, which, for some reason, was better than the Japanese seaweed. They had come here for fishing.

After dinner I went to the very touristy Ainu village, packed with shops stocked to the brim with Ainu craft. I watched a fire ritual dance there. Even though the atmosphere was nice, it felt a bit too fake and commercial to me. Almost a bit like Rotorua.

I noticed that, apart from the smell of cigarette smoke, another smell that I will probably forever associate with Japan, or at least Hokkaido, is the smell of cabbage. You smell it in the most unexpected places, like, for example, on the toilet of the hotel I was staying in. Since I like cabbage, I'm ok with that, but it's kind of taking you aback at times.

I tried out the hotel's onsen in the morning. It was my first time to wear a yukata. I didn't really know how to tie the knot, so I had to look it up on the Internet. I had breakfast with the Koreans again. Since they had gone fishing in the morning they had been up since four. I had natto (fermented beans) for the first time, too, and did not like it at all. To me it tastes a bit like puke, to be honest.

I took a walk along the lake and through the forest. You hear lots of loud crickets and frogs here. The lake view is beautiful and calming. The path lead to some bubbling hot springs with warning signs everywhere not to go near them. It kind of felt like New Zealand again.

There was also an Ecomuseum Center telling people about the fauna and flora of the lake and the surrounding area. Most of all the cute little moss balls that grow in the lake, called marimo. And since they are cute, of course, stores here sell an incredible amount of cute merchandise with them. The museum was only in Japanese, but a guide helped me out with an iPad with some English text. I also tried talking to the museum staff. It was fun, but again, my bad Japanese stopped me from truly communicating.

I went to the Ainu shopping street again to buy souvenirs.

Then, I just sat by the lake for a while. I had noticed when I had walked past a school that all the kids that were coming out of it, were wearing bear bells, which didn't instil much comfort in me, to be honest.

In the afternoon I took the bus back into the fog of Kushiro.

After a brief rest, I decided to have dinner in the city and walked the streets. If found a mall with restaurants at the top floor that were still open. I sat down at a yakitori and ordered some food. There were two people there, a woman and a man. While I was eating my skewers, the lady suddenly shows me her phone with the Line-translated sentence on it "I am sorry that I can't communicate with you." I answered that I speak a little Japanese, and that started a conversation with her and the guy who served the yakitori. It was pretty awesome and completely unexpected. We talked about Switzerland, Japan and all kinds of other topics with the help of Google Translate and Line. It lasted until after midnight, and it was amazing! Ayako, the lady, was a single mother who worked in a sento and loved K-Pop. Masato mostly asked me questions and revealed very little about himself, so I somehow felt I should not pry too much.

After a very heartfelt goodbye, I went back to the hotel.

So, there are two important things you should know about kimonos and yukata: the left side is always worn over the right. This is the case, since the dead are buried with the right side over the left. The sash is always on the back. If it would be in the front, you'd look like a lady of the night. House yukata are another matter. There, the sash is worn in the front the right.

Some people have a small TV in their car where the navigation is, how does this not distract them?

I sometimes think the predominant colour here in Hokkaido is brown, or "faded". There is a lot of dark wood, and you sort of feel like you went back to the seventies or to remote areas in northern USA or Canada. The landscape is similar, too.

The crossroads here are like American ones. This means that always one direction of the cross is green and the other is red. That makes reading traffic really easy.

Kushiro's fog is actually quite beautiful.

I took the train to Furano today to see the lavender farms and the flower fields. The train ride, again, was very beautiful: lush green forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, small villages. It looked like Canada or the Jura sometimes. I also met some nice Malaysian people on the train, and, later on, two Americans who were teachers in Tokyo.

Mizuki, the Japanese girl I had met in Australia, had told me to try lavender ice cream, so I took an old vintage train to Lavendar Batake farm and did just that. There were many tourists there, but the weather was great and the fields were really pretty, too.

In Hokkaido, trains are apparently not as reliable as the trains over the rest of Japan. On my way back from the farm to Furano station, one of the trains on the schedule did not run at all. Also, they mostly consist of a single cart and the conductor is in the front of the train, right along with his machine that controls the tickets. Usually tickets are controlled at the stations, but here stations are so small sometimes, that they are not staffed, so the ticket gets controlled when you exit the train.

What I realised on my journey through Hokkaido though, is that this is very much a car country, and I vowed that, if I ever came back, I would do so with a car.

In the evening I went back to Sapporo. The hostel I had there was really good and the staff was pretty nice.

People here eat something that is called kakigoori, shaved ice. Like in a lot of other places in South-east Asia, it's ice with pretty much any colour of syrup you can imagine.

Sapporo is an urban sprawl, and every suburb sort of looks the same. This became especially apparent, when my mobile malfunctioned one day and I had to find my hostel on my own. I had to go to a hotel and ask for a map.

Japanese people often have these cloth sleeves over their books, so you don't know what they are reading. Probably to keep their privacy.

There are jingles and music everywhere: at train stations, malls, through speakers on the street, you name it.

I slept in, stored my luggage at the hostel and went to the vicinity of the Sapporo Beer Museum, since someone had recommended it to me. To my surprise there was an impromptu market and festival there, with dance performances, friendly, lively people, and a lot of food stalls. I had a black coloured meat bun.

For lunch went to the beer garden though. The food hall there is really quiet impressive and kind of reminded me of a German beer hall. I had a really nice dark beer and another Ghengis Khan there.

Then, I went back to Sapporo train station to get lost in the mall beneath and go to Yodobashi Camera to buy more USB cables there (I swear, they break every other month).

Then, I went to the airport. At the security check, I thought I had to give up my water bottle, but it turns out that they have a machine that checks the fluid in the water bottle and if it turns out to be water, then you get to keep it. It's ingenious! I wonder why other airports don't do that?

So, next I flew to Tokyo. People seem to be a lot more stressed there and a lot more reserved and less friendly. At the same time though, they are also exceedingly well dressed. The subway system is incredibly complex and I was overwhelmed for a moment.

My hostel was in a really cute neighbourhood called Higashikomagata close to Tokyo Skytree. The streets are really narrow here. It feels more like you're in a village than in a big town.

Some toilets are Chinese style, especially at train stations and airports.

Stores, like Lawson and 7eleven, all have ATMs, but only at 7eleven you can get money with foreign cards.

Oh my goodness, Tokyo is a shopping paradise! From socks that look like bakery goods, to umbrellas that change colour when you pour water on them; you don't know that you needed so many things until you come to Tokyo.

I changed the hotel in the morning, to the one where Luke and I would be staying. Then, I walked along a small street with restaurants along the train tracks to Akihabara. On the way I saw a small family that had a picnic on the pavement, which was cute and a little sad at the same time.

Akihabara... nothing prepares you, for the onslaught of media, anime, figurines, games, colours, sights and sounds that hits you when you walk out of the station. It is really overwhelming and impossible to describe.

I walked the street, went to manga stores which were 6 or 7 stories high, Cosplaying shops with an incredible selection of wigs and contact lenses and, again, Yodobashi Camera which exists on 8 stories here. Eight stories of electronics and toys! I think I'm in heaven!

