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 one tower to the other!! The view though is awesome and the dayglow lights and pavement at the top are hilarious, not to mention the Japanese couples getting cosy in the little made for 2 areas!

Himeji Castle, outside Osaka, was beautiful with a stark white exterior set up on a hill outside the top of Himeji. The castle was made in the 13th century entirely of wood and previously housed 48 rulers of Japan. It's an awesome site set up on a hill with its 6 storeys entirely in white against the sky.

Nara was the capital of Japan back in the 7th century and it's a lovely day trip - unfortunately for us it was oppressively hot and rained most of the day! We wandered about the town and visited lots of the beautiful shrines and temples. One area has lots of tame deers wandering about. I made the mistake of buying some deer biscuits to feed to them and had about 10 of them following me about, including stags with huge antlers, and I ran away trying to throw the deer food at Gareth!

A huge gold Buddha that stood 3 to 4 storeys high was amazing as were the kids trying to crawl through a hole in one of the supporting beams - apparently if you can get through the hole you can get into heaven or some such!! Another temple in the middle of the woods had 3,000 lanterns all around it covered in moss and it was just gorgeous.

Night life in Osaka is hilarious - all the neon explodes into life in Dotombori and the Japanese youngsters come out in their hordes and hang around trying to look as Western as possible. An area called Amerika Mura is dedicated to all things American and we spotted lots of wannabe gangsters and California surfdudes wandering around.

Worst of all though - I made Gareth do karaoke - after all I reasoned with him it's a very Japanese thing to do and we couldn't possibly leave the country without trying it. We got our own booth and sang away in private to our hearts content - Madonna, Billy Joel, Patsy Klein, Foo Fighters - you name it we tried it and guess what - it was fun!