I met some Australians in Hiroshima who informed me that there was a Universal Studios in Osaka and that it had a proper full on Jaws ride. After the emotional roller-coaster that I had been through at the A-Bomb Museum and the Peace Park I jumped on an early train over there.

I was a little disappointed with park, although I had just visited the same place in Hollywood which had updated a lot of it’s rides. The jaws ride was great though, you go on a guided tour of Amity Island, then you get a call from another boat in distress. As you go through the rest of the ride Jaws get closer and cloaser to the boat and you get more and more wet. It ends with him chewing on a powerline and being blown up by a nearby oil drum, shot by the guide.

The other problem was that it was so cold, I’ve managed to get this far on my travels just wearing a hoody, and I didn’t really want to buy a coat to last the last 3 days before I head to SE Asia where a coat would definitely not be needed. I ended up mainly going on the rides that where indoors and using the time in the queues to warm up.

That night I met back up with the 2 Australian girls and anther Australian guy back at the hotel. It was decided that we should have a real Japanese night out and go to a Karaoke bar. I managed to murder the pixies, blur and underworld and we all had a go at chanting along to tubthumping.

The next morning the 2 Aussie girls an myself went to the Dotobori district of town which must have been an inspiration for Bladerunner. Lots of industrial buildings covered in neon signs. It looks like quite a trendy place to hang out, it was full of big groups teenagers all dressed up as though they where going out for the night. I head back into Tokyo for the evening and just went straight to bed.

For my last day in Tokyo I decided that I would just catch the subway to Akihabara, then just walk in a random direction until I found something interesting or I got bored. I found a cool market selling all sorts for weird stuff as well as a whole load of fish. They also seemed to sell a hell of a lot of octopus which I’ve never really seen on sale before.

I ended the night at a restaurant with an English guy I was sharing a room with, he showed me Okonomiyaki which is like a pancake, cabbage and whatever other fillings you like. I had shrimp, they also topped it with a special Okonomiyaki sauce which tasted just like HP brown sauce to me. We had a really interesting conversation about how you meet people and have this weird little relationship with them where they become like your best friends and then a couple of days later one of you has moved on and all of sudden your doing the same thing with someone else. I’m sort of looking forward to doing an organised tour where I’ll be with one group of people for a few weeks.

I had to get up early to catch my flight to Singapore where I’ve got an overnight stop before I get to Hanoi. I flew on the new double decker super jumbo A380, Economy class was pretty much the same as on any other plane, but I did walk through business class which looked wicked. You get a double seat and a 21″ TV. Unfortunately I’ve been feeling a little rough since last night and didn’t sleep at all, to top it all off I was sick a few times on the plane. Hopefully it’ll not last to long and I’ll be good for my first Tour starting on Tuesday.

I spent my first night in Hiroshima drinking in the hostel with three Austrailians that I was sharing a room with. We got a bottle of Saki between us, because none of them had tried it before. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy another. We spent the night playing games. They showed me Uno and I showed them Othello.

Hiroshima seems like quite a cool city, there’s a lot going on and it seems like it has quite a vibrant night-life, but I guess it’s hard to come here and not spend the day immersed in the city’s horrific past.

I spent the day at the Peace Park and A-Bomb Museum, it was quite an emotional affair and there was a couple of times that the room got a little dusty.

First off visited the A-Bomb dome. The bomb exploded almost directly above it and is one of only a handful of buildings that survived the attack. As I was wondering around I walked past a group of Eastern European tourists who where taking smiley, happy photo’s of themselves pointing at the building, I got so angry, I felt like screaming at them.

Next I walked over the bridge into the peace garden. There is a monument with an origami crane on top of it. There is a story about a girl called Sadako Sasaki. She was only 2 when she survived the initial explosion, but 10 years later fell ill with leukaemia. Spurred on by an old Japanese saying that if you fold 1000 cranes, the gods will grant you a wish. She folded well over 1000 (although wikipedia says she only folded 644) but her wish to get better was not granted and she died a few months later. Now the crane has become a symbol for peace in Japan and Japanese children fold them in the millions and are delivered to hang in the peace garden. Whilst I was there a group of kids came and sung a song around the monument and whilst I was watching a much younger girl came up to me and gave me a crane. Cue more damp eyes.

There is also an A-Bomb museum in the park which I spent most of the day wondering through. It go’s through the history of Hiroshima, before and after models, the science of the bomb etc. The most heart wrenching though is all the torn,burnt blood soaked clothes and personal items, complete with the story behind each of them. The one that really got me was the skin and finger nails of a boy called Noriaki Teshima who was at school when the bomb went off. He somehow made it home despite his skin dangling in tatters. He died a day later, but is said to have been so thirsty he sucked the pus from is nail-less fingers

The Museum also exhibits the letters of protest written by the mayor of Hiroshima to the leader of a country following any nuclear testing they do. So far there has been well over 600 letters, the last one being to Kim Jong Ill in North Korea.

