The Far East: Day 18

NOTE: Post updated to include the bit about the England-Germany game - sorry it got left off before!

I awoke on Sunday morning at 9:30, after a nine-hour sleep. I hadn't meant to sleep so long, but I felt better for it; I had been quite tired from the previous few days. After a lazy morning catching up on what was going on in the world, I headed to Osaka for the afternoon. Such is the speed of the Shinkansen that you can make it to Osaka from Kyoto in just fifteen minutes:

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 511: 1416 Kyoto to Shin-Osaka, arr 1430

However, that only gets you to Shin-Osaka, which is across the river from the city centre. Shin-Osaka has three levels: the Shinkansen is elevated two levels above the other tracks, and between them sits the concourse. To get to Osaka, I hopped on a local train on what used to be the mainline before the Shinkansen was built:

Kobe line local service: 1437 Shin-Osaka to Osaka, arr c1441

Osaka station is the nerve centre of a huge commuter network stretching out as far as Kyoto and Kobe and many other places on the plains of Kansai.  Osaka's rail network is very similar to Tokyo's, even having a loop line just like the Yamanote line. I used the loop line to head to Osaka-jo, otherwise called Osaka Castle.

Osaka loop line, 1448 Osaka to Morinomiya arr c1458

Osaka Castle was built by Hideyoshi Toyotomi in the 1580s in a bid to reunify Japan after years of civil war. He succeeded in bringing his arch-rival, Tokugawa Ieyasu, into the cabinet, but with Hideyoshi's death the country fractured once more; most of the power fell upon the Tokugawa shogunate, until eventually they relinquished power to the Emperor in 1868.

The castle is a great example of reconstruction: in Japan, and also in China, great structures such as Osaka Castle have been rebuilt many times, as faithfully to the original as possible. This rebuilding is brushed under the carpet: Osaka Castle has only really looked like it does now since 1997, but it is claimed as a masterpiece from 400 years ago. In a sense that's true, and I can understand their point of view; nonetheless, the idea that the castle is an abstract object and not a concrete building is alien to the west.

This is not to detract from the castle: it stands proud in a large park, surrounded by two huge moats, and stretches eight storeys high. From the top there are very nice views over Osaka city, though not anything as spectacular as Tokyo Tower by night. Inside is a nice exhibition about the wars and battles in which the castle played a vital role, including some very detailed tapestries from 1615 depicting the Summer War in Osaka.

Osaka Castle somehow manages to be Japan's most-visited tourist destination - beating the more impressive castle in Himeji (which I only saw from the train), and Mount Fuji. Critics say this is because it's the only thing to do in Osaka; this is unfair since there are many other sights, but the castle was all I had time to do on this particular day. I headed back to Osaka station, going the long way round the loop line for fun: 

Osaka loop line, 1734 Morinomiya to Tennoji, arr c1746

Tennoji is the main station for suburban trains into Osaka from the south. It's pretty baffling, with more platforms than Osaka station (18 vs. 11). Some suburban trains arrive at Tennoji, and then head clockwise round the loop back to Tennoji before terminating; this makes up just over half the services on the loop line, the rest being services which go round and round all day. 

Osaka loop line, 1753 Tennoji to Osaka (clockwise), arr c1818

At Osaka station, I decided to get some food - after wandering around the station area I settled on pizza and chips, which was cheap(ish) but not brilliant - before heading home. 

Kyoto line, 1923 Osaka to Shin-Osaka, arr c1927

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 486: 1940 Shin-Osaka to Kyoto, arr 1954

I had intended to get caught up with the blog, but between following the F1 on live timing screens - not a patch on watching it but the best I could do - and listening to the England-Germany game on Five Live I didn't get to bed till gone 1am. The game was no fun for an England fan, and 4-1 sounded like a reasonably fair scoreline given how bad the defence seemed to be. I have never heard Alan Green so fed up, though: mainly with Sepp Blatter and video refereeing, but also with how badly England were playing.

Lineker was right in 1990, and he still is: twenty-two players run round a field chasing a ball, and in the end the Germans win. English football needs a root-and-branch review: no more can we sustain a top division with English players in the minority if we are to have success as a national side.

I apologise to those of you who didn't come here for a football rant; normal service will be resumed shortly.   

The Far East: Day 17

Saturday started early at 05:50 so Jon could head to Narita Airport to fly home. In fact, it was such an early start that we'd had to check out the night before in order to be out early enough to get to Narita:

Joban line, 0644 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Yamanote line, c0700 Ueno to Tokyo

Narita Express #9, 0731 Tokyo to Narita Airport T1, arr 0836

We arrived at the airport in good time for Jon's flight at 10:30; he was flying back with Air France connecting in Paris CDG (that being, apparently, the cheapest option). He checked in and then we parted, after a very enjoyable week. On the one hand I am sad to see him go, and it seems more lonely without him; but we often egg each other on, and I think we ended up doing more together than either of us would have done on our own; it is nice to be able to go at my own pace again.

Having parted, I got some much-needed breakfast, browsed quickly through the English language magazines (but thought better of it once I saw the prices), and headed back to Tokyo.

Narita Express #14, 1015 Narita Airport T1 to Tokyo, arr 1114

The Narita Express is a wonderful way to arrive in - or leave - Japan. Even on the narrow gauge network there is plenty of room for wide double-decker trains, though the Narita Express is single-decker to make handling luggage easier. It has wide seats and lots of legroom, quite like a Shinkansen. The only downside is the journey time - an hour or so - because it has to fit in with lots of local trains.

A new line is being built to ease the pressure, which opens in July (after I'm home, unforunately!), which will cut the journey time to 38 minutes, but that will be operated by Keisei, not JR - unlike in the UK competition actually seems to work in Japanese railways, though I'm not sure how... 

Back in Tokyo, I decided to take a look in one of the city's biggest bookshop, Maruzen. It has four huge floors, and most of the top floor is dedicated to English-language books. In particular there is a huge academic section - on a par with Foyles in London or Blackwells in Oxford - in English, and the maths section in particular was excellent. I guess the Japanese do their university maths in English, which would make sense.

On the second floor I also found the maps section, looking in vain for a bilingual map of Japan - the so-called bilingual map being, in fact, almost entirely in English. I also chanced upon the section on railways, which was much, much bigger than you'd get in any bookshop in the UK - there were track diagrams, timetables, back issues of magazines for the last year, picture books, and even maps designed for you to tick off when you've been on a particular line or through a particular station. If only they'd do that in Britain...

After whiling away an hour and a half browsing the bookshop, I headed back to the Imperial Garden which Jon and I had failed to visit on Friday. It was well worth the return trip, with some lovely trees and buildings as well as some nice ponds and a few flowers. It was clear from the amount of green, though, that summer is not the best time to visit: I can imagine the colours in spring or autumn being simply beautiful. That's not to say it wasn't very nice, but I do want to go back now.

In fact I think that rings true of Japan in general: there is so much more to see, and so many more train journeys to enjoy, that I think it's a matter of when I return to Japan, and not if.

After seeing the Imperial Garden, I headed back to Tokyo station, retrieved my case from the locker I'd put it in earlier to avoid carting it about, and got some lunch; I fell prey to expensive in-station prices, but I did enjoy a proper spaghetti carbonara instead of more noodles. I then headed to get my train to Kyoto, where I had booked a hostel for six nights:

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 519: 1533 Tokyo to Kyoto, arr 1816

I arrived in Kyoto station and was immediately taken by its architectural magnificence; it's more usual for stations to have the concourse under the platforms, but Kyoto has a huge concourse over the suburban platforms, with only the Shinkansen platforms being elevated. It is certainly the nicest-looking station I've been to in Japan; it doesn't hold a candle to St Pancras, though. (On the other hand, Japan has nothing remotely as depressing as Birmingham New Street.)

I left the station armed with directions to the hostel - Ikoi-no-ie - which turned out to be a bit misleading; as a result I spent half an hour or more wandering around in progressively heavier rain trying to find the hostel; in the end I found it, having given up too soon when heading down one of the streets. The hostel is basically an overflow for another hostel a block away, and is pretty quiet; it's set back from the main road by three blocks of houses, all crammed into the city centre. It's quite nice, I suppose, but after the friendly atmosphere in Tokyo it's very quiet indeed, and the rain didn't help my opinion of the place.

