Toraya Ryokan Osaka

We now have our round the world flights booked. Starting with the flight from Heathrow to Moscod on 27th July 2010, and returning from New York to Heathrow on the 26th July 2011 (although this return flight could possibly change !!)

We have also booked our flights from Beijing to Osaka (Japan) and back as an extra leg to the journey.

Day 166 - Caught the early Shinkensen up to Kyoto to spend a couple of days. Quite like Kyoto, there seems a lot to do and see, it was the former capital i suppose. Went to a few shrines, palaces, gardens and temples. Didn`t feel too hot, really starting to doubt the Korean `beef` i had last night...

Unfortunately a couple of the places...

Nada Gogo stretches from the Nada and Higshi-Nada district (located in the southeast of Kobe city), towards Nishinomiya city in Hyogo prefecture. It is renowned for being the best sake (nihon-shu) brewing region since ancient times; particularly the Edo period (1603-1868) when about 80% of sake consumed in Edo (the former name of the Japanese ca...

We head to Japan excited, excited, excited if a little intimidated by the land of technology. Everything will be fast, everything will be like in the space-age, right...?

Getting through customs was a bit of an ordeal (a very orderly ordeal) but I now have plenty practice acting like cattle being hearded around in lengthy queus, so an...

The second largest city in Japan. This was just purely a shopping trip, I would say. Before we started off spending our yen, we went early morning in JR (about 30mins train ride) to Osaka. As the shopping centres usually open about 10 to 11 am, we decided to visit the Osaka castle there. Originally called Ozakajo, it is one of Japan's most famou...

They say that in any UK city, you are no more than 7.62 metres* away from a rat at any time. In any Japanese city, you are no more than 7.61 metres** away from a vending machine (and probably a rat as well but who cares about that anyway). Consequently there is a set of toilets every 20 metres***, to cater for the vending machines (which only ev...

After a tiring flight journey - with the transit from Singapore, we finally touched down in Osaka, Japan. Though tired, but I was still delighted, and excited of the sightseeing. We'd expected to see something special. I was once been told by one of my buddy that, "If you have only one chance to travel overseas, you must have chosen Japan. You'l...

Arrived in Japan safely. Well, we had a bit of trouble at the airport in Cairns before we left....basically we ended up booking a flight back to Oz or else they wouldn`t let us check in. The horrible check in staff wanted us to prove that we were going to leave Japan, which we did, we had our ferry booking with us, but wasn`t good enough, they t...

Woke before dawn this morning, got up at 7AM. We have yet another very busy day ahead as we're returning to Tokyo tomorrow. We're anticipating one of the major highlights of our visit to Kyoto...seeing the Bamboo forest. We had to go back to Kyoto Station to get the train for the Arashiyama section so now we get to explore parts of the station w...

Week 7 (11.28 - 12.04.04) - Craig's birthday being on Thursday, we decide we should go out all night in Osaka to celebrate the occasion. As I said before, the trains stop running at 12:20, so if you miss the train you pretty much have to get raped by taxis and hotels or just stay out all night. We start at a little joint where we have set up a d...