Purikura? Forgot about these..

Ben, Junko and I went into a Purikura machine over christmas.. Basically a girly photo booth where you can edit the photos afterwards. This is the shocking result, lol. wah.. etc >_<

Last day in Japan

2nd January 2012

My flight is at midnight. I packed my bag and went to Junko's place and we all went to Kawasaki to watch Tin Tin at the I-Max cinema there. Later on Junko made beef ribs in special Japanese Junko style for dinner which were super tasty!

22:00 came round pretty quickly so I said my goodbyes, bid farewell to crazy Japanese culture and headed to the airport bound for Sydney, Australia.

This map shows my route around Japan.


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Happy new earthquake

1st January 2012

There was an earthquake today, I read that it was magnitude 7 but some say 6.8. I was in Tsunashima, and we felt it for about a minute or so. 5 months away and I've already experienced 2 earthquakes.

Another quality poster..

Saw this at a train station on new years eve.

New years eve in Japan

31st December 2011

For new years eve I went out for a meal with Ben and Junko and a load of their friends. We had dinner at a traditional Japanese place and spent about 3 hours eating and drinking, the restaurant was really good and we were able to order using touch screen menus and then the waitresses just arrived with the food soon after.

Just before midnight we stomped to the temple near by to watch a ceremony and make a wish. There were hundreds of people there. By the time we had finished we had missed all the last trains back to Junko's place so we sat around at their friends place drinking until about 4am and then went to the train station. Finally got home around 6am.

The robots are coming!

30th December 2011

We heard that a life size Gundam statue was being erected in Odaiba and decided to go there and check it out. The statue itself was pretty cool, and it seemed to attract lots of people.. some of whom were dressed up as their favourite anime characters to have their picture taken near the statue.

We had a look around the history garage, where they had loads of cool old cars including a Delorian, which I've never seen in the flesh before.

After we had a huge Hawaiian cheese burger we went to the Sega Joypolis arcade which was actually a bit lame, it didn't have many traditional games in it, all the machines were like theme park rides with a huge screen attached to them.. it cost 500 yen to get in and we didn't really find anything we wanted to play - although I did go on the Initial D 4 limited edition which had a full car with hydraulics, I had to wait about half an hour to play and it cost me 600 yen for 1 race but it was pretty cool. When we left I saw that Michael Jackson had visited there in 1996, perhaps it was better then or maybe he was just there to endorse the terrible moonwalker arcade game?!

Drunken karaoke rocks!

22nd to 29th December 2011


Spent a few days hanging out with Ben who now has a break from work. On Christmas day and boxing day I crashed at Junko's apartment to save travelling for an hour back to James' place.

Christmas is celebrated in Japan but not on the scale it is in England, and for some reason everyone goes to KFC for their Christmas dinner and the colonel dresses up as Santa. For our Christmas dinner we managed to put a fairly decent effort together, despite not having a real oven (you don't find a proper oven in most Japanese apartments).

On boxing day Ben, Junko and I went to do some drunken karaoke for an hour, which quickly turned into 2 hours of embarrassing fun.. The highlights were Ben and I trying to rap to Wu Tang Clan and singing total eclipse of the heart (of course).. shocking. I'll spare you the terrible video footage! The next day we had another karaoke session since the first one was so much fun. Had a pretty sore throat after 2 nights of shrieking into a microphone! The private karaoke rooms are ace, we went to 2 different places and the second place gave us maracas and tambourines as well serving us drinks all night.

No more hostels.. 'til Sydney!

22nd December 2011

Today I made my way back to Tokyo. I met Ben's friend James who let me stay at his apartment until I leave Japan!


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Exploring Nara

21st December 2011

I spent the day exploring Nara park. There are a few nice gardens, a giant Buddha statue, Todaiji temple, Kasuga Taisha shrine, a five story pagoda and lakes around the park. There are so many deer in the park, you can buy "deer buscuits" to feed them if you like.

After lunch I went south and saw Gangoji temple, a traditional house (Naramachi Koshi-no-ie) and finished the day off with a visit to the local sake brewery (Imanshi-ke shoin) where I tried 5 different types of sake.

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Ronery in Nara

20th December 2011

Stijn and I went separate ways today, he was planning to go skiing and since I will go snowboarding in March I decided not to join him and went to Nara instead.

I arrived at the hostel in Nara and found I had the place to myself, good and bad I guess! I went out and looked around the Heijo palace grounds and then hit an arcade for a while before I had dinner and crashed out at the hostel.

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Small beds for small people

19th December 2011

Went to Hiroshima today, took another bullet train, it costs a lot but saves so much time. We had decided to share a room at a hotel because it was only a little more expensive than the hostel we would have stayed at and it was closer to the train station. When we got to the hotel the receptionist told us there was only one bed.. neither of us minded, but when we got in the room it wasn't even a full sized double bed.. wah. Never mind, its the first real bed either of us had slept in for a long time, makes a change from sleeping on the floor even if there is hardly any room!

We visited the atomic bomb dome, peace memorial park and museums - not for the faint hearted, theres some pretty grim stories and images in there. Having spent most of the day there we went and got some dinner and looked around the city a little.

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Train fail

18th December 2011

Today Stijn and I went to Osaka. At 6:30am I was woken by some terrible singing coming from the karaoke bar next door to our hostel so I had no problems getting up early. :/

We failed so badly at using the trains today. We started out by getting an express train instead of a local train which took us way past our stop, so we had to get a train back and try again which cost us about half an hour. Then later on in Osaka we took the wrong train on the loop line which took us off the loop to Universal city, and then on our way back from there we got off at the wrong stop and had to wait for another train. Damn we were good!

We checked into our hotel in Shin-Imamiya and headed to Osaka castle park. When we arrived there were 3 bands playing near the station, it was funny because there was hardly anyone watching the bands except this one old guy who was doing this awesome dance in front of one of the bands.. had to record him for a bit.. teehee. The third band was cool simply because they had a trombone player who was trying so hard to make the trombone cool, throwing it in the air some times and using it as an air guitar between his parts..

After we saw the castle we grabbed some Okonomiyaka and headed to Kobe. I had hoped to have a Kobe steak while I was there but it was just too expensive, found one for about £80! Went to a butcher and found 100g of Kobe beef for about £26! Needless to say I did not try Kobe beef that day. :(

Found a free foot spa at the side of the street in Kobe that was good considering how cold it was, sat in there for a while and got chatting to a bunch of locals for a while. Got accosted by a bunch of girls that wanted to practise their English and saw some pretty freaky looking mannequins at a wig store as we went to the train station.

On the way back from Kobe to Osaka we had yet another train fail where we got the express instead of local train again.. not paying enough attention!


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