For dinner I went to a vampire cafe called "Dorakura", with vampire cosplayers serving you and talking to you. Even though they spoke only Japanese and were a bit taken aback by some weird foreigner just strolling into their place.

Another store I should mention is Don Quijote, which is just a wild jumble of random and crazy. There are so many weird and cheap products there, that even if I would explain some of them, it would not do the store justice. I almost had a sensory overload. Oh, and they even have an adult section. It's weird. Just let your imagination run wild for a little bit.

In the late evening, I went back to the hotel and Luke finally arrived! Yay!

I noticed that there are a lot more non-Asian tourists here than in Sapporo.

Sometimes, the traffic lights play music when they turn green.

The laundry machine just knows what to do when you put the clothes in it! I don't know how that works.

Luke and I wanted to go to the Imperial Palace East Gardens, but after slogging through oppressive heat to reach them, we found out that they were closed on Monday.

So we walked from there to Tokyo Tower instead. On the way we went through Hibiya park and through a suburb called Kasumigaseki.

I climbed the stairs to the Atago shrine (Luke was too tired) to finally see my first Japanese shrine (there are not that many of them in Hokkaido).

We also visited Zojoji Temple, a temple built by a Buddhist sect. It is known for its huge bell.

Then we walked through Chiba park to Tokyo Tower. We are not ones to spend a huge sum of money, just to see the city from above, especially when you can do the same thing for free from other places, so we moved on.

We visited Shibuya for dinner. We saw the famous crossing, of course, and had, to my taste, bad ramen at a ramen restaurant. There are lots of stores and malls here. So many, that you almost get lost. We stumbled across a district that seemed to consist of only love hotels and then stumbled back into the stream of eager shoppers and night life crowd into an underground manga den lit with strobe and neon lights. There was music and lights everywhere. Again, sensory overload.

For shrines you go up some stairs, mostly. Something to do with a sense of achievement or grandeur, I guess. You wash your hands and mouth with a small ladle at a well under a separate roof. Then, you stand in front of the shrine proper, throw a small coin, usually 100 Yen, into the donation box, bow twice, clap twice, and assume a praying pose. There are different shrines for different deities and different aspects of life in the same place. If you want, you can buy a charm at the end at a shop that is run by the priests. Most of them are for health, a lucky marriage, good birth, save travels, good school grades, and much more.

You always have to keep the train ticket, since you need it at the beginning of the journey and at the end to show it to station staff.

Apart from MacDonald’s and Burger King, Japan also had MOS Burger and Freshness Burger.

If you buy something at a store, you usually put your money on a small tray.

You give and receive everything with both hands.

We went to Shinjuku and walked between the grandiose architecture of its business district. Even though most of it is concrete, the buildings still seem human somehow, if that makes sense. We went up two skyscrapers, both of which were free, to admire the endless view of Tokyo city. The second one had a set of really kitschy merchandise stores at the top.

We also explored the small park close by, which was really pretty.

Then we went for more sensory overload and journeyed to East Shinjuku, one of the red light districts of Tokyo. We had lunch at Isetan Mall and visited the Shinjuku Gyoen Park, which is incredibly beautiful, and the Golden Gai and Kabukichou streets. We also found the Robot Restaurant, which is utter madness, but it was too expensive for us. Since this is a red light district, there are of course a lot of love hotels and "soap massage" shops around.

Prostitution in Japan is illegal, but there are ways around it, like special massage places for example. Or restaurants where you are served by naked or half naked women.

I noticed that our room's cleaning staff was Chinese. I assume that labourers from abroad are cheaper, just like everywhere else.

We took the train to Yanaka, a cute little old town, with nice houses, and lots of tourist shops on one street. They sold mostly food like rice cakes, baked goods and meat and fish. This made the whole street smell really interesting. The locals seem to be mostly old people which is kind of sad.

At the end we walked through the very austere but pretty Yanaka cemetery. I don't know about you, but for me, cemeteries are always kind of calming.

Then, we took the train to the Japanese National Museum, which is pretty huge and has some nice buildings. We restricted ourselves to the main building, which displays Japanese art throughout history. This was more than enough. There seemed to be few artworks per section, but they were well chosen. You had your ancient art, then script, plates, bowls, lacquer ware, iron utensils, paintings and samurai swords and armour.

We had a late lunch at Ueno station.

Then I took Luke back to Akihabara, to have him experience the madness for himself. Of course, I had to take him to Yodobashi Camera, and to manga stores, and Don Quijote, and more.

We found some weird books in our hotel room. Apparently they were written by the owner of the Apa Hotel chain. They are basically justifying Japanese history and bending historical facts in Japan's favour while at the same time dismissing American, Chinese and European history as a conspiracy theory to make Japan look bad. It was pretty frightening and we hoped this was not the general consensus.

We took the train to Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo harbour, and walked along the beach and through the park there. There's a Statue of Liberty there and a lot of futuristic architecture, like the FujiTV building. Unlike Shinjuku though, it seems very cold and remote.

We headed over to Miraikan, which is an interesting museum, whose goal it is to make you think about the future and its threats and possibilities. The building it's in, is really impressive as well. There was a small hands-on exposition about ninjas, which was a ton of fun. You could throw shuriken and walk across nightingale floors. We also watched a 3D movie about string theory in a planetarium-like dome cinema. The movie had some really pretty visual ideas and contained a character called T.O.E., or Theory of Everything, that I really liked. What Miraikan is most known for though, is its lifelike androids. Those are really interesting as well as creepy. Finally, we even saw an Asimo demonstration.

Since we were already in Odaiba, we had to see the Gundam Statue, of course. It is to size and is just as impressive as the pictures make it out to be.

In the evening we went to Disney Sea. It was something that we had decided to do spontaneously and, wow, had that been a good decision. The theme park has worlds that centre around water, hence the name. There is a Venice-like Italian area, a pirate bay, a New York harbour, a steam punk world in a hidden volcano crater, an Arabian Nights city, a Mississippi village, an Incan jungle, and Ariel's castle. Apart from the last, all of it seemed very realistic and unlike in other parks I've been to, the illusion that this was one fully realised flowing world is never broken! My favourite one was the hidden steam punk volcano crater. Mostly because while other places were filled with music, this one just had the sound of steam blasts and felt like a hidden treasure trove. It helped, of course, that it looked like a mix between Riven, Myst 3 and Bioshock.

We went on the 20'000 Miles Under the Sea ride, where you had the illusion of being under water in a small submarine and exploring the life of the deep. We also explored a castle in Pirate Bay and watched the fireworks of the evening show. Finally, we went on the Crystal Skull Indiana Jones ride, which was pretty good. Just because of the rich and beautiful world it creates, I think this is the best amusement park I've been to so far!

We finally made it to famous Tsukiji fish market, but, of course, didn't go early, so we just saw how they were wrapping things up. There are so many vehicles, mostly forklifts, there, carrying crates around, and there is so much Styrofoam thrown away!

We went to the smaller marked extending over a couple of streets close by. It was selling mostly seafood, of course, and was packed with people. I got some special mochi with black sesame and citrus and vermouth.

