Welcome to Japan

Konnichi wa. We are now in the land of the rising sun. It is our sixth and final country we will be visiting on our trip. Probably the one we were looking forward to most as well.

We've been here for a few days now and our first impressions have not disappointed. The people are incredible here - more friendly and helpful than anywhere else so far. The modern culture is alot more interesting (in my opinion), music, fashion, art etc. than anywhere else we have been. Tokyo is by far the coolest city we've been to. Kyoto is probably the most beautiful town we've visited too. The transport is incredible, quiet, fast, comfortable. The accomodation and food has been great.

The catch is that this all comes at a price - it's probably more expensive than home here. Food especially is pretty costly, but the sushi is definitely worth it! Still, I guess you go to the places you want to go to, not just the ones that are cheap!

We have a Japan Rail pass for a week which gets us unlimited travel on the trains and some buses throughout Japan, and then we spend the second week in Tokyo. For our week away we are mainly spending time in Kyoto (where we are right now), which will be a base for a couple of day trips out and then we head to Hiroshima and Miyajima for a couple of days.

Here are a couple of photos from our time so far.

I'm trying to get up to date with pictures over the next couple of days but it will be fairly busy while we're in Japan so this may be the last update of the blog until we get home. I will finish updating it once we get back though. In the meantime enjoy some Bonobo.

Beijing

We arrived after our train pretty tired, as expected. Seriously, those hard seat trains overnight are one thing I really don't want to remember from this trip. Horrific. Anyway, we arrived which was the main thing. We headed out to try and get a taxi to our hostel - the queue was long, and when we finally got to the end all the drivers were seemingly refusing to pick us up and instead opting for a Chinese fare. Easier on their part I'm sure, and we sympathise, but it wasn't really working for us. So we chucked our stuff in the boot of one of the taxis before he realised we didn't speak mandarin. Rough deal. We showed him some maps and the address of our hostel, he seemed to take no notice but got us where we needed to be anyway, happy days. Taxis in China are insanely cheap too, and the subway in Beijing is a standard fare of 20p - I'm sure London won't be so kind.

Beijing was cool, we did alot of the usual touristy bits - Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace. They were all really impressive, but at the same time they were all slightly underwhelming mainly because they were so unbelievably busy. It's hard to really take in how great something is while there you're surrounded by Chinese tourists poking their sunbrellas in your face and trying to barge past you. Don't get me wrong, they were all really good, and I'm glad I saw them, but they certainly weren't highlights. We checked out a couple of smaller gardens and parks as well which were great.

We also headed off to the Olympic City which was good, had more people asking to take photos of us. At one point they were queueing up. I'd hate to be famous and get that everywhere I went - must be torture. The area around our hostel was amazing too which had lots of pedestrain areas with some really nice shops and stalls etc. Was good for a wander. We also hit another fake market like the one in Shanghai, only much bigger. This was serious stuff. The clothes floors were like TK Maxx on steroids. I grabbed some more fake shoes and a wallet and some other small souvenirs. They had everything there. It was the one place in Beijing that language wasn't a problem either, they could hassle people in any language. People kept talking to us in Spanish - I'll take that, the tan is still prime. They can also get pretty aggressive at these markets though, we saw one guy get kicked, and a few women called me an idiot when I didn't take a pair of "converse" that had glue all over them. She protested "but it's just glue", as if that would make me buy them. What she failed to realise is that I wanted my new shoes without glue all over them. She was angry - I took refuge at another persons shop and the same thing happened. It worked until I bought some shoes from a nice lady that didn't have glue on her shoes - customer satisfaction right there.

Anyway, the highlight of Beijing was the Great Wall. We had been a bit unsure about which section of the wall to visit (there are lots - it's pretty big apparently). Most people go to Badaling - we were sure this would be like everything else in Beijing and too busy so we chose to go to Mutianyu, which was meant to be quieter but a bit further away and more expensive. It turned out that our hostel wasn't doing that trip the day we wanted to go, and language was far too much of a barrier at the other tourist shops to even contemplate using them. In the end we went for the trip the hostel was running - they called it the ancient wall and the secret wall. One section was part-restored, the other unrestored. The names were doing nothing for me and we were a bit hesitant as obviously we couldn't find any information beyond what the hostel were giving us (and they were never going to tell us it was crap). In the end we took the plunge and honestly it's one of the best bits of luck we've had on the whole trip. The trip was incredible. The wall we saw was actually really near to Badaling, but there must have been about 5 or 6 people we saw in three hours that weren't a part of our tour group. It was great to be able to enjoy this away from the crowds. The weather was also great too (which was lucky as we were so close to going the following day - when it rained all day long).

