Hong Kong I will type up tonight or tomorrow depending on the amount of free time I might also cover Thailand, it was awfully uneventful.  Then I can try and get up to date with ourselves.  For those curious we are in Queenstown, New Zealand and the snow is eluding us.  As a result we ma have a chance to update this here blog a bit more frequently.  Also for those of you who read this far, cheers.

John

Who would have thought that we would have such a hard time getting consistently online and time to write these updates, anyway.  For those who care here’s the next chapter……

So last time we gave you an update we were in Beijing and we were staying in Raffles.
We had a very comfortable night there in the height of 5 star luxury.
I took advantage of the use of the gym in the morning then Phil got up and joined me for a swim in the pool when I got back from the gym. Lazy bugger.
I don’t think I have ever been in a gym where so much attention has been paid to me.  Now I hold my hand up and also say that I have not been in that many gyms before also.  But this was just mad.  I walked into the gym to use the machines and was greeted by a pleasant female staff member whom I thought I wouldn’t see until I was leaving said gym, I was wrong.
I am used ot use a gym facilities where you wipe down the machines after you use them to not leave your sweat all over them.  Well it seems that this is not the way it is done in Raffles, I was off the exercise bike no more then a few seconds, when in popped the pleasant young lady from earlier.  Towel in hand wiping down the various surfaces.  I hadn’t even finished wiping the sweat off my face when she has finished wiping the whole machine of my perspiring droplets and had retreated behind the desk to greet the next guest.  With the kind of speed and efficiency she did that I reckon the girl could have given the machine a full service while I was on my way to the rowing machine.  Now maybe this is just in China where they demolish and rebuild streets at will, I don’t know but I have the feeling that it was because of the poshness of Raffles. No other reason I can think of for the stealthiness that she performed all of these tasks.
It only got better with the food however.
After the trip to the gym and the swim we had to go for breakfast, it was included in the ridiculously cheap deal that we had gotten.  So we pillaged the breakfast buffet dressed like pikeys.  The only part better than the breakfast was the look on the other guests faces when they saw us in the place.  Fantastic.

First thing on the list was to see Mao’s mausoleum, it was very weird seeing the fella lying there embalmed and on display.  The theory is that it may not actually be him but rather a wax copy of him that was used to practice embalming him.  I would be in somewhat of agreement with that theory, he was awfully shiny and some of the facial structure was mid expression.  The rest of the people there however were not that concerned, they even allowed you to rent flowers that you could place in the mausoleum as an offering.  At the same time they have a rake of security, probably a mix of cops and military and special intelligence.  In true communist tradition there are a load of tat sellers waiting right outside the exit hawking souvenirs to you.  Still the best part has to be that Mao wanted to be cremated after his death and not have what happened to him.  He expressly said this after seeing what they had done in Vietnam and also to Lenin in Russia.

After this we headed out to the Summer Palace, amazingly colourful place altogether.  It has all of these littles buildings, shrines, temples etc in the place.  This is the place where the emperors retreated from the Forbidden City during the summer.  Its fecking huge.  The emperors of ancient China really know how to build it big.
There are quite a few amazing looking things here but it was also full of commercialisation.  Some of the old halls and buildings had been renovated on the inside to be souvenir and tat shops.  Really takes from the whole thing when you look at the map and see a hall in the middle of a courtyard only to find it housed a shop selling drinks and little Buddha’s.  Some of the sites in this place make you gasp in amazement at how fantastic they are.  Then you get deflated to turn around to have a woman thrust some shitty little kite at you to try and get you to buy it. It really gets to you after a bit in China, they have the beautiful summer palace with the 17 arch bridge and worlds longest corridor in this place and they just pour capitalism all over it.  Ol’ Mao must be turning in his grave.  At this stage however we were getting worn down by the amount of tat in these places.  Something which will only get worse with the Olympics.
This is sounding somewhat like a disapproval of the place, it’s not in anyway shape or form.  Any of the places we have seen in this place can’t be recommended enough, maybe just go in with ear plugs in.  That should make it more palatable.  Then you only see the awe inspiring sites and not the annoying idiots.

The place has some awesome sites here like the ones mentioned above and including my favourite, the Marble Boat.
This was built way back by an empress. She had this huge budget and was using the money to enlarge and better beautify the Summer Palace.  The problem was that she was meant to spend it on a navy. She didn’t so she tried to find a way around this.  So she built this boat out of marble and it was proclaimed to be unsinkable as you can imagine because it is a boat made of marble way back when.  From afar it looks cool seeing this boat in the water.  The damn thing however is not a boat obviously, once you are standing beside it you can see the “boat” sitting on the base of the lake.  Its just a building made of marble sitting in the water, the story was that she brought some of the generals in a boat across the lake to see the boat but didn’t take them close enough to see that it was in fact a building….. clever girl.

