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It is now 2009 in Japan, so happy New Year everyone.

I was always going to give some awards at the end of my trip, but so they stay relevant I am going to do some as I go along. So I’m going to split my trip into thirds. The next logical third is the Pacific Islands including Easter Island, Tahiti, New Zealand and Japan (technically [...]

So I arrived into Hiroshima at 1:30pm on Saturday after having my usual lunch of rice in seaweed. First I checked into my hostel for the next couple of nights. After that I headed to the mixed contemporary arts museum. It had some moving art on the atomic bomb in the foyer and in the [...]

I got up at 7am on Saturday to head on the train to Hiroshima. It’s clear at this point that the New Year which is the Japanese equivalent to Christmas has begun and there is a lazy atmosphere in the air. First I headed to Kyoto station to leave my baggage before catching the slowest [...]

I headed out to castle Himeji on boxing day morning, heading to Himeji mostly on the Shinkansen and changing 3 times on the way. Himeji is unsurprisingly another boring town though it has it’s good points. Firstly they rent free bikes to allow you to explore the town. This wasn’t that useful but did enable [...]

On Christmas day I had a lazy morning (it’s Christmas after all) and then headed to Osaka. First I had a slow walk around the exterior of the castle before having some lunch. At which point I decided I was going to see the more impressive castle Himeji a little later so I gave it [...]

So I arrived into Kyoto late on Sunday and in the evening I uploaded a whole bunch of stuff to Flickr which carried on after midnight and so in the morning I had a lie in and got up pretty late too. First I had a wander around town and went down one of the [...]

Well it’s 12:03 on Christmas day here in Kyoto. So happy Christmas everyone.

After arriving on the bullet train into Kyoto I sat down and uploaded some more photos at my hostel these are now online on Flickr and named (some not very well though), enjoy, but now I’m off to bed as its midnight here.

After leaving the railway museum I caught the Shinkansen north to Sendai. The journey was uneventful and I made my way to my Japanese style accommodation. There I had a relaxing evening aside from heading out to Mosburger for a small Japanese burger that was too small so I had a second supper afterwards -these [...]