Today was a day of rest for us, with no plans set in place. After our Scottish breakfast we set off to navigate our way across to the other side of Kyoto station. And that's no mean feat. We eventually made it, to find Kyoto Tower right there, diagonally opposite. The view from the top (100 metres from the observation floor) was extensive, although the population is only 1.5 million (compared to 2.6m in Osaka city). It was very smoggy, although you don't notice t...

This morning we took it easy. Tom went out to explore further for the hunting and gathering of our breakfast and came back with coffee, scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes and a hash brown - yes he'd found that Scottish restaurant named for his ancestors of the Clan McDonald. So we ate heartily, knowing that we have dinner planned on our tour tonight and could probably skip lunch - this was a huge breakfast! It was rather sad to be leaving Osaka, it was beginning t...

This morning we were up and showered pretty early because we were to be on the Shinkansen from shin-Osaka at 8.40am. We caught the local train from Osaka straight to shin-Osaka where we found a large store, Eki Marche, which sold bento boxes (just as Chari said there would be). With the comprehensive description of the contents all in Japanese, we took a guess and picked bento boxes without seafood (Tom's preference), and we weren't sure if they were breakfast, l...

What a day - very challenging. My knee is still unreliable, so Tom went hunting and gathering for breakfast, and managed to bring back some sandwiches (a little uncertain of the filling in one of them, but the other was egg, lettuce and carrot), and some milk for coffee. After brekky we set out toward the aquarium - catching a JR train to Bentencho station, and then catching a different subway train on the Chuo line to Osakaka - this involved using a machine to b...

We arrived in Tokyo very early, just after 5am, as the city was awakening. Before we went through immigration I had my first experience with Japanese public toilets! As I lowered myself to the seat I took stock of the various buttons "spray", "dry", "bidet" etc with their accompanying illustrations, and then I was startled to hear the loud sound of rushing water. I thought I must have touched one of these buttons by accident and was about to get doused - head to ...