After drying off I headed back out into the rain, and found a place to eat - another Japanese fast food place, but by this stage I was too tired to care. Once I'd written some more blog and chatted to a few people online - one good thing about this hostel is that the wireless extends throughout the building - I headed for a good night's sleep. 

The Far East: Day 16

Friday was Jon's last day in Japan, so we decided to do a number of things in Tokyo, before meeting Jon's brother Nick and his girlfriend Tomoe for Tomoe's birthday party. But the best-laid plans gang aft agley, and we endured a few disappointments as well as a stifling 28C heat during the day.

That was probably a blessing in disguise, really, because we had had a very busy Thursday and were more tired than we realised. After sorting out my arrangements for my final week in Japan, we headed out later than we'd intended but glad of the rest.
 
Joban line, 1120 Minami-Senju to Ueno
Yamanote line, c1142 Ueno to Shimbashi

So thoroughly urban is Tokyo that it can come as a shock to many visitors (and some residents) to discover that the city is actually beside the sea. But its bayside is home to the world-famous Tokyo Central Wholesale Market, where chefs and restaurants bid for the freshest fish from around the world. It's in full swing at 5am, but there's normally still some action mid-morning, so we headed down. However, we were unaware that it shut at noon, and so by the time we got there it had closed. 

However, the nearby Tsukiji-Jogai Market provided Jon and I with the opportunity to try fresh sushi. Technically, sushi refers to the rice; the raw fish more commonly associated with that name is properly called sashimi. Whatever you call it, it was raw fish. For ¥2100 (about £16) we shared a tasting platter of raw fish and rice, and it was... interesting.

There was quite a bit of tuna, some of which was very nice indeed; those of you who have had tuna cooked rare can perhaps imagine what it tastes like. There were a number of other things, including shrimp, salmon eggs, shark fin, and various other unidentifiable things. Only one, which was yellow and slimy, was unpleasant; the rest had so much wasabi that you couldn't really taste the fish. I guess it's a bit like oysters: they don't really taste of much, so you have to season them to have them taste of anything at all. I can't say I enjoyed the whole experience all that much, but at leas I can say I've tried sushi.

Tokyo Metro, Hibiya line: c1340 Tsukiji to Hibiya

It being too hot to walk, we took the Tokyo Metro and headed over to the Imperial Palace, still the residence of the Emperor of Japan, who is technically head of state but has less power even than the Queen. We happened to catch an imperial procession taking someone into the palace and back out, but we didn't see who it was. Unfortunately the attached gardens were closed - apparently they're not open on Mondays and Fridays - so we looked around what we could - which isn't much - and then headed round towards the south-west if the city centre, to an area called Shibuya: 

Yamanote line, c1550 Tokyo to Harajuku

The Meiji-jingu shrine was created as a memorial to Emperor Meiji, who died in 1912 having reinvented a stagnating empire and moved the capital from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1868. The shrine is set in a park, which provides some much-needed to Tokyo residents and visitors trying to get away from the bustle. The shrine is quite understated, typical of Japanese shrines, and the gardens provide wonderful places to relax.

After doing just that, we headed to the centre of Shibuya, where we were due to meet Nick, Tomoe et al for Tomoe's birthday. We were quite tired, so when we got there with an hour to spare we took a seat in Starbucks above the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. The junction outside Shibuya metro station has to be seen to be believed: for over a minute, all traffic at this crossroads stops, and pedestrians flood the black-and-white stripes; you wonder where they all come from, but a good proportion of them must surely come from the metro station releasing huge numbers of passengers.

Eventually we met up with Nick, Tomoe and several friends of theirs, and the eight of us headed for dinner in The Lockup - a horror-themed restaurant. A great night was had by all, even if I was a bit tired. The other six retired to the pub at 22:30, but Jon had a flight to catch on Saturday morning so we headed home.

Yamanote line, 2242 Shibuya to Ueno

For fun, we went the very slightly longer way round the Yamanote line, thus ensuring that we'd done a complete (clockwise) circuit of the line in a day (with a few overlaps).

Joban line, 2320 Ueno to Minami-Senju

We were sad not to have seen more of Tokyo, but Jon had certainly seen his fair share over three weeks in Japan, and I looked forward to heading west to Kyoto on Saturday.

The Far East: Day 15

On Thursday, the overcast humid air was replaced by somewhat cooler and clearer air, bringing with it some nice sunshine but leaving temperatures at a very pleasant 24C. To take advantage of the weather, Jonathan and I headed out of Tokyo to the town of Nikko, about 90 miles north of the city.  

Joban line, 1025 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Tohoku Shinkansen, Yamabiki 49: 1046 Ueno to Utsunomiya, arr 1130

By way of contrast to the linear Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen, the Shinkansen to the north of Japan's main island of Honshu has no fewer than five separate branches: the Tohoku, Akita, Yamagata, Joetsu and Nagano Shinkansen each serve various cities in the north of the island. It is hard, however, to dispute the notion that the Tohoku Shinkansen is the main route, being the longest and reaching nearly all the way to Hokkaido, the main island in the north of Japan.

We used just 65 miles of this complicated network to get to Utsonomiya, where we would change for Nikko. The line north out of Tokyo was built in 1982; it runs partially underground to get out of the city via Ueno station, the main station for suburban trains to the northern suburbs. Being newer, it offers up a higher maximum speed of 300kph instead of 270kph, which doesn't feel all that much faster but is nice to know.

Nikko Line, local train: 1139 Utsunomiya to Nikko, arr c1224

At Utsonomiya, 65 miles north of Tokyo, we made a nine-minute connection to a local train to Nikko. The metropolis of Tokyo sprawls nearly as far as Utsonomiya - there was little countryside to interrupt our journey - but the branch line was definitely more rural in feel, being single-track with passing loops in each station, of which there were six in our 25-mile, 45-minute journey. It was very nice to get out of the city for a while - it can get a bit oppressive after a while, especially given how many people there are in Japan.

Oddly, though, it appears that even Nikko has commuters to Tokyo; while our route is not considered part of the Tokyo network, there is an alternative route to Nikko which is part of the Tokyo Metro (subway). The Metro, however, is not included in the price of the JR Pass.

Nikko is home to a world heritage site consisting of a number of beautiful shrines set in a national park surrounded by mountains. After a 20-minute walk uphill from the station, you come to the beautiful Shin-kyo bridge, which points the way up to the Rinno-ji, a Buddhist temple, and Tosho-gu, an unusually ostentatious Shinto shrine. A combination ticket for ¥1000 (about £8) provides good value for all the main sights.

The Tosho-gu shrine was established in 1634 by Tokugawa Iemitsu in honour of his grandfather Tokugawa Ieyasu, who died in 1616. Its dazzling beauty stands as a testament to the wealth of the Tokugawa dynasty. Unlike most Shinto shrines, it is fabulously decorated in gold leaf and bright red paint, and has to be seen to be believed. As, in fact, do the crowds: if you thought hoards of Japanese tourists frequenting European tourist sites was bad, you should see them when they visit their own tourist sites. 

Two more shrines lie adjacent to Tosho-gu, namely Futarasan-jinja and Taiyuin-byo, neither of which are as extravagant, nor are they as touristy. In fact, after Tosho-gu they came as a bit of a relief. The buddhist temple of Rinno-ji and its large hall of Sanbutsu-do, which hosts three giant gilded statues, rounded off an excellent afternoon.

We hadn't been hungry when we started visiting the shrines, but getting there was uphill so we decided not to go down until we'd seen everything. As a result it was about 4pm by the time we finally got some lunch, which was chicken and meat skewers accompanied by rice and noodles. After that, we headed back down the hill and caught our train back to Tokyo: 

Nikko Line, local train: 1707 Nikko to Utsunomiya, arr 1749

Tohoku Shinkansen, Max Yamabiki 122: 1758 Utsunomiya to Tokyo, arr 1848

Again, a nine-minute connection in Utsonomiya. It is a testament to the network that we could comfortably make a very short connection with a relatively long walk in an unfamiliar station with no fuss whatsoever. Imagine doing that at somewhere like Liverpool Lime Street. The key difference is that, as a rule, each line has its own platform, which is signposted as such: as such you only usually need to check departure boards when there's more than one platform or to find out exactly when the next train leaves.

