We woke to bright blue sky and sunshine and, as there was no point in continuing on to Mount Aso, we decided to retrace our steps and have a look at the view from the Daikanbou Observatory, which we had apparently driven past the day before but due to the low cloud, rain & wind…
I know it’s hard to believe, but Robert, the man who hates shopping with a passion, spent an entire day very happily in a shopping mall. There is method in this madness, as it was a huge and very beautiful edifice, that just so happened to be right next door to the Oita Dome, thus…
Japan is full of lovely quirky little statues and pictures so, when you least expect it, you look up or round to find you’re being watched.
We had a couple of days between NZ V Canada and Australia v Uruguay, so we decided to head into the middle of Kyushu and go and see Mount Aso, a live volcano in the flesh so to speak. The problem with real life is that it doesn’t always play ball and so after we’d…
Did you hear the one about the Welshman, the Scotsman, the Kiwi and the Aussie? This sound like it should be the first line of a particularly poor joke, but it actually describes a group of blokes we met at the New Zealand v Canada game in Oita (great stadium by the way). They met…
It’s camper van time, something I have simultaneously been looking forward to, but also quietly dreading. The thought of 21 days together in a very confined space, is only off set by the travel flexibility the vehicle will give us. The first challenge was finding the rental office, which we managed with surprising ease and…
I am not going to dwell on the night we spent in the Relief Hotel in Kokura, suffice to say it was clean and functional and for 5,000 Yen i should not have expected any more. The combination of poor air conditioning, a rock hard bed and Robert’s, recently developed, irritating cough (to add to…
I have wanted to visit Naoshima for the longest time. It’s probably best described as an art island and Bennesse House, which is at its heart, is part hotel and part museum. If you are staying at the hotel you can wander round the museum after hours and each bedroom has different work or works…
I didn’t know what to expect when visiting Hiroshima. The other war memorials I have visited (Ground Zero in New York and the military graveyards in Northern France) moved me to tears and I always cry during the Last Post on Remembrance Sunday (actually whenever I hear that piece of music) but I was totally…
We decided not to travel too far today, so thought we would explore downtown Osaka. We both like a big smelly market and so we headed for Kuromon Ichiba Market. The selection of fish was amazing and so, given that we are currently avoiding all things pig, we had a healthy fish breakfast. The Dontonbori…