I’m back at the hostel now feeling a bit moody, but I’m hoping to go to Osaka early tomorrow and hopefully go to the Japanese Universal Studios which will be quite a contrast from today.

Kyoto’s, home to Temples, Shrines, Gisha’s, Parks, blah, blah, blah. When I arrived in kyoto I only had one thing on my mind: Monkeys. There is a monkey sanctuary/park in the Arishiyama area of town. It takes about 20 minutes to climb up a quite a steep hill to the park. At the top of the hill you get ushered into the resting area where there is a cage on one side, from which you can feed the monkeys, but you can also go outside and wonder amongst them. I think I stayed there a bit too long, a couple of them came right up to my leg a started grooming each other.

I spent a couple of hours wondering around the gardens of the Tenryuji Temple which was quite nice, but I suspect that it’s quite similar to the hundreds of other temples that are found throughout Kyoto. I also went down to the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine which is a series of small temples linked together with pathways which are lined with thousands of Torii (the red gate things). I got a bit lost wondering around and once it was dark the shrines got a little bit spooky.

I lso spent a day in a city called Nara which apparently was Japan’s first real capital (back in 710). It has a large temple and park complex which is inhabited with hundreds of wild deer that have lost their fear of humans and will happily walk up to you (especially if you have handful of crackers that the street vendors sell). Alson in Nara is Todai-Ji, which is a temple that houses the Daibutsu-den Hall, the largest wooden building in the world. Inside is a 15m high Bronze Buddha (I’m about as big as one of it’s fingers). The place was packed with school kids and tourists, but I think it’s funny how people go to places like this and never seem to take their eyes away from the the viewfinder of their cameras. Maybe I’m a little guilty of that as well, but I try to put my camera away for a bit every time I visit somewhere.

I took most of today off to do washing etc. and also to travel down to Hiroshima which is about 2 hours south-west by bullet train. I’m going to have a look around the A-Bomb museum and Peace Gardens tomorrow and possibly go down to Miyajima.

I’m not sure how the time difference works out, but I left Seattle on the scariest bus ride of all time in the early hours of Monday morning and arrived in Tokyo very late on Tuesday night in a state that would put a George Romero zombie to shame.

After a really good nights sleep and trying to work out how to use the toilet, I set off for a look around the neighborhood. I’m staying in an area of Tokyo called Asakusa. There is a huge temple just up the road and it’s surrounded by a market, a really cute little garden (complete with fish pond) and a maze of little store fronts selling all sorts of weird food and trinkets.

I was sharing a room with 3 Swedes: Gus, Linda and Robert who turned out to be great fun. Gus was very eccentrict but funny, he always wears a top hat when he’s out. Linda and Robert where a little more reserved, but still great fun. They invited me to join them out for the night to the Shibuya area of the city. It’s one of the more young and trendy areas of town which is probably most famous for a crossroads that was used in Lost in Translation. We went to a noodle bar for dinner and ate for about £3 each. The food I’ve tried so far in Japan hasn’t been too great, but I’m defiantly open to trying anything new and maybe I’ve just been going to the wrong places. I’ve made myself a promise that I’m going to eat at least half of everything I buy, no matter how bad it tastes.

We also went to a Manga internet cafe, which are littered all over Tokyo. It costs around £2 for an hour’s use of a private cubical in which you get a PC and comfy chair and you also have access to a very comprehensive library of Manga books and DVD’s. There is also bring food and drink to your cubical on request. Apparently a lot of people use them to stay in over night if they miss the last train home, although it did seem a bit seedy and Linda said that the guy in the cubical next to her was “making himself very comfortable” whatever that means to a Swedish.

I’ve also spent a day visiting the Ginza area which is full of designer shops and department stores but not really my scene and the Akhiabara (aka electric town) area which was much more to my liking. There is streets and streets of gadget shops (including a massive 7 storey gadget have called Yodobashi Camera) and an unusual amount of “adult” stores and quite often the 2 merge and you suddenly find yourself surrounded by vibrators.

I’ve started getting the hang of some of the customs , bowing at people and taking your shoes off at the door are the 2 biggest ones. I’m also really worried about unwittingly offending someone. I know it’s really bad manors to blow your nose in public (which doesn’t help when I’ve got the beginnings of a cold and there must be a stack of others that I don’t know about. If anyone’s got any ideas, let me know.

The Japanese people are really friendly, and always putting themselves out to help you out. I really wanted to go to the Studio Gibli museum and the girl on reception at the hostel wrote me a note in japanese saying “please can you help me buy a ticket” with all the information on I needed to take to take to the supermarket which has ticket machines within it. Unfortunately it turns out the the museum is fully booked the whole time I’m in Japan, but I was really impressed by the good nature of everyone.

I caught the Shinkansen “Bullet” train to Kyoto today it was really smooth and apparently goes at 285 km/h but on the inside it was pretty much like any other train.