Ane Anne etc.

So much has happened since my last post. I’ll fill you all in what I’ve been up to a gradually.

The highlight of July has to be the arrival of my sister and co. My sister came to visit with her boyfriend, and best friend/business partner, Kate, the other week. So for a week I was running up and down the country sightseeing and exploring new parts of Japan.

We were lucky to be greeted by the shrine carrying ceremony, when we arrived in my home ‘city’ of Kisarazu. It was quite lucky that the gang got to see something so quintessentially Japanesy for the first day. Day two was a trip straight into the big city. First stop we had the slightly disappointing visit to the Imperial Palace. Then onto a whistle-stop tour of Shibuya and Harajuku, where we met up with some old friends from Sheffield. Sunday, in Harajuku is famous for ‘Cos Play’; where people dress up as their favourite anime character or Little Bow Peep or few drinks before we headed to an izakaya.

High at the top of Anne & Kate’s list of ‘things to do in Japan’ was Tokyo Disneyland and admittedly I didn’t need much encouragement to visit the other Disney amusement park. Again we met up with Kate’s old friend Joe and her sister, who also happened to be visiting Japan. I actually preferred Disneyland to Disney Sea, which is always purported to be the more grown up, but actually Disneyland has a lot more rides and a lot more of the classic rides. It was quite nostalgic going on some of the rides I remember from Disneyland Paris, like Star Tours and Michael Jackson in ‘Captain EO’ (which I found hilarious). Other highlights include being told that we’re all too big gaijins that needed to be in the two-person carts alone.

After Disneyland we headed to Kyoto and then Nara. We were lucky enough to stumble upon 3 shy geishas in Kyoto, which really impressed the girls. This was my second trip to Kyoto and so I tried to encourage the exploration of districts I hadn’t seen, which wasn’t hard, there is so much to see in Kyoto. We ended up exploring the Higashiyama district, which has some of the most quintessentially traditional Japanese streets. After a portion of temple shrine and geisha viewing we moved on to Nara to gawp at the huge Buddha and stroke some very tame deer. Probably the most memorable episode of Nara was the Youth Hostel we stayed in, which had a very 1960s Scout hut feel to it. It was a very nice traditional room with tatami mats and futons but we were requested to check out by 8.00am, there were no real showers to speak of just a large, communal Japanese style bath and no breakfast. There was also an 11pm curfew. Nonetheless we had fun playing drinking games (which was against the no alcohol rules) in our traditional Japanese style room and had a lot of fun.

There’s a lot more to tell about Anne’s etc. time here, which I’ll hopefully update later. Needless to say I was very pleased to see everyone and enjoyed having them round and guiding them through my favourite parts of Japan.

I’ll try to update this soon. I have my friend Jenn down from Hokkaido with me at the moment and we’re doing a fair bit of travelling. We’ll be off to Yamanashi on Tuesday and hopefully climbing Mount Fuji on Wednesday. Can’t wait.