Once we finished there we hopped into a taxi and picked our gear up from Raffles to head to the airport.  Once we eventually got a damn taxi we got to the airport in Beijing.  This being the Beijing airport that is brand new however it is obviously gonna be big. Really big, as it turns out this place has been declared the worlds largest airport just recently. Its made up of three terminals, 1 and 2 are old and 3 is the newest one.  Built by the great Sir Norman Foster.  He is the architect behind many of the amazing looking buildings we have seen. He seems to built it on the delta wing design and has two of these facing each other.  Think of a very smoothed out salt timer with the middle being very thin if you don’t know delta wings.  The real Chinese side to this is that this single terminal is bigger then all five of Heathrow’s terminals put together.  Immense.  Pulling up to it in the taxi was bewildering.  I thought I was seeing the whole airport and not just the front of one of the terminals.  But thanks to the Beijing weather we couldn’t see the other end of the terminal.  We were looking down the runway and taxiing planes would disappear.  It wasn’t until we were in the plane taking off we were low over the terminal we could see the scale of the place.  The Chinese know how to make em big and with this place they were very Chinese.  The only downside to the place are the squeegee guys in the toilets.  Phil got caught by one of these and I slammed the door of the cubicle into the little bloke until he gave up anf left him alone.  Very weird.

After our flight which was with Air China by the way, we were picked up in the airport by the driver from the hostel.  Certainly very handy but it would have been smarter, cheaper and would only have taken a bit longer. They also gave us a triple room as they had given away our double.  Free upgrade and a bed for our bags, success.  The next order of the night was to grab a drink because we were parched, its worth noting that for internal flights in China you cannot bring on any fluids.  Not even in a resealable bag.  Also that Air China do not have a very good cabin service system, in fat its a pretty crap service all round.  For a flag carrier they are pretty crap.  I recommend the other carrier we had which I will cover in later posts, China Eastern, their flights are tagged with an MU.  So we bumped into a few other Irish in the pub in the basement and had a bit of craic with them.  WE tried the whole going out thing but because Chine was in its third day of National mourning for the victims of the quake they place was dead.  So we eventually returned to our Hostel after hitting up what looked to be someones house for drinks, the bar had toilets upstairs when you turned right but if you turned left you walked into the sitting room.  Very confusing.

Pur first proper day was spent with the Terracotta Warriors and they were wicked.  The whole site is very Chinese (for those who haven’t picked up on it yet that means huge)  The presentation of the site is excellent and the whole organisation of the area exemplary.  You can tell this is one of the jewels in the crown of Chinese tourism.  Lots of nice neat touches and everything possible done to make the place accessible and enjoyable aswell as informative to tourists.
The rest of the day was spent on a bus back to Xi’an which went all around the world and back it seemed and then trying to find food.  As I said previously the problem with Lonely Planet is that since their last visit half of the streets have been ripped up and moved so the maps in the books are pretty useless.  To our disappointment we ended up eating back in the hostel.  It was still good however.  WE got an early night because of our early morning flight to Chongqing.  Left the hostel at the crack of dawn and hailed a cab.  Gave him our directions and we arrived at the airport.  Thanks to me and my rudimentary Mandarin.  From their we passed through internal passport control.  This country has quite the security system for all of this.  Instead of stopping terrorists however it was for what seemed like just Big Brother purposes.  Anyway we hopped onto our plane with little fuss and had a quality meal, a little bun for breakfast, mucho tasty.  Phil however wasn’t much of a fan.  I liked it however, some kind of grilled meat in some sort of baked bun, all good.

That’s it for now and I will give you the next post from Chongqing onwards shortly.  Internet access has been a pain in NZ and Thailand.

Apologies for any and all bad grammar, I wrote this in notepad and then eoploaded it in a rush.

Cheers

John

This is just a short post to say hello and confirm that we are all here and not dead.
Avril arrived yesterday and we are in an apartment/condo in Pattaya that belongs to Phil’s Auntie Mary.
Herself and John have been great in having us over and letting us also use their place in Ko Samui while we are there.

Anyway when I get a chance to write a catch up post I will do so, on my new laptop that is.  For the nerds interested, Sony Vaio SZ79GN/C you will be able to get to an english version of that site, it’s the Hong Kong Sony site.

Anyway till then.

Now I should probably explain the above for you because it must be quite confusing and weird to hear how my head works.  Its bad enough for me and I live with it every day. 
Well this part picks up from the next lucid moment I have after going to bed after the beers the night before with the Israeli lads.
I woke up to an awful feeling and the above played out.  I didnt get sick or anything and after taking time to think about it the only conclusion I can think of is that it was food poisoning of some sort.  After all I am in China.  Phil didn’t have any issues but then again I do have quite the picky stomach as my parents know well after 23 years.  Once I was lucid this morning I was also able to understand the ludicrousness of me thinking I had Dengue fever. 

Anyway I’m fine, I had some breakfast and then more food in the minbus on the way to the Great Wall.  It all stayed in my stomach where it should have and I haven’t had any trouble since.  This part is for the few people daft enough to worry about me and my well being.  I’m fine honestly!  Now just keep reading.