Our next stop was the glitzy Ginza shopping district.

We came across the Kabuki theatre there and decided to book the second act of a performance, if there were still some tickets left. There were. Since we didn't have normal tickets, it was standing places, only. It was ok though. This specific act only lasted half an hour. It was a weird experience. Apart from the foreign sounding chants and talking, there were shouts from the audience. I later learned that certain people, that are part of a special guild, are allowed to shout the stage name of a certain performer when they did something well, to compliment their performance. The guild is called kakegoe. I liked the costumes, but sometimes didn't understand why people laughed when they did, or applauded. For some reasons I found different things funny than the general audience. A lot of the mannerism were, astonishingly enough, very similar to anime.

In the evening, we went to Roppongi and a small park there where we had a look at the 21_21 Design Sight Museum. We walked back through Tokyo Midtown, a mall whose architecture is especially impressive.

There is so much packaging here. I think I have never produced so much garbage like in this country!

A lot of old people have simple jobs, like waving people past construction sites or cleaning toilets. I wonder what that says about the social system.

As we are both gamers and both like Shenmue, we just had to go to Yokosuka, the home town of the main character Ryo Hazuki. We took the train southward early. It was interesting to see, that the grey, uniform urban sprawl does not end or change until you reach Kamakura. Only, from there onward it got greener.

Yokosuka is dominated by its large military ships in its harbour. I had read that it had been one of the military stations for the US. For that reason, there are still a lot of shops here selling military gear and food, especially burgers, that cater to US sensibilities. It was not very touristy though.

Since it was rainy and windy, we went to the mall first to warm up a little and ate at the food court. Then we went to explore Dobuita street, which looked like it was adapted for the game almost one to one.

After visiting a temple, we took a stroll through the urban area. It was beautiful. So calm and quiet with a lot of hills and trees. Almost like a forest between the houses.

We took the train back to Kamakura, but missed the stop and had to walk from Kita-Kamakura back to the city centre. This was the best thing that could have happened to us. We walked through a positively magical forest, with an incredible chorus of birds and cicadas. There were no other sounds. The urban area of Kamakura was really peaceful and there were several temples close by that you could theoretically see, but it was too late in the afternoon, and they were already closed.

When we came to the train station it became a lot more touristy, with souvenir shops lining the streets.

All in all, I had really liked this day. It had provided a welcome change to the continuous grey urban goo of Tokyo.

We got to see the Royal Palace East Gardens, but in both of our opinions they didn't really live up to the hype. They were way too strict and there were these high stone walls and ugly large streets everywhere. The only thing I liked about them were the many dragonflies and large butterflies.

Then we went to see Meiji Temple. The temple grounds were rather big with a huge green area around it. There were lots of tourists, of course, and we even saw a wedding. I liked this park here a lot better. It was very cosy somehow.

Our final park for today was Yoyogi Park. It was interesting, since it had a lot of colourful people there. Or just a lot of people, period. You could see punks, people doing acrobatics, people playing instruments (mostly horribly), singing (just as horribly), and we even witnessed a judo match. There were people relaxing, playing netball, children blowing soap bubbles, joggers, water balloon throwers, people doing rope jumping and much more. There was something to see everywhere.

Finally, we went to Harajuku and visited people-packed Takeshita Street, again, a very touristy area, with shops selling mostly cheap trash, really. However, the quieter areas around it look almost like European shopping streets and so did the big shopping alley, Omotesando street, which serves as the main pulsing vein of this suburb. The houses here are not too high, and there are no neon signs.

This was our last day in Tokyo, so we wanted to have dinner in Akihabara. We found a restaurant where you had to take off your shoes and put them in a locker and there were Japanese and European style tables.

We took the train to Toyama and then to Takayama today. It was a nice train ride. Even though it was very urban in the beginning, the further North you went, the more the landscape was shaped by rice fields and smaller villages. Later, there were lush green mountains and a lot of tunnels.

Our first stop was Toyama and we just walked around the city, basically to a park and back. It was a nice and quiet town and a welcome change from Tokyo. There were cute little trams here as well and the park had a small castle and a museum.

On the train to Takayama we followed a river all the way back south again, into the heart of the Japanese Alps. There were dams and rice field terraces, and the forests became darker and more menacing.

Once we were checked in at the hotel, we went for a night walk through the small village. It is an old town with traditional Japanese houses. We ate good ramen at a cute ramen restaurant where the staff only spoke very little English.

In Takayama you are, of course, not off the beaten track as a tourist. Even though the village is nice and cute, souvenir shops are the most prevalent stores here. Still, the town makes up for it, with a calming river with huge fish in it, beautiful bridges, and a very homey morning market along said river.

We walked around the village as we usually do and went to the Karakuri Museum, a museum that shows off and demonstrates the functions of float puppets, used in festival floats.

Then, we went to Sakurayama Hatchiman-Gu Shrine which is a nice shrine, halfway in the forest.

After a walk up the hill we did some more window shopping.

Then we took the bus to Hirayu Onsen and Hirayu no Mori spa. We had our first Japanese style rooms there. Well, the first for Luke anyway. The tatami mats were made out of plastic though, so there was no smell, which was a disappointment. We would spend the two days here to relax a little and go to the onsen. Breakfast and dinner was included and dinner was a huge plate of all kinds of small bowls filled with pickled vegetables, meat, fish and even a small mochi for desert.

We spent the day at the spa. It was very rainy, so that fit well with our plans. It was soon clear that Luke was build a bit too big for this place. He always hit his head on the low door frames and his yukata went only to below his knees instead of to his ankles. An older lady thought that the latter was especially funny.

Onsen are great. As everywhere you wash yourself before you go in and you are naked for the whole experience. A bit like in our spas.

I love the long corridors and the hidden gardens of the place and the food was just amazing.

Before we took the bus back, we had a small walk through Hirayu Onsen. It was a cute place with a few eateries, happy wooden figures lining some streets, and surrounded by mountains. Much like a Swiss hot spring village.

Our bus took us back to Takayama and then we took the train to Nagoya. I am still amazed that it takes the train several hours for this journey and it is still on time by the minute.

In Nagoya the cheapest hotel that I could find, was a love hotel called, very fittingly, Hotel Love. Now, Japanese people use love hotels for one-night stands or couples use it for special occasions. Guests are treated with the greatest discretion. There were a lot of young embarrassed couples and one older man with a young women wearing one of those white face masks snuck by us. It was an interesting experience.

The room was insane. It was, sort of, in a Japanese style with tatami mats, but with a western bed. There was an eating section with a Japanese style table and seat cushions and a bed section where the bed stood. The bathroom was pretty big, and the bathtub was so huge it could accommodate two people at least. The room had its own slot machine in the corner, three TVs (one where the table was, one at the bed and one in the bathroom, right above the bath tub), as well as a control board to control the lighting mood, a karaoke machine, a shit load of beauty products like soaps, creams, a comb, free condoms and something that was labelled as a... massage rod? Yeah, right.

