Somewhere Lost in Translation, Tokyo

And so the goodbyes are said to Richard, our travelling, drinking and sushi partner for the past two weeks, and soon we will also be leaving the land of the rising sun.

We loved Japan, that is clear! This proud nation surprised first and foremost through its friendly, polite and respectful people. Everywhere we went, be it train stations, restaurants, hostels, supermarkets or simply walking down the street, we got a smile, a greeting and a polite bow, a willingness to help regardless of their ability to speak english that was surprising and extremely comfortable, making us feel at home! If only back in Europe it was this polite!

But let's start from where our guest blogger Richard left off. Did you know one can only climb up Mt Fuji two months of a year? Neither did we, and as it turned out June was not one of these climbing months so our plans had to be again rearranged and Mt Fuji will have to be climbed some other day.

All was for the best though. We returned to our beloved Kyoto where we enjoyed sushi from our favourite conveyer belt restaurant and some more live japanese music - we even spotted an apprentice geisha on her day off enjoying a dinner at an Irish bar - a very weird sight!

After Kyoto (an alliteration of Tokyo, we are still to find out why) we toured the old japanese capitals of Nara and Nikko, both world heritage-listed with their very old, very amazing temples and shrines. In Nikko, north of Tokyo, we stayed at a very traditional Japanese inn where we enjoyed the typical hot bath "onsen" and the local sake, both great! Nikko is also the site of the original three monkeys who "see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil" and we were not disappointed, they looked really cool!

Back to the Singansen, the bullet train system in Japan, fast, clean, safe, comfortable and so punctual one could set his watch by it. If only we had something this good in the Western world there would be much less cars, pollution and bad accidents! We returned to the busy metropolis Tokyo, where we saw the night skyline from the jazz bar at the top of the Park Hyatt hotel, sitting not far from where the lovely Scarlett Johansson sat in the film "Lost in Translation" and we treated ourselves to some luxuriously priced drinks to the sound of a brazilian song sung by a Quebec-born jazz singer living in Paris.

Now it is time to close yet another chapter in our journeys. Bye Richard-san, Sayonara Japan, we loved our time here with you and hope to see you again very soon!

PS- We will upload this entry later with some photos - we could not find any USB ports in the internet terminals at Tokyo airport.