So we hopped into the minbus at 6am after checking out of the hostel and took the roughly 3 hour car journey to Jinshanling pass to start the 11km hike that we had ahead of us to the Simatai gate.
It was awesome, excuse my American.  The views were absolutely breathtaking.  The weather, perfect.  The number of other hikers on the same portion, minimal to none at times.  The difficulty, well now that’s another thing.

In my previous post I mentioned the pollution, sibsequently we have read a sandstorm caused this look of pollution.  Funnily enough, this is only on the Chinese news sights, then again it was bad enough to prompt this sort of coverage so who knows.  Well out on the wall is a different story. 
The amount of greenery certainly helps but there is still a very noticable haze.  Whether this is because the area is humid and hazey or the pollution reaches up here I’m not sure.  Those of you cynical enough go and join Phil in the pollution though corner.
The rest of the weather however was great, just enough sun and plenty of heat, but not a debilitating amount.

The portion that I mentioned above is one of the roads less travelled on the Wall itself and there were only six of use in our group.  This meant that once we spread ourselves out we would be fine and we would only meet oncoming hikers and locals hawking tat.  Which worked out perfectly for us and we spread ourselves out just enough so that we had enough time for the wall but would also reach our destination by 2pm for the return trip.  We also met a group of about 40 men and women doing a charity 5 day hike for Marie Curie Cancer Care, congrats to them and I hope it is still going as well as it was today.

As I said the views, well they really were beyond words.  The pictures can’t tell the story properly, the wall is enormous and you look the length of it and all you see is undulating hills with towers atop them as far as the eye can see in the haze.  It really is breath taking.  I have pictures and Phil has better ones but to do this justice you really have to see it.

The difficulty as I said was altogether different.  We were told this wasn’t a stoll in the park but we didnt think it would be what we got.  The wall itself is incredibly stepp at some points and then you throw decay into the question.  All of a sudden you have some very tiresome inclines and very awkward dsecents.  (Please don’t let this turn you off it, there was an elderly couple climbing it at theiur own pace and having no issues, they were also smart enough to be ready with the right shoes and hiking sticks.)
Initially I was pushing Phil to keep the pace but once we both got used to it we were fine and we had no issues with keeping it going at a managable pace that allowed us to see the views and make the trek in time enough. 

The one thing you really get surprised by is the tenacity of the locals to follow you to sell their tat.  We had a local each following us for the about 5 five minutes after about 20 minutes into the walk.  The woman follwing me was supposedly a Mongol who lived nearby, she was also half my height.  As a result when I wanted to get rid of her I stepped up the pace, those little legs gave up on her I left her behind thankfully.  Phil wasn’t so lucky, his guy persisted for a bit linger but enventually got the message.  About every third tower we went through however and there are 67 on this stretch had more locals waiting for you to try and sell you cold water, coke beer or tea or coffee.  Yeah hot drinks were available.  I dont get it.

Once we finshed up on the wall we made it to the destination restaurant and had lunch, cheap cheerful and very tasty.  Then we hopped into the minibus for the trip home.
This is somehting that myself and Phil liken to an extreme sport.  Getting in a vehicle in China is quite the trip.  Road markings and traffic lights are but a recommendation and using your signals, nah thats no fun.
Phil made the point that we shoudl tkae the so called “advanced drivers” from the Hibernia Insurance course and see how they do on the roads.  I reckon they would rather hand in their licence then continue driving on the roads here. 
There really is only one way to learn how to deal with the driving here and that is by use of a simulator.  I don’t mean any normal one I mean by playing Grand Theft Auto on a computer.  Half the time the people her drive the car like they have stolen it.  Completely reckless.  Overtaking and forcing the oncoming car to duck out of the way.  Changing lnae without looking or doing any kind of signalling.   But always beeping your horn.
That seems to be the only rule here.  If you are going to break the law then just beep your horn before some beeps at you and you’re fine.  I can’t see this ending well.  The main cause of death over here is also by road traffic accident.  Thank god we are flying to all of the rest of the locations from now on.

Once we passed that gauntlet we were able to pick up our gear from the left luggage room in the hostel and head to our next place to stay.  Which is where I am writing this from.  Raffles of Beijing.  It’s fantastic.  It’s a five star hotel and it was well cheap for us to get, compared to home.  We decided we had to do one night of this while we were here and we are glad we did after all the walking of today.  I’m currently in the executive lounge of the hotel wearing the complimentary slippers which I must say are pretty cool and surprising that they fit out foreigner feet.  Most of them don’t over here.  The lounge was part of the deal and gives us a drinks cabinet and the use of the laptops etc.
We also have use of the gym, spa and pool aswell as free breakfast.  Quite the deal and we are going to make every penny count. 
The best part is all of them trying to be curteous etc to the two of us after we got in this evening.  we looked like knackers and they still had to treat us like royalty.  Thank god for the internet special offer price. 