After me fretting the longest time, that I'd have to order food over the phone in Japanese, Luke found out, that you can actually order food, over the TV menu (and a whole bunch over other stuff, like interesting outfits). The food portions were a lot larger than we had expected, so we had enough to eat tonight for sure.

One of the reasons why we had come to Nagoya was the Sumo Tournament. Today, we got up early, around 6am, to get tickets for it at the Aichi Prefecture Gymnasium close to Nagoya Castle. The Sumo Tournament would be going on all day. We got to see the first few fights, which were not all that interesting, since they were by young and unknown contestants. So the stadium as almost empty. The atmosphere was interesting nonetheless though. The person crying out the names of fighters. The referee judging. The preparation for the fight by the contestants and the short bursts of the fight all between the long build ups. The repetition made for an almost meditative spectacle. We watched the first fights until the late morning and then went out to have lunch and walk around down town Nagoya.

We saw quite a few sumo fighters on the subway, heading towards the stadium and when they walked past us, we were enveloped in a haze of perfume for a moment.

We walked around in town, and bought a bento lunch at Don Quijote, which we ate at Chuo Park, a nice park with sculptures close to Nagoya Tower.

Then we found a cool rental shop with lots of DVDs, CDs, and more, called Tsutaya. We walked towards the local shotengai (roofed shopping street) and found Komehyo second hand shop. I wonder why all cities in Japan seem to have the need to build a ferriswheel on one of their buildings, though. The design seems to be very common.

Back at the Sumo Tournament, the more prestigious fighters were now arriving by car, or even limousines. Followed by their retainers, they were greeted like movie stars with cheers and a volley of flash lights. In the stadium, we watched the ceremony of the most known fighters, as they paraded in and created a circle on the arena before they were dismissed. The fights were more interesting now. There was more build up, more ceremony, and the famous throwing of the salt was seen more often. The stadium was full now. All in all sumo is fun to watch and easy to understand. The first person to touch the outside of the ring or touch the ground with anything else than the soles of their feet, looses. We liked it, but after a while our buts were sore and we had had enough.

In the evening, we went to Inuyama. It was a quiet town with a peaceful atmosphere, old houses and a lot of low flying swallows. The castle was already closed and we inadvertently triggered an alarm when we climbed up a hill to see it more up close.

When night came, we went to the river, to see the traditional cormorant fishing by torch light. It was mostly for tourists and we didn't get a ticket, so we only saw it from the shore. After having seen how the birds who had caught a fish were yanked out of the water, I was actually glad that we didn't support that kind of thing.

There are no toilet brushes in the bathrooms. What's the deal with that?

Also, so far I have seen very few beggars.

The other reason why we had come to Nagoya, was to meet Jin. A Japanese guy I had met in both Brisbane and Cebu. We met up with him at Kanayama Station and then went to the Nagoya Science Museum. The building was really impressive and it boasts to have the largest planetarium in the world. The museum is kind of like the Swiss Science Museum Technorama. A lot of it was hands-on. But most of the explanations were in Japanese.

Apart from going to the planetarium, we also experienced -30 degrees Celcius in a cold room. For Jin especially, this was very interesting, since he had never experienced this kind of cold before.

We had some pretty spicy food for lunch at a Chinese restaurant.

In the evening, we went to the Sakae Oasis bus station, a beautiful piece of architecture with a small food court, a mall and a glass viewing platform.

We had ice cream there and then just hung around at the nearby park. Jin had to go home early, since he lived about an hour or so outside the city.

We stayed at the bus station, until nightfall and were mesmerised by the illuminations.

We ordered another good TV order dinner at our love hotel tonight.

We went for a hike today. We took the train to Nakatsugawa, and then the bus to Magome, an old village along the Nakasendo, the old postal road from Tokyo to Kyoto. As with everything in my guide, it was very touristy, lots of souvenir shops and people.

When we started our walk along the postal road to Tsumago though, the crowds somehow lessened. We met a friendly Israeli couple along the way. They were called Netalie and Roi and were on their honeymoon. We stuck together, since the presence of bear bells along the way didn't exactly set us at ease.

It was a nice walk though. Lush forests, gurgling rivers, waterfall, villages with old houses and there was even an old tea house halfway with a welcoming old man, serving free tea. He had all kinds of interesting machinery inside his house, like an old rope creating machine and a rice shelling machine.

Our destination, Tsumago, was a lot smaller than Magome, but still, the tourist shops and the tourists were there in abundance.

When we took the bus to Nagiso to get the train back to Nakatsugawa, we accidentally stumbled across a small festival where they carried their shinto goddess float through the town. It was great and the people were really friendly and natural. We bought some treats and lucky charms from a few kids in priestess outfits in support and an old lady explained the custom to me in more detail. I tried to follow her Japanese best I could.

We followed the parade for a while and then went back to the train station.

The train back to Nagoya was full to bursting and it took some time until enough people got out at stops so that we could get a seat. We had to sit on the floor for quite some time.

Luke and I ordered really nice desserts over our love hotel TV in the evening.

The shinkansen from Nagoya to Kyoto takes half an hour or 36 minutes. Our speed was about 320km/h. It's pretty impressive, to say the least.

Our number one priority today was laundry, so we did that first. Then we checked into our apartment in the Kyoto old town. An old man, who seemed to own the bike shop just underneath it gave us the keys. It wasn't very good, since we had to share the apartment with some other people who were living in different rooms and the walls were very thin. Everyone was just really quiet, too, which stresses me out, somehow.

After relaxing for a while at the apartment, we went out again in the evening. We went to the local shotengai and had dinner at a restaurant that had an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet with savoury and sweet pizzas.

Kyoto is so pretty! There are lanterns everywhere! And the loudspeakers on the street play traditional Japanese temple music, which is calming.

The only thing marring the experience is the smell of natto (fermented beans) that sometimes wafts over you. Unfortunately natto still just smells like puke...

We went to the Manga Museum today, since Nijo Castle was closed. To say that it's a museum is misleading, though. It's more that you pay an entry fee and then get to reed all the manga that they have. Most are in Japanese, but they have a vast collection that reaches all the way to the beginnings of manga, even though not all books are available for reading. One room outlines the history of manga and of other comics around the world. It's the one that resembles a classic museum the most.

They also have a demonstration of Kamishibai. This is an old form of storytelling for kids that was used before TV became popular in Japan. It's mainly a storyteller and a wooden box with paintings in it: the storyteller would reveal new paintings as the story unfolds. Most stories are a to be continued affairs to keep children coming back. Candy would be sold to the kids at the show. The story we attended was really funny, because the guy demonstrating it was a great showman.

After the manga museum we went back to the shotengai and Nishiki market there.

Then we paid a visit to the local Disney store.

We soon dove into Gion, the old pleasure district of Kyoto turned tourist trap. Geisha culture is still very much alive there, and you can spot Geishas and Maikos (Geisha apprentices) on their way to work. We spotted a few, but I felt I should be considerate and not take pictures. Also, they move pretty fast, so the pictures would not have come out very well anyway.

