Category: Japan

Returning to Japan, there are some things we have already done that we want to do again, like TeamLab Planets, and other things we didn’t do that we wish we had, like the Sky Tree.

The hostel WiFi password is “checkout10am”, just in case you didn’t know. I made sure to be out on time, but still feeling a bit sluggish, I luxuriated in a lie-in. I had been up late chatting to a French girl called Lena and a Canadian lad called Doug about their travels. While waiting for my laundry to dry, they gave me the name of a good sushi restaurant for a date night.

The £16-a-night hostel is amazing. For the money, you really cannot ask for more.

The morning started with a 5 so I was not happy. But when Major General Aimi San says “GTFO of bed”, that’s what you do. Soon I was dozing off on the train and a right grumpy bastard. Then I had a mediocre vending machine latte and I was ready to end the Japan leg of our trip on a high. Literally.

I’m not sure how to write about this experience, what I saw or what I read here today. I feel lucky that I don’t understand how people can inflict such suffering and devastation on others. It goes against what I assume, perhaps wrongly, every person has inside them, a natural morality to do what is good. Seeing the photos of burnt bodies, the clothes with brown blood stains and black radio-active rain drops over them is sobering in the extreme. 

Finally, a sofa! My back! My butt! Oh the comfort!

Rain outside, big TV, kitchen that’s somehow smaller than before, but big enough to cook a meal (we actually had about an A4 sized bit of work surface this time!) so we stayed in, cooked spaghetti and watched Top Gun Maverick. And I have to say…

This is our last day in Kyoto and we have seen all we want to. There have been plenty of Temples and Shrines to satisfy our interest for a good long while. So we just went into town ato an air conditioned shopping centre ( not the one attached to the station ) and to walk around, see what was there and get some lunch. We needed a break from our frantic researching anyway…

Ooof, these early mornings make for long days. But it’s the only way to avoid the crowds and heat, so it is worth it. Especially because being early meant we basically had all the deer to ourselves! But by midday it was so hot we didn’t want to be out in the heat any longer, no matter how many beautiful stone lamps we found in the park.