Author Archives: stevep17

Our trip home was a very long day.  We were up at 3:30 because our taxi to the airport was booked for 4:15.  Surprisingly, even at that time of morning, there was quite a bit of traffic on the roads. We had to fly from Tokyo to Seoul and then had a very short timeContinue reading “Home again”

We had some of our most complicated transportation arrangements today, using several metro lines and a train line to get to the west of the city. Our first port of call was to the Meiji-Jingu shrine.  Set in a wooded park, this was dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken in 1928.  There are severalContinue reading “Cool Tokyo”

We had a free morning today, so decided to head to the Yanaka area, a few stops north from our hotel.  According to Audley, it has “an artsy ambience, with lots of craft stores, coffee shops and the odd friendly cat”. We negotiated the railways successfully and struck out for Yanaka Ginza, a “shopping street”Continue reading “Exploring Tokyo”

Our guide this morning was Momoko, and she was taking us on a classic tour of Tokyo.  We headed down to the Metro station and travelled to the end of the orange line to visit the Sensoji temple, the oldest in Tokyo. Legend has it that in 628, two brothers fished a statue of Kannon,Continue reading “Classic Tokyo”

Since Kyoto, we’ve been in relatively small places with relatively small buildings.  That changed today!  We caught the bullet train to Tokyo and when we finally found the exit from the station we were surrounded by very tall buildings, to the point where our map app was struggling to find us. We decided to walkContinue reading “The land of the rising buildings”

We set off on foot with Kiyomi, our guide, to explore the Samurai area.  To get there, we had to go through the Oyama-jinja shrine, belonging to the Maeda family, the richest of the feudal lords.  It would have been very peaceful if it weren’t for the helicopters buzzing around filming the marathon! The shrineContinue reading “Geishas and Samurai”

When we checked in at Eiheiji yesterday, they gave us the opportunity to join in the morning prayers from 4am to 7am today.  We politely declined!  However, at 3:55 this morning, they rang a very mellifluous bell to wake everyone up, just in case.  It failed to enthuse us to climb the mountain in theContinue reading “Kanazawa”

Once again we set out to catch the ferry to Miyajimaguchi and then the train to Hiroshima.  After a pastry in our favourite pastry shop, we negotiated the ticketing system to catch the Shinkansen back to Kyoto.  It was two minutes late getting there! We noticed, because we only had 20 minutes to catch ourContinue reading “Thunderbirds are Go!”

This morning we walked down to Miyajima docks and caught the “fast ferry” to Hiroshima port.  After crossing the sea, the ferry slowed down to navigate up one of Hiroshima’s river channels to arrive at the Peace Park. As we approached our destination, we sailed right past the A bomb dome.  Once known as theContinue reading “Hiroshima”

Today we had to take the Shinkansen, or bullet train, from Kyoto station.  The first part was easy, get onto the subway at the hotel and get off four stops later at Kyoto station.  We had quite a wait at Kyoto, so we hunted round for a coffee shop.  We didn’t find one.  We foundContinue reading “The Bullet Train”