Our train back from Utsonomiya turned out to be a double-decker train. The British tracks don't have big enough tunnels to allow for double-decker trains, but the Japanese ones do, and they are imposingly big: the trains are a full metre taller than normal, and the seats on the upper deck are 3+3 with no loss of space - such is the width of the cabin. Adding the staircases to permit access does reduce the number of seats in each deck, but not so much that the effect of having two decks is lost: double-decker trains typically have up to 50% more seats than a single-decker train of the same length.

We had intended to go back to the hostel before heading on to the Tokyo Tower, but we hadn't planned on starting so late or staying so long in Nikko. So we headed directly to the Tokyo Tower: 
 
Yamanote line, 1857 Tokyo to Hamamatsucho

The Tokyo Tower is a 333m high copy of the Eiffel Tower built in 1958 in an era when the Japanese were producing cheap copies of everything European; it actually manages to be a few metres taller than its French counterpart. We got up to the 150m-high observation deck just as dusk was fading.

Views from tall buildings in cities are always nice, but they're always much of a muchness: one city doesn't look that different to any other city. At least, that's true in the daytime.

At night, though, Tokyo's neon lights make for a spectacle that no other city can match. The moonlight over the Rainbow Bridge in the distance made for a stunning view. I was glad that I'd bought a new lens for my camera that was able to cope with low light a month or so before I left: being able to take hand-held shots in near-darkness is much better than having to use a makeshift tripod, and I have some hopefully rather good photos (which I can't do anything with until I get home) 

After that, we headed back to the hostel: 

Yamanote line, 2108 Hamamatsucho to Ueno
Joban line, 2133 Ueno to Minami-Senju

We popped out again to get some food, after a rather long day, in a Japanese fast food restaurant: the ramen was alright, but a bit salty. We ended up watching most of the Italy-Slovakia game, which turned out to be a really good game - I was not expecting Italy to go out, and it was made all the more hilarious by the reactions of the Italian staying in our hostel.

Between that and the insane Isner vs. Mahut game at Wimbledon, we eventually got to bed at about 1am, later than planned, ready for our last full day in Tokyo, and Jon's last full day in Japan. 

The Far East: Day 14

After just two nights, it was time to say goodbye to Hiroshima: there's plenty of Japan left to explore and not nearly enough time, so we'd better get cracking. As Jonathan flies home on Saturday, we decided to spend his last three nights based in Tokyo, in part so we could meet up with his brother Nick.

So we packed up and got the streetcar back to Hiroshima station; unfortunately it took longer than we hoped and we missed the 0915. I thought there was another train at 0948, but on closer inspection of the timetable I realised that that only ran on certain holidays, so we were forced to wait until 1015:

Sanyo Shinkansen, Hikari Railstar 550: 1015 Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka arr 1144

I love Japanese trains. They run perfectly on time. They know how many carriages there are before they arrive. They tell you where the unreserved seats are, and they tell you where to stand for each carriage. You never seem to get short-formed trains or cancellations. There are plenty of platforms, plenty of tracks, incredibly long trains which nevertheless are often busy. And, most importantly, everything is signposted in English.

We headed back to Tokyo in basically the same way we had come, changing in Shin-Osaka. The mainline to the west of Japan is the Tokaido Shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka, and the Sanyo Shinkansen beyond Osaka to Hakata-Fukuoka. Combined, they stretch 730 miles from end to end; that will increase when the line is extended over Kyushu to Kagoshima. The route is entirely linear, with no branches; this is mainly because we pass through pretty much all the major cities, including Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. 

When they built the Shinkansen, they required new platforms and tracks in every city, because of the wider gauge of track. In many places, more than one might expect, the Shinkansen has been integrated almost seamlessly into the existing main station: this is the case in Hiroshima, as well as in Tokyo. In Osaka, however, there was not enough room near Osaka station to put the Shinkansen, so they built a new station a little to the north for Shinkansen trains to use, with a rail connection to Osaka station. The new station was called Shin-Osaka, literally 'New Osaka' station. We didn't spend much time there, just grabbing a burger before boarding our onward train to Tokyo: 

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 516: 1213 Shin-Osaka to Tokyo, arr 1513

One very noticeable difference between the British and Japanese rail networks is the loading gauge; that is, the maximum size that trains can be in order to fit through tunnels. The British network is hampered from having been the pioneers of the railway: we're stuck with some pretty short-sighted decisions made over a century ago, which basically makes trains bigger than the 'standard' BR passenger train very costly because you have to expand the tunnels.

By contrast, the Japanese either planned ahead or have already altered their network to cope with good-sized trains. The default for a Shinkansen is 3+2 seating. However, in that you get considerably more seat width and much more legroom than you would anywhere in British standard class; I've never tried first class but I can imagine it might well be beaten by the Shinkansen. Not only that but you can stand up and walk down the aisle without hitting your head.

We spent the three-hour journey to Tokyo dozing, and I tried writing some blog to not much success. On arrival at Tokyo, we headed for the Aizuya Inn in Minami-Senju, where we had been meant to stay on Sunday night but for a computer error. In so doing we headed for the Yamanote line again: such is the efficiency of not just the layout but the signage of Tokyo station that we were on a train 9 minutes after arrival.

This is no mean feat in a station with 28 platforms: there are 10 elevated platforms for the Shinkansen (six for the west and four for the north-east), another 10 elevated platforms for suburban trains to much of the Tokyo metropolitan area, and 8 underground platforms (two sets of four) for other suburban services, including services to Narita airport. Those suburbs without services to Tokyo main station have services to one of Ueno, Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, and Shinagawa, all of which are connected by the Yamanote circle line.

Yamanote line, 1522 Tokyo to Ueno

Minami-Senju happens to be one of those suburbs served from Ueno terminus, which is itself pretty big. While Tokyo is the main Shinkansen station, where everything terminates, all services to the west stop at Shinagawa and Shin-Yokohama (Yokohama being the second largest city in Japan, though it basically merges into Tokyo), and all services to the north-east stop at Ueno. So between the Shinkansen and a bewildering array of suburban services, Ueno has 21 platforms: four for the Shinkansen, four for through suburban services to Tokyo, and 13 for terminating trains, including ours:    

Joban line, 1542 Ueno to Minami-Senju

The Joban line is a commuter line to the east of Tokyo; we went just three stops (eight minutes) along the line to get to Minami-Senju. We walked the 10-minute walk to our hostel and checked into our twin room, perhaps a little smaller than I'd been expecting but enough room for two. It had Japanese style beds again, with folding mattresses that goes on the tatami-mat floor. After a brief rest to check emails and world cup scores, we headed back out to Akihabara. 

Joban line, 1736 Minami-Senju to Ueno
Yamanote line, 1750 Ueno to Akihabara

Akihabara probably represents what most people think of when they think of Tokyo: bright lights and huge shops filled with the latest gadgets. We first headed to Yodabashi Camera, which despite the name now sprawls over seven floors and sells PCs, iPods, mobile phones, air conditioners, hi-fi sets, televisions, DVD recorders, watches, fridges and, yes, cameras. The scale of the shop is hard to appreciate: there is an entire aisle devoted to camera tripods, an entire aisle of computer mice, at least six aisles of iPod accessories - it's just mind-boggling.  

They have an incredible selection of cameras and lenses, though not quite as big as I'd expected: it was certainly great fun to get a look at some of the huge telephoto lenses used by photojournalists and paparazzi which can just about fit in the ear of the person standing on the other side of the shop.

In the Apple section they had about ten iPads out for testing, and I have to admit that having used one in the flesh it is rather an enjoyable experience - I found that I could almost touch type, with a few mistakes that I'd probably get used to, which was way better than I was expecting. I realised later that, in some ways, I should have waited until the iPhone 4 came out to visit, though I expect it would have been crammed.

After leaving Yodabashi, we happened to bump into Nick, Jon's brother, which in a city the size of Tokyo is quite a coincidence. Nick had some time to kill, so joined us in looking round Akihabara. I had hoped to visit the Tokyo Anime Center but got there after it closed, so we wandered around the shops, before getting a bite to eat. We then browsed a bookshop - unforunately the English language section was pitifully small, but I did find a nice map of the railways around Tokyo. After that, Nick went back to his girlfriend's house (with whom he is staying for a few weeks) and we returned to the hostel:   

Yamanote line, 2108 Akihabara to Ueno
Joban line, 2118 Ueno to Minami-Senju

Across the road from the hostel is a bar, which on Wednesday has a yaki soba party - soba being a kind of thin Japanese noodle - meaning that there was free food. Not that we wish to be called cheapskates, but who are we to pass up an opportunity to eat for free? We got chatting to an American guy who's been travelling round India, China and Japan for six months, and conversation quickly turned to the world cup; appropriately, since on Wednesday group containing England and the USA was to be decided with two games at 23:00 Japan time.