We came across Gion corner and since it sounded like a good deal we went to see the show there. The performance in this theatre would show you a Maiko dance, tea ceremony, Ikebana flower arrangement, a Koto zither performance, Gagaku court singing, a Kyogen comical theatre performance, and Bunraku puppet theatre. I liked it, since it introduced you to all these things and it was only a bit more than an hour long, unlike some of those actual performances, which can take several hours and would have turned into a chore to sit through.

In the evening, we visited Yasaka Shrine.

Then, we went to see "Finding Dory".

We went to see Honganji temple, a Buddhist temple, first. It was nice and the main hall is pretty impressive. Apparently it's supposed to be the biggest wooden building in the world.

We walked to Sanjusangen-do, a temple with a 1000 Buddha statues in it and several other wooden deities. That temple, too, was very impressive. Apparently it was the longest wooden building in the world. At the temple they also had an archery contest once a year where contestants shot arrows along the length of the building.

Then we went to the main event and the main reason why I had wanted to come to Kyoto: Fushimi Inari-taisha and it's many orange gates or torii. The whole hill where this temple is standing on is full of those gates and the path mostly goes through under them. The streets to it are lined with tourist shops, of course. And there are people. Many, many people. The throng lessens a bit the further you go up the hill, but as long as you stay on the paths under the torii, there will always be people.

So we left the torii and went along a path that lead into a bamboo forest. The silence there was beautiful. Just bamboo and trees and a graveyard here and there. Sometimes a bird. It was very peaceful. The whole area where the temple stands is very picturesque. Lots of streams and lush green. It was a really good experience.

Our last stop for today was Kyomizu-dera, a temple known for it's waterfall, but by the time we arrived there, on foot, as usual, the temple grounds were shortly before closing, so we only had very little time to see things. But the view from the temple is really pretty.

In the evening I walked through Gion once more.

Since Nijo Castle was open today, we went and saw it. I mostly wanted to see it, because it has nightingale floors. But the audio guide was also surprisingly good, telling visitors about how people lived in this castle, making it a living, breathing place. The gardens were also really pretty with a nice pond and a Japanese as well as a European style part.

Next, we took the bus to Kinkaku-ji. A completely gold plated temple pagoda standing on the border of a small lake. It was pretty impressive.

Finally, we went to see Ryoan-ji, a temple with a really nice park and a stone garden that you could sit and meditate by.

For dinner we went to Okishima Garden, a vegan restaurant that a friend had recommended to me. I had the most interesting tea there. It's called blue mallow tea and it is actually blue, but when you put lemon into it, it turns violet.

There are so many different birds here, it seems that every park has it's own birds.

Also, the old town of Kyoto is overflowing with good restaurants.

We had changed to a different apartment, because of booking reasons and this one was actually pretty good. This one at least, we had to ourselves. It had complementary water bottles in the fridge, an umbrella we could use and pocket Wi-Fi, in case we didn't have a SIM card. On the downside, you could hear the street very well, even though it was on the seventh floor, and at night, sirens were really loud sometimes.

Another friend recommended us to go to Kurama and do the hike to the temple there. We took the bus, which was interesting, since everything was in Japanese only, so my Kanji reading skills came in handy.

The place was a disappointment though, since it was more of a tourist trap than anything else. The restaurants only sold really expensive food (over $100 a meal!) and we had to pay for the hike up to the temple.

The experience was ok, the hike was nice, even though it was hot and humid and hard going up. The funicular down was fun. The temple was pretty, too, and we even heard a monk sing in it. But I would have enjoyed myself a lot more, had it not been such a blatent rip-off.

We were happy when we could take the train back. For some reason our train back had bells in it.

Today was Gion Matsuri, so we went to see the parade on the main road from Yasaka Shrine. It was a nice and settled parade and I regretted that some of the symbolisms of the individual floats and parts were unknown to me.

In the afternoon, we went to Arashiyama, again, one of those quiet little old towns with traditional houses. We mainly went there for the bamboo grove. It was nice, but not as pretty as the one at Fushimi Inari.

In the evening we went shopping, again to Yodobashi Camera, and other malls. I swear, you get depressed if you ever go to another country, and go to an electronics store, if you've been to Yodobashi Camera.

On the train, I saw some students who have books with a red foil. Some of the text in those school books is red, so putting the red foil over it, hides the text without hiding the things you need to be able to read. I like that system.

Some women colour the area below their eyes a pale red. This is a make-up choice that I've only seen here in Japan.

Osaka is pretty close to Kyoto, and we took the train there today. We saw our first beggar in Osaka and the streets smell of excrements here sometimes. Someone once said that Osaka is the dirtiest city of Japan, but even the dirtiest city in Japan in cleaner than most other cities in the world.

The train station is rather huge and we almost got lost in it, as we were looking for a locker to put our luggage into. While we were waiting for our apartment's check-in time to arrive, we had lunch at the local shotengai and admired the architecture around the train station.

Our apartment was incredibly small. Three, maybe four tatami mats large, with a small bathroom attached. That just left space for the futons and not much more. We had to stack all other furniture and our luggage against the wall. Also, it was on the ground floor and the windows were single glass, so you could hear everything from outside, including the "plonk" of the vending machine next to our house.

We left our apartment soon to go to the so called Tenjin Matsuri, a yearly festival in Osaka. It consisted of a parade with a lot of different floats that went over land and then transferred to boats on the river.

There were also a lot of festival stalls with food, fish catching, games, and even a horror house.

And finally, in the evening, there were fireworks. Really pretty ones, too.

Happy and tired, we walked back to our hotel together with the rest of the crowds and through ever watchful police that seemed to be there to prevent panic.

Back at the apartment, I felt exhausted. We had done too much over the last few days and I felt that we needed a day to just relax and do nothing.

We were being cultural misfits today as in: we went to the Universal Studios Osaka. I had been looking forward to this for weeks, especially since they have something that is called Jump Summer, meaning that they had special rides and shows with Dragonball, One Piece and Death Note. And they also had a Harry Potter world.

The Universal Studios always felt a bit like sets to me and not like a world you can get lost in, so I don't like them as much as, for example, Disneyland. But the Harry Potter world was awesome. You first went past a stone circle and through a forest before entering Hogsmeade. Everything felt so real! There was the Hogwarts Express, lots of stores from the books, the owl post office, the Hogshead Pub where you could get butter beer and, of course, a small version of Hogwarts. There were a lot of shops where you could buy merch and wands as well. Olivander's was my favourite store. Everything was just like in the movies, or even how I would imagine what the books would be like.

And finally, the Harry Potter ride in Hogwarts was one of the best rides I've ever been on. Just queueing for it was great. You went through a stairwell and corridors where paintings moved and spoke, through the headmasters office, and the classroom where they taught the Defence against the Dark Arts, complete with the dragon skeleton. The ride itself was a mixture of 3D flying and 2D animatronics and it was perfect! We went on it twice because we loved it so much.

Other worlds that could be visited was Amityville from Jaws, that had more elements from One Piece now, a children's section with Snoopy, the Muppets and Hello Kitty, Jurassic Park, Water World, New York with Spiderman, as well as a ton of show attractions. We went on a Spiderman ride that was also a mixture of a 2D ride and 3D action sequences, on a roller coaster, that I really didn't like, and a fire show based on the movie Backdraft of which the beginning was pretty boring, but the end was pretty incredible, since the whole building felt like it was collapsing.