Anyway as always I am rambling and need to go to bed.  I want to use this gym, jacuzzi and pool before I check out tomorrow.  My leg is really quite good now my physio would be happy to hear, it didnt give me any trouble and the climbs today.  Here’s hoping it will stay that way and I can get some snowboarding in NZ.

Oh and if anyone has any ideas why I was thinking of seventeen please let me know.  I don’t know why but it was one of my thoughts, I can’t come up with a satisfactory answer yet.
I have a very convoluted idea as to what it is but it will just make me look even crazier.
Also by me referncing my phone being on you have probably worked out that my phone is now working in China.  I can receive call but can’t make them.  I can send and recive texts also.  Phil is the same but with the ability to make calls. I dont need my phone to make calls yet so will leave it be for now.

Till next time, Same bat channel, same bat place……

We landed here on Tuesday morning after a 10 hour night train from Qingdao.
It was not the best way to do it but one we are happy we have “experienced”.
We were in the “plush” soft sleeper cabin with four sleeping berths.  We had two other people in the cabin, both Chinese.  It wasn’t that busy in the “plush cabin but the other cabins, hard sleeper and the “seats” (you just get a seat for the journey, no bed. this is not the best as there are hard and soft seats, those with and without cushions) were quite a bit fuller.
Obviously we figure this is due to the price difference for the tickets, to us the 300 worked out to be 30 euro roughly but a beer here will cost you roughly 5 of their yuan so you can see how “cheap” it is to the locals.
Coming to the ticket cost we still don’t know how we got the tickets for the journey.  With a little of my phrase book and a few other remembered qords of Mandarin aswell as a bit of sign language it all eventually worked out.  We were able to figure it out because we klnew the train number and then confirm they had charged us for the right thing.
All really by the skin of our teeth really don’t want to depend on this again, a local and enriching experience you might say.  We say a pain in the ass and likely to get you on the wrong train in the wrong cabin.

Anway we tried to get some sleep in the train, it was fleeting, not the most comfortable compared to what we had in Japanese trains. The real pain was the heat however the air conditioning really wasn’t up to much for us.  The two locals however were fine, they slept the whole journey.  That is until aout two hours before we arrived, they started announcements and ticket checking.
I say announcements because there were many of them.  In fact we figure the only way they could have stayed on the intercom for the whole time was to e reading the paper to the people.  Maye this is something they do on Chinese trains ut we have no idea ecause it was all in foreign.  None of it however repeated so it must have been somewhat interesting.

Anyway we stumbled off the train around 6am into the throngs of taxi drivers outside the station just wanting to help us to our hostels.  Nah you’re ok mate we know where we are going…..don’t we?

Well yes we did but the sleep deprived state made it all the more interesting and difficult.  We got t the hostel after a quick go on the new Beijing metro line.  Still under construction and the ticketing machines weren’t running so the good old reliable tearaway stubs it was for us.
Checked into the hostel and noticed how filthy we were.  The pollution was crazy.  We finally got ourselves ready to roll and into Forbidden city area, this also includes a fairly famous square.  I just don’t want the blog to blocked from us like Phils email is.

Once we got here we were then aware of the pollution properly, the sky was brown.  Yes that’s right brown, this can’t have been meteorological, anyone know of a natural way to cause this let us know.  So we can only assume that it is technological.  This makes it quite weird to walk around the city dring the sunny hours.  It’s hot and humid and the sun it there it is just dulled.  Could we have even got a sun burn or even a tan.  Well we have no idea but the feeling is little unnerving to say the least.  You feel like you want to hold your breadth the whole time.

We have to say though that both the square and the house of goverment building to the side were quite a let down.  Now hold on a second before you decry us for the lack of cultural insight.  The whole place is huge yes but well quite samey really.  Maybe it is because we have seen so many temples and shrines in Japan that look quite similar that we are kinda let down. I dunno the whole place doesn’t have that historic feel, what with the fresh paint and cement and the plethora of cctv cameras.  Yeah every lampost has speakers, microphones, may lights and multiple cameras.  This surely is for the peoples protection.  What is also for the peoples protection are the hundreds of police officers and cars aswell as military infantry on patrol.  Most of the cars and officers are just awaiting a call at the side of the square the rest of them are walking around watching you walk around.  Just ready to come to your aid, should you need it. hrmm something about that sounds weird.
Anyway we progressed into the Forbidden city and to say it is vast is an understatement but that seems to be the main point to it. The colours and architecture are very samey and then the other parts that you can’t go into, bout 30% of it is under renovation.

This all is underlined by the clock at the side of the square, showing the countdown to the start of the Games.  79 days today, I think they will be all built in time but I don’t know about ready.  These guys work through the night here on construction and it seems to fly up. All construction is under budget and ahead of schedule.  But that’s the problem, until then the city is in chaos, we went to a restaurant listed in the guide book to find the whole street closed off and under constrcution.  The whole street.  Imagine tearing down Grafton St, road buildings and everything and then rebuilding it.  That’s waht’s happening here.  Difficult to believe but very true. 

