Our first day trip by Shinkansen was to Himeji, home to one of Japan’s oldest and most spectacular castles, known as “The White Heron” for obvious reasons.  We are too late for cherry blossoms, and too early for autumn foliage, but it was still beautiful – and less crowded than it would be at peak […]

Trivia update – we placed third in the Progressive Trivia.  Little did we know that all that quizzing was simply honing our brains to cope with the complications of the Japanese railway system.  We’d already booked seats on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to get from Yokohama to Osaka – but how to get to the […]

Our last port of call on the cruise was Kagoshima, still in Kyushu.  After a big couple of days, we got a relatively late start to the morning, accompanied by Captain Kumamon on his first adventure away from home.  When we got off the ship, we discovered there was a ferry service shuttling passengers to […]

A new travelling companion/stowaway has appeared in our cabin; he’s dressed to impress, and excited to see the world.  He’s a soft, cuddly, black and white bear with rosy red cheeks.  He is decked out in his Captain’s jacket and cap, and his name is Captain Kumamon.  He’s left his home behind in Yatsushiro, and […]

I spent a lot of time in the months before this trip, trying to figure out what we’d do for a day in Yatsushiro.  The biggest place nearby is Kumamoto, which has a rebuilt castle, but it was a half hour train trip away, and we’d be seeing much better examples of castles on our […]

After two restful days at sea, we arrived in southern Japan; specifically the port of Nagasaki, in Kyushu.  Nagasaki is a small city which hugs both sides of a steep valley, in fjord-like fashion.  At the entrance there are some shipyards and other industries; it was those shipyards which led to Nagasaki being on the […]