The trip to Hiroshima provided us with our first Shinkansen train trip. The bullet train would speed us the 250 miles from Osaka to Hiroshima in around 90 minutes, too fast for many photos but fast enough to make our ears pop. We arrived feeling fresh and had no difficulty locating Peace Park a 20-minute walk away from the train station. The large majority of buildings have been built since the dreadful atomic bomb was dropped on the city by the Americans in 19...

Kyoto was one of the places I wanted to visit. Pictures of traditional streets and Geisha had fired my imagination although I was also concerned that it may turn out to be something of a tourist trap with high prices and hoards of people. In the event, we had an interesting albeit exhausting day and only saw a few of the many attractions. The golden temple (Kinka Kuji) was very photogenic although it demanded a patient approach to photography as the mass of vi...

Japan - the land of the Rising Sun, or so they say, was the next stop on our journey. We'd decided to make a base at Osaka and trek out from there. There is something comforting about being able to unpack your luggage and put down roots for a couple of weeks. We'd booked the first part of the trip at the Umeda Dormitory in Umeda, which turned out to be the smallest room of the trip so far, and then completed the two weeks In an Airbnb near Namba, close to the b...