Thursday 18th August - Chichijima... or not. Today we were supposed to catch the ferry to the island of Chichjima. However, we got completely confused over the departure time. We arrived what we thought was over an hour early. It turned out to be fifteen minutes too late. We've been planning this part of the trip since before we left the UK, and it had cost a fair amount to go, so you can imagine how upset we were. Luckily they managed to get us on the next ferry...

Wednesday 10th August - Arrive in Tokyo. Thursday 11th August - the Sony Building, Toyota Megaweb and a ferris wheel. Well obviously our first stop in Tokyo was going to be at something techy, so we went to the Sony Building. They allegedly showcase upcoming items here, but the only thing they seem to be promoting at the moment are 3D TVs. Once you've seen one TV, you've seen them all. After that it quickly becomes a normal stores selling Sony goods. At the top ...

Friday 5th August - arrived in Kyoto. Saturday 6th August - Shosei-en garden, Higashi Hongan-ji temple and the Manga Museum. The garden and temple were just round the corner from our hostel. The garden was nice, very peaceful. The temple, on the other hand, was very busy! It features the largest wooden building in the world, though this was mostly under scaffolding when we went so you couldn't really get a feel for it. Whilst we were there they seemed to be havi...

So here we are in Japan, our last stop before home. It is vastly different to China and Korea, but it hasn't met our expectations. We were expecting some techno wonderland, but instead we've just found grey cities. If anything, it looks like it's behind Korea in terms of the technologies that we've seen. That might all change once we hit Tokyo though. Wednesday 27th July - hydroplane from Busan to Fukuoka. When we got up this morning there was a massive storm go...

Saturday 16th July - arrive in Busan. For such a large city, Busan has a very relaxed, holiday feel to it. But first things first, we needed to stock up on toiletries and snacks so we headed to Home Plus. This chain of supermarkets has some connection to Tesco so a handful of familiar products were on the shelves. As a result, Chris is now currently enjoying a cup of Tesco Finest Assam tea with breakfast!  For our first evening we headed out to one of the seven...