All night

We flew through the night and arrived in Manila in the early hours. We found the free transfer shuttle bus and transferred to the domestic terminal for our 6am flight to Cebu.

After landing in Cebu we caught a taxi to the south bus terminal. It is not that far but the traffic was bad. Quite usual for the Philippine cities. We couldn't pay the taxi as he had no change. We all tried to find someone who could break the money down and eventually we found someone. The taxi went on his way and we went to eat.

A little cafe was serving set meals, so we ate there and the meals were tasty. We had two different ones but they both had sweet pork meat and rice.

From the southern bus terminal we caught the Ceres bus south to Moalboal. The journey took about 2.5 hours and we arrived in the busy little town. Our first stop was the supermarket to buy a few essentials. We also ate again at a local stall. This time we had 2 veggie dishes. There was also a McDonalds and a ramen restaurant in Moalboal but we resisted!

Lots of tricycle drivers were touting for business, hoping to take people down to Pangasama beach, 3km away. We opted to walk to the beach which took about  45 minutes. The beach area has gone through a lot of expansion. New hotels and restaurants are everywhere. There are now many Chinese day trippers that come and go on tours too.

We dropped our bags at our hostel near the beach front, donned our masks and snorkels and in the sea we went.

Plenty of nice healthy coral here, lots of fish and loads of turtles. We swam amongst a shoal of millions of sardines that reside on the the reef. As we passed through they closed in behind us and we were totally surrounded by so many fish!

After drying off we walked around the beach area looking for food. We settled on a small restaurant serving tacos before completing a loop back to our hostel.

Now we are in the Philippines we are going to be spending most of our time following a daily routine.

Breakfast

Snorkelling

Lunch

Snorkelling

Dinner

Bed

We will report back anything we see underwater that is a little unusual!

Yesterday the locals told us a whale shark was spotted swimming along the reef at Moalboal. Sadly we missed it. There was also a huge pod of dolphins swimming out beyond the reef but we missed them too! Seeing them would have been a great start to our Philippines adventure.

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Leaving Tokyo

In the morning we didn't wake up at our usual time. The room was so quiet and dark we forgot to wake up! We had a late breakfast, chatted a lot and had a tour of the early cherry blossoms nearby. Beautiful! A quick walk back along the river to grab our bags and we headed to the train station. Tickets purchased, instructions to hand and Narita Airport here we come. 

The train involved one change onto the express airport train. Once again the train went pretty fast and leaned as it cornered. We arrived at Narita airport, purchased 'survival snacks' and went to get our passports checked. A short while later we boarded and ...next stop ... the Philippines!!!

Yokahama

We met our friend packing the kids off for school and shortly we would be following. Today we are very privileged to visit a Japanese school. Breakfast was a bowl of traditional Japanese miso soup, rice, lightly poached egg and green tea. Great!

We walked to the school past many cute houses and quiet lanes. We changed our outdoor shoes for slippers. Small lockers were provided for the shoe switch and a small tag turned over to show that the locker was being used.

The school was quite big over many floors. Yokahama is a large city and has many children. We toured the classrooms, said hello to the children and spoke to the sweetest vice principle.

Next stop was a guided tour of the local area. We stopped by the supermarket to buy some fried mashed potato and check out the local foods. The fruit in Japan is super size. Apples were enormous and strawberries are not only huge but everyone looks perfect. This area of the city was very quaint and had a pond filled with koi carp. We picked up some Japanese cakes at the bakery to accompany our fried mashed potato snack.

Back at home we were treated to a fantastic bowl of udon noodles and the accompanying soup was amazing. We topped it off with our earlier purchases (FMP, curry cake, sweet chocolate bun and a sweet red bean bun). We were pretty full!

We chatted for a while, had help planning the complex train journey through Tokyo and ensured we had everything we came with. In fact we had far more than we came with because we had so many beautiful gifts from our friend and her family! Our time here was amazing we are so lucky to know such wonderful people. Otsukare sama desita!

We walked to the nearby train station together and said a sad goodbye to our friend. The train departed and we made our way towards Tokyo. 3 carefully planned train changes took us to the Tokyo sumo museum which was interesting. There are no sumo matches in the nearby stadium in February so we could not watch a live match. Many places were now closed but we walked through a beautiful memorial park and along the river before taking the train once more.

We arrived at our stop, searched for our accommodation and spent the night cooking our own Okanomiyaki on a portable grill. We also learned a lot of new things about Japan and chatted for hours before flaking out on a very comfortable futon.

Shinkansen

We left the hostel early. We had an important meeting with the Shinkansen Nozomi N700A bullet train! We arrived at the station on time and took photographs on the platform. One after another bullet trains came and went. Less than every 10 minutes one left for Tokyo!

Finally our train arrived. Did it arrive on time? Yes, everything in Japan is always on time. It was quite plush and busy so we are glad we paid extra for reserved seats. The train left Kyoto and picked up speed. In fact calling it a train is a little strange. The Shinkansen flies. There is no rickety train movement as it passed joins in the track. It glides and even leans! 

Just over an hour into the journey we were getting really excited. The sky was blue and clear. We had seats on the left hand side of the train and had our eyes peeled. Suddenly Christine spotted what we were waiting for. Mount Fuji in all its glory. A magnificent cone volcano!

Not too long after we arrived at Shin-Yokahama. We were meeting our Japanese friend at the Shinkansen gate. We headed to our meeting point and there she was patently waiting for us. Next, we walked to the car and we were off for an exciting day! First stop was a local Onsen, steam bath. Not a tourist in site, we listened carefully to the instructions.

"Leave everything in the changing room when you enter the spa .... EVERYTHING."