As a result we don’t know what the pollution is from, building dust, cars, thei infamous coal fired powerplants.  Who knows.  Anyway we were wrecked after all the walking and heading off to get food.  One whole roast duck for the two of us. Fantastic.  The whole thing was very opulent, carved in front of us by the chef and surroundings all gold and red and sparkley. Well actually just tacky then.  this however was just a chain restaurant.  And it was huge, five or six floors of huge areas for tables and the main dish for everyone to get was the roast duck. Well worth doing it properly.  The beer however was quite the let down.  Don’t get the Lan Jing “Ice beer” stick with Tsingtao outside of this place.  They don’t serve Tsingtao for some reason.

Headed back to the hostel and had another shower to wash off the days grime. We washed our hands in the restaurant and were horrified to see the amount of dirt come off from one dys walk around.  Met some Israeli blokes and had some beers and a few games of pool.  Cool guys, they’re heading to the mountains that are to the west, you know that place that is closed to foreigners.  They think they may have a way in. Search for the ceiling of the world if you want to know where we are talking about.
headed to bed earlyish as we were going to do the Great wall on Wednesday, more info on the next post.

Cheers

I’ll start off in Hiroshima because we didn’t really get that covered for you.

So we hit the Peace memorial museum up and really just wanted to see the Peace memorial park which encompasses the museum and a few other monuments to the bombing.
We hit the display areas before the main museum and it was empty which was great, we had seen hordes of school kids on our arrival.  This however turned out to be the type of area that was described in the guide books.  The basement is where we started and they have artifacts from the bombing and paintings from the survivors along with a large amount of photographic evidence from the incident.

It was in one word devastating.  This both describes the bombing and the effects of it on the area and us.
We walked around the whole place in complete silence, not one snigger at some mistranslation or immature joke we made.  For those of you who have been lucky to escape being left with Phil and myself then be assured this is very rare.  The sombre mood continued when we passed a room where a survivor had been giving a talk to a roomful of students.  From there we continued upstairs to the main display.

This area was packed to the gills with school kids however and for me made it a little bit easier to walk through the display.  As I said it was likened to Auschwitz but the constant bustling of kids and the running back and forth of them made it much easier to no get sucked into what was on display.  I and others we stopped by many kids either looking for us to write a note for them in English or just to say “Hello”.
Auschwitz on the other hand is quiet and sombre and you can feel the horrors all around you.  The kids alleviated the mood, constantly running and chatting, giving the room life.  They seemed to make you think of the peace and what could be instead fo the 150,000 or so people killed by the “Little Boy” dropped from the Enola Gay.
Most of you are probably quite perplexed by reading the above but it’s not me being drunk.  The reason for this optimistic and possibly even altruistic writing is really because of the museum.
The whole place though it is documenting one of the most devastating moments in the 20th Century is also dedicated to bringing the notion of “peace” to the world.  It is constantly making references to human kinds need to disarm and look for a better way to resolve differences.  While it is gratifying to see you also sometimes get a feeling that they are losing their energy to continue this.
Every year for example they have a new peace proclamation, calling the world to disarm and so forth.
Every time a nuclear weapon is tested the mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter to the ambassador of that country to protest.  Copies of each of these letters cover two large pillars in the main display area.  At first they are venomous letters attacking the people for carrying out such testing.  They show real pain in people who are one of two cities who have felt the pain of being bombed by one of these weapons.  As they continue they however lose their vigour and almost look like they feel like it’s not worth it anymore.
It’s worth noting that this seems to  a common feeling across Japan, some of their ministers are calling for use of Nuclear research and at least to start using Nuclear power plants.

As I said however we also went to other areas of the peace park, there are a number of peace memorials for different things such as the eternal peace flame that will be lit until all nukes have been disarmed.  Then there was also one of the buildings that survived the bombings, it is simply now called the A-Bomb dome.
It is a building that was very very near the hypo centre, the point just below the explosion of the bomb. For those of you who don’t know the bomb was exploded 600m above the ground.  This building was shredded but the dome in its ceiling stood after the bombing, the metal structure was strong enough to resist.  They use this as a symbol to show they have stayed standing.

Anyway after this we didn’t do too much else in Hiroshima, food drinks etc.

