Our string of stinky weather has continued (which is no surprise given it's February) but yesterday was so freakishly warm that we walked around in just jeans and a t-shirt. Thank you carbon pollution! We didn't get the best sleep on our traditional tatami bed, which can best be described as a piece of plywood with sheets, but we still lazed around our tiny room until the last possible second. The train station was just a minute's walk away, and then we'd hit the...

Holy guacamole am I glad that we did all of our sightseeing yesterday! Today's weather has been pretty terrible from beginning to end with an interminable icy rain. Of course, umbrellas didn't make the "must pack" list so we've had the repeated privilege of looking like aquatic morons as we stand for minutes-on-end at glowing red street crossings. Brittany even said she saw a lady point and laugh. Who could blame her? Fortunately it was mostly a travel day and we...

As planned, yesterday was a long and boring travel day. It technically took less than two hours to get from Kyoto to Hiroshima, but when you throw in transfers and figuring out how to get around in a new city we pretty much lost the entire day. The first 12 hours in any new place are always really stressful for me. No matter how much (or, in this case, how little) I prepare I still get very flustered and intimidated by the simple to task of getting from point A t...

Today was a trip highlight for Brittany, which made it all the more fun for me. I had planned on going to a large bamboo forest outside of the city but figured it was time for Brittany to scour the guidebook and see if anything else sounded more interesting. We settled on visiting a city called Nara, which was less than an hour away by train. I had already read about this place but wasn't all that excited about it, which is why Nara wasn't on the itinerary. I'm s...

Kyoto has been a mind blowing city for me. It is a little less polite and a little more hectic than Tokyo (which I never would have guessed) but I love it. In Ireland you see thousand year old castles every half hour as you just drive down the road. Here you see thousand year old shrines and temples every fifty feet as you walk to the bus. It's insane! Kudos to the city for preserving it all. Unfortunately, I finally understand what the guidebooks meant when they...