Hello from Japan!

We have both just polished off our first Okonomiyaki (traditional dish) over looking the Dotombori river in Osaka!

Yesterday, our final day in China, we visited Suzhou for a day trip. We had lazy morning and enjoyed an amazing breakfast in the hostel. We then took the bullet train to Suzhou and on arrival walked through the city to the north where we walked around the Humble Administrators Garden. This was a beautiful, yet jam packed full, Chinese Garden with many pagodas, bridges and lakes full of giant lily pads. It was really hot and humid inside the garden and together with the many tourists we walked around relatively quickly and then decided to head for Pingjiang Lu, a pedestrian street by the canal full of little shops, cafes and snack outlets! Finally, we took the opportunity to have a sausage on a stick which we have seen all over China! It was yummy and just as we finished it started to rain. We bought two umbrellas for 10 Yuan and decided to head back to the station to return to Shanghai as the rain turned into a massive storm. Our next stop was XianTanDi, an area full of restaurants and bars that we had spotted on our bus tour. After the usual walk around the streets in the wrong direction looking for it and upside down map reading, we finally managed to find where we wanted to be and enjoyed a great meal in The Refinery. This was in the hub of the old part of the area, where the grey brick buildings surrounded the alleyways and cobbled floor covered the ground.

After our meal we made our way back to the hostel via the subway, packed up and set our alarms for 3:15am!! Soon enough, 3:15am came and we set off to the airport in a taxi. It was really quiet and took off on time, 2ish hours later we arrived in Osaka, Japan! Country number 40 for Tom and 16% of the world now visited!

After only a few hours sleep we felt shattered but grabbed some breakfast in the airport before sorting some train tickets out for the next few days and making our way to central Osaka. We walked from Namba station around the corner to our hotel, APA Eki Higashi, and after a brief argument with check in staff were able to get in our room and have a well earned snooze to recharge our batteries.

This afternoon we took the Lonely Planet recommend walking route around Dotombori from Tara's book... (She's very excited to be starting a new book today!)... Dotombori is an area full of bright neon lights along small alleyways and streets lining the Dotombori canal. There are arcades everywhere, huge signs and wall art hanging from every wall, the place is buzzing! We enjoyed our first traditional meal in Japan and started to write this blog. We then walked a little more of the route through small malls and shopping streets before enjoying a great ice cream in a bun for dessert and a drink by the side of the canal in a prime people watching position! Opposite there were Japanese singers entertaining us as day turned to night and the street signs etc came to life!
Tonight we have decided to post all our pictures of China so we hope you all enjoy...

Tomorrow we are off to Koyasan and are looking forward to seeing the mountains and countryside of Japan.

Goodnight all,
T&T x