That afternoon we left for Shimonoseki and hit our hotel.  The Tokyu Inn, quite bland boring and well everything a budget business hotel is, pretty shit then.  The city of Shimonoseki was also, well, shit.  There really seemed very little to do so we pressed on with our dinner.  The famed and dangerous Fugu.  The fish Homer eats in the Simpsons and it has all the poison in it.  We took the Lonely Planet recommendation for which restaurant to go to.  Got there and ordered the two different variations we could get in the typical Japanese manner of sharing the food between us. 
Fugu is known better for it’s ability to kill you if ill prepared but the taste is not going to rock your world.  Well that’s being kind to it.  It was shit, it tasted like rubber and ate like rubber.  Our teeth bounced off the food more then jelly babies.  The first part was raw fish and it was horrid, the rest of the meal continued like this for pretty much the whole thing.  There was a short respite when we drank our draft Kirin beer, good, and the time we fried some of the fish, passably like chicken.
Put simply we got “F’ed in the A” by Shimonoseki.  For those of you who don’t get that it is a south park reference.  You will be able to look it up.  But beware of doing this, it is not the cleanest phrases.  It is not safe to read the below link in work.  (NSFW)
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=F’ed+in+the+A

The next morning was a splurging of the breakfast buffet and a quick shopping trip to pick up supplies for the boat.  The boat was well interesting, bland and full of Chinese people.  This was not surprising as it is the cheapest way to get from Japan to China.
It was pretty uneventful until we were tempted by the amount of beer we had consumed, because of the boredom, to go up and join the natives in some karaoke.  Sense and nearing sobriety won over however and we didn’t.

We finally go off the boat today anyway and got through immigration.  Took a while, my J1 Visa to the states raised a few eyebrows and they searched both mine and Phils hand luggage.
Once out however it was culture shock.
The stories of China being dirty are so very true, we just left the cleanest and most organised place in the world and landed in the most hap hazard and dirty one.  We stumbled around trying to fins our way to our hostel.  We were impeded by not knowing where we were and not knowing where we were going.  So we just kept walking.  Eventually we gave up and got the hostel to direct a taxi we picked up to the hostel.
So we’re here now and the hostel room that is costing 10 euro a person per night is about one and a half times the size of the hotel rooms we stayed in Japan for 3 to 5 times the price.  So things are looking up on that front.

We still don’t know what the story is with how badly the earthquake has effected our travel plans but we fired off a few mails to the hostels to find out.  So now it is time to get food and washed, the some beers and sleep.  Phil however has been waiting to do this for the past 30 minutes so is now pacing the room and reading this over my shoulder.  I shall as a result bid you adeu (I did German so my Frenchy is horrid, my mum is horrified reading this).

Till tomorrow everybody.

We`re on our way to the ferry port now and will be on the boat for the next 27 hours so you won`t hear from us until then.

Next time we write it will be from China.
If they haven`t done something like the place in Nagoya.

Last night I finished off at saying we went to Himeji.
Himeji is one of the many many UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Japan.  They have loads of them, the temples in　Nikko for example were all heritage sites.
Himeji however really deserves it.  Ever want to play “forts” when you were younger or pretend you had this castle in your mind that you were king of?  Maybe it was just my overactive imagination then.
However this was the type of castle you would have wanted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himeji_castle

The place is absolutely breath taking.  The castle dominates the city and the views are really something else, you can see this from the local train station.  They are very proud of their history in Japan and have rebuilt any of these sites that have been damaged in the past.  The unique thing about Himeji is that it is in it`s original state.  As a result it has only been touched up to clean and keep in good nick.  Very much worth the visit.  As usual pics to follow, we keep hitting the Internet too late to do anything really useful so will prob just throw all of the photos up together at some point, it is 3 am here and I have to get up by 10am to check out by 11am.  Oh the joy.

Anyway that was yesterday for the most part, we left the hotel in the morning, went to Himeji and got to Hiroshima in the evening.
Most people have this idea of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed out shells but they really aren`t.  Well Hiroshima anyway.
They Japanese are very proud people and as a result they rebuilt the city quite quickly and have made it into a vibrant international and culturally minded place.
The place also revolves around peace etc, not surprising really when you think as to why.
The main street for example is called Peace Boulevard for example and there are quite a few memorials and museums to the A-Bomb strike by te Yanks.

Today however we didn`t do Hiroshima, that is for tomorrow. We instead went to Miyajima.  This is a small island that is mainly known for it`s shrines and sites, which are all on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  Yeah see they are everywhere.  Pretty much the whole island is a World Heritage sanctuary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyajima

Is good link to start off with.  It is one of the most photographed sights and this gates or Torii as they are called here is the reason for it.
At high tide the sight is really something else, the Torii looks like it is floating in the water.
Once again many pics to follow, I tried to get a few in time lapse with the setting sun but it got messed up halfway because of a deer.
Yeah a deer came along and pulled a map out of my pocket casing me to move and also the camera.  It was quite funny to watch a deer chew away of the map, I have kept it as a keepsake for now.  This place was the same as Nara, deer everywhere.  Although most signs said they were wild they didn`t seem it to us, they mainly just wanted us to feed them.
Besides gawking at this gate and looking for photo anoraks we also saw a five storied pagoda, some unfinished temple and another shrine area full of school kids.
You can see we are getting all temple`d out at this stage, they are a mixture of Buddhist and Shinto shrine most quite cool, but also many are very similar.
After the temples we went up the hill to hop on a “ropeway” again, yeah a cable car.  After two separate journeys in them we got to a height of about 420m, with an additional hike we eventually got to the top of Mt Misen at 530m.  This included a hike down the side of the mountain we were on into a valley and back up to the top of Mt Misen.  Very idyllic and offered some pretty cool scenes.  However we were in a rush, the cable cars stopped at 5:30pm sharp, in this country that means exactly on time.
As a result we were in quite the rush and didn’t get much time to stop.  The run back down to get ourselves back in time for the car down, 7 minutes to spare, was good for us.  Phil however may disagree.  If you read the post about trains then you know why we say we had 7 minutes left.  You get in the rhythm of being very precise with your timing.  It suits Phil very well as you can imagine.

