Wish You Wok Here

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 ...

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...

They say the sun rises in the east...well it just beats us by a few minutes this morning. After spending a night in a traditional Japanese house, with floor beds and kimonos we were up and out to visit some Buddhist shrines. Anya is now an honorary Buddhist monk after receiving the blessings of 10 dragons.  A few insta poses with the water shrine later the adventure continued to an amazing garden...where Sam broke us all in. After a quick game of hide and seek we headed back to the house.  Noodles, pizza and curry for breakfast before heading to the port to be pirates for the day. As the stars we are we obviously sailed First class across Lake Ashi... It was a cloudy day so what little hope we had of sneaking a peak of Mount Fuji had all but gone...but the spirits remained ready to embrace the voyage to the unknown....40 minutes later we disembarked and followed the crowd.  No idea what to expect we saw people queuing for a cable car...with a money back guarantee influenc...