We've finally come to the end of our too short trip to Japan. The last leg of the journey was a real race; we had to go from Hiroshima all the way to Tokyo in one day, so we could pick up our passports with our Indian visas. Just to make it even more of a challenge Elaine's back went so I had to carry both our rucksacks, so now my legs are like tree-trunks! We got two bullet-trains to Tokyo and after dropping our stuff into our hostel in Tokyo – with the smallest room ever – we made a mad dash to the visa center before it closed and made it with a whole 2 minutes to spare.

We stuck around in Tokyo for a couple of days, staying in a traditional Japanese ryokan. Elaine's back got a little better so we had a gander around some of the parts we'd missed the first time. Harajuku is a bit mad and hectic, it's where all the cool kids in Tokyo go to hang out and shop. It's pretty hectic even on a Wednesday afternoon, so we headed to the peace and quite of the nearby Mejii Shrine. It's a lovely wooded area with temple complex in the middle, filled with monks and maidens, which was a nice break from the rampant consumerism just a few hundred metres away.

Our next stop is Singapore, but to get there we had to go via Bangkok, which meant a night in Bangkok airport. Leaving Japan is a bit tough, especially with 24 hours of traveling to do. Hopefully I'll get to come back some day and see more of one of the most amazing countries i've been lucky enough to visit. As ever photos on Flickr, so check em out!

The stay in Hiroshima started really well with the baseball game we went to on our first night. The crowd were well up for it and there where "high-5's" all round when the Carp scored a home run. In the middle of one of the sets, or innings or rounds, (whatever!) the crowd started to blow up these very phallic looking pink balloons and then everyone started singing a song. At the crescendo everyone with a balloon let it fly off into the air so there was a huge swarm of giant pink mickeys floating in the twilight. It was a very surreal sight! The next day we went all over Hiroshima city on bike. Elaine is so brave!. We saw the A-Bomb Dome, the site were, on 6th August 1945, the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. It's a very eerie place, this huge concrete skeleton sitting as a reminder in the midst of a huge green park teeming with tourists. After that we headed to Hiroshima Castle which had some nice displays of samurai swords, but I wasn't allowed take photos :(

The next day took us out to Miyajima, an island just outside Hiroshima city. There's the famous floating torii and lots of very tame deer roaming around the island. There bloody cheeky too, one tried to steal my lunch! After heading back to our hostel we had just enough energy to try ordering some Japanese food and were rewarded for our efforts with a really delicious meal of okonomiyaki, which is a weird pancake, with noodles, cabbage, bacon and BBQ sauce. I know it sounds terrible but it was delicious!

Check out the photos on Flickr.

I never understood baseball, it's a bit like rounders only with more beer. Which isn't bad. I probably would have been bored out of my mind if it hadn't been for the amazing crowd singing and chanting the whole way through the game. Goooooooo Carp!

We hopped on the train for a little day trip from Kyoto to Osaka. There was a nice graphic design exhibition on that I made Elaine go to and after I'd ogled all the lovely work for about 10 hours we had a wander around the city. The first thing we noticed is that everyone rides bikes! Everything from full on racers to stripped down courier single speeds and those cool little folding bikes. And all the kids look super cool… Maybe a little too cool.

There wasn't a lot to do in Osaka, but it was nice to go for a little day trip. As ever, photos on Flickr. Enjoy!

* Too Cool For School
** The Man With One Red Shoe was an offbeat spy comedy starring Tom Hanks. This man has two red shoes and is on a bike.

