Monday 8th April Breakfast was another Japanese set menu, beautifully presented with a myriad of small items on the plates & another small heated stove to heat the miso soup. The taste buds were not too enthusiastic over some of the items but we soldiered on & did our best. Had a later start at 11am due to the rain. It had rained in the night & early morning & when we left the hotel it was immersed in a moderate fog & about 5°C. The bu...

Sunday 7th April Left the hotel at 8am to see the Black Castle in Matsumoto, another fine example of Japanese castle building in 1593. As with all these places the outer walls are surrounded with a moat, in this case bright green & shallow with the compulsory carp. Inside the outer walls lies the keep which is a 5 storey construction with a wooden frame on a sloping stone wall of about 3m. Our assault on the floors via extremely steep stairways was h...

Friday 5th April A bit warmer today at about 15 C. Started out travelling north along the west coast near the Sea of Japan that separates Japan from Korea & China. Stopped for a lunch break at 11.30 at a service station on the coast overlooking a small harbour under construction. One of the surprises to us was to see snow covered mountains a few kilometres east of our highway & also a yard full of snow ploughs. We had passed quite a few flooded fie...

Thursday 4th April Went to see the Hiroshima Peace Park & crossed the river to see the domed building which sat right under the hypocentre but miraculously, although all the occupants were killed the shell of the structure survived the first Atom bomb dropped on 6th August 1945 at 8.15am. From there we walked to the museum & a sobering experience it was, particularly the interviews with survivors. Then we drove east to Kurashiki to visit a lovely old...

Monday 1st April Another day in the freezer, spent rugged up. Off we went to see Oura, Nagasaki's oldest Catholic Church, set on the edge of a hill in a small precinct of Dutch influenced buildings. In the adjacent old seminary building, was a fine exhibition about the checquered history of Christianity in Japan. Introduced in the 16th century into Nagasaki by the Portuguese & tolerated for many years it had up to 400,000 followers. The Shogun saw it as...