Wish You Wok Here

Today marks the penultimate day of our travels. We woke up bright and early to get our last set of insta pictures before we leave The Land of the Rising Sun. Paul started his day how I ended mine - in the one-man steam room - we would both recommend this if you find yourself in our capsule hotel.  Weather forcast: hot and sunny Planned activities: Team Labs , batting cage, Shibuya Sky Completed activities: ALL OF THEM! Today's theme: Just nearly.... Surprise! Our journey starts, as you may have guessed, on a train! Our quant little capsule hotel is situated on the outskirts of the outskirts of outer Tokyo; a bit like getting an Air BnB in Alnwick and being told you're in Newcastle, so we had quite a journey into the city to be close enough for Team Labs (the win-all-insta-competitions art exhibition visited by the likes of Kim Kardashian). We had bought these tickets on our second day in Japan so needless to say, we were pretty excited! Who knows what celebrity we may rub shoul...

This morning the group were up bright and breezy to secure a couple of lockers in the main train station in Hiroshima, so we could visit a few places without needing to carrying 15kg extra around with us. A short ride back into the city we had grabbed some prime real estate and set our sights on a local island that had a shrine and a few other shops to visit. A train back to where we came from and a ferry saw us touch down on the island of itsukushima in the bay of Hiroshima. Our timings were perfect as we waded out into the shallows to grab some photos. I tried to wave someone down to get a group shot and everytime he clocked me he tried to get further away. We finished just in time for the tide to start to come back in and stop anyone else getting photos under the shrines arches. We spent a little time wandering around the local stores and bought quite a few souvenirs. We got a photo under a temple. When asking someone to take a photo of us the couldn't understand why we where un...

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Is the question we all asked last night when we left it until last minute to book the train from osaka to hiroshima. So our well thought out plan for the next day went to pot as everyone seemed to have the same idea about travelling early the next day.  Whilst we sat and ate a delicious Persian meal ( but expensive as the guy overcharged us!.) We booked a train for 17.20 the next day, which is alot later than the morning we had wanted.... We all got up, mostly well rested and checked out of our swanky pad at 10am and headed to the main station osaka to drop off our luggage, or so we thought.  Again, seems like everyone had the same idea and the entire city of osaka decided they'd do the same and in the whole gigantic train station there was 1 small locker, safe to say our 4 backpacks, 2 large suitcases and 6 rucksacks wouldn't be fitting in that. So we trundled to the next station to try our luck there so we didn't have to lug around ...

We all enjoyed a slow and steady start this morning, with no urgency to be in any ques before 8am , or, running for any trains! At around 12pm we headed out to go to the Osaka Aquarium which is apparently one of the best aquariums on the world. After a couple of quick stops , we approached a very up-market Tynemouth Sea Life and began the exhibition. Within the first few minutes we were all on a brisk walk under a tunnel of hammerhead sharks and schools of various fish , it was obvious that this was going to be 100x better than Shields!  After only 4 days , Paul and I rekindled our friendships with the baby otters as they preformed some parkour in the display and swam with their fish frenemies - we have decided to call ours Platypus in future btw. Following the otters, we also spotted different species of penguin, some pacific white-sided dolphin, whale sharks , sting - rays and the rest of marine life from the pacific and Antarctic oceans. I think the sea lions (sea doggos as Paul...

Early start for myself, Samantha, Paul and Anya to make the most of our visit to the fantastic theme park Universal World.  Quick stop for breakfast to get the energy for a couple of short train journeys...45 minutes later we were met with the huge rotating Universal globe.  All anxieties about not getting into Nintendo world were alleviated within minutes of being in the park when I acquired the help of an employee who explained where it says "Register park tickets" was where I registered park tickets and where it said "Time Entry Tickets" is where I book out time entry tickets.  Clicking onto the earliest possible time led to a morning quick pace shuffle to Nintendo World.  This theme park has some rapid rides and adrenaline pumping roller coasters...the lethargic Yoshi ride was not one of these but enjoyable nonetheless as we got a view of the whole park.  As I spent a week's wages on an interactive Mario watch I decided to stay behind and complete all of the...

Weather forcast: sunny with predicted showers  Planned activities: Imperial Palace Kyoto, Ninja School, Osaka food quarters Completed activities: Imperial Palace Kyoto, Osaka Red Light District Today's theme: R&R Our last day in Kyoto started at very different times for our group. Zak and I rose before the birdies and took one final walk to the top of Mount Inari. We met at 3am, local time, for a meander down the river and arrived in good time at the foot of the mountain filled with shrines.  Darkness still surrounding us, we walked the path to the summit through the lantern lit shrines and made it to the top in time to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately for us, the shape of the mountain and the overcast skies meant we were stood at the  top of a mountain at 4am, a little bit cold, a little bit sweaty, a little bit tired and a lot bit narked. Waves of sunset PTSD coursed through my veins as I relived a cold, overcast evening Ibiza when a famous sunset never emerged. May...