Twas the night before travelling......

Well, two nights to be absolutely accurate, but while I have a moment, I thought I'd get started! Charlie and I are off on a mum and lad road trip on Sunday 19th October for 13 nights in Japan. I think, distance wise, this will be the furthest I've ever travelled, and I KNOW it's the furthest Carlos has ever been. (I'd have to do a geeky thing and check whether Vancouver / Vancouver Island was further, but hell, they're Occidental and it feels like it's closer!) You may or may not know that AJ isn't coming - even though he adores SE Asia, he felt that Japan was just a trip too far, culturally. I'm hoping that we come back so full of love and enthusiasm for the place that he'll be sorry he missed it, and will be anxious to venture out there next time we head East. I'm doing the worrisome stuff at the moment - checking how to get this onto my phone for example ;) and thinking about what tech to take. It's a strange thing isn't it, that we don't seem to be able to travel without oodles of cables and tech, and yet really, how does that make it a proper holiday? I do not know. But I also do not know that I'm not going without it, whatever anyone says. Part of my lack of intrepidness extends as far as not wanting to go where I can't communicate. 21st century living eh? No wonder the postcard is more or less dead...

ITINERARY 

This is mainly for AJ so he can see where we are, and when - but you might just be interested!

So we fly into Tokyo, landing on 20th October, staying there until the 23rd.  I'm hoping to do loads of touristy stuff with Charlie - the Studio Ghibli museum, the museum of the future, the Robot Cafe.... and of course the world famous fish market to name but a few ideas!  Charlie also wants to eat sushi/sashimi at every possible opportunity so I'm sure there will be plenty of pics of food...  On 23rd we depart on the Shinkansen Hikari train to Nagoya, change to Nakatsugawa and then take a local train to Nagiso, which is where we are staying for the night in a very traditional ryokan for a Japanese banquet and sleep on futons. Oh my back.....

On 24th October we travel from Nagiso to Hiroshima via a rather tortuous looking train journey of many changes.... But both of us are looking forward to the rail part AND the visiting of Hiroshima, especially the Peace Park. I have a feeling that, if it's anything like the feeling of the war cemeteries I've been to that we'll need tissues, but surely that can only be a good thing?

On 26th October we travel to Kyoto which I'm REALLY looking forward to. Our lovely travel agent Rivkha at Audley Travel has said that she finds Kyoto her favourite place in Japan with a lovely serene spiritual element to it. It's the 'old' capital of Japan and I'm really hopeful that there'll be castles and gorgeousness for us both to explore, enjoy, PHOTOGRAPH!

Finally, on the last leg of our trip, we head back to Tokyo for a couple of days on 29th October, prior to our return home, landing on 31st October at Heathrow, anxious to be welcomed back into the bosom of my darling husband.