We then retired to the hostel to watch the England-Slovenia game with some other guys, including three guys from Edinburgh University. It was all smiles until the USA scored in the last minute to win the group, which meant that we'd be facing the winners of group D - which transpired to be Germany. But being able to watch the game with some fellow Brits - not to mention an Italian, a Frenchman and an American - made it so much more fun. I was especially glad that the match wasn't at 0330, as the other two England games had been.

We finally retired to bed at about 0100 after a long day, with plans for another busy day on Thursday. 

The Far East: Day 13

First, the bad news. On Monday night, I unfortunately developed diarrhoea: if I'd been at home I would just have let it run its course, but since I had just two nights in Hiroshima that would have been rather annoying. So I was very glad that I'd packed some anti-diarrhoea medication - which stopped it in its tracks within a couple of hours of taking it. I stayed in the hostel for the morning to let it all settle down, so Jonathan went for a walk around Hiroshima. 

Once I was feeling better, we went out and got some lunch, this time in Sukiya, which is another Japanese fast food restaurant. For ¥280 (about £2.25) each, a bowl of pork and rice is really good value, even if its nutritional content isn't great. From there we headed back to the train station, and headed for Miyajima, a nearby island.

Sanyo Line, local service 1557M: 1430 Hiroshima to Miyajima-guchi, arr 1457

We took a local train along the Sanyo line, which used to be the mainline prior to the building of the Sanyo Shinkansen. We got off at Miyajima-guchi, the port for Miyajima. 
   
JR West Ferry, service #37: 1510 Miyajima-guchi to Miyajima, arr 1520

A short walk away is the port, where we boarded a ferry over to Miyajima. It was quite reminiscent of Portsmouth Harbour and the Isle of Wight, though Miyajima and the port are both smaller and the journey is only about 10 minutes. We got a clear sunny afternoon for the crossing, which afforded us excellent views out over Hiroshima bay.

Miyajima is most famous for the shrine of Itsukushima-jinja, whose magnificent vermillion O-torii gate appears to float on the sea at high tide, rising sixteen metres above the water. It has been declared as one of the three best views in Japan: it's certainly very nice but I'm sure there are mountaintop views which are more spectacular. It is certainly photogenic, and I took advantage of my new remote control for my camera to take a photo of Jon and me in front of the gate. We had a look round the shrine, and then took a short walk around the island, climbing a little to look at the five-storied pagoda and get some views out over the bay.

We had come to Miyajima with the intention of going up to the top of the 530m-high Mt Misen by cable-car, but unfortunately managed to choose the one week in which the cable-car was closed for maintenance. While the mountain isn't a hard climb, it would have taken more time than we had (especially given the late start), and given how hot it was it could have been pretty unbearable. As it was, we had a nice relaxing time looking round the island for a few hours, before heading back to Hiroshima.

JR West Ferry, service #150: 1845 Miyajima to Miyajima-guchi, arr 1855

Sanyo line, local service 2672M: 1908 Miyajima-guchi to Hiroshima, arr 1936

After getting back to Hiroshima station, we walked through the city centre to Okonomi-mura, a collection of about thirty traditional okonomiyaki stalls spread over three floors. Okonomiyaki is a traditional Japanese dish consisting of pancakes, cabbage and noodles with the diner's choice of filling: it is perhaps similar to a thick filled omelette (about 3cm deep), but is both filling and delicious. The best thing about the traditional stalls is that they cook it right in front of you, turning batter, cabbage, bacon, noodles and egg into a traditional okonomiyaki right in front of your eyes: when you're really hungry this is a feast for all the senses. They were truly superb, and the atmosphere of the place - filled with locals - made the experience all the more enjoyable.

Afterwards we relaxed in the hostel, and got packed ready to head back to Tokyo on Wednesday morning: while we only had a brief stay in Hiroshima, I think we saw the best of the city and I'm looking forward to seeing Tokyo for a few days, before Jonathan flies home on Saturday. Thereafter I plan to head to Kyoto and Osaka, before I go home next Saturday. 

The Far East: Day 12

On Monday, we headed west. I had been looking forward to taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) for years, and we started by taking one of the longest journeys possible: from Tokyo to Hiroshima. 

Joban line, 0923 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Yamanote line, 0936 Ueno to Tokyo

Both suburban trains were pretty packed, though in each case the train before the one we got was much busier.

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari #467, 1003 Tokyo to Shin-Osaka arr 1303

The Tokaido Shinkansen was the first 'new main line', opened on October 1st, 1964, just in time for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. That cut the journey time from Tokyo to Osaka down to four hours: today, the fastest trains do it in just two and a half hours. 

Unfortunately the Japan Rail Pass does not permit travel on Nozomi services, which are the fastest services between Tokyo and Osaka and beyond; nonetheless, there are more than enough semi-fast (Hikari) and stopping (Kodama) services on the Shinkansen that you can easily make any journey you wish, it just might take an hour or so longer. In this case, our Hikari service took three hours to get to Shin-Osaka (the new station built for the Shinkansen to serve Osaka).

*This* is what trains are meant to be like: wide, spacious carriages; plenty of legroom and seats that recline; sixteen carriages so there are plenty of seats; and a top speed of 168mph (270kph). It didn't seem that fast, probably because the line has a lot of tunnels, many more than I was expecting: that says a lot about how many mountains Japan has. We stopped twice for about ten minutes each in stations to let faster trains tear past. Nonetheless, three hours to cover a distance of 343 miles is rather good. 

I could niggle: a lack of soap (seemingly intentional, rather than by omission) was annoying, but this appears to be quite common among Japanese public toilets. The seats didn't always line up with the windows perfectly, either, but given how small the windows are required to be on a high-speed train I can understand. But these niggles should not distract from a superb train journey. 

We arrived in Shin-Osaka, where we picked up some lunch. I also bought the pocket version of the Japanese rail timetable - 864 pages at 10x20cm apparently counts as a pocket book - for just ¥500 (about £4). Very good value for an excellent and nearly comprehensive timetable, with just one slight problem. 

It's in Japanese. 

Nonetheless, I perservered and have found planning journeys with it to be quite easy, once you learn the symbols for a few places - and you can figure that out from the excellent maps at the start.

We had just under 20 minutes in Shin-Osaka until our next train:      

Sanyo Shinkansen, Hikari Railstar #563, 1322 Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima arr 1454

This was a shorter 8-car train, but with a top speed of 177mph (285kph). Inside, however, it was very similar to the previous train, and I won't say any more. 

We arrived in Hiroshima, and got the streetcar (basically a tram) to our hostel, the Reino Inn, which Jonathan had booked for us. We checked in, but it was only 3:40pm so our room wasn't ready yet, so we left our bags and headed to the Hiroshima Peace Park. 

Hiroshima became synonymous with utter devastation almost as soon as the first nuclear bomb detonated 160m above its centre at 8:15am, August 6th, 1945. Within just a few years, however, the city had been rebuilt, and its very existence is a testament to the strength of peace. 

On an island between two branches of the river, a park was built in memory of the 140,000 victims of the bomb, only half of whom died on the day, the rest falling victim to complications of radiation sickness and burns. At the entrance to the park is a museum: Jon and I spent two hours looking through the excellent and very balanced exhibitions, many of which were quite graphic.

The whole experience was quite harrowing: there is a panoramic photo on the wall of the utter devastation caused by the bomb, which simply beggars belief; models of the city help to bring the point home. The most poignant exhibit was a pocket-watch, frozen in time at 8:15am, its owner dying a few weeks later of his injuries.

The details of some of the illnesses and injuries that the hibakusha - the survivors - had to endure was almost nauseating: that was the last exhibit, save for a photo of a flower growing in the dust a few months after the bomb, as a symbol of hope, with the words:

That autumn
In Hiroshima where it was said
"For seventy-five years nothing will grow"
New buds sprouted
In the green that came back to life
Among the charred ruins
People recovered
Their living hopes and courage

In a strange way, it was also quite optimistic: there is a real drive in Hiroshima and Japan to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Anyone who still believes that any country possessing nuclear weapons is a good idea need only visit Hiroshima: thankfully there is real hope that President Obama will try and push for an end of the most horrible weapon humanity has ever devised - for the good of all mankind.

