Pandas. Opera. Hotpot. Chengdu - done.

Arrived in Xi'an after our first night train experience. 6 to an open cabin - pretty claustrophobic but fun as was a novelty. Ended up playing cards before lights out - Cheat (which I was always terrible at) but ended up being more fun as we were playing with the Danish girls on our trip who taught us it's called 'Schnu' in Denmark and this seemed more entertaining to shout for some reason. Took in a couple of pagodas while we were in Xi'an and the main reason f...

Written quite retrospectively as we've been pretty lazy with the blog in China.... Spent a few days in Beijing and found it quite a contrast to Japan. We were surprised at just how big this city is and seemed to take quite a while to get around c/w Japan. It's quite a smoggy city and I'm not sure we ever got used to the close proximity staring! (It's not deemed rude here and at one time I was eating a bowl of noodles in a booth with a woman literally 20cm away h...

Our last day in Japan! Had a quick stop in Kamakura after leaving Mount Fuji but probably didn't do it justice with one night there. Think we'd reached our quota of temples by then and weren't as enthusiastic as we'd probably have been at the start of our trip. Still a nice town though (although Hotel New Kamakura is a bit overpriced!) and found a good place to Pooch-watch in 'Bowls' cafe where you can choose the size of the bowl you eat from and watch extremely...

Couple of quick stops over the next couple of days. We had less than 24hrs in Koyasan, to visit Okonoin graveyard and stay in one of the many temples run by monks. We stayed at Ekoin, which was very picturesque and were well looked after. We, as requested, got a 0630 call to come and watch the prayer and fire ceremonies that are done every morning before breakfast. Pretty special to be able to watch such a thing and felt very welcome. Okonoin is a huge forested c...