I have only 2 things to say about Kyoto: it boasts more temples than any other city in Japan, and WE GOT ENGAGED THERE!

Some of you have heard the details already, but for those who haven't: James proposed at the pagoda of Eikan-do, his favourite Kyotan temple, which overlooks the city. Considering the place boasts some 137 of the things, finding a favourite is no mean feat. This temple is famous for being one of the few places in the world where you can see a 'looking back Buddha' – we saw this before James proposed (I'm seeing how many times I can use the words engaged and proposed within a single post) and therefore I was still keenly interested.

I don't think I've ever been more surprised or delighted, it was an absolutely perfect moment (once I cottoned on to what was actually happening), and of course I said yes. He had planned everything with amazing thoughtfulness, with a specially-engraved plain band which is to be my travelling ring – we'll pick something permanent out when we get back to the UK. I also found out that he'd booked us in to a 4 star hotel for our last 2 nights in the city, and not the budget ryokan that I'd been led to believe – such were the lengths he went to to ensure I didn't find out, he'd created a fake reservation e-mails, just in case I checked it!

The next few hours (and in fact, days) have passed in a blur; neither of us can stop smiling. The Japanese don't believe in room service so we celebrated in the hotel bar with a tankard of gin and tonic apiece, and then a slap up 6 course French meal (French Japanese food = increased chance of decent red wine). It was a very special evening.

Thanks to all of you for your calls, e-mails and Facebook messages; we wish we were there to celebrate with you, but I am sure we will have a homecoming/engagement extravaganza when we return. We're still both on cloud 9 so have no ideas as to dates yet...realistically it will be 2012 I think but watch this space.

Otherwise Kyoto has been wet and cold for the most part, not that we've really noticed. Highlights (apart from the obvious) have included: Sarah having a geisha makeover (thank you Dani for the telephone number!), a day trip to Nara to see the Giant Cosmic Buddha and I think the best Big Mac either of us has ever had, and, for James at least, enjoying the beauty of the Zen gardens – call me a philistine but I didn't quite get it.

We're off to Shanghai shortly (am writing this from the airport) which will I'm sure be a whole new adventure....

Whilst in Osaka, we took a day trip to Koya-san – catching an early train South out through the suburbs of Osaka, past Kansai airport, down into the neighbouring prefecture of Wakayama then up into the mountains. We made the last part of the trip by funicular, up through the clouds into a cold and sunny Monday morning.

The mountains did not initially agree with Sarah. Having been rudely awoken at the top of the funicular, bundled into a bus and dumped in the middle of the monastery town, she was not in a happy frame of mind. It took her a good half hour of stomping around town, uttering phrases such as 'This place is unnecessarily complicated', 'Why did we bother coming here?' and 'These temples are poorly organised' (whilst I kept my head down) before she was in any kind of mood to take in any of the beautiful shrines and temples.

As a day trip from Osaka, we took the bullet train to Himeji to visit the castle - one of the only surviving castles in the country (sadly, most of the others have been burnt down a number of times before finally being rebuilt in concrete)

The castle and its battlements soar above town, and the bright white 6 story structure is affectionately known as the 'white heron' in Japanese.

Now all this would be very poetic, had Sarah and I not made the grave mistake of visiting on a weekend. There were hundreds of thousands of people streaming off the trains up the main road to the castle. However, on entering the grounds we all entered a very efficiently managed queuing system involving scraggly students with oversized-uniforms and whistles and a series of holding pens - so after 45 minutes we arrived at the ticket booth and, to our relief, the entrance to the castle-proper.

Unfortunately, through the main gates we were greeted with the sight of yet another queue. No problem, it must end just around that corner. Nope. Every turn we expected the queue to end, but at every turn it snaked onwards out of sight. After 4 turns we realised that the queue actually wound its way through the entire castle grounds, into the castle, around each floor, up and down the 6 flights of stairs, and back out again. They say the English love a good queue, but having lived through this ordeal I have to admit that we are mere amateurs compared to the average Japanese sightseer.

