Ok, final blog from Japan. In Kyushu, the southern most of the main islands. We went to the largest volcano crater on EARTH! It is just massive- bigger than me with jen standing on my shoulders! In fact it has a circumference of 75miles. wow, geography heaven.

We got off the train and realised that the town, station and all, was actually inside the crater (or caldera to be geographically correct!). The huge crater had 5 smaller active volcanoes within it- which are what we climbed. We got a bus from the station to the foot of the volcanoes, then we went off exploring...

We weren't initially that amazed until we looked down into one of the craters, where we found a turquoise blue bubbling & steaming pool of liquid- very impressive-the pics dont do it justice! I then went a little bit geography crazy and decided to climb/trek to the next summit (pezza had done enough hiking by then). That was lots of fun and pretty mind blowing too- quite hazy though so the pics aren't so clear- sorry for the lack of atmospheric control! Anyway went back, found our hostel and went to sleep. good night.

Next morning went to Fukouka so that we could catch the hydro-foil ferry across to Busan the following day. Also popped back up to hiroshima that eve to pick up a little pink fleece that had gone astray. (literally was a pop as the bullet trains are so fast and super efficient, a japanese version of my old peugeot, i feel). got to the ferry departure terminal and were 20Yen short for departure tax, so the nice lady persuaded her colleague to donate it to our needy cause. Thank you nice lady. Then we beetled off to Busan, Korea (beetle was the ferry line). That's where we are now and having so much fun, but i'll let jen tell you about that one day soon.

bye for now, monty.