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.

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!

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...