Getting to our next destination was a little trickier than any of the others in Japan. It involved not only two bullet trains but also a very long bus ride up mountain roads. The bus trip was livened up by the autistic Japanese passenger doing constant sound effects, Greg's favourite being the imitation of the door beeping. We finally arrived at our ryokan, perched on a mountainside overlooking Mount Fuji. Checking in we were told that we had been upgraded to a ...

After our poor sightseeing efforts in Osaka, we were keen to make the most of Hiroshima, we had dumped our bags, acquired our maps and got into the city within 30 minutes of our arrival. We had an agenda. First up was sake shopping, we were keen to take a bottle of our favourite sake home with us, so set out on the hunt for 'taka', that's all we knew. We were unsure if this was the name of the type of sake, a specific sake or a sake brewery. One of the girls in t...

We are ashamed to say that after arriving in Osaka mid afternoon, we spent most of our time there doing some much needed laundry. We had read the guide books and TripAdvisor and we weren't overly excited about doing any sightseeing so we decided this was a good use of our time. We managed to get out and stretch our legs for a rainy evening walk around the centre of Osaka. The coats we've carried around the rest of the world finally came in use, although we look...

We had decided to spend a couple of days out of the cities of Japan, so we headed for the town of Takayama in the Japanese Alps. It is a very relaxed town, with old dark wooden buildings lining narrow streets littered with sake breweries. We spent our first afternoon there on a self-guided sake brewery crawl, so we were a little wobbly by the time our 4pm check in came around. After a brief rest, we soon developed the munchies so headed out for some Hida beef, a...

Our first big train journey was upon us, our first journey on the Shinkansen (the bullet train). This experience far surpasses that of any Virgin pendolino, with oodles of leg room, huge comfy reclining seats and a delicious buffet car, our train journeys have been something we actually look forward to. The speed is incredible, a little nauseating at first but you get used to it, along with the ear popping. We were only on the train for two hours before arriving...