Asia 2016 Wet Socks and Heavy Luggage Today was a bit less of an exciting day. It was raining, which was a good start. And we were changing venues. Unfortunately, there was only a half hour train ride between the
Asia 2016 Hiroshima (広島市) Today we tried to see whether we could glow green. Hiroshima doesn't quite seem to have that effect on people anymore. It does however still have a pretty strong effect on making it
Asia 2016 Osaka (大阪市) Winter After enjoying a little bit of extra sleep and preparing more for our immediate surrounding region, we headed out to see the city that we had actually landed in last night. And when
Asia 2016 Country of Lights It was far too early when we had to get up, it was -6 degrees when we were standing outside for the shuttle, and after it still hadn’t turned up 15 minutes
Asia 2016 Close call past Tokyo After a lot of grumbling and discussions about whether this flight is too early or actually too late, we could all agree on the fact that it was at the wrong time, once
Transit Duck Adventures Getting up at 5 in the morning isn't really my strong point, and it wasn't improved by the realisation that I had been awake for over four hours when I boarded my first
Japan 2015 City landscapes It took us a surprisingly large amount of time to find a train today. Like 6 hours and 12km of walking. And even then, the train still had rubber wheels. It is worth
Japan 2015 Adorable Pets The first destination for today was an exhibition by Toho studio, known for works like the original Godzilla or the Seven Samurai. The funny thing is that the Godzilla almost looks cute for
Japan Not Rain but Wind If you would like to build a museum for different styles of Ramen, by building a small network of back alleys (the place where Ramen shops are naturally born), where in a place
Japan Toyoda and Silk First, the joke. The busiest store at the Nagoya train station, with a queue that required portable barriers to keep it in line, was the popcorn shop. The reason for coming down to
Tokyo In hot and cold water For the majority of the day it was bucketting and cold winds were in no short supply. So we set ourselves underway to find us some hot water instead, and found a Japanese
Japan Kamakura (鎌倉市) After being in busy Shibuya yesterday, we went for the scenic route today. Our route to Kamakura involved the subway, a normal train, an upside down monorail which the train was suspended from,
Japan For Science Today was time for the science museum. Even if we aren't exactly fluent in Japanese, it's still exciting to see what kind of a show they put on in there. If was slightly
Japan Nagoya (名古屋) Today's goal was to shoot down to Nagoya for the train museum there. It's a little weird that the museum from trains which were very much operated by Japanese Rail (JR), cannot actually
Transit Tokyo (東京) Our usual method of getting out of the country involved driving to the nearest city and flying from there. This time we decided to spoil ourselves and fly to the nearest city instead.
Japan Homestretch When you get onto a plane, you always think: "What I really want is to be surrounded by small loud children for my overnight plane." Well, I didn't quite get surrounded
Japan Narita (成田) It's actually very hard to tell whether a skyscraper is being built, or whether it's being taken down in Tokyo. The two look very similar as demolution also needs to be done very
Japan Tōkyō (東京) 2 A note about going to sleep last night, going to bed and turning off the lights was all nice and easy. What was slightly weird was how bright the room was afterwards. And
Japan Tōkyō (東京) Waking up in the morning and immediately jumping onto the next Shinkansen to Tokyo! Directly after arriving and getting rid of our luggage, we ran an errand for a friend to buy some
Japan Nara (奈良市) For 73 years, minus 5 in the middle, it got to be Japan's first permanent capital. Before that they went through capitals like they went through Emperors. But during these years, Nara managed
Japan Kyōto (京都市) Steam Engines and Other Trains Being slightly disappointed about the lack of transportation museum, we decided to take another look at the web page. It's basically a picture, and all the writing is embedded and written in Kanji,
Japan Fukuoka (福岡市) Having decided that the current trend of temperatures in the Osaka region were getting ridiculous, we jumped a Shinkansen heading a little closer to the equator. A few hours later, 5 degrees west
Japan Kobe (神戸市) Today, a cold chilly slap of reality. Even in Japan, not every train comes at a 5 minute frequency. We had to wait almost 45(!) minutes for our train to Kobe, though we
Kyoto Kyōto (京都市) Okay, I admit it. I have to take it back. Osaka station might be able to dock with a spaceship, but Kyoto station is there to dock with the mother ship. With a
Osaka Ōsaka (大阪) Aquarium Today was time for the Osaka Aquarium. And a glorious one it was. They did put in quite some effort into a lot of aspects. The feeding times were a beautiful show of