Blog

Not a lot to say today. Pretty uneventful journey from Hiroshima to Nagasaki in 2 trains. The first part is the good old Shinkansen to Hakata, then it's onto a "Limited Express" Kamome service to Nagasaki. Unfortunately, whoever designed the interior of the Kamome trains went for style over useability! The interior is very nice in a bit of a modern-meets-retro style with a lot of wood for the floor and panels.

August 6th, 1945 at 8:15am... May not instantly trigger anything until I remind you that I am currently in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. To walk around the city today, you wouldn't think that nearly 70 years ago the city was mostly flattened by the world's first use of an atomic weapon as a tool of war. Indeed, the city is pretty much like any other in Japan with tall buildings, neon signs, busy streets, but that doesn't mean the city has forgotten what happened on that fateful morning; not does it wish to see it ever happen again to anyone.

So today has seen me move cities again - I'm now in Hiroshima. Got to Shin-Osaka station and went to reserve a seat on a train. The first 2 "Hikari" services were pretty busy and had no window seats available. When I asked the guy behind the counter about the "Kodoma" service he looked at me like I was a bit strange, but I eventually convinced him to book me on that train. The reason he thought it strange I wanted that train is because the Kodoma Shinkansen services are the slowest; stopping at every station and sometimes waiting for around 10 minutes to let faster Shinkansen overtake it.

Well, the weather decided to dry up a bit today, although we did have a bit of a mid-afternoon shower.

Started the morning with a trip out to the Fushimi-Inari Taisha; a shrine complex dedicated to the gods of rice and sake. One of the things it's best known for is a trail around the hillside which is lined with, probably, thousands of red wooden torii and a number of statues of foxes (said to be messengers Inari, the god of the rice harvest).

Well today's plan was originally to visit a couple of the sights here in Kyoto. Unfortunately, the weather decided to throw a spanner in the works and I woke up to a light drizzle. Ended up deciding to swap around the plans for today and tomorrow and head over to Osaka today instead.

Spent most of today in the small town of Yamazaki; a 10 minute train ride outside of Kyoto. A lovely little town with everything you would need - a bakery, hotel, cafe, noodle bar, medical facilities, schools, transport links, garden centre, supermarket, shoe shop, haberdashery, police station, nice houses, communist era-looking blocks of flats, wedding planner, religious sites... And a whisky distillery!

Not a lot to report today.

Left Tokyo to travel to Kyoto. Uneventful journey on the Shinkansen. Hotel was a little hard to find, but have my reference points now so shouldn't be a problem again! Main difference so far is it's a lot colder here in Kyoto, and it's spent a large part of the evening throwing it down. Hopefully it'll dry up a bit tomorrow when I plan on spending the morning at the Yamazaki whisky distillery!

Not really been up to much today. Needed a bit of rest after 2 early starts and days out, so instead here's a few observations about Japan so far...

Sterotypes
Quite a bit of it is true. They are an exceedingly polite nation; especially those in the service industry. The television is, in general, as loud, bright, and insane as you'd think. And yes, there really are vending machines on (almost) every street corner. Not seen any of the mythical worn panty-selling machines yet though!

So today it was an early start to go and visit the area around Mount Fuji. As it's not climbing season there isn't much point going to the mountain itself, but there are plenty of the surrounding areas that are worth a visit. I decided to head out to the Fuji Five Lakes area; specifically Kawaguchiko.