Kobe marked the end of our visit to Japan and what an ending! On the ferry out to Japan we met a chap called Akira, marketing director for Kobe port, who asked Joe, David and I to contact him when we arrived in Kobe.So on our last night we all went out for a meal ofShabu Shabu - this is a pot of boiling water which is placed in the middle of the table into which you put raw vegetables, meat and noodles. When they are cooked you take them out with your chopsticks dip them into your bowl containing, in my case, sesame sauce and eat - delicious!. After this huge meal, finished off with a bowl of black sesame seed ice cream Akira said he was going to take us to an English pub for Fish and Chips - we thought it was a joke - how wrong we were (and they were eaten with chopsticks).

As Akira works at the port he promised that he would come and give us a big hand to see us off. Boy was he true to his word - he and a colleague only came marching up the dockside waving a huge cardboard hand each. They carried on waving until they were mere dots on the landscape.A big thank you to Akira for such a memorable send off - goodbye Japan it's been great!

The ferry home was really enjoyable - assisted by brilliant sunshine to warm the bones.We arrived in Shanghai 2 days later to a rapturous welcome - turns out we were the first ferry to dock at the new port building. The excitement however was short lived when it became apparent that the new electronic walkway wasn't high enough to reach the ferry door there was much discussion amongst the many people now congregated on the walkway . After being held captive for some time with hysterical Chinese people (the noise level was unbelievable)it was decided that we would have to resort to the old manual walkway - at last we were free!!