Back in Yokohama now.

So our travels around Japan are over it was an amazing 21 days.

Been home for about a week now and i have been sitting butt doing sweet f-all just playing playstation.So i have been pretty lazy not updating my blog, I have heaps more photos to go through from our trip so i'll put some more up soon however i think those were my best pics        ( Lightining was my fav :) ). Please comment under the pics telling me your favs because im going to put a photo book together which the photo shops make here they cost about 20-30$ and they are quite classy looking.We came in under budget for the trip only cost us about ¥140 000 each($2700) plus our rail passes ¥65 000 ($1200) so under 4 k for everthing is pretty good esp since our rail passes actually saved us about $2000 maybe more.

Most of the places we visited were packed with japanese tourists no matter what day of the week we went which made it hard to get photos that weren't full of people of course they are try to take photos, I have never seen so many cameras in all my life and most people here just use there cell phones as the quality is as good as most compact cameras.

The other thing about the tourist places is people go there who are learning english and they want to spend about 10 mins talking to you it gets annoying after a while. However i did have a few random conversations with people and prob the most interesting was in the first days of our trip. It was a public holiday here and we we found a small cafe to have a late lunch there was a couple of old guys in there who spotted me when i walked in "Konichiwa.. Konichiwa.. haro.. hello" they slurred out, they had been drinking there all day and were very pissed. Poor Kaori was try to eat lunch and understand what these guys were saying to translate it to me. It was made for an interesting lunch which we tried to eat in a hurry as it was kind of embarrassing.

Kinkaku-ji "golden temple" the top 2 floors are coated with 22 krt gold leaf at the cost of $7000 000 us.
Geisha in Gion district Kyoto.

Oldest wooden buildings in the world originally built in 607 ad they were destroyed by fire in 670. They rebuilt them and they are lucky to still be there today. We visited around 10-12 temples in total and most of them were built around the same time however most of them have been rebuilt anywhere from 7 - 12 times because of fire.
"A-Dome" this is still as it was after the bomb exploded around 160 meters from here. The explosion and fire that broke out after destroyed over 92% of the buildings in Hiroshima and killed 70 000 people and 140 000 by the end of the year. Everybody within 1 km died almost instantly (we were staying within that distance) and those that were unlucky enough to survive went to the river right next to this building and the shock of the cold water on there bodies killed them.

The roof of the building was cooper and melted within 3 seconds so you can understand why nobody really stood a chance.
Torii tunnels in Kyoto.

some local wildlife in Nara.
 "floating torii" in Hiroshima. The tide was low so it was possible to walk right up to it however i was standing in about 2 inches of water when i took this

The deer in Hiroshi were very tame they even stole pamphlet for the temple right out of my pocket and tried eating it.
Lanterns in Hiroshima.
"Kaki" english name "persimmon" took this in Tsumago. They are hung up outside almost every house in the rural areas to dry in autumn.

Autumn colours in Kyoto
Snow monkeys.

Himeji Castle. This place was amazing i would of hated to be an attacking army it was so well fortified.

Biggest wooden building in the world. This was in Nara.
These guys were at a temple in Hiroshima there were 500 of them! and every one different
Snow monkeys near Nagano.

5 DAYS LEFT

Well its been a pretty good trip so far and with only 5 days left and no more internet till after that i thought i'd try and give a quick trip run down.

I already mentioned Kakunodate which was the samurai town, we stayed in Morioka for one night. Then we headed north to Hokaido and spent 2 nights Muroran , day tripping to Toya to see the its volcano and lake.

 Back on the train again are destination Asahikawa which was pretty cold when we arrived, spent the afternoon at the zoo but spent most of the time feeling sorry for the animals being stuck in there. That night we had an awesome lightening storm which allowed me to get my first lightening pics "YAY". Next morning we caught a bus headed for Asahidake the tallest mountain in Hokaido only to find out that the cable car was closed because of bad weather, they had about 50cm of snow in the past 24 hours and it was still snowing when we arrived. With only one return bus that day we spent the next 5 hours split between sitting in an empty information center and going outside in about 5 min lots (because it was sooo bloody cold) trying to get some photos of the white nothing. The following day in Asahikawa we woke up to find the snow and followed us it was beautiful but i'm glad we were leaving because it would have made for another crap day trying to do stuff.

Next was Sapporo, Japans 5th largest city and a very beautiful one. We only had the that afternoon and night there so we headed up a 90m tower in a glass elevator which pretty much scared the absolute crap out of me but made for a great view of the city. That night we went up the cable car and the view was just breath taking it was well worth going there just for that.

Then it was back to Yokohama 11 hours in the trains"fun stuff" until you get packed in like sardines for 1.5 hours trying to keep track of your bags and still be able breath.

Next was Nagano (winter olympics 1998) got to see some cool temples here and with it being further south there was still a lot of the autum colour left in the trees.

Tajimi was the next destination but we saw nothing of this place it was just a place we could stay so we could do our hike between Magome and Tsumago its was about 8 km and was the old path taken before roads or railways took over, this was really cool and the 2 towns were still the same as they were 200 years go.

Now we are in Hiroshima staying only 900m from where the A-bomb exploded.

Well that was just a quick run down of the trip so far, Kyoto is next after 5 days there its back to Yokohama where i will put some more photos up.

Another sunset pic from Kushiro and there will be more to come...
View over Sapporo Japans 5th largest city (pop) 1.9 million. Took a cable car up here the view of the city was just amazing and this photo only shows about a 3rd of it.
Another pic in Sapporo.
And this is what we woke up to in Asahikawa, we were there 2 nights the first was the lightining storm and the second night brought this.

Photos

Hey spent all day on the trains today and tomorrow we are off again early so I will just put a few picks up before I'm off to get some sleep. This one is from the volcano we visited which erupted in 2000, that is what is left of the main road in the foreground.
I snapped my first lightining pics in Ashikawa.
Sunset in Kushiro.

Its cold

Hey all. 

Well the trip is going well we have been to a few amazing places which I'll talk about more another time but just a quick run down for now.

First place we went to was an old samurai town with a lot of the old houses still in original condition and one that we went through still had direct descendants living in it, it was around 200 years old and had the original samurai stuff like weapons, clothing, tools and everyday kitchen stuff.

Next was Toya which was the site of several volcanic eruptions which badly damaged the town and a lot of the surrounding area. Its last eruption was in 2000 everybody was evacuated before it did its worst which you can see till this day. The buildings are still there about 6 feet deep in mud and on the other side where the volcano has actually changed the shape of the hillside one side of the buildings have been forced up about 1-2 m (will upload some pictures when i get a chance). We also looked at a school which was just destroyed its still there but there are holes in it everywhere from the flying boulders and rocks. There was a bus there which had holes in the roof and in the floor and when you look under it there is the boulder, its just amazing to see the damaged caused.

Will post some pics and another update in about 4 days .

Sorry bout all the time lapse vids but its been passing the time.

The last one shows the small room me and kaori are living in. But tomorrow we are off on our trip so i'll try to keep a diary so that when we get back i can make a few posts saying what we did. Also i should have a lot more pics to show off and maybe a few more time lapse videos.

Busy people