Japan

We didn't get off to the best start in Tokyo, it taking us about 45 minutes to find our hostel which was supposedly a 7 second walk from the station, but from there it was all plain sailing. We spent the first day in Tokyo at the Sensoji Temple which was really pretty as we were lucky enough to be there in cherry blossom season. Leading up to the temple was a row of markets where we got to try some traditional Japanese food, including bananas covered in blue icing, random.

The next day we took 2 tubes, 3 trains and a car ride to get to Mt. Fuji, where the weather was so bad we couldn't see the summit of the mountain. We soldiered on anyway and took the gondola up to a lookout, and managed to see a fair amount of the mountain and the lakes and town below. From here we took the train to Kyoto, and managed to get some great views of the mountain on the way out so the visit wasn't a total loss! In Kyoto we spent the first afternoon visiting the Golden Temple and then onto a blossom park in the evening which was great fun. We also visited the Silver Temple, which compared to the Golden one we were a bit disappointed by as you couldn't see much of the actual temple itself.

We then took the famous bullet train back to Tokyo where we spent the next 5 days in the city and met up with Chess' mum and brother. We reaped the benefits of having a hotel and not a hostel, spending a large amount of time in the spa, eating fab food and stole way too many toiletries from the housekeeping kart. We visited the Imperial Palace, where you can actually only see the grounds and not the actual palace which was a bit of a let down, Ueno Zoo where we saw pandas, bears and ligers, and we went to the famous Shibuya scramble crossing. We spent a day at Disneyland, which bar the ridiculous queues was loads of fun. We strolled in towards the first ride, followed by a stampede of Japanese kids all sprinting to get in. Literally every single person was running for their lives. It was also in the hotel in Tokyo where we had the slightly awkward situation of not being able to work out how to flush the (heated, bum cleaning and drying) toilet. In the end, Chessie's mum had to find it for us - after travelling alone for 2 months it seems we still can't function without occasional adult supervision.