The museum exits out into the main park, which is directed towards the A-bomb dome, the dome just 350m from the point of explosion whose shell survives intact. In the centre is a huge arched memorial: after going through the museum I couldn't help but drop to my knees in front of it, overwhelmed by emotion.

There are a number of other memorials dotted around the park: one remembers the Korean victims, who perished as slaves of war but who went unrecognised by Japan for decades; another remembers the children who died of illnesses in the years and decades after the bomb. The whole place is an incredibly serene and poignant place, and will stay with me for the rest of my life.

We returned to the hostel at about 8pm, and then headed to a nearby Japanese "fast-food" restaurant; I use quotes because while it is fast and cheap, it is very like 'normal' Japanese cuisine and doesn't feel as cholesterol-laden as anything like McDonalds. A curry (well, a Japanese impression of one) for ¥590 (about £5) each was pretty good.

After that, we returned to the hostel and played some Go before eventually getting to bed, ready for a day trip to the nearby island of Miyajima on Tuesday.

The Far East: Day 11

After a long chat on Saturday evening, Sunday started early at 0515 Chinese time. Having said goodbye to Catherine and Martyn, I got the Airport Express to the airport. This is nominally part of the subway, but costs Y25 single rather than Y2, and it is unusual in using a linear induction motor - which looks like a fourth rail - to propel the train. It took just 16 minutes from Sanyuanqiao to the airport. I was in fact getting the first train of the day, at 0604. I arrived at the airport, checked in, went through security (via the inter-terminal train again) ready for:

Flight NH956: 0830 Beijing T3 to Tokyo Narita T1, arr 1300
Operated by All Nippon Airways using a Boeing 767-300
Push-back 0821, wheels-up 0924, wheels-down 1317, on stand 1325

We taxied on time, but there were severe ATC delays at Beijing this morning so we spent nearly a whole hour in a queue waiting for clearance. It was evident that this runway - which I think was 36R - was being used for both takeoffs and landings; moreover, the separation between planes seemed wider than at, say, Heathrow. We eventually got away, and were treated to superb views of Beijing and the surrounding area in the climb-out. Once we were cruising, though, haze and then cloud prevented us having much of a view.

The meal was, effectively, brunch: too late for a Chinese breakfast, but too early for a Japanese lunch. I got the western option, which consisted of an omelette with vegetables, a croissant, a salad, and some melon. The omelette was surprisingly good, and was just what I needed after not getting much breakfast. The croissant was nice enough but there was no butter, while the melon was quite nice. The salad, however, was a bit odd and I didn't really eat any of it: it appeared to contain coleslaw, some pork, a prawn, some unspecified vegetables - possibly turnip - and a single sprig of green. Green what, however, I'm not entirely sure. Pretty good overall, and I can't complain.

We landed only 20 minutes behind schedule, and I made my way through arrivals and immigration to meet Jonathan. He happened to be running late too, and arrived about 30 seconds after I walked out of the arrivals hall. The tricky bit was that our phones simply don't work in Japan - 3G phones work but ordinary GSM phones don't simply because there is no GSM network any more - Japan has moved on from the west.

Having found each other, we went down to the JR (Japan Railways) station. I exchanged my pass order for my Japan Rail Pass, which cost ¥45,100 (about £347) and gives unlimited travel on the entire JR system for two weeks, excluding the very fastest Shinkansen (bullet trains). This isn't quite equivalent to an All-Line Rover, for two reasons. One, the JR pass is only available to foreigners entering under temporary visitor status. Two, there are a good number of privately owned systems which are not included in the JR pass.

Having redeemed my pass, we obtained seat reservations for the Narita Express:

Narita Express: 1415 Narita T1 to Tokyo, arr 1514

As soon as I got on the train, I felt at home: it felt just like the Heathrow Express, but with legroom. The legroom and headroom is particularly impressive given that most of the Japanese network - excluding the Shinkansen - uses narrow guage track, with the rails being 3ft 6in (1067mm) apart, rather than the standard 4ft 8.5in (1435mm) used on the Shinkansen and most of Europe and North America (excluding Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Russia).

But more than that, the railway network felt just like being in the UK, not least because they drive on the left, both on the rails and the roads. (Pub quiz question: name the only country in Europe in which they drive on the right on the roads, but on the left on the rails.)

Okay, the script may be a bit unreadable - though it's not nearly as bad as Chinese - but Japan really feels a lot like the UK. With bowing. And mountains.

Anyway, Jonathan had booked us a hostel for the night near Ueno in north central Tokyo; however, they'd had a computer mixup and were actually full, so they arranged for us to stay in a nearby hotel. We took a couple of suburban trains to get to Minami-Senju:

Yamanote line, c1536 Tokyo to Ueno

The Yamanote line is basically Tokyo's answer to the circle line. Being a bigger city, however, the circle line is also bigger at 22 miles long. It's pretty useful, connecting Tokyo's main station to a number of other stations used for suburban services, including Ueno, just 8 minutes from Tokyo and the terminus for the Joban line:  

Joban line, 1552 Ueno to Minami-Senju

Just three stops on this suburban line took us to the station for our hotel, where we dumped our stuff before heading back to Ueno to get some food. 

Joban line, c1650 Minami-Senju to Ueno

We found a soba vendor on the street outside Ueno, basically frying noodles like a burger vendor would fry burgers. After that, we gave Jonathan's brother Nick a ring. Nick is out in Japan as part of his course at Oxford Brookes. He and his girlfriend Tomoe joined us in Ueno at about 1830 and we wandered around the market, in awe of the lights.

After looking around, we got some dinner in a place selling ramen, a kind of noodle soup originally from China but very popular in Japan. Eating noodles with chopsticks is definitely an acquired skill: fortunately this being a noodle soup meant that I had a spoon to help me out. All this for only about ¥800 (£7) per person: Japan is only expensive if you don't know where to get things cheaply. 

By this stage I was quite tired, so we parted with Nick and Tomoe and went back to the hotel.     

Joban line, 2052 Ueno to Minami-Senju

All five trains we used were very punctual, and all were much longer than they would have been in the UK - the shortest was 10 carriages long. Moreover, the entire network seems well-signposted - in Japanese and English - and everything is laid out just where you'd expect it to be. Elevated stations and underground concourses are the norm, much like Birmingham New Street or London Bridge. Tokyo main station in particular is like very like Birmingham New Street - only bigger and with 23 platforms, 10 of which are exclusively for Shinkansen trains, of which more tomorrow.

We spent the evening relaxing in the hotel. Back in March, I jokingly said to Jonathan that I'd see him in Japan, not really believing it would end up being true. But it did, and it was nice to catch up with him: this will be the longest I've seen him since we lived together in third year at Warwick.

We went to sleep on Japanese-style beds: the floor is covered with tatami mats, and the beds consist of a mattress which you unfold. After being used to a hard mattress at Catherine's it wasn't too bad at all, and we both slept well, ready to head to Hiroshima on Monday morning. 

The Far East: Day 10 - Reflections on China

Another hot day with temperatures peaking at 32C, combined with how tired I was after two days of quite a lot of walking and the prospect of a very long Sunday, led me to take Saturday pretty easy once again. I got some laundry done, and caught up on a few emails.

In the evening, we headed to Liqun, the best place to try the city's signature dish: Peking duck. The restaurant itself is near the centre, but it's down one of Beijing's traditional alleyways, or hutong, and it's hard to imagine anyone stumbling across it by accident.

The ducks are dried and then roasted on the spit over a real wooden fire: you can see them cooking as you come in. This is not crispy duck; it is roasted to a time-honoured recipe. It's served with hoisin sauce, cucumbers and spring onions; traditionally, one takes a few pieces of duck and a few vegetables into a wafer-thin pancake, wrap it into a parcel, and eat.

It was sublime; quite possibly the best meal I've had in decades. You haven't experienced duck until you've had proper local Peking duck.

Since this was my last day in China, I've decided to reflect on a few things about China before they become distant memories. Some of this is a bit random, but I hope you find it interesting.