We trekked for three hours up and down (it is a long way up!) and saw some of the wall in it's original state which was really cool as well. Felt pretty authentic and exactly what we were looking for. Satisfied, we returned that day and feasted on some Beijing roast duck (peking duck), which was also great. Good day.

That's pretty much Beijing covered (overall we loved it, definitely up there with the highlights), next stop Japan. We got our flight from Beijing airport bright and early after waking up at 4am, we touched down in Tokyo at about 1pm. Japan is the last country we go to before heading back home, which we're both looking forward to quite a bit now! Here are loads of photos!!

Here is a beauty from Four Tet. Man has skills.

Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai early doors after our sleeper train and headed straight off to meet our friend Flora, with whom we were staying in Shanghai - she is here working so had a nice flat to put us up for the weekend in - nice!

After three months on the road, having somewhere we could relax and chill out in was a huge draw. Also having a laptop where we could upload our phots, get up to date and bits and pieces was another massive draw. Add to that the fact we could order food online to our door and not have to leave the room. We didn't get out much in our first couple of days in Shanghai.

When we were suitably refreshed we hit the town. First up we went to the zoo, which in all honesty was a pretty depressing experience. There were some pandas which was really cool. Other than that we saw a collection of animals that looked to be thoroughly unhappy, all huddling in the shade looking absolutely broken from how hot it was. The general conditions seemed to be pretty shocking, no water and loads of rubbish in the cages etc. It must have been close to 40 degrees that day too - the polar bear in particular didn't look impressed. I remembered that I don't really like zoos that much. I didn't take any photos but Maddy took a few so there are some on her page if you want to see a (to be fair pretty impressive) range of miserable looking animals.

Actually, this deserved an edit when I saw how funny the monkey pictures were again, also a cheeky couple of photos with some people that wanted to have our photos taken with them - happened so much in China it got too funny, we decided to start getting some photos of them too - some good ones to come from Beijing.

After that we headed over to the bund which is one of the big tourist spots in Shanghai. It's pretty impressive there really, especially after it gets dark. The buildings are amazing - China's answer to Wall Street, and you can get some great photos from the other side of the river too which has some more modern skyscrapers. We later headed over to that side for a drink (and some amazing chocolate cake) in the highest bar in the world. The view was pretty epic! It was also next to the huge building that the french spiderman climbed without a harness (if anyone knows what i'm talking about), which looked tiny from the bar. We walked around a bit more and took some more photos and then headed into China's flagship Apple store which I talked about in my presentation for my job at KPMG, used them again for a cheeky bit of free internet.

The next day we headed out to check out one of the fake markets in Shanghai which was supposed to be pretty cool. It didn't let us down, we got some crazy cheap bits from there. I grabbed a new wallet, couple of dvds, some converse (or not), and a go set which I had been looking for while I was in China. Don't know how to play yet - but I will! We grabbed some more (pricey) all you can eat sushi later that day (it was ace though) and headed back to the bund for some more photos. The day afterwards was a bit of a rush trying to sort out our Japan Rail passes - we got screwed over once more by STA, this time the Chinese branch - never deal with these pirates, they're incredibly shit at everything it seems (STA, not the Chinese that is). After that we literally rushed through Yuyuan Gardens before getting our train to Beijing - it was worth it, they were amazing.

That day when we finally did get our rail passes that day we incidentally asked where our train station was, looking for confirmation rather than new information, only to find out he (who booked our tickets) told us the wrong station which was miles away from where we needed to be. Luckily we arrived at the correct station just in time to get settled in (after pretty much dropping my bag on some guy's head) with a McDonalds (our second of the day, not through choice but a lack of time and alternatives in the train station) on our hard seats, which we would be sat on for 15 hours. Nevermind, it was our last train in China. After that we just had the luxurious Japanese Shinkansen (bullet trains) and flights to look forward too. Effectively this was our last hard bit of travelling - the 15 hours were long and hard, and sleep deprived, but we made it. From here on, we travel like kings.

Shanghai was pretty cool, certainly not one of my favourite places - I'm glad we went to see it but I doubt I'll be hurrying back. Here are a few photos.

The skybar was at the top of this

Soon to be the tallest building in China I think

Been listening to a fair share of Burial on this trip (perfect for late night journeys), he's up there as one of my favourite artists for sure. This remix of Commix's Be True is awesome (though it sounds nothing at all like the original). Actually, have them both. Enjoy!