Tuseday 24th April Another bad nights sleep - due to snoring mostly. Lights being switched on after midnight another reason. Pot noodles for breakfast. We were thinking we could keep the empty bowls for cereal, although having consumed our hot breakfast the pots didnt seem upto it when emptied. Today's activity was to be the Jade Temple. Off we trotted on the metro, scouting out places for a spot of coffee later. The Jade Temple seemed a sureal place, calm and ...

Monday 23rd April Not having the best nights sleep (more on that later), now breakfast. Blue Mountain has a fridge and a hot water tap for noodles as well as its bar & resturuant grub. It has no kitchen to cook hot food in, so porridge and banana ordered for me, whilst Frank opted to finish off our bread and ordered a coffee. Out on the metro to Shanghai Railway station to buy our onward tickets and we walked along the main road back to the hostel - a fair t...

Saturday 21st April As mentioned in the earlier post we spent much of our first 24 hours in China holed up in our room, venturing out only for some food from the shop next door (pot noodles, fruit in jelly, bread and sweets) and to get the wifi code ... although the internet would only work on Bing. Hmm? Feeling a little digitally stranded but glad of a rest, we slept well. Watching the Robin Williams film "Hook" on the ex- pat channel. Then "Lord of the Rings",...

Through departures at Narita, not much there, mostly shopping and one cafe. Good thing we ate before. Down to the gate, which then changed. Down to that gate. The clientele waiting for the flight were much much more different than the locals over the last week. Jetstar are the Ryanair of Japan shall we say. Well it was cheap. That also explains why it was delayed by 15 mins. Definitely Ryanair. Onboard to our uncomfortable leather (like) seats. Because we had ch...

Here are a few observations on Japan. The roads, even with traffic on, seem very very quiet. No one shouts, hollers or talks loudly - except in Shinjuku which is more a piccadilly circus if you like. Everyone in public spaces in fact is very quiet and softly spoken. On trains, apart from us, we only saw a couple of older ladies talking and some school boys too. No one talks on their phones on the trains or metro. They put them on silent and either text, surf or p...