From Hiroshima we took the train to Kyoto, the birthplace of traditional arts and crafts in Japan, and until relatively recently, the Japanese capital. In fact some argue that the capital of Japan has never legally been changed to Tokyo, merely that the Emperor has moved his residence there.

There are over 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines in Kyoto so it's not easy to know where to start, or in fact where to end. By the time we went to Nara for the day though it's safe to say I was all templed out. Nara was the capital of Japan for a relatively short period of time between 710 and 784. The Emperor moved the capital there to get away from the influence of the larger temples and feudal families. Unfortunately for him, many of them also moved to Nara and spent lots of time and money building new temples and shrines. Although the Emperor didn't stay in Nara for long, the temples have been fairly well maintained and it's an easy daytrip from Kyoto.

The lonely planet describes Nara as 'having a village like atmosphere from the moment you leave the train station. I can only conclude that the person from Lonely Planet who wrote that has either never been to Nara, or never been to a village. Eventually we found our way to the edge of town where the temple complex begins, and then it started to rain. We hadn't been organised enough to find a student guide so we were left wandering round temples in the rain with no umbrella when my temple fatigue kicked in. Temple fatigue looks a lot like some of my other strops, but it is distinctly different as it is caused by excessive viewing of old things. It is somewhat different to museum fatigue as it usually involves being outside and is therefore weather dependent. After I insisted on having pizza for lunch, and taking a detour to an earthquake simulator (where a Japanese security guard straps you into a chair and then tells you what earthquake he is going to recreate next, and the factor - 'Kobe 97, 6.5', 'Japan Tsunami last year, 6) I was ready to go back to another temple.

This particular one had a giant wooden statue of Buddha and was quite popular with Japanese school children. In particular, there was a wooden pillar with a square carved out of it at the floor - about 18inches by 18 inches - and for some reason they were queuing to try and squeeze themselves through it, all popping their heads out and posing with the peace sign before wriggling all the way out. This kept me amused for a while before we took a scenic walk back to the station to see - and feed - the famous deer of Nara who bow for deer crackers, and follow you down the road if they can smell them in your pocket. Luckily I managed to construct and effective deer shield from two umbrellas and we made it safely back to Kyoto.

For most of our time in Japan we'd simply been wandering round, hoping for perhaps some English tourist leaflets to tell us basically what was going on. I think that approach had served us pretty well, but had left us with some knowledge gaps so the next day in Kyoto we decided to take a couple of Walking Tours with Walk in Kyoto.

The first tour was with a lovely guide called Eme, who spoke fantastic English despite having never been to an English speaking country. It took us round the back streets of Kyoto, and definitely filled in some knowledge gaps, as well as telling us stuff we didn't know we needed to know. She began by taking us to Higashi Hongan-ji temple and giving an overview of the differences between Buddhism and Shinto religions. The two religions exist side by side in Japan perfectly harmoniously. Buddhism comes from India, via China, whereas Shinto is the Japanese indigenous religion. Eme explained that Shintoism is based on the environment around you, and has over 8 million gods (with fairly specific ones, with shrines dedicated to praying for protection against traffic accidents or good exam results. The Shinto Gods don't take any particular form, and just exist around you. This is why when praying at a Japanese shrine you ring the bell and clap twice first - to get the right God to notice you. Shintoism takes care of the day to day living of your life and is focussed on happy occasions such as weddings. Shintoism does not however deal with funerals and death - for that the Japanese turn to Buddhism. As death and after life specialists, many of the Buddhist temples have graveyards attached, and the larger ones will often be located next to the Shinkansen lines. This is because many Japanese are still fairly superstitious, and the land price around graveyards is lower than the surrounding areas. So much of it was bought up by Japan Railways when they built the Shinkansen lines after WWII.

Eme also talked to us about modern Japanese culture, explaining the meaning of different bows - head bow is hello, 45 degree bow means thank you, and a 90 degree bow is to apologise to someone - often CEOs who have had a bad year will bow that low at the annual investor meeting. She also showed us how to recognise a Japanese w****house (white square sign with a black border outside) and told us that these were officially teahouses, but if you went in and asked for 'cake with your tea' then the mistress knew what you were looking for. This secret code is how they stay legal, but also led to some confusion when she announced she was taking us for tea with cake in the afternoon…

The night tour focussed on the Gion district of Kyoto, which is the historic Geisha district made famous by the book/film Memoirs of a Geisha. Our tour guide spent much of the hour trip trying to explain to us what a Geisha is, and what she is not. Apparently there is much confusion from Westerners who think that Geisha's are Japanese prostitutes. Real geishas are entertainers and artisans who specialise in traditional dance and music. To me they seem to be uniquely Japanese, and although they are clearly at different ends seem to exist on the same spectrum of male entertainment as maid cafes and escort bars.