Needless to say, I was absolutely livid on exiting the castle and would probably have had to vandalise a local convenience store to calm down. Luckily for 7-11, the authorities had cleverly employed a series of actors to dress up as samurai next to the castle and pose for photos with tourists. All was forgiven!

Back in Osaka, that lovely ugly town. The people are less polite, care less about appearances, eat more, drink more, and generally have a better time than the rest of Japan. It's good to be back.

I'm not sure what I expected from Hiroshima, but it certainly wasn't the thriving, modern city that confronted us as we first got off the bullet train. That said, it wasn't long before we passed the first reminder of what happened here almost 65 years ago, in the form of the A-bomb Dome. The Industrial Promotions Hall (as it was in 1945) has been preserved exactly as it was in the immediate wake of the bombing; a reminder of the devastating consequences of atomic war. Whilst the city has healed, and seems today like a really relaxed place (reminded us a bit of Chicago) it still has a very deliberate mission - to one day see global nuclear disarmament.  For example, the mayor of the city still writes a letter of complaint every single time a country carries out a nuclear test.

We stayed in the World Friendship Centre, a hostel run by an antinuclear nonprofit organisation, currently in the guise of Ron and Barb, our honorary grandparents during our stay. They were an incredibly sweet and inspiring couple who have worked on several volunteer projects since their retirement a few years ago, including working with the families of prison inmates in the US. At the end of this project (about this time next year) they're going back to the States to build an ethically-friendly house in New Mexico.  They were nothing but helpful and nothing but welcoming - would definitely recommend a stay here to anyone who finds themselves in the area.

Kasaoka-san today

We visited the Peace Memorial Museum almost as soon as we arrived, which was, needless to say, a pretty harrowing experience - especially the stories about all of the children who lost their lives as a result of the bomb. However, nothing could have prepared us for our meeting with a hibakusha (an A-bomb survivor) called Mrs Kasaoka back at the Museum the next morning.  She lost both of her parents in the blast aged just 12, and only survived herself because she was given a day off from her wartime duties on the 6th August. Yet somehow, over the years, she has continued to survive, despite losing her husband and many friends as a result of the long-term effects of radiation. Her story was deeply moving, but something we're very glad we had the opportunity to hear.




But our time spent in Hiroshima had its lighter moments too, notably when Sarah thought she was enjoying some kind of slow-burn cop show on TV (pre-the dramatic car chase), only to discover what she'd actually been following was the CCTV footage of 2 stationary cars in front of the noodle bar where we were eating dinner.



We also took a day-trip to nearby Miyajima, of floating-tori-gate fame, and one of Japan's '3 best views' according to the travellers' version of the Bible, the Lonely Planet. The island was beautiful, and against our better judgement we decided to climb to the top of Mount Misen, the highest point of the island at some 535 metres. It was a long old trek up through primeval rainforest, but we felt a real sense of (sweaty) achievement on reaching the top. Unable to face walking back down we took the 'ropeway' option, which boasted not one, but two types of cable car for tourists' enjoyment.

There was just time to see 'the largest rice spoon in the world TM' before we had to catch a ferry back to the mainland.

Our Osakan adventure awaits next, scene of James's misspent youth as an English teacher....

We struggled to find somewhere to celebrate! Ended up paying £9 for a pint of Guinness, in a Spanish tapas bar, in Hiroshima. And no-one seemed to want to give us Guinness hats either. (Ms Hill, methinks there's a gap in the market out here...). Anyway, Cheers all!

Takayama is a small town in the Hida prefecture on the edge of the Northern Japanese Alps. Stepping off the train on Monday afternoon there were still patches of snow on the road, and at 2 degrees the frosty mountain air made quite a change from the 24 degrees of Tokyo.

Thats right, it's a 'Type II Single-Use Masturbation Device'. Only in Japan.

