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.