Osaka is like a mini Tokyo - we quite liked it as it is small enough to get around and gives you a bit of the madness of Tokyo but on a smaller scale (though D did liken the nighttime Dotombori area to Blackpool).

We were apparently staying in a 'bad' area in Osaka and were warned to be careful after 10pm but to be honest, other than there being a soup kitchen next door, we felt perfectly safe - this is Japan after all - how can you not feel safe!!!In fact we thought the hostel was pretty good, they provided FOC umbrellas when it rained (how helpful is that!) and they had a VCR in every room with an extensive video collection. All the video cases were in Japanese and, as sad as this sounds, we got quite a buzz from selecting random videos and seeing what we had picked.

Osaka is home to the biggest ferris wheel in the world so we decided to give it a go in the early evening - have to say it wasn't that thrilling but we've done it!

As we were in Osaka we decided to head down to Nara - the ancient capital city of Japan. We were joined on the train by an old guy who is visiting Europe next year who, I think, just wanted to practice his English on us! Nara is a pretty town but it had its highlights and lowlights. The lowlights were the herds of deer which seem to roam everywhere - in pre buddhist times these were believed to be messengers of the gods and now enjoy the status of national treasures - personally I think they are smelly, flea ridden and bad tempered. The highlight was probably an exhibition about the use of seismic isolation to reduce the impact of earthquakes on buildings - as boring as this may sound it was actually quite interesting!