And then we were back to Tokyo! We arrived into Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon - a sight not to be missed - there were people dressed in the strangest outfits all over the place with lookalikes ranging from Little Bo Peep to Carebears to seriously dedicated Goths. Great people watching! And then we went for a wander around Yoyogi park and it was transformed that the quiet tranquil place we had last seen - there were groups of old guys all dressed up in black leat...

Think of Hiroshima and obviously one major thing springs to mind - the Atomic Bomb that was dropped there, the first ever used in history, which destroyed the entire city and killed hundreds of thousands of people. This was our main reason for coming to Hiroshima but instead of a place destroyed and still struggling to re-establish itself we found a very cosmopolitain and bustling city. The Peace Museum gives a chilling account of the effect the bomb had and how ...

Arriving into Osaka is like fast forwarding into the future with high rises and literally millions of neon signs everywhere. A trip up the Umeda tower after dark showed us the carpet of lights spread out below us and going out for miles. The Umeda tower in Gareth's own words is an architects dream and a surveyors nightmare - it's 2 towers each 40 storeys high joined at the top by a walkway and with 2 escalators going through the empty space towards the top from ...

Kyoto was once the capital of Japan and its full of ancient shrines, temples, palaces and history filled lanes - a world away from the modern metropolis that is Tokyo. Plus its also a hotspot for Geishas and we even spotted a real live Maiko (an apprentice Geisha) walking down the street. The Buddhist temples and shrines in Kyoto are amazing but with about 2,000 of them in all we had to be very selective in which we chose to visit. Although it sounds like ...

Japan is a real culture shock but thankfully our arrival in Tokyo was very much cushioned by staying with Gareth's friend from college, Jonathan Smith. Our lost in translation moments were temporarily put on hold by tripping around with a local. Our first day was spent observing worshippers in the Meiji Jingu shrine which is a haven of tranquility in the centre of Tokyo with a huge tree lined park surrounding the shrine and no city noise at all. We really got ...