We then trekked it back down for the time lapse pictures I mentioned of the sunset earlier.
Hopped back on the Ferry and headed home.
We just got back from a night out and it was crap but we did have some Yakitori.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitori

It really is awesome.

Anyway tomorrow is Hiroshima city itself, the war memorial stuff is meant to be very heavy and can be quite depressing.  Think Auschwitz for those who were there.
Then we are on to the port of Shimonoseki for our last night in Japan.  We hop on the boat on the morning of the 17th and then land near in the afternoon of the 18th.
We are going to try and stock up on food before we leave, we don`t know what crazy food we are going to get served on that boat.

Anyway we will be trying Fugu in Shimonoseki so we will try and find an Internet cafe to let you know how it is!

Till then

So we landed in Tokyo on the 2nd of May, stayed in the Shinagawa Prince hotel.
It`s a fairly basic business hotel, but it was the best accommodation we could get in Tokyo.
This was because the first week we were here it was golden week and accommodation was hard to come by.
The next night was spent in a capsule hotel, pretty fun and interesting to do, I was pretty cramped though.
We took one night in a regular hostel then in an area an of Tokyo called Asakusa.
Was pretty boring, we went to Nagoya then the next day. We were meant to use this day to go Kamakura but slept in.

The next two nights were spent in Nagoya, the first one left us pretty freaked out as we went out for beers that night.
We were in the “nightclub district” in Nagoya and got mobbed by people offering “massauges”. Otherwise we were just being ignored. As I said the whole problem with being foreign here is that they ahve the main idea of you being a yank. The American soldiers stationed in bases all over this country have caused many problems and are just not welcome.
That and the fact that most Japanes do not speak English they dont want people in their establishments who dont speak Japanese.

The second day in Nagoya however was much better, we went to the Toyota factory and it was class. We arrived and were told to take a tour around the public area and half an hour later we would be leaving on our organised tour. They had all of the areas that Toyota was working on with some interactive displays and showing company history details etc. I never knew they owned Daihatsu.
They then had the coolest part of our unguided tour, they brought out a “partner robot” one which assists humans. They set this up with a trumpet and got it to play music. I have a short video which we will put up once we have the full hang of this blog theme, just got the gallery working the other day. Anyone familiar with the trumpet or trying to play onw will　know how tricky it is, you need to chang you whole mouth shape and how hard you blow and many many other tricky things for humans, let alone making a robot do it. It was really cool to see, we didn`t however see the “orchestra that they have of multiple robots, that would cool.

The next thing they rolled out was the i-unit

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/04/1203_1e.html

and

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/toyoto-ifoot-and-iunit-026866.php

This thing was straight out of a sci fi movie and was fantastic. The lady who was demoing it activated it with her fingerprint then drove it around the show room. Really was awe inspiring. once again video to follow.

We left Nagoya the nex day, the place we stayed was as previosuly mentioned, Ryokan Meiryu. Nice clean and very friendly but otherwise unimpressive. Than again so was Nagoya so myeah.

We went on to Kyoto to our guesthouse there. There was however an issue with getting there properly. We had gotten a train to Shijo, which was where the map said we should go. They didnt however say that there were two Shijos in Kyoto, quite annoying. As a result it took us a little longer to get there but we did in the end.
Phil made a small reference to this place already but it is worht mentioning again. We spent three nights there and kinda wish we spent more. The first night after our walkabout we had dinner with the owner, Yashi and the other guests. Great way ti get t know the guests and we had a good laugh. trading stories and making recommendations. That night we went out for drinks after with the two other guests. Ended up in some little Reggae dive in Kyoto because the English guy we were with couldnt find the good place he had been the night before. Needless to say that ended up being a waste of time and we ended up giving up around some stupid hour. Luckily the hostel was close by so we could walk home.
We did a bit of a look around Kyoto that day and hit up one of the castles, pretty cool but the audio guide tour thing that we rented was awful shit, I strongly recommend you keep you 500 Yen for something more useful.
The next day we did the Lonely Planet walk around Kyoto in the lashing rain, it really dulled the effect. We were not really impressed that much at all by “one of the most beautiful cities in all of Asia”. We put this down to the rain and the getting lost on the way, which we put down to the rain.
That night we did similar but the english guy went home. In his stead we got english, welsh australian and french girls. Four in total. We all had dinner, drinks and Yashi brought out his sake. This is not like the crap you have in Ireland. This was actually tasty and everyone enjoyed it. After that a friend of Yashi`s brought us to the local Irish bar where she used to work. There is the dosgiest sign outside, think large piece of cardboard with green marker in the window. We thought it was a bunch of students messing but it was n actual bar. Anyway at this place we had a great night, ahich culminated in us making a dance floor for some Daft Punk after myself and Phil bought them a round of shots of Poteen. This stuff was 90% vol and could have been used as an industrial cleaner. Everyone but Yashi nearly got sick. instead he took all of what we didn`t drink, most of it all really, and sat there sipping it.
Bizarre, but it worked for him.
Anyway the next day we went to Nara and well we were a bit underwhelmed really. It was the first capital of Japan but was not really much to shout about. In fact I am trying to think of what was worth it there and I`m coming up blank. That night needless to say was taken a bt easier by everyone. We got back after dinner and most were just chilling out in the dining area. We took an early night and got prepped for the next trip which was to Osaka the next morning.

