Taking the advice of the Brit we met yesterday we headed out of Hiroshima to Miyajima Island It looked close on the map but it was a good 30 minutes on the train. From Miyajimguchi station it is a short walk down to where the ferries take you over to the Island. The ferries run every fifteen minutes so no need to rush as you get off the train. They also have a locker facility meaning we could dump [...]
After already experiencing the bullet train, and knowing how expensive it is we decided to find our way to Hiroshima down the local tracks of the JR railways. This halved the cost from £80 to £40 but the journey time skyrocketed from 1.5 hours to 6 hours. This we really didn't mind and it was actually quite nice to just sit and watch the world go by catching up on blogging. We finally got to our H [...]
As we've travelled across Japan we've often come across 'love hotels' when searching for accommodation. On the likes of hotels.com they're often referred to as 'couples hotels' and their true nature isn't explained until you do a bit of digging on Google! We recently stayed in one of these Japanese love hotels in Himeji so if you want to know what to expect, read on.. What are Japanese love hotel [...]
Today is the day we leave Kyoto and start our long journey down to Fukuoka, where the flights are cheapest to Hong Kong. The problem came when we finally got round to booking our hotels, there was nothing left. Our first stop is Himeji and we could only find a “Love Hotel” that was in budget. If you want to know more about Japan's Love Hotels checkout Hayley blog post on the subject, What to expec [...]
Most of today was spent in the hotel catching up on bits and bobs. We was going to spend all day lounging around but thought we might regret not going to see the Ryozen Kannon Temple as it was only a few stops away on the train. The Ryozen Kannon Temple is home to a 24 meter Buddha statue and if it was anything like the one we saw in Nara, it would be well worth the trip! I’d seen pictures of the [...]
Fortunately the TripAdvisor ‘best tourist attraction of 2015’ in the whole of Japan is right on our hotel doorstep. The Fushimi Inari Taisha is a very large shrine complex built on the side of a “mountain”, it's more of a big hill, but never the less it was a 5 mile hike up to the top and back with more steps than I care to imagine (I am writing this on the train and my legs are still shaking!). W [...]
Ahh it was nice to sleep in a bed last night and have our own bathroom! The last 3 nights have been spent sleeping in very cheap traditional Japanese rooms which has meant sleeping on the floor and having to share bathrooms. The last one didn't even have a western style toilet so I had no choice but to squat down and embrace Japanese style peeing! This is pretty much the only negative for me in Ja [...]
Osaka Castle can be seen from miles away, it really stands out amongst an otherwise mainly modern skyline. On approach to the castle we were offered to dress up and have our photo taken in front, complete with samurai swords! Surprisingly, like a lot of touristy things in Japan, this was free. The castle is built up on battlements with ramparts running round the edges. We found out that the wall [...]