Hello everybody!
So the last time you heard from us we were leaving Mt Fuji. We decided to take a bus from there to Osaka. Still weren't abel to find a host, but hey, what can we really do. Satying in Mt Fuji was beautiful, but was getting a bit expensive, plus we felt that sitting on the same spot for too long is not good for us. So after two days of enjoying the beautiful countryside we headed to the bus stop and decided to take a 10 hour bus ride to Osaka. We were really excited to get to Osaka but not looking forward to the 10 hour coach trip. Plus the fact that Laura was exhausted. The lack of sleep from previous night was wearing me out. We had to stay in separate rooms for the final night in Mt Fuji because the hostel was full. So i ended up sharing with 3 girls. At first i thought - great! No snoring guys! The girls were really nice but i ended up sleeping next to the shower room. The wall between was paper thin and i even heard when people were opening their shampoo bottles. So until 1 in the morning the showering was non stop. I was just about falling asleep when i heard some quick footsteps passing our room and then it started. The loudest vomiting I've ever heard. I felt sorry for the guy but felt sorry for myself when he returned.
So anyway. Getting on the bus from Mt Fuji was a long wait. We were sitting there for 4 hours because the last transit from the hostel was just after 4 and our bus was at 9. Playing cards and having some ice cream killed the time very slowley. But the bus arrived. It was one of the most comfortable busses i have ever seen. Only three seats in the row gave us enough legroom to have a solid 6 hour sleep.
It was a shock arriving in Osaka. Half past six and still asleep we stepped off the bus and tryed to find out where we were. We found a tourist information center but that only opened at 8. So we had at least an hour to sit around and watch 1 million Japanese people rushing past us to go to work. After my bum went num the tourist information point opened. Grabbed a map from there and made our way towards the Peace House hostel, where we had booked a room. Coming out from the tube was a shock. It looked like we are in a different world. This part of the town was strange. People were different and the city was different. Everybody gave us a stare and we felt a bit funny. And this bloody hostel was no where to be found. After walking around for an hour we stopped on the streetcorner to think about this situation and a local parm (thouse of you not familiar with this word it means drunkensmellyoldguy) decided to look after us. We showed him the map and he seemed to know exactly where the hostel was. Chatting away in Japanese and smiling his toothless smile he took off and we followed. Well it wasn't our hostel but they were nice enough to give us some directions to get there. Seriously though, that place was like a maze! After getting the directions we managed to find it. The sign on it was about 20cm*20cm! But we were more than happy to get there. They allowed us to have a shower and then we left to see the biggest fish tank, sorry Aquarium, in the world - The Osaka Aquarium. This was the only interesting sight seeing spot on the map. It really was amazing! The massive tank in the middle had all sorts of huge creatures in it., Two of them being whale sharks. We spend more than an hour walking around and enjoying the fantastic fish. Then it was time to start heading back to the hostel. We decided to eat out, as a treat, and went to a local all right looking restaurant. We ordered some rice, chicken and beef we waited hungrily. Mine arrived very quickly and looked nothing like beef. It looked like thin stomach fat thing. Or maybe something from inside the beef- animal. Stomach lining? This didn't go down very well. So i left, hungry and grumpy. Nic said that i will have a laugh about it in the future...well i haven't yet. It still brings a bit of tight feeling in the throat when i think about it. Going back to the hostel we checked our e-mails and there was still nothing. We really need to find a host quickly or we will run out of money. Nic tried to log onto his wwoof profile and we discovered that it was blocked. That might have been one of the reasons why we haven't heard anything back from anyone. Feeling very upset about it we went to bed and tried to forget everything bad what happened today. The stomach lining being on of them.

Woke up at 10 and made a cup of coffee. Decided to leave Osaka whatever happens. We really don't like this city. So i decided to look for some places to stay in Kyoto whilst Nic checks his e-mail. And what a surprise! There has been an acceptance for us to go somewhere near Osaka and do a bit of Wwoofing! "On the scale 1 to 10, how happy are you right now?!" "10!" Looks like our worries are over and we are heading down to Sasayama today! We checked out from the hostel and rushed to the train station. Booked our tickets and we were on our way.

So we left London on Friday morning, the 2nd of September, to start our Journey. First stop, Tokyo! The flight was long, as can be expected and between the 2 of us, we got through 6 movies and only managed to get about 1 hour sleep, not our smartest move so far.

We arrived at Tokyo Narita airport at around 9 in the morning and as the doors opened we were hit with our first shock, Tokyo is super hot at this time of the year - even at 9am it was 30 degrees. We grabbed our bags and headed down to the train station to head into central Tokyo. I had read on route that there was a place called Asakusa which seemed pretty cool, so we went there. It's not easy to find a hostel in a city as big as Tokyo. We walked around for about 2 hours (in the heat, with our big backpacks!) before finding a tourist information point (which was actually next to the station). They were really helpful and booked us into the Sakura Hostel which was just around the corner from the Asakusa Shrines and Temples. We were planning to stay awake for the rest of the day so as to try and prevent too much jet lag the following day but unfortunately, we crashed our for about 6 hours, woke up and got some food from the local 7-11 and went back to sleep. Not a very active first day but as I said earlier, maybe we should have tried to get more sleep on the flight. The next day we went for a 2 and half hour walk to the Imperial Palce in Central Tokyo - I nearly fainted on the way. We couldn't actually get into the palace itself but walked around the gardens for a while, they were really beautiful - so pristine! We decided that we weren't up for the walk back so caught the metro back and had some dinner - good food but really small portions. When we returned to the hotel we met Bastian and Stephanie who were from London (well technically Austria and Greece and Germany). They were really cool and we had a few drinks with them in the dining room - Bastian had some lovely 15 year old single malt whiskey which was great for me but Laura thought it tasted like feet! They suggested we go to Mt Fuji as they had just come from there. Tokyo was stressing us out anyway, so the next morning we packed our bags, checked out of the hostel and got a 1h45 minute bus ride to KawaguchiKo near Mt Fuji.

The drive to Kawaguchiko gave us a better view of what Japan was about. Small houses and flats line the highway for about an hour as you head South out of Tokyo. Was you're out of Greater Tokyo, the road narrows and the landscape seems to come alive. You are suddenly surrounded by mountains and trees and it is beautiful, like seriously! We arrived at Kawaguchiko Station at around 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, where our new hostel, K's House (which has branched all over Japan) came and picked us up. We did a bit of planning and had some dinner and pretty much went to bed on the first night. As of this writing, we have just returned from a cycle around Lake Kawaguchico. This bike ride actually had a dual purpose, 1st and foremost, to see local area and get a better view of Mt Fuji - we didn't see it, the stupid thing was covered in clouds which apparently is what it normally does! Second, we had a mission of sorts (Punks and Boobs, stop reading now). I left my Journal on the bus from Tokyo! I was actually really quite upset when I realised this had happened. We sat down on the bed on Sunday night to catch up on what we had done and it wasn't anywhere to be seen. We quickly realised what had happened and Laura went down to reception and got it sorted (surprise, surprise!). They tracked the bus and arranged for the same driver to bring it with him on next journey to Kawaguchiko, which was today. So I got it back (Punks and Boobs you can carry on reading from here). The end. Just kidding hehehehe.

We are now in Mt Fuji waiting to hear back from a Wwoofing host, as soon as we get the all clear we'll be jumping on another bus (for 8 hours - yay) to Osaka or Kyoto, whichever the host says is closer. We're having loads of fun without you all but we do miss you! Lots of love and check back soon to see what we get up to next!