In Osaka we met Tomo, one of Phils classmates who lives in Osaka, he gave us a fantastic tour around Osaka and we were able to fit everything in that we and he wanted.
The Osaka Castle, the open roof skytower. Den Den town (electronics area of Osaka) and America Town, we ahd to after The Simpsons did, and walked through a very crazy and huge shopping district. We also stopped into their time square area which was smaller but more compact and just as　much neon. We sampled the local food specialities, Okanimyaki and Takoyaki. Headed back to the hostel and really just grabbed sleep. The day was very busy and we were on the go the whole time. Thanks to Tomo we made it to all the places we wanted and needed to see.
Yesterday was Kobe and Arima. They will rack up as the most expensive places, for accommodation and other food and travel. The hotel was available and cheap with a good Onsen so we booked there. We didn`t know however that they are like a Ryanair airport, in the middle of nowhere. The trains cost us an arm and a leg to get there and back, we figure about 2000Yen return per person to get anywhere.
Then there was the food cost, Kobe is famous for this thing called Kobe beef, so we had some.
When I say some I should be more specific and save the chefs special, 250g sirloin.
To put it simply this stuff is awesome. The best steak I have ever and probably will ever have.
Phil has a mountain of shots we will get at later and show you but the picture cant show the taste which I reiterate, was awesome. We will put up a better post just about this with photos later.
Here is a wiki link for the moment, the marbling you see is waht gives it the fantastic taste and huge price.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef

We also did a cable car and ropeway, neither of which are what they sound to be.
The roapway was a cable car, and the cable car was train on a pulley system. The “roapway” was cool for the views but the “cable car” was pretty crap.

Anyway that brings us to today, we haven`t gone anywhere in Hiroshima yet but instead spent the best part of the day at Himeji castle.
I@ll have to give an update of this and Hirshima tomorrow as the time is now running out.

See ya

First things first,　apologies for the delay in posts. I’ve been spending the last while getting schooled by Japan.

Lesson One: Japanese is not a forgiving master

If you think you can muddle your way through a Japanese language interaction, at some point you’re going to get pwned.

Lesson Two: Dont press the format button on your camera unless you’re really sure

Having stumbled through a Japanese DVD burning program and (suppossedly) backed up my first 4GB of pictures, I went and deleted them from my camera.

Oops.

Three days later, and I’m trying to use the DVD to illustrate a point about something from Tokyo. Pictures not there. It turns out that none of them are, after a certain point.

Fuck.

Lesson 3: There’s very little you can’t do with internet access and a lot of beer

So, one and a half days later, I’ve recovered some of the pictures. Some have been lost for good, and I haven’t had a chance to wade through the recovered files to see whatI got back and whats gone for good, but any result is a good result.

On to more interesting news.

We’ve been to Kyoto, Nara, and are now in Osaka. In Kyoto, we stayed in what was probably the best place I have ever stayed in – Ichi En Sou. It was a small guesthouse, with one 6 bed mixed dorm and one 4bed female only dorm. The owner, Yashi, is a young guy and very enthusiastic. He’s only been running the place for 3 months. If the guests are up for it, he invites them to cook dinner with him. the first night, we had octopus balls (Takoyaki), which was certainly an interesting introduction. The second night, we had fried noodles with beef and vegetables. Both were fantastic.

Unfortunately, the weather was not. It rained on saturday. A lot. This put something of a damper on our sightseeing of Kyoto. We still went out into the rain, but we were a little underwhelmed. However, we did run into one of Kyoto’s most interesting sights: the Geisha. The guesthouse was close to Gion, which is an area of Kyoto famous for its traditional culture. I don’t really know much about Geishas or their Meiko apprentices, but I do know this. They dislike being photographed by gaijin. John snapped a sneaky photo of two which we hope to get online at some point.

I’ve gone on for too long now, but stay tuned for tales of a depraved Saturday in Kyoto (involving 90% alcohol), and a deer filled trip around the ancient Japanese capital of Nara.