Nonstop to Tokyo [.co.uk]

The famous 'floating' torii (temple gate) on Miyajima Island, near Hiroshima. Commonly identified as one of the 3 best sights in Japan, and it really is incredible. We managed to catch it in the early morning, while the mist was still lingering in the mountains and on the shore (even though in the picture it just looks like a miserable day ....).

Japanese temples have a place to hang little wooden blocks, which you can buy for about 500 yen and write your wishes on, and once a month the temple priests pray for the wishes that have been hung. The one in the centre in English really made us laugh. The text says: "Please let there be peace, finally (esp. in the Middle East). Also, please help us in school. Also, let us have nice boyfriends and husbands leasing to cute babies."

This picture was taken while we walked up the highest mountain on Miyajima Island, which we stupidly climbed with no food or water on a baking hot day. Little shrines like this are littered all over the place in any natural area of Japan thanks to the Shinto religion which believes that, amongst other things, gods (or 'kami') reside in natural objects, such as rocks, trees, mountains, streams, and even whole landscapes.

At the base of the mountain was Daisho-in, a temple complex with several buildings and shrines, and the whole place was covered in shrines, Buddhas, and assorted Buddhist/Shinto statues. There was also a cool cave shrine with literally thousands of statues and candles, but unfortunately those pictures didn't come out very well.

There were also hundreds of these little statues lined along paths and sitting at the temple entrance, and this picture is just a small detail of them. Amazingly, each one is unique. They were actually small enough to have fitted in a small bag, so it was quite tempting to 'borrow' one to use as a novelty garden ornament .... but luckily for them, I'm not the kind of the guy that would do such a thing.

This is the Hypocenter Park in Nagasaki, the epicentre of the atomic bomb that exploded there on 9th August 1945. The black column marks the position where the first atomic bomb exploded, several hundred feet directly above it. On the left you can just about see some of the colourful paper cranes that Japanese school-children still make and send to the a-bomb sites in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This is a view of Nagasaki city, on the southern island of Kyushu, which is where the prettiest cities we came across were. I would have definitely liked to have spent more time in Nagasaki, and Kyushu in general. Nagasaki also had a wicked tram system!

In Japan we were amazed to find whole shops devoted to Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Spirited Away and head of Studio Ghibli, and some shops were even devoted to one single film of his, My Neighbour Totorro, which features a rather bizarre neko-bus (cat-bus). In Nagasaki we found found a shop which had a life-size neko-bus outside, which Emma just coudn't wait to get into!

This is a view of Kumamoto-jo which isn't dissimilar to Osaka-jo, as Japanese castles were all built in a similar style but with subtle design differences, depending on the current thinking of military strategists. Kumamoto was one of our favourite places, simply because we stayed in the home of a fantastic old lady who didn't speak a word of English, but was so kind to us and even bought us dinner one night.