We decided to treat ourselves to the local entertainment, known as kabuki, which is hard to describe, a cross between opera and theatre of sorts. Plays have been performed since the 17th century and it seems to still have a popular following in Japan today - the Kabuki-za (theatre to you and me) was packed and we were the only non-Japanese there.

The play itself was one of the weirdest things either of us has ever experienced - a chanter yodels his way through the story, accompanied by another guy on a sitar-like instrument. These two are replaced at regular intervals by a revolving door, and each yodeller becomes higher-pitched and more involved as the story progresses.


The actors (all male, though mostly in drag) also wail occasionally, though for the most part they act melodramatically. Some of these kabuki actors have near god-like status in Japan, and they all grow up in the tradition of kabuki - so sons inherit roles from fathers, fathers from grandfathers etc. To add to the madness, members of the audience occasionally made cat-calling noises, shouting what sounded like "Schmeer, schmeer" at regular intervals [we later found out they were shouting the nicknames of their preferred kabuki actor on stage, but at the time, we were completely bewildered as to what the - otherwise incredibly reserved - Japanese audience might be doing].

Our bewilderment was somewhat lessened by the audio commentary, which regularly threw in things like "there is no reason for them to be doing this, it's not part of the story, it's just to add to the audience's enjoyment." Without this, well might we have wondered what was happening when one of the characters pushed a chicken across a lake on a tea tray, only for it to start cock-a-doodle-doo-ing half way across [for future reference, chickens can detect dead bodies at the bottom of bodies of water].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

"We'll be fine in Tokyo. After all, we're Londoners”. Oh, the arrogance.

• There's a musical jingle for everything. Lifts, traffic lights, trains, even toilets. Train station platforms pipe in 'calming' jungle bird noises, and each train plays a random assortment of chiming tunes when leaving or arriving at stations. Commuting, you kind of feel like you're trapped inside a Disney computer game. The toilets are pretty special too. They play "authentic" flushing noises, to enable you to wee without feeling self-conscious.

• The Cartoon is the preferred medium of communication for any and all messages, regardless of the target audience – No Smoking signs, subway announcements, any advertising from canned coffee to cars.

• The current pop sensation is a 14 year old from the Isle of Man who became famous for dancing to Japanese manga music in her bedroom, and has been whisked over to Tokyo for a publicity tour, such is the popularity of her choreography over here.

• It's cool to have an English slogan on your shop / advert / clothes, but apparently not so cool to make any kind of sense. All-time favourite thus far has been a shop in Harajuku called 'Store my ducks'. No idea what it sold, but we imagine its some kind of long-term storage for when your pet mallards start crowding your apartment.

In the 5 days we spent in and around Tokyo, we took the phrase "Japanese tourists" to a whole new level, covering north, south, east and west, taking in sights and sounds at sometimes break-neck speed. Could be something to do with the sheer energy of the place - people do everything quickly and efficiently (Sarah is in heaven).

• The morning we got up at 0430 to see the Tsukiji Fish Market auction, which supplies fresh fish to the whole of Tokyo. Even better was the super-fresh sushi we sampled for breakfast at a cafe in the market. Our M&S sushi snacks will sadly never taste quite as good in comparison!

• The Meiji Jingu shrine built to honour Emperor Meiji, who introduced Japan to the western world after 2 centuries of seclusion under the shoguns, and the Shinto couple we saw having their wedding pictures taken there.

• Becoming history geeks at the excellent Edo-Tokyo museum, which enabled James to pretend to be a 17^th century fireman standard-bearer and Sarah to ride a penny farthing (awesome, such a shame they don't still make them)

And now we're on to Takayama, for a bit of rest and relaxation in the Japanese Alps. There's snow on the way tomorrow, but hopefully we'll be safe and snug with our electric blankets and hi-tech gas heaters...

In an intuitive act of cultural transition, Sarah pulls an (unprompted) traditional Japanese 'Cheezu' pose whilst enjoying her last Full English Breakfast at Heathrow T5

...I will attempt to fit all this ... into these two small bags