Tokyo - Loin cloths and maid outfits (?)Rather pleased that all the driving around London stood us in good stead for driving into Tokyo, we returned the battered hire car to its home and scarpered before they noticed a few scrapes!!A ride in Japan's child-unfriendly taxis (incredibly clean white seats!!!) still amuses us with their white gloved drivers, chauffeur style suits with matching caps and taxi doors that open automatically for you!Our reason to spend 4 n...

'Castle and squiggle' Armed with a marginally better map this time (there is a market out there for Japanese/English maps by the way .. anyone…) the 3 of us headed off in our second hire car for a 9 day exploration of the Japanese Alps, maybe some coast and a little bit of 'where will the wind take us' spirit. How free and breezy! Taking about an hour to actually get out of Hamamatsu (bloody crap map!) we get rather lost (more queasy than breezy!) but finally ...

Craggy cliffs, beef and kites … Leaving Kyoto for a three day wander in our hire car around the Northern Coastline of Kansai, we quickly wished we had equipped ourselves with more than our crappy tourist map. Taking what we are sure was a very long route to the coast, we passed through some gorgeous mountain passes, but you had to strain to see the beauty over miles and miles of garish signage - Japan has obviously no planning control over signage. Pachinkos (...

Buzz Lightyear, geishas and temples … The carrot we have been dangling for Owen for the last 4 months - a trip to Disney Tokyo is upon us. Arriving to a very cold and rainy Tokyo we braced ourselves for a soggy day, but the gods smiled on Owen, and the sun shone.It goes without saying that Owen loved his day. It was a little surreal however to hear well known Disney characters speaking and singing in Japanese - ' to infinity and beyond ' in Japanese??? We le...

A River, monkeys and swimming. Kinabatangan river is the most popular and visited way to experience rainforest and see wildlife in Sabah. Everyone we spoke to along the way confirmed it was worthwhile, so we decided to go for one night and see for ourselves. Booking into a place called 'nature lodge', we hot-footed it to the pick-up point only to have to wait nearly four hours for the bus. So, not a good start, but on the positive side, a reminder that we have a...