What I also really liked was the Terminator 2 show, that featured 3D and real people playing Arnie, Sarah Connor and John Connor. It was so well done, that you thought it was actually the real actors playing them, since the faces on the big screen were those of the actual actors. Also a lot of fun was the Dragon Ball show, which was basically a 3D fight between Freezer and SonGoku.

Needless to say that by the end of that day we were pretty tired, but also pretty happy.

We wanted to explore Osaka a bit more before we left for Nara today, so we travelled to Namba station and walked through Dotonbori shopping district there. It looked pretty amazing, with all the huge screens and shopping malls and skyscrapers right along the river.

Nara is just a short train ride away from Osaka and we went there in the evening. Compared to Osaka it's positively tiny with a very small core. Everything interesting is within walking distance. We had a cute, little hostel there with a very nice host.

In the evening we had dinner at a very good Yakitori restaurant close to our hostel.

We had come to Nara in the first place to see the great Buddha of Todai-ji temple. We walked through Nara Park, with its wild deer. This was very entertaining, since you could buy cookies to feed the deer and many tourists did so. Once the deer knew you had cookies, tourists would be followed by a whole group of them, until they would give them up. They were mostly docile, but sometimes they would nibble at unsuspecting people, if they thought they had food. Sometimes kids would start crying because they were scared. We watched the whole spectacle with slight amusement, but I was also wary. They were wild animals after all.

The Buddha was rather impressive. A massive statue of several tons of iron and gold in a temple that, like a lot of other things in Japan, had burned down several times.

The temple grounds were equally interesting and we walked all the way to Zoshicho temple were you had a nice view over the city.

After that I went shopping for a little bit and then we relaxed some more at the hostel.

I noticed today, that a lot of people have talismans from the temples on their backpacks or strollers.

We went on to Himeji today. The interesting thing about Himeji is, of course, the recently refurbished castle, but we also went there for another reason. A friend of ours from Switzerland, Matthias, was also there at the moment. His wife lived there and he travelled to Japan at least once or twice a year to see her. So we met up at the train station with him and his daughter, Akari. We had lunch, walked around a bit and had ice cream at a plaza at the end of the big shotengai. We also went to a small shrine to see koi, but there weren't any.

Himeji is a small town which has a nice side and a weird side. Since it was cheap, we had chosen a love hotel which was in the weird side of town. All the restaurants seemed to be closed there and everything was strangely quiet. Matthias had explained to us that most of this side of town was owned by Yakuza and that it would be wise not to walk around there at night. It was true that our love hotel was a bit grimy. It was also difficult to communicate with the staff there, since they didn't speak English and were very timid, but I did my best.

We didn't do much today, just walking around on the shotengai. When we had lunch on a bench there, we inadvertently were roped into a tombola, where I, probably because of my foreigner bonus, and another customer had to pull on a piece of string cloth and then a ball at the top of it opened and prizes dropped out. I wasn't really interested in the prizes, but we got a lucky coin from the announcer anyway.

Then we met up with Matthias again and hung around with him for a while.

We went to see Himeji Castle today. It's one of the biggest, if not the biggest still standing castle in Japan, and it really is huge. Five stories and a really big garden area. All in all, I liked the castle, but the exhibition put more of an emphasis on how they refurbished it, and that made the castle less of a place where you could imagine people lived in, and more of a museum. I thought that kind of missed the point.

It was very humid and warm today, so we didn't do too much more sightseeing.

We decided to go to Shikoku and cross over to Takamatsu by train. The train ride is pretty spectacular, since you go over a long bridge that has been built from island to island from Honshu to Shikoku. Takamatsu's surroundings are actually not very pretty, especially if you take into account it's surrounding area. Factories and industry everywhere.

Once again our hotel was in the red light district, possibly even again a Yakuza area, but the hotel staff, mostly comprised of older men, was friendly and the hotel was cheap, so I didn't complain.

Since the train ride had been so long, we only went for dinner at the Aeon Mall close by and then to bed.

We explored Takamatsu for a little while today. First we went to the castle, which was no longer really there, safe for the watch towers, and its park. There was a pretty, traditional Japanese house there that you could relax in, and a small museum with masks and parts of the castle. A beautiful moat with fish and boats on it ran around everything.

Since it was really warm, we went to the malls around the train station to cool down a little. There, we came across a small market selling umbrellas and other nice Japanese ware.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Ritsurin Garden. It cost a small entry fee, but it was really worth it. There were lakes with pure green islands on them, pruned garden areas and beautiful, small patches of forest. We spent a whole half hour just sitting by a pond, watching other people feed the koi. Something we thought was rather funny was an artificial waterfall with running hours.

In the evening we took the train back.

Today we did something special. We went to Naoshima, an island that was consecrated to and known for its art installations and museums. We took the boat over in the morning.

The first thing you see at the harbour is a red pumpkin that you can actually go into. I really liked to aesthetic of it.

It was hot, but we still decided to walk from the ferry terminal across the island to the other side. In main village area, there was an art walk called the Art House Project with several interesting stations that you could do, so we decided to give that a shot.

We purchased the tickets for it right at the first house we encountered. It was called Minamidera and was an unassuming brown wooden building. When you entered, it was pitch black inside, but after a while your eyes would get adjusted to the dark. I thought that was rather clever, since it showed very effectively what our bodies were capable of.

The second house, Kadoya, had a pond with LED numbers in it in one of the rooms. You could sit beside this pond and watch the numbers change, some faster, some slower. It was meditative. There was also a window with big digits on it, that changed every so often from one random number to another. The fun thing about this was, the widow was opaque, but for the part where the numbers were showing. And the glass changed from opaque to clear within a blink of an eye.

Go'o Shrine was a narrow passage on a cliff, leading to a stair that was really made out of glass, but looked like it was made of ice. The stair lead to a construction above ground which was a wooden "shrine" sitting in a field of white rocks.

Haisha was a jumble of a house made of wooden planks and deformed plastics, and plastered with all kinds of photos and newspaper clippings. There was even a small Statue of Liberty in there.

After the Art House Project, we walked along the beach and came to a meadow with sculptures of Nikki de Saint Phalle and there was another pumpkin, a yellow one this time, on a small jetty at one of the beaches. The island was very pretty in its own right. There were huge empty beaches, nice cafes and beautiful stretches of forest in-between, as well as scenic cliffs with hidden artwork on them. I understood why some people spend their vacations there.

We walked up to the Benesse Art House, a small museum at the top of a mountain. It had some interesting artwork, and the smell was rather intriguing. I usually call this kind of smell modern art smell, a mixture of plastic, paint and other artificial products. There was a board that mixed various adjectives with the words "live" or "die", e.g. speak and live, come and die etc. There was a filled out circle out of driftwood, and statues that said "Chatter, chatter, chatter..." all the time until they all suddenly started singing in unison. There were soft, round rocks you could lie on. They were in an atrium, where you could see the sky.