Language: Mandarin Chinese is one of hundreds of languages in China: what makes Mandarin special is that it is taught nationwide as the de facto national language. Mandarin, or putonghua as the Chinese call it, is based on the native Beijing dialect. It's a difficult language to get used to speaking, mainly because of the tones: exactly how you stress a word changes its meaning completely.

What makes life more difficult is that, while in the major tourist attractions you can get by without much, if any, knowledge of Mandarin, getting *to* the tourist sites can be the problem since taxi drivers speak not one word of English. Getting anywhere thus requires having the Chinese characters of your destination written out to show the driver, and usually a phone number for the taxi driver to talk to the restaurant or whatever to figure out how to get you there. Fortunately I got along alright, only having to venture into a taxi on my own twice.

Roads and taxis: If you think you've seen bad driving, you haven't. Not until you've been to Beijing and witnessed the sheer terror-inducing ride in a Beijing taxi can you understand the madness.

It is, quite literally, every man for himself. The concept of lane discipline is only obeyed when moving at high speed, and then not even very well. Use of indicators is scant; use of horns is apparently mandatory. No-one has *any* patience: drivers will overtake indiscriminately on whatever side they see a space, and cars cut in quite happily without warning. I am amazed that I didn't see any accidents.

This is, at least in part, down to the big but poorly designed roads. Junctions are invariably too small, so everything's too compressed and the bends end up being insanely tight. There are bus stops on off-slips, so buses are cutting back onto the highway across traffic going off. It's quite common to have on-slips and off-slips pretty much crossing each other, and in any case slip roads usually aren't very long, so cars are expected to accelerate and decelerate in no distance at all. 

That might not be so bad if there weren't much traffic. But with 22 million citizens and 9 million alien residents in Beijing, there is a huge amount of traffic. There are four huge ring roads: the largest of these is about 80 miles long, which is only 2/3 the length of the M25, giving an indication of how dense the city's population is.

It's even worse at street level, especially as a pedestrian. The American rule of permitting right turns (Brits, think left) on red lights means that even when there is a green man you can't trust it. The traffic is even more undisciplined here and you really need your wits about you just to cross a road.

Subway: By contrast the subway is a model of efficinency. The main problem with the subway is that it's not dense enough yet - there aren't quite enough lines to be able to get everywhere as easily as you might like, with a particularly noticeable lack of diagonal lines.

What puzzled me about the subway was the behaviour of passengers. Every interchange station, where two lines meet, was teeming with passengers and huge numbers seemed to be changing trains. However, the stations in between were quiet, almost eerily so: few people got off or on, and the train remained full of people. So where is everyone going? Maybe the answer is they're going to the suburbs, but it seems unlikely; even getting off or on at Tian'anmen West or East, which should surely be the two busiest stations, was a fairly quiet affair.

There are a huge number of subway lines under construction, as well as high-speed rail lines and motorways, so the situation will undoubtedly be different in a few short years. Indeed, it seems the only constant in Beijing is change.

The 2008 Olympics: The Olympics have undoubtedly left a huge legacy in Beijing, though not all of it is good. On the one hand it vastly accelerated the pace of investment into the transport network, which is undoubtedly a good thing. But the stadiums lie empty, as vast white elephants, as do neighbouring hotels built for the games. I cannot believe that Beijingers really needed so many new hotels.

The vast array of western shops that were built have not done good business, and many are shutting down to make way for the kind of family-run businesses that would have been there before they were simply bulldozed. I guess this is good, but it would have been better if they'd never been demolished in the first place. Anyone who's ever complained about British planning law being too slow need only look to Beijing to see the effects and dangers of having an inadequate planning system.

Money: The Chinese currency, officially known as the yuan but usually called either renminbi or kuai, trades at around Y9 to £1. However, almost everything is done with notes: the highest-value coin is a Y1 piece, which is worth about 10p, but that's rarely used. Instead, Y1 notes are commonplace, with the highest denomination I've seen being Y100. It's quite nice not having to fiddle about with coins too often; on the other hand I have a wallet stuffed full of notes whose combined worth is at most £20.

Not that I've had to spend much: I'm not paying for accommodation, so all I've been spending is for tourism and the occasional meal - though my hosts insisted on paying too often. It will be a bit of a shock getting to Japan and having to spend money hand over fist.

---

I am sad to be leaving Beijing, but I have had a great week looking round no fewer than five World Heritage Sites, and all while in the hospitality of my cousin. I will admit that, left to my own devices, I would have been unlikely to consider visiting China: it's simply too big and too scary. But having the advice of a local made all the difference.

On the other hand, I am greatly looking forward to exploring Japan by train: I have wanted to go on the bullet trains for years and years, and I can't wait!

The Far East: Day 9

Before Mao's abortive attempts to expunge all semblence of religious belief from its citizens, China was a country of traditional Eastern beliefs such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The country still has a number of temples devoted to such beliefs, and on Friday I went to visit two of them: the Yonghegong, or Lama Temple, Beijing's foremost Buddhist temple; and the Tiantan, or Temple of Heaven, a unique Confucian altar and the centrepiece of one of Beijing's most popular parks.

I arrived at the Yonghegong by subway at about noon, and initially thought I was in the wrong place. I found the temple after a few minutes' walk, but I still can't quite fathom how such a beautiful temple has been plonked in (or, more accurately, surrounded by) the middle of Beijing: it is a wonderfully idyllic place in the middle of complete mayhem. It would be as incongruous as putting Westminster Abbey in among the tower blocks and alleyways of East London.

It was built as the residence of one of the emperors-to-be, but was converted into a lamasery (a temple used by lamas) in 1744. As a result, the traditional imperial Chinese architecture has been modified to fit the new purpose, with walls being decorated with Tibetan script and many statues of Buddhas being installed for worship.

The five halls are beautiful, and the Buddhas inside are masterpieces of sculpture. The rearmost hall contains a 26-metre high statue of Buddha (of which eight metres are underground), carved from a single piece of white sandalwood: this appears in the Guinness Book of World Records - quite rightly, given just how staggeringly huge it is.

There are also two rooms housing smaller statues and other artefacts recovered over the years: there are some ancient bronze sculptures dating back over 3000 years, as well as a huge variety of costumes and ornaments. 

The temple remains a working temple, with many people kneeling in prayer to the Buddhas, and offering incense to be burnt. I felt a little like I was intruding into a solemn place of worship, and while its beauty is undoubtedly something to behold I can't help but wonder if it might be better for the temple to go back to being just that. I suppose the answer is that without the tourists they would have no money to spend on upkeep.

By contrast, the Temple of Heaven, which is a short subway ride away, stands proud in the middle of nearly one square mile of parkland in central Beijing. It consists of three altars in a line from south to north: the first, the Round Altar, is nothing more than a circular mound (albeit made of marble); the second, the Imperial Vault of Heaven, is a small octagonal building; and the third, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, is the familiar huge circular triple-roofed structure that forms the centrepiece of the park. The park is popular with Beijingers wanting to rest in the sun, and the temples are no longer used for any religious purpose since the deposition of the imperial class in 1911. 

The main Hall is a unique structure, quite unlike anything else in the world. The original 1420 structure burned down in 1889 after apparently being struck by lightning. It was rebuilt in a manner completely faithful to the original, save that the new timber was sourced from Oregon, as no wood remained in China that was strong enough to support the roof, which was built (and rebuilt) without nails or cement - quite an achievement for a building 38m high and 30m in diameter.

The building is supported by a number of pillars, and the roof is covered in beautiful blue-purple tiles. The whole thing sits upon a three-tiered marble terrace affording excellent views over Beijing on a clear day.

The walk from the Hall south to the other two altars is beautiful, as are both the altars in question. The Imperial Vault of Heaven is surrounded by a so-called Echo Wall, meaning that if you stand in a certain place and clap you should hear three echoes. It didn't work for me, but that was probably due to the hordes of tourists in the way. The Round Altar is a beautifully serene place, feeling quite isolated from the rest of the park.

All in all the park and the temples are the perfect antidote to busy, bustling Beijing, and I can quite understand why so many people frequented the park. The weather was good, too: cloudy at first but it brightened later on, with temperatures peaking at a much more manageable 26C and making it easily the most pleasant day of the week, and certainly one of the most enjoyable.

For dinner, we headed to a Mexican restaurant in Sanlitur, the main ex-pat district, and watched Serbia beat Germany on the big screen, before heading home for an early night - I have an early start on Sunday to fly to Tokyo, so I wanted to get used to getting up early, ready for my last day in Beijing.