Men on 3rd floor, Ladies on 2nd. We spent the next hour and a half seperated enjoying 13 different spa pools, some inside, some out. Some hot others cold. After a thorough pampering we were off to our lunch stop.  Free tickets to the Yokohama ramen museum meant we would get to eat Japanese ramen in style. The museum was fun. We learned about the history of ramen, had a free tasting session and explored the old style ramen restaurants. Before we chose our different ramen a world balloon making champion entertained the big kids with a great Mickey Mouse balloon model.

We chose 2 different restaurants to eat at. We only chose the small bowls so we could sample a variety of ramen. We tried soya sauce, salt based and even a spicy variety. All fantastic and we were totally stuffed!

Back at the house the children arrived home from school. They helped us make some  incredible origami models using their English learned at school. We played some excellent games together, a great one arranging coloured cups and another with pictures of matches! Before dinner we had a short trip with the children to the local shop to collect a few items for dinner.

Dinner was served and was delightful. We got to sample so many different things. Our friend was an excellent cook and had gone to enormous lengths to make the perfect meal. Her sister-in-law also came and brought some more dishes for us to try. 

The evening was spent catching up on the past and we had a surprise visit from Mum who was bearing gifts and fruit. What a lovely lady! We now have a bag full of beautiful Japanese gifts from our friend and her mum.

The end of a wonderful day in Yokahama for which we owe many thanks to our friend and family!

Blossoms

Spring is here in Japan! Today was quite warm in Kyoto. We walked south but we made a wrong turn and had to clamber through a building site. Back on track we crossed a train track and then a river, eventually reaching the mountains. The first temple was Tofukuji at the base of the hill. It was reasonably quiet and very picturesque. We walked on to Fushimi Inari Taisha. It was packed with people as it was Sunday. From here a trail leads up to a series of small mountain shrines. We walked part of the way up but decided the volume of people detracted from the experience. We walked back down and decided to catch the train to the north of Kyoto. A friendly lady pointed us in the right direction and in about half an hour we arrived at our stop.

A 2km walk took us through a student area and brought us out at Ginkakuji. Next to Honenen in, both lovely temples. We then followed the Philosopher's path to more temples before taking the road to the Kyoto Palace and gardens. Unfortunately by the time we got there the palace was closed, luckily the gardens were still open!

Food was calling and we headed downtown to Nishiki market, a long foodie street but nothing stood out and said, you must eat me. We briefly stopped at the Disney store before heading to the hostel via the supermarket. Tonight we stayed in the hostel chatting and preparing for our early train ride tomorrow.

Today we saw so many beautiful cherry blossoms, Spring is certainly here! 

Kyoto

Today was a day of temple spotting. We walked through a cemetery to get  to our first temple. It was very clean and all of the graves were an upturned rectangular shape. We took our time walking through the narrow streets soaking up the Japanese ambience. 

The first temple we arrived at was Kiyomizu and there were many others in the vicinity so we explored as many as we could! We took a route through the traditional streets towards Kodai ji. All the temples on the way were very beautiful! Girls dressed in kimonos filled the streets with their partners wearing the male, less colourful looking kimono.

We stopped to admire many Japanese shops with pretty little things; elaborate chocolates, beautiful paper and savory pickles. We sampled a lot of sweet things and both felt a little sick.

We decided to take a break from temple spotting and headed to downtown new Kyoto. We needed to buy our Shinkansen (bullet) train ticket to Yokohama. We tried to get a discounted ticket at a small booth but were not 100% sure how it worked. We decided to go directly to the station. We found the ticket office, handed over the credit card and parted with a lot of money. Trains are expensive here especially the 300 mph ones!

We saw a queue of people waiting outside a small restaurant, so we joined it. We had great gyoza (dumplings) when we finally got inside. Next we walked across the street to a make shift food area. On entering we were given complimentary miso soup to try followed by a glass of sake.

After we got back to the  hostel it was quite late so we decided to eat in. Udon noodles once again came to the rescue. In the evening we explored the Gion area and saw a Geisha walking near the theatre. Well, we think so as the Japanese told us that there are not really Geishas any more. On the way home we collected a bottle of ice coffee from the supermarket. Not to add ice to but to heat up!

On the move

Our time in Osaka was coming to an end. We relaxed for a while and watched sumo wrestling on TV. There was also news on an earthquake in Japan! It was far to the north and magnitude 5.5. Luckily, we were far away from it!

Bags packed and off we went through the quiet streets. It is so quiet in the area, that as we pull our trolley bags along, the noise makes us feel really embarrassed! We walked until we found the recommended sushi restaurant. We stopped here and enjoyed the relaxing style of the sushi restaurant. We picked one item at a time from the conveyor belt, ate it, discussed it and moved on to the next. We had various raw fish dishes that we had never tried before. One was amazing and just melted in your mouth. It was such a nice place and an amazing meal.

Next we caught the tube to Osaka station and looked for another train station, inside the main train station, to buy tickets to Kyoto. We found a ticket machine but all text was Japanese characters, so we were totally confused. A nice friendly man offered to help and in no time we had 2 tickets.

The train arrived and was rather luxurious. In fact we thought it must be the wrong one, but nope this was it. It was an express train and got us to Kyoto in about 40 minutes. Through the windows we saw many things; mountains, houses, more houses and cleanliness!

We arrived on time, jumped off and found our hostel. We dropped our bags in our capsules and headed out into the historic city of Kyoto. It was getting a little dark but we found some great temples, traditional streets and lots of Japanese people dressed up. Japanese tourists to Kyoto really embrace their ancient traditions and wear beautiful traditional clothes. Kimonos everywhere!

We walked towards the Gion area after dark, Geisha spotting. However tonight there was none to be seen We didn't eat out as the restaurants we found were a bit too nice (extremely pricey!). Instead we bought a huge bag of fresh Udon noodles, added sauce and they were delicious!