It snowed all last night and heavily all today. Absolutely beautiful! It was wonderful for skiing, so soft and pure. Really enjoyed ourselves and great to be out in a wonderful world of white on slopes so empty it could have been our own, private mountain. It was snowing so hard that we were covered in it and looked like white monsters after sitting on the chair lift for a few minutes. Very cold but we were wrapped up warm, what a glorious day!

Time to leave Osaka, we have really enjoyed it here! We left the hotel early to catch our limited Express RapiT train for Kansei airport and checked in for our flight to Sapporo. A short time in the lounge and we were on our way. Snow, here we come! After a comfortable flight during which they fed us copious amounts of consommé soup we landed in Hokkaido. It was so easy to arrive as a domestic passenger, no queuing up for visas, just collect your luggage an...

Armed with our usual fistful of maps we caught the train to Nara, a trip recommended to us by Tony from Bar Freedom. Nara was the site of the capital of Japan from 710 to 784 and there are many temples and historic monuments, also a famous deer park. It was quite a way on the train and we arrived round about lunch time. We found a covered mall near the station and chose a small restaurant for a setto lunch which turned out to be one rice and one noodles each, ve...

We walked out of our hotel directly into the labyrinthine subway below. Armed with a fistful of maps and instructions we set about trying to get ourselves over to the other side of Osaka for our Duck Tour. We nearly fell at the first hurdle, as we were trying to get our tickets in the railway station hall when we should have been a couple of floors down in the subway station hall but we found the right place eventually. Having successfully negotiated buying the c...

After delays to the flight we arrived in Osaka much later than intended. We caught the train to Namba where our hotel was conveniently situated just above. We checked in and found our room and felt in need of a nap. I think the very boozy lunch on board our flight had something to do with it! We woke up late in the evening but were determined to go out and not miss a Saturday evening on our first day in Osaka. We wrapped up warm because it was bitterly cold and...