The Far East: Days 7 and 8

Wednesday was a public holiday - the Dragon Boat Festival - in China, so Catherine and Martyn had the day off work. Once again, however, it was unbearably hot - topping out at 36C - so aside from a brief trip to the shop I didn't do much all day. Dinner was also a subdued affair: we went to a nice burger place, which wasn't as fast-food-ish as normal, but it wasn't all that special.

Wednesday evening brought us another thunderstorm, as did Thursday morning. In fact, it rained quite a lot on Thursday; the temperature came down with the rain and made it feel an awful lot more pleasant. Even in the afternoon sun I don't think it got much higher than 27C.

Mao Zedong once said "you cannot call yourself a real man until you have climbed the Great Wall". Well, today (Thursday) I am a real man. Catherine organised for me to go on a tour to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, organised by China Culture Center. At a cost of Y350 (about £40), including entry, lunch and transport, it was really good value and the tour guide was really informative (and spoke very good English, which made a big difference).

After getting a taxi to the CCC - easier said than done but I got there in the end - I met up with the other 15 or so people on the tour; there were three Norwegians, two Germans, a couple from Hong Kong, at least six American students, and one other British guy from Oxfordshire.  At about 9am we set out by coach for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.

First, let's clear up some myths. One: the Great Wall of China cannot be seen from space. While it can be seen from low earth orbit, at that height you're low enough to discern motorways and other features too. Two: the Great Wall is not one big long wall. It has various overlapping sections, some of which have been restored to something like their original condition. Moreover, there have been various walls built at various times, some as simple as piles of earth and some as complicated as small fortresses.

The most popular section of the Great Wall is that at Badaling, which was visited by Nixon, Gorbachev, Reagan, Thatcher and the Queen. Unfortunately it is hideously touristy, and I'm quite glad that this tour avoided Badaling in favour of Mutianyu, which Clinton visited but is otherwise relatively peaceful. 

To get up from the car park to the wall, you can either walk, take a cable car, or a chair lift; coming down you can also use the toboggan run. Unfortunately when we got there it was raining heavily, so we opted for the cable car, which whisks you up the hillside in just three minutes. Such was the rain, however, that when we got to the top we couldn't see a thing at first - it was what I'd call Scotch mist.

We had about an hour and a half on the wall, which is about 3m wide and follows the contours of the hills, so there is some climbing to be done just in walking along the top of it. The mist cleared gradually, and by the time I'd walked along the wall for about an hour the views were stunning, made all the more mysterious by the presence of small wispy clouds of white mist.

The Wall is set quite high up in the hills, using the natural contours as much as possible to add to the defences, so all you can see for miles around is hilly countryside. It is seriously impressive, and Richard Nixon's pronouncement on seeing the wall in 1972 says it better than I ever could:

"This is a Great Wall and only a great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with a such a great wall will surely have a great future."

All morning there was thunder in the air, but the only serious rain we had all day was as we were heading up to the wall. The rain put paid to coming down on the toboggan run - that was closed - and the thunder also briefly halted the cable car. Eventually we all got down the mountain, where we were taken to lunch in a nearby restaurant; the food was traditional Chinese local food, not dissimilar to what I'd had on previous nights but in a rather more upmarket setting. The food was excellent, and the conversation was great fun with it being so international.

After lunch, we had an hour's drive to the Ming Tombs, the resting place of 13 Chinese emperors. The burial mounds are provided with huge courtyards in reverence to their honoured dead; the courtyards provided more of the same style of architecture, but this time with a knowledgeable guide rather than a glorified tape player. It was interesting, not just for the tombs but the guide's take on Chinese history. 

The tombs are set in a beautiful u-shaped valley pointing south towards Beijing, chosen for its good feng shui. To provide an entrance-way to the tombs, there is a long avenue of arches. One section has eighteen pairs of statues lining the path between the arches; first there are four 'meritorious officials', then four civil officials, then four generals, and then four of each of six animals: horse, qilin (a small dragon), elephant, camel, xiezhi (unicorn), and lion, with two of each standing, and two of each sitting. This 'sacred way' made an excellent addition to the drudge of the Ming Tombs themselves, and the bus collected us at the other end. All in all, an excellent day out. 

On the bus ride home we passed the Birds Nest stadium which hosted the Olympics in 2008 but which is, unfortunately, now a white elephant. The design is unusual, and certainly interesting, but it's not the nicest-looking stadium I've ever seen. Moreover, the whole area around the stadium has been concocted out of nothing, and seems to be too out of keeping to survive for long: Beijingers don't need huge seven-star hotels, they need roads that aren't clogged and more subway lines (among many other things).

Catherine hadn't been feeling terribly well so we had a relatively low-key dinner in a bar nearby, watching some of the football. Catherine and Martyn have been busy sorting out stuff for coming home in July, finishing off bits of work and getting a house sorted, so I had a quiet evening writing this blog. And I think I'll stop now before I get any more self-referential.         

The Far East: Day 6

Another scorcher of a day in Beijing, with the temperature apparently peaking at 35 Celsius. After a leisurely morning catching up on my blog, I got a bite of lunch before heading to the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace in north-western Beijing is the Windsor Castle to the Forbidden City's Buckingham Palace. It's a sprawling park set on the shores of a beautiful lake, with a maze of paths and passageways connecting a multitude of halls, towers and palaces.

Having spent the previous day seeing round the Forbidden City in some detail I must admit I was suffering from architecture fatigue - I enjoyed looking round some of the halls, but they are all really rather similar.

Nonetheless, there was more than enough to occupy me for an afternoon. The Wenchang Gallery contains an amazing collection of vases and bowls, some of which date back as much as 3,000 years. There were bronze vases dating from the Shang Dynasty, which ran from approximately 1600 BC to 1100 BC, in perfect condition. One can imagine that perhaps they may have originally been painted, but any such paint has not been preserved.

There was also a great collection of jade vases, some over 700 years old, and of pottery which, while not being quite so old, was exquisitely decorated. All in all, it is a great testament to the longevity of the Chinese civilisation that such things have been preserved in such good condition. I can't imagine anything remotely similar having survived in Europe, thanks to wave after wave of invasion.

The shores of Kunming Lake are home to some of the best views in Beijing, with a seventeen-arch bridge being the focal point. However, by this stage the heat had started to take its toll on me, so I didn't see perhaps as much as I should have; I could have climbed up Longevity Hill and got even better views, but by this stage even the shade was too warm and I couldn't physically eat an ice lolly fast enough to stop it melting.

As such, I decided to call it a day and headed home after a fairly short look round the Palace. The subway again proved to be refreshingly cool; this time I used line 10 from Sanyuanqiao to Haidianhuangzhuang, and thence line 4 to Xiyuan, from which it's just a ten-minute walk to the palace. 

That ten-minute walk, however, was quite eye-opening: unlike the centre of Beijing the streets were cracked and the people were obviously poor. What you can't prepare for, however, is the smell. I can't really describe it, but the Chinese people and streets just smell very different. I imagine that a Chinese visitor to the West would think us just as smelly; that doesn't make it any less unsettling.

Dinner was another baptism of fire in a proper Chinese restaurant, this time with a bunch of teachers that Martyn had gathered to say goodbye to a student teacher who departs this Friday. The ten of us ate for, in total, Y260 - about £30 - sharing a variety of lamb skewers, pork and beans, sizzling beef, crispy noodles and chicken with peanuts. Fantastic food at fantastic value, especially considering that price includes the beers.

The evening was cut short by an incredible thunderstorm at around 9pm. As we'd been eating outside, we headed home to escape the worst of it, but by the time we'd walked home the rain was coming down quite heavily. We were treated to an incredible son et lumière looking out from the balcony at forks of lightning hitting buildings all round, and sheets of lightning lit up the sky like nothing I'd ever seen. Sunday's thunderstorm had served up much more rain, but on this occasion the lightning outdid itself and had to be seen to be believed.

Knowing that Wednesday would be just as hot, as well as being a public holiday in China (the Dragon Boat Festival), I planned for a quiet day, so I didn't rush to bed and spent the evening chatting and reminiscing.

The Far East: Day 5

Until you see it, it's difficult to believe, let alone comprehend, the sheer size of everything in Beijing. I stepped out of the subway at Tian'anmen West onto a road with at least 12 lanes - in the heart of the city centre. Compared to the Champs-Elysées, this is huge.

