Japan and Australia

Hey Hey

Well were in Oz now, had a few lovely days in Sydney so far.

Our last few days in Japan were taken up as follows:

We spent a day visiting a small town up in the mountains near Kyoto called Kara San.

Its main attractions are its various temples(including the headquarters of one of the Buddhist sects, I forget which one!) and shrines.

The place was really picturesque, and the trip up there was half the fun. Two trains, a funicular and a bus along the dodgiest road I've ever seen.

Outside a temple in Kara San

Some cute mini shrine in Kara San

The funicular

A view over the mountains

It was then off to Osaka for the day.

Osaka was fine, not a great deal to do there really. We went up what is reputed to be the worlds tallest big wheel, but don't they all say that??

Chris also tried to get into a spa, but was refused entry on account of his tattoo. Turns out tattoos are deeply offensive to most Japanese on account of their association to the mafia! Poor Chris, does he look like the mafia type to anyone!!

It really was quite big

Had to be done!

It was then onto Hiroshima where we spent the morning visiting the A bomb memorial park and museum.

It was a pretty haunting place (although the museum was a little one sided in the telling of the story, but that's by the by).

The atom bomb exploded just above this building

Our last day was spent back in Tokyo, where we spent the night in a capsule hotel, another quintessential Japanese experience!

Me in my capsule

Australia

So our three days in Sydney so far have been lovely and relaxing. The 26 degrees sunshine is definitely a contributing factor!

We've just been walking about exploring the city centre really. We met up with one of Chris's friends Helen yesterday who took us on a ferry over to one of the suburbs for some lovely cheap food, some nice Ozzy steak!

Me in front of this famous landmark

And Chris in front of another famous landmark

And both of us in front of both of those landmarks

Drag queens with half naked boys, well we are in Sydney!

Helen taking us on our boat trip, oh and yes, that famous landmark in the background

Bondi beach baby!

Oh, and there was a St Patricks day parade, all the way to Oz and surrounded by Irish!

So another couple days in Sydney before heading off to Alice Springs.

Later!

PS Just to say, on the flight to Sydney I chose to watch Baz Lurmans latest epic "Australia", my advice to anyone else..........don't! Its 2 hours and 40 minutes of your life you'll never get back!

Last day in China and onto Japan!!

Okay,　so I`ve been holding off on the blog until I could get free Internet again, but since theres precious little chance of that happening here in Japan I`ve relented and coughed up the hundreds of yen to use the hostels PC......I hope you all appreciate my sacrifice!

So, what have we been up to?

Well our last day in Beijing was good, we had a wander around the Summer Palace, which is where the old Emperors etc would spend their time when the Forbidden City got too hot, I actually found it a lot nicer than the Forbidden City,　it was much more chilled anyway.




Up at the Summer Palace, yes that water is frozen, Summer Palace you say? hmmm

On our last evening we met up with one of my old Uni pals who I had only found out lived in Beijing the week before (the power of facebook!).
Suzie and her boyfriend Ian took us to a really lovely Duck restaurant where we experienced Peking duck how it should be done, thanks so much to Suzie for taking us there!

Suzie and Ian, is that a miniature orange you`ve pealed there Suzie?

Then........

JAPAN

Well we`ve been here for 6 days now and its certainly an experience.

We spend our first two days in Tokyo. What can I say about Tokyo?? Well first of all its massive, I mean really massive!.......and busy, I mean really busy!........and expensive, I mean really expensive! But we had a good couple days there. On our second day one of Chris`s friends,　Miki met up with us and gave us a locals tour of Tokyo which was really good fun, we saw so much more than we would have any other way. Thanks so much Miki!!! (We`ll see you in Edinburgh in 2010!!!)

Miki, me and Chris enjoying some authentic Japanese food(remember that raw squid Chris??)



That umbrella is from Clares Accesories if anyone is wondering


Tokyo's answer to the Eiffel Tower, only 3 metres taller and in technicolour!



Responsible parenting Japanese style!


Oh yeah, Chris got his hair cut too, what do you think???