So we headed down to Kyoto for a few days and finally got to use our JR Pass on a Bullet Train! Whooooooooooo!!!!! That thing makes the DART look like a thing that's really slow… oh wait… it is really slow! The bullet trains (or shinkansen in Japanese) can get up to about 300km/h, at which point everything becomes a blur and goes to plaid. They might look like giant white tampons but they're still cool and strangely sexy. Real tampons are icky…

After getting in to Kyoto we had a bit of a wander around trying to see some geishas but we didn't spot any, until a few days later on the bus! Kyoto is famous for it's temples and shrines, so we headed for a wander around Fushimi Inari, a shrine dedicated to the Japanese god of business. Companies and businesses donate the massive gates – called torii – as a way of bringing good fortune. These line the path up and around the hills so it's like walking in a weird orange tunnel in some parts. We also spent a while wandering around Kyoto station (mostly trying to find a toilet) which is a really impressive piece of modern architecture with one of the scariest escalator rides I've ever been on. We contemplated life for a while in the Zen Garden of Ryokan-ji, but that gave me a headache so I had the tiniest pint of Guinness ever. I know things are smaller in Japan, but this is ridiculous!

Have a goo on Flickr and let me know what ye think.

Due to our Indian Visa fiasco, we had a few extra days in Tokyo and as we had our handy Japan Rail pass we could go on all the trains for free! So we took a day-trip down to Yokohama which is a really nice city. It's odd having a smaller city so close to one really big city, a bit like having Galway about 20 minutes from Dublin.

Our first stop was Chinatown, Yokohama having a large Chinese population due to it being a port city. The gates and temples were really bright and detailed as opposed to the slightly more restrained Japanese gates (torii) that we've seen so far. There was tonnes of people wandering about and some lady had a little terrier in a pram!One step up form having it in a handbag. Elaine has been finding it hard to get local food that is vegetarian, but we thought she'ld be OK with some sweetcorn soup in a Chinese restaurant… eh, not really, it had big bits of chicken in it, so poor Elaine was really brave and ate a bit, then headed to Starbucks for a cookie :(

Japan's tallest building, the Landmark Tower, is in Yokohama and we went up to the viewing deck on the 69th floor (hee-hee 69) in the fastest elevator ever. That's one of the great things about Japan, they don't just normal trains or elevators, they do really fast ones! I think we hit about 120m/s, which works out around 268mph! Shit, my ears popped after about 2 seconds in the lift. The view was a bit hazy from the top, but it was still slightly surreal to be up so high above everything else. Back down on terra firma, we hit Chinatown again to see it all lit up at night, and spent a bit too much time wandering around trying in vain to find the Yokohama Curry Museum, so the fun park in the bay was just closing and I didn't get to go on the crazy rollercoaster that goes into a hole in the ground. Boo-urns. We did have an Indian for dinner to make up for missing the curry museum. We were bloody knackered after all that so we fell into out tiny little bed in our tiny little room back in Tokyo.

Have a look at the photos on Flickr and drop me some comments!

Finally arrived in Japan, sorry about the wait for a post, I've been too busy doing stuff :) Our first stop was Tokyo, which is the coolest city ever. Elaine and myself had a bit of bother getting our Indian Visas sorted out; first we went to one place, which was closed, then to the Embassy proper, which doesn't actually take visa applications, then we had to go to the third and final, actual 100% real visa office the next day. We thought we might have to stay in Tokyo for the whole time as it takes gaijin visas 8 working days to process, but it was sorted eventually…

Our first day we spent wandering around the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives with Darth Vader. The park around the Palace is really odd, there's a cool fountain area and over the road from it is a beautiful park where a lot of homeless guys live. On the English language map it translates as from Japanese as "Park and Area for People Who Cannot Go Home". The next day I dragged Elaine to a Max Huber (graphic designer) exhibition in Ginza, which was deadly. There was actually two separate exhibitions on, so obviously we had to go to both! After that we hit Akihabara with all it's electronic stores and Manga shops and from there we tried to spot a few Harajuku girls, but it was raining so they didn't want to come out to play.

I'll try do a few more posts in the next while, I've only got a short while in Japan so trying to squeeze as much in as possible. Check out the Flickr shots and leave some comments if you like.

Thanks to Elaine and her swish, new camera for the blog photo!