After our somewhat horrendous day yesterday, Darren and I decided to have a bit of a break and take it easy today. Sort of. I say "sort of" because today was after all a travel day and we were moving on from Kyoto to Tokyo. We had a nice sleep in, as our lovely hotel's check out time wasn't until 11am, which is very generous. When we got up we had a nice cup of tea, got packed up and stored our luggage at reception. We decided to just go for a walk and che...

I had lots planned for today….but it was just going to be one of those days where no matter how hard you try, nothing seems to go right. Darren and I left the hotel fairly early this morning and started off by getting on the right metro train, but on an express which did not stop at the station we needed to get off at. Only a small issue, but it was a sign of things to come. We got off at the station in the middle of nowhere and caught an all stops train b...

We are now in Kyoto, and our first order of business was to negotiate the messy Kyoto central station in order to get to the bus terminal on the other side. I don't understand why the Japanese feel the need to build shopping centres into stations? I mean, who goes to the train station to shop? It's not like at the airport, where you might have a ten hour connection and need something to do while you want around. I don't get it, it just makes everything so c...

Woke up again in the tiniest room I have ever stayed in….not by myself but with another person. Making matters worse I had been too tired to pack up the night before, (breaking one of my own golden travel rules) I decided to just sit on the bed and let Darren get ready and packed before I did the same so we didn't get in each other's way. We checked out of the hotel and stored our stuff, I'm afraid neither us of were disappointed to see the back of the APA ...

This morning we decided to go and visit Nara, the first capital of Japan. First we had to learn to use the subway, the stop of Higobashi is conveniently located opposite the door of our hotel. After some difficulty using the ticket machines (apparently here you put your money in first and then decide what you want) we bought day tickets and we were off the Umeda station which connects to the JR lines out of the city. We used our trusty JR rail passes to get ...