Kyoto to Osaka

Ok, first of all we apologise for the lack of blog updates. The travels are proving to be way too much fun and busy to sit in front of a computer screen. China also presented some problems with their ban on the blogger website. We're in the south of Thailand at the moment and have a little time for some updates so here we go, continuing our journey where we left off in Japan...

Before leaving Kyoto we managed to do a little more exploring; visiting one of the world's largest wooden buildings and scaling Kyoto Tower for impressive views over the city. Kyoto is pretty much surrounded on all sides by hills and forest which makes for a beautiful setting. Kyoto station is also worth a mention, the building is massive and you can take a series of escalators right up to the rooftop garden.

You can view a full gallery of our photos from Kyoto here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/globefest/sets/72157623881200134/

The shinkansen to Osaka took barely 30mins, our hostel was located in Shin Imamiya, which has a huge homeless population making for some rather messy streets. Despite this we never once felt unsafe as with most Japanese people they kept themselves to themselves.

The main reason for our visit to Osaka was to catch up with our friend Makoto. It was great to see her and some other old friends again, especially Leah and her family. This included a new addition who Shad quickly connected with...



We also made a visit to Tsukamoto where we'd spent about three weeks on our last visit to Japan three years ago. We popped in to our old local Izakaya and met the master who was really pleased to see us again.

While in Osaka we also visited Osaka Castle in glorious sunshine, easily the warmest day of our trip so far. The castle is stunning from the outside but once indoors you realise that the whole thing is actually very new, with a modern interior. Still, the views from the top are beautiful.

You can see a full gallery of photographs from Osaka on our flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/globefest/sets/72157623881244086/