If you're reading this blog looking for the kind of entry where stuff happens, of any description, please skip today's entry. Deliberately, and most welcom-ly, we did practically nothing today. After today, I put Nagoya in the same basket as Osaka. I've tried to like it. I really have. This is the second time we’ve visited here, but the city just isn’t for me. Osaka seems like a nightlife, drinking and clubbing hub, with some excellent food inter...

First of 3 theme parks for the trip. Nagashima Spa Land is a popular theme park on a peninsula of land in the Nagoya bay area, approximately half an hour by train from the centre of Nagoya. This peninsula appears to have been turned into a bit of a tourist/entertainment district, as this is the same stretch of land that Nabana No Sato gardens sits on (last night's illumination), as well as a couple of kids museums, a range of shopping malls and outlets, and an ...

So our time in Kyoto is done..at least for now. We've got another 3 day visit planned in a little over a week, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover before then. Veronica got most of the bags packed last night, so the morning just involved the difficult tasks of eating the ice-creams and snacks that we still had in the freezer, and getting everything out the door so we could get moving to Nagoya. If the size of a day on holidays is measured in energy ...

Woke up very early this morning. I guess we're all getting a little bit over novelty of sleeping on the floor. As nice as the ryokan was, it is still a thin mattress on a hard floor, with a pillow which is soft on one side, and ******* the other (one side of the pillows are soft, and one side are traditional "bean" pillows which are like laying on gravel). We went down for breakfast, of similar content to yesterday's breakfast, and needless to say, far too much ...