We`ve been staying in Kyoto for the past 4 days.
Kyoto itself is okay, there isn`t much to do apart from look at one of the hundreds of temples! Great if you love temples I suppose! We`ve had a look at a couple.



Somewhere in Kyoto


Its what you come to Japan for really

Yesterday we took the train to Nara for the day. Nara is really small by Japanese standards so it felt really chilled and relaxed there. Nara is famous for the deer that just wander about all over the town, they are treated as sacred by the Buddhists I think?
We rented bikes for the day so we got to cover the whole place in an afternoon(until the rain put an end to our fun).



Chris in his bike, and the obligatory temple photo


How to make friends with Deer??......Deer biscuits of course!




Today we took the train to Kobe, famous for beef and a very bad earthquake!
Kobe was nice, there wasn`t a whole lot us must see sights, but we managed to make an afternoon of it, including a very ropey cable car ride!


Our bullet train, awesome!


The not so stable cable car


Inspecting the art in Kobe

Xi'an, the terracotta warriors and then Beijing

Xi'an

So our 3 days in Xi'an were really good.

In Xi'an itself (which at a mere 3.6 million people is a hamlet by Chinese standards) there were a few nice old monuments etc to wander around, although its main attraction are the completely intact city walls(all 14km of them) of which we walked around approximately 1km before we got bored, and cold.

Us on the city walls

Xi'an was a lot slower paced than Shanghai, (although you still dice with death any time you try to cross a road!) so we had lots of time just to chill out and relax.

The staff in our hostel were really nice and friendly, didn't want to leave! Chris fell in love with our tour guide Ji Ji as well, bless!

Chris was also told he looks chinese by one of the other girls, i'll let you decide - votes please!

Our main reason for coming though was to visit the terracotta army.

Suppose there isn't much to say other than wow!

I hadn't appreciated before I got there how many of them there actually were.

In the main pit there were 6000 of them!..and they're still excavating.

Definitely worth the trip to Xi'an just to see them.

I'll not say anymore, just look at the photos.

The main pit


Up closer

Beijing

We've been here in Beijing now for 3 days, and loving it all.

Again, as everything seems to be in China, its absolutely massive. We've worked out the subway system though so we're getting about fine enough.

We've pretty much been filling up our time doing all the usual touristy stuff.

We've been to:

Tianamen Square- very big and very full of army and police types (just found out that its 50 years since the invasion of Tibet so I think the authorities are a bit tetchy! As foreigners though we get no hassle and are pretty much ignored by the police)

Chris trying to blend in

The Forbidden City- Nice enough, lots of Chinese looking buildings. I think if we knew even a little about Chinese history it might have meant more to us!

The Olympic Park- Really impressive. We got to walk around inside the birds nest stadium which was totally surreal, and really didn't look that big once you were standing in the middle of it all. The whole place did feel a bit Disney-esque though, from the dancing Olympic mascots to the constant (and slightly irritating) feelgood music across the whole park

The bird is this big!

Those crazy dancing mascots!

Great Wall- Definitely worth the trip in itself. Once we had walked far enough along to the less tourist ridden parts the whole thing just looks amazing. Its also really steep and treacherous, we both slipped more than once! But apart from Chris's mild hypothermia we both made it back in one piece.

Only another 2 miles to go

We've also been getting adventurous with our dining out in Beijing. We had a lovely mongolian type meal the other night. Basically we had to order lots of raw ingredients, beef, spinach etc and then we were meant to boil them in a little table top cauldren thing. Being silly foreigners though we couldn't work any of it out so we ended up having one of the waitresses seconded to our table who cooked all our food for us! I say one waitress, often there were two of them, occasionally three, and at one point four! Couldn't ask for better service I suppose! The meal was lovely though, we're gonna go back before we leave(and cook the food ourselves this time!)

A less succesfull dining experience was our duck and noodle soup cafe night. All i'll say is internal organs and legs!

Anyway, we have one more full day here before heading off to Japan.

Adios for now.