After a very expensive but very good ice cream in the museum cafe, we walked on to the Chichu or Underground Museum, but we thought it was too expensive to go in, and by that time, we thought we had already seen enough art. So we went to the nearby bus stop to take the bus back to the ferry terminal. The bus system was actually pretty complicated for such a small island and it turned out that there was no direct bus to the terminal, even though we were actually not too far away from it, having walked almost all the way around the island. We had to take the buses all the way back the way we had come, changing lines at the breach we had walked along.

The ferry ride back was rather pretty, since we rode right across the sunset.

Sometimes I think that Japan is mostly not built with people in mind. Most of the cities seem much more artificial and less grown than cities in Europe, and even though there are parks, there still seem to be a lot less public places where you can just... be. Almost every place tells you that you need to move from one area to the next. I guess most people find solace and peace in restaurants and bars, but most of these only have inside rooms. Japanese don't like to sit outside much. Mostly because of the heat and the sun. So, like that, not many outside places look appealing.

Stamps are used for everything. Signatures, confirmations, tickets. Sometimes there are multiple stamps for the same thing.

We moved on to Hiroshima today, across the spectacular bridge from Takamatsu back to Honshu. Our hotel was a bit outside of town in Higashi-Hiroshima, but thanks to the Shinkansen, we were in the city centre in no time. We walked through the eastern part of the central city and the park there. We checked out the manga library and the museum in that park.

I had timed our travel plan in a way that we would be in Hiroshima on the 6th of August, the date when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. This meant that the city had its own sombre Piece Memorial Ceremony today.

One thing you have to know, is: even though an atomic bomb had been dropped on the city, after overcoming it's hardships and rebuilding, the people of Hiroshima did not become angry and lashed out. Instead, over the years, a profound sadness took over, and this sadness turned into a will to spread the word that there should be peace on earth. I think this is what impressed me the most about Hiroshima's legacy. They had had the opportunity to become bitter about what had happened to them, but instead they turned it into a message for the betterment of humanity and tried to walk a path of non-violence.

To commemorate the dropping of the bomb, the city would set thousands of lanterns into the water at the Peace Park and we went there to see the spectacle. It was even more beautiful than I had imagined. There was this strange, eerie music being played and as the night slowly came down on us, the forlorn lights looked like the lost souls of the dead, being guided to the afterlife. There were accidents here and there. The lanterns were made from paper and wood, after all, and some of them caught on fire. But there were always people who waded and swam through the river to splash water on them.

Luke and I sat there for hours. Beside the Atomic Bomb Dome, right by the hypocentre. Watching lanterns. I didn't know if it would break my heart or not.

It was a long time until I could finally tear myself loose from that sight.

Hiroshima seems to be a lot shabbier than other cities, or maybe it was just the areas we had been to. We had changed hotels to another apartment today. It was, again, not too far away from the red light district, and by now we were joking about it. It was a nice apartment though and it was right beside a cemetery, so it was really quiet.

Once we got settled in, we went back to the Peace Park to go to the Peace Memorial Museum. It was a sad experience, being confronted with the reality of so much death, and seeing the belongings of people who had died gruesomely. It is hard to convey and I will not even try. The museum had sections about the victims, about the bomb, about radiation, and about the rescue teams, doctors and their efforts. It was really well done. There was also a part that went into the present, showing people who visited Hiroshima and gave their pledge of peace.

After that we walked through the Peace Park again and visited the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall. This building housed records of all the victims, as well as showed stories of people who had been there.

We visited the Children's Peace Monument, a sculpture for one of the children who had been diagnosed with radiation cancer and had tried to fold 1000 paper cranes to make her wish to live come true, but had ultimately died nonetheless. Her teacher and her classmates had petitioned the city to create a memorial in her honour and in honour of all the children who had perished. Since then, the memorial is surrounded by small houses with rows and rows of paper cranes in them.

After all this sadness, we walked around a bit to explore other aspects of Hiroshima. The main mode of transport here is trams. As in every Japanese city you have your shotengai and your huge malls and your underground passages with shops in them. Even though Hiroshima as a whole didn't impress me that much, there are certain small areas that are rather nice. We found a pretty 80s architecture plaza for example.

We did an excursion to the island of Miyajima, taking first a small train and then a ferry over. The island is known for its huge torii (gate) standing on the water and marking the entrance to a temple standing on stilts in the water on the beach. Quite the unique set-up. Since this was one of the most popular sightseeing places of all of Japan, it was full of tourists and tourist shops, of course. Something else we didn't expect was that, here as well, were wild deer roaming the streets, nibbling on said unsuspecting tourists.

We walked to the torii first.

Then we, lead by rather cute signs, walked to the ropeway to get to the top of the mountain. The ropeway didn't go all the way to the very top, you still had to walk for about an hour to get there. First we weren't sure whether we wanted to do that, since it was very hot, but then some clouds started covering the sky and we braved it.

It was worth it. We saw temples and nice rock formations on the way and there was a wooden construction with a tiny shop at the top where you could relax and enjoy the view.

When we went back we almost didn't get down though, since a thunderstorm was moving towards us, and operation of the ropeway was going to be suspended soon because of it. For our own safety, of course. We made it just in time though.

Luke went back to the ferry terminal right away, but me, I still wanted to explore. The cool thing was, while the water had been high when we had arrived, and the torii looked like it had been floating on the water, it was low tide now. So the temple on the beach, close to the torii and the torii itself were all standing on the sand and you could walk from the temple directly to the torii.

The sand was covered with small shells and crabs were scurrying two and fro while birds were dipping their beaks into the muck, looking for prey. I walked to the torii, barefoot and happy. There is something extremely liberating about removing your shoes and walking over wet sand.

We took the shinkansen to Fukuoka. We had assumed that it would be an Evangelion shinkansen, but it turned out that it was not running today. This was a bit sad.

We had a quiet day today, relaxing at the hotel for a bit and, as per usual, looking for the next shotengai to look for food in the evening.

We explored Fukuoka a little, but soon ended up in Canal City. A reasonably big mall with incredibly interesting architecture. The mall's main theme was outer space and there were seventies style stars, a "moon walk" along the shops and astronomical signs on the outer wall. The best thing about it was the artificial canal running through it, that gave the mall it's overall name. They had a One Piece theme going on when we were there, with water battles, One Piece statues and rubber ships to ride. It looked like a heck of a lot of fun for families.

We found a very good all-you-can-eat buffet there.

Today is Mountain Day, an official Japanese holiday for the appreciation of mountains. The reason why I mention this, is because the Japanese government had decided pretty much uniformly in 2015 that Japan needed this holiday and this is the first year that this holiday exists.

Since we are complete nerds, we decided to take the shinkansen to Shin-Yamaguchi and take the Evangelion shinkansen back. That's right, this trip was done entirely to ride one specific train. I'm sure Japanese people will understand.

Shin-Yamaguchi is not really pretty. It was again very hot and we sought out shelter by walking through a very abandoned looking, desolate suburb and finally reaching a large supermarket and later a small mall.