Despite not really understanding the role they played it was interesting to hear about their day to day life and the training they need to do, and it was good fun trying to spot the Geisha parties going on in the traditional wooden teahouses, and play paparazzi when they glide past in their full makeup and kimono. The world of the geisha is still very mysterious to most Japanese people as well as Westerners, and many school girls visiting Kyoto pay good money to be dressed in the traditional kimono, with the white geisha face make up and extravagant hair, and spend the day visiting top tourist sites, often with a photographer in tow. It's fairly easy to tell the difference between a real and fake geisha - most geisha's don't go out in the day, and if they do they don't take a photographer with them. They also don't have a mobile phone.

Every spring in Gion the Geishas put on a show of traditional music and dancing called Miyako Odori - we were lucky enough to get tickets for the final performance on our last day in Kyoto and got to see them in action. The main dancers were incredible as you would expect, but even the girls in the chorus were unbelievably graceful - probably as graceful as ballerinas although the dancing is much less physical. It was great to see, and made me feel like even more of a giant Western oaf than usual…

Following the temple fatigue meltdown in Nara, we hadn't spent too much time in Kyoto looking solely at temples but there were a number of big guns we had to go and see. These included the Kiyomizu-Dera temple which is made solely of wood (no nails, no glue etc.) and which hangs over the side of a hill overlooking Kyoto, as well as the largest five storied pagoda in Japan, and the Golden Pavilion ( in the North West of town. At least following our day with Eme we had temple etiquette down pat, and we balanced these with a trip to the bamboo forest in Arashiyama and a UNESCO (yup, them again) Zen garden at the Ryoan-ji temple.

That night we made our way to Osaka for the last stop on our Japanese adventure. The hostel put on a 'tour' the morning after we arrived which was like no tour we have done so far. Basically it was me, Jon, two South Americans and the 60 year old cleaner from the hostel - Mr Yano - who barely spoke any English. In fact 3 years ago when he started work at the hostel he had never spoken English before, and everything he learnt he learnt from hostel guests. This includes 'All OK', and 'Dangerous'. He took us round the markets in Osaka and we ate lots of local foods (well, the others did, most had fish in). Then he took us to a maid café which was considerably smaller than the one in Tokyo, and the maid had to do a song and dance each time a new customer came in. It was a bit weirder, not helped by the two gentlemen leering at the bar when they obviously should have been at work.

We spent the afternoon in Osaka bay where they have a world class aquarium with lots of animals from the deep. Vic Hislop would not approve. But it was a good way to spend a few hours before Mr Yano took us out that night to a traditional Japanese pub, and made everyone drink lots of Sake and then go to karaoke. Jon doesn't really drink sake, and as a result was really up for karaoke when most people weren't. Luckily we only went for an hour and I left Jon downstairs drinking with a Brazilian who the first person in ages who really understands football like me… and who he needed to talk to.

The next day as you can imagine Jon wasn't feeling too fine, but as it was our last day in Japan we need to celebrate. So we took the train to Kobe for a Kobe beef dinner. Amazing, melt in your mouth steak cooked by a fantastic chef on the hot plate in front of us. Judging by the amount of butter he used to cook it this shouldn't be an everyday dinner but as a last night treat it was definitely worth it. This prompted much discussion about Argentinian v Japanese steak but we both concluded the meal in Kobe was in our top 3 steaks ever.

Our final stop in Osaka and indeed Japan was the international ferry terminal where we boarded Su Zhou Hao, our ferry bound for Shanghai, which is where I'm writing this. Even though we are still in international waters it's pretty clear we aren't in Japan anymore. The boat and most of the passengers are Chinese - the food is spicier (and considerably more random), the atmosphere is rowdier and the queue for the duty free shop when it opened was longer and more disorderly that anything you would find in Japan. China is our last stop on this RTW voyage, although we still have over a month before our flight home from Beijing so we've spent much of our time at sea planning how to make the most of it….