The Evangelion shinkansen however, was everything we expected. There was a cockpit section at the front where you could virtually fight angels on the train tracks. Characters of the series could be found everywhere and much of the train was in the colours of Eva Unit 01. If all of this is unintelligible to you, I'm so sorry. Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime show and I've been a fan of it ever since I was a teenager. If you want, you can read about it on Wikipedia.

After the shinkansen, we hit the malls again.

Luke was leaving today and to be perfectly honest, this made me sadder than I would have thought. Not only because I missed him, but because at this moment I felt I wanted to go with him as well. Not because I wanted to stop travelling, per se, but because I was exhausted again and felt like I needed to stop and heal.

I accompanied him to the airport subway station, we said our goodbyes and for some reason that left me utterly devastated. I changed my hotel to the cheaper hostel I had booked and went to Yodobashi Camera and then Canal City to easy my pain, but it only postponed it to the evening where it hit me with full force.

Thank goodness, the hostel was ok and the staff and the people in it were nice. The staff were two Korean guys and when I needed to do my laundry, one of them offered me to wash my clothes. I had to hang it up on the roof on my own though, when it was done. So this is what I did.

The roof and the routine task of hanging up clothes gave me perspective. Both on the city and my inner turmoil. It would be only ten more days and then I would be able to rest. Until then, I would do some sightseeing and then use the time when I got home to relax.

I didn't do much today. Some shopping, getting a Kyushu rail ticket, booking hotels, trains, and just generally organising this week.

I did a small excursion to Dazaifu, a town not too far away from Fukuoka with temples, nice old streets, and statues.

There were also a couple of museums there. I went to the Kyushu National Museum. It mostly had artefacts from Japan and, to a certain degree, from along the Silk Road. It was loosely ordered by kind of artefact and time period, but, to be honest, the choices were strange to me. The oldest artefact was a tree trunk that had been found in the earth after a volcanic eruption had buried and preserved it for several ten thousands of years. There was pottery, drums from different East Asian places, merchant seals, clothes and much more. It was once again one of those smaller museums that had a lot of exhibits, but never overwhelmed you. There was also an ultra high resolution film about a dig site on a close by island where they had found some interesting pottery, and about a few of the exhibits that were especially interesting, like a cupboard for example that looked Japanese on the outside, but had a Christian painting on the inside. I also liked the museum building. It was on a hill and looked like a huge wave.

After the museum I went to a small rather beautiful rock garden and then went back to Fukuoka.

I checked out Fukuoka Tower and the beach and recreation area around it.

I also found a robot shop in one of the malls there.

Then, I went to Tenjin, the so-called Fukuoka down town. As always, there were lots malls there and I pretty much got lost in them.

In the evening I enjoyed Mitama Matsuri, a festival where thousands of lanterns are hung up on the plaza in front of Gokoku Shrine. There were food stalls and people making music and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, just hanging out and soaking in the atmosphere.

I travelled from Fukuoka to Nagasaki.

Nagasaki is different from most Japanese cities, as in, that it's built on a couple of hills. A lot of nice buildings gleamed in those hills and that made the whole city rather beautiful. It was, again, swelteringly hot, and a very loosely connected tram and bus system was the only mode of transport. I had to wait a lot until I finally made it to my hostel.

When I had arrived at the train station I had seen that there was an Evangelion exhibition at the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture. So, after settling in in my guest house I went to that exhibition. It consisted mostly of making-ofs and animation sketches, which was amazing for me.

In the evening, after a meal at a local mall, I walked along the harbour front until I came to the Nagasaki Seaside Park and the architecture-wise very interesting Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum. When I walked back to my hostel, I also realised that there is a very vibrant China Town here, something that I had never seen before in any other city.

Today I went to an interesting place. It was an island just on the shores of Nagasaki called Gunkanjima or Battleship Island. It was actually called Hashima, but got its name since it started looking like a battleship from the side. The island was an old coal mine, run by Mitsubishi. When the coal expired, Mitsubishi dismantled all mining equipment because they were subsidised by the state to do so, but otherwise just left the buildings intact. Since there was nothing more to do there, the people just abandoned the island and it became a ghost town.

I had booked a tour that would take me to that island. It was interestig to see all those old building that were in a terrible state of decay. It made you think about what cities would look like when humans are no longer alive.

In the afternoon I went to Dejima. Once an island, it is now in the middle of the city, since the Urakami river running through Nagasaki filled out the harbour area more and more over time. It used to be an outpost, first of the Portuguese and then, when Japan was in isolation, a delegation of Dutch people lived here. It was the only place where Europeans were allowed during that time. The houses and streets of the island were well preserved and restored, and gave a good impression of how people must have lived back then.

Later, I walked through Nagasaki Peace Park.

I went to Urakami Church to see what a Japanese church looks like. Nagasaki is one of the few places in Japan where churches are a part of the cityscape. Japan had only really been under moderate Christian influence, and only for one century from the beginning of the 16th to the beginning of the 17th century. After that, Christianity had been banned by the shogunate. As a result, today, less than one percent of all Japanese are Christians. Urakami Church looked like a protestant Church to me, roughly fashioned after Dutch architectural styles, with very little in terms of decoration both inside and out, but it is actually a Neo-Romanesque construction and of Catholic denomination.

Oh, yeah. I went to see one of the most bad ass temples as well, I think. Check out that statue!

In the evening I went on to Kumamoto and arrived there very late. The hostel was really cute with a nice little common room, all in traditional Japanese style.

Kumamoto is dominated by its mascot Kumamon. It's the first thing you see when you arrive at the station, and the friendly, slightly crazed looking black bear can be spotted everywhere. He even has his own fan shop in one of the malls.

I had wanted to go to the castle in this city, but unfortunately there had been an earthquake and it was closed as a result. I looked at it from the entrance, but even then it was woefully far away and barely visible.

I went to a small old town area with restaurants called Ninomaru instead and watched a puppet theatre there.

Another store that I really love is Tokyu Hands. It's a store where you can buy anything for your next handicrafts project and it's really inspiring. Stores from that chain can be found in just about every city.

I ended up in Fukuoka again. I had been wondering whether I would want to go to Huis Ten Bosch, an amusement park that looked like a Dutch town, but in the end I decided against it. My knee was sore. So sore, in fact, that I went to see a doctor just in case. He gave me pain medicine and it became better.

I had a single room in the hotel I was at, just for this one night. I used it to relax.

On my last day in Fukuoka, I pretty much just went to my favourite places again. Tenjin, the Sky Mall, Yodobashi Camera, Don Quijote. I used my time to buy souvenirs, too.

And I had one last good Sapporo-style ramen.

I had to change hotels again. Most of all, since the hotel I had spend last night in was really expensive and I didn't have a choice. I returned to cheaper accommodation which was more my style. This was good, since I met a lot of nice people in the common room there, and I talked with them all into the night.

So, today I would go back to Switzerland. It was still surreal, but there it was. The flight back was very uneventful, but I met a nice Swiss person on the way back, who lived in Kyushu with his wife, but worked for a Swiss company. We had tea on our layover in Hong Kong and talked for a long time.