But that's nothing compared to the architecture. The National Centre for the Performing Arts has to be seen to be believed: it's basically half of a huge eggshell, made of metal, though a huge bead of mercury might be a more accurate description. It looks even weirder when seen including the reflection in the pool that completely surrounds it - it appears that access is from underneath, so there are no drawbridges.

A short walk away is the infamous Tian'anmen Square, with the Great Hall of the People to the west, the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall to the south, the National Museum of China to the east, the Gate of Heavenly Peace leading to the Forbidden City (of which more later) to the north, and the Monument to the People's Heroes in the centre. It's not nearly as imposing as it sounds - largely because the square itself is so huge, and even the biggest and most important buildings in China seem... small and distant.

The square is nothing like, say, Trafalgar Square; one, its size is in a totally different league; two, it has airport-style security scanners at every entrance, with police aiming to thwart any protests before they even start. Most of all, though, it's much more open, and has very little shade.

Which is a bit annoying when you arrive at Tian'anmen Square at about noon on a very hot, sunny, clear-skied June day, when the temperature is about 33 Celsius. Thankfully, the thunderstorm had at least brought the humidity down from the horrible levels it was at on Sunday.

The Square itself is, like the rest of Beijing, perfectly flat and level. It's a truly incredible place, but the soul of the place is in its history rather than its architecture.

Afterwards, I sat in a shady spot under some trees a short walk away to recover from the sun, which, even with suncream, was pretty strong. I'd bought a sandwich in Subway on the way to the subway in the morning, and surprisingly my bag managed to keep the sandwich relatively cool.

At about 1pm, I headed through the Gate of Heavenly Peace - which has the famous portrait of Chairman Mao in the middle - leading, through a seemingly interminable series of similar gates, to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the Emperor's residence and workplace for 500 years in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, until in 1911 the imperial rulers were overthrown by the Kuomintang (the ruling party of the Republic of China).

The architecture is incredibly intricate, and the attention to detail - such as the animals on the corners of the roofs - is mindblowing. That said, after a couple of hours it does get a bit monotonous, with hall after hall wearing a bit thin after a while. 

However, the real treat of the day was the Imperial Garden. There are over 160 pine and cypress trees in the garden, most between 300 and 400 years old. Most of them have very knotted and gnarled bark, making for some very weird shapes. There are a variety of stone sculptures dotted around, and while the garden is fairly small it doesn't feel it, as it's packed with really interesting things to look at. It's the kind of thing my mum, who's an artist, would enjoy no end; what surprised me is that I enjoyed the garden no end too, which I wasn't expecting.

I used the Beijing Subway to get from Sanyuanqiao (where my cousin lives) to Tian'anmen, and was pretty impressed. The system underwent huge expansion for the Olympics in 2008, and now consists of six full lines and a couple more short branches, with plans for half a dozen more. I took line 10 to Goumao, and then line 1 to Tian'anmen West, and the reverse on the way back. 

It's quite reminiscent of the newer lines on the Paris métro, with doors along the platform edge which open when the train arrives, preventing people accidentally falling onto the track (as on the Jubilee line extension in London). Some of the lines also have gangways between the carriages; even better, some have windows into the driver's cab, so you can see forward into the tunnel. 

They also all have very intuitive diagrams of the line, with flashing lights to indicate where on the line you are, what direction you're going, and which station is next: it's a genuinely useful innovation, one I wish London might copy.

The really good thing, though, about the Beijing subway is that it's air-conditioned. Unlike the London Underground, which is so old and the tunnels so small that air conditioning is impossible, the Beijing subway has generously-sized tunnels, so the trains can be big enough so that you can have headroom *and* air conditioning.

The headroom, in particular, was very welcome given how busy it was. Even at 11am the subway was standing-room only, and coming back at 4:30pm it was pretty much breathing-room only. It wasn't as bad as the Northern Line in the morning peak between London Bridge and Bank, at least, but it wasn't massively pleasant.

Dinner was a relatively subdued affair: pizza while watching the World Cup (Netherlands vs Denmark) on the big screen in the plaza below the apartment was just what I (and Catherine and Martyn!) needed after a long day, and I slept very well, ready for an even hotter Tuesday. 

The Far East, Day 4

A quiet Sunday in Beijing, as I continued to get over my jetlag. I lounged around during the morning, and then the three of us went to a nearby café to allow Martyn and Catherine to get some work done. 

Dinner, however, was quite another story. Matt, a friend of Martyn and Catherine who they know through their school, was due to fly home on Tuesday, so he and his wife Janet joined the three of us for dinner at Fukunoya, a Japanese restaurant just ten minutes' walk away. 

The menu allowed to order as many dishes from a certain list - basically more than half the total menu, excluding mainly expensive things like sashimi - for Y108 per head (about £10), inclusive of beer. Which was very good value, especially given how much we drank - though one pint was more than enough for me - and we had a hilarious evening chatting about everything from ash clouds to wedding dresses. Chicken teppanyaki was undoubtedly the best plate in an array of dishes shared by the five of us, including bacon rolls, shrimp, and salmon with cheese (which Martyn claims to have enjoyed).

The humidity had been rising all weekend, and in the evening the cloud finally mustered and gave us the biggest thunderstorm I can remember - though I'm told it's fairly normal for Beijing, even if this year it's been raining rather more than it used to. It cleared the air, and Monday saw clear skies.  With the beer down me, I slept like a log - which was good, since I had a much busier day on Monday...  
 

The Far East: Day 3

I slept very well on Friday night, sleeping for nearly twelve hours. Not all that surprising given I'd been up for 31 hours. I had some breakfast and got a shower, and then found Iwas pretty much ready for lunch - the jetlag seems to have made me quite hungry. So I blogged a little and got a sandwich.

Catherine had some work to finish off, so Martyn and I headed out. Martyn needed to go to the tailors to get a suit fitted, so we did that before heading to the Sanlitun area of Beijing (pronounced Sanliter, thanks to the Beijing accent). 

Sanlitun is one of the main areas in which expats live, and has a number of embassies nearby. There are a large number of Western shops, such as United Colours of Benetton. Martyn and I settled down for a couple of hours with some drinks and had a long chat, before Catherine joined us and we went for dinner.

Catherine and Martyn decided to give me a baptism of fire and take me to a proper Chinese restaurant. 'Chinese' food as eaten in the UK simply isn't what the Chinese eat. There are so many regional varieties of food that even attempting to try them all could keep you here for a year.

While I went to the bathroom, they ordered a variety of dishes, which we all shared. There were lamb skewers, very hot chicken wings, something that looked like pizza but was really bread in a bowl of tomato sauce and lamb pieces, and bite-size chicken pieces with leeks and chillies. My personal favourite was a combination of pancake pieces and cabbage, that looked not dissimilar to a bowl of fried onion, but which tasted nice without being overpowering; it was very moreish.

The trouble with sharing food is that you don't get it in portion-sized plates, so you're never quite sure of how much you've eaten. As it was I ate a fair amount, though I could probably have eaten more.

Unfortunately I'm still quite jetlagged as I write this on Sunday morning: I don't feel particularly tired, I just feel a bit disoriented, and a bit more hungry than normal. I'm sure it'll wear off soon.

I've not got much planned for today (i.e. Sunday, aka Day 4), but tomorrow I plan to head into Beijing city centre and see some of the sights like Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

Lastly, a correction to Day 2: Beijing terminal 3 is the second biggest terminal, but the biggest is Dubai T3, not Heathrow T5. In fact, I discovered that Beijing T3 is 17% bigger than all five of Heathrow's terminals put together! Beijing airport has rapidly ascended the rankings, and in 2009 was third in the world on passenger traffic (up from eighth in 2008); London Heathrow was second (up from third) and Atlanta remains first (as it has been since 2000).

The Far East: Day 2

First, a note on timezones. All of China uses GMT+8, and all of Japan uses GMT+9. Neither country observes daylight savings time, so the difference from British time is reduced to +7 and +8 respectively during the summer (as now). Unless otherwise stated, all times are local.

Flight NH202: 19:35 London Heathrow T3 to Tokyo Narita T1, arr 15:20
Operated by ANA (All Nippon Airways) using a Boeing 777-300ER, seat 32B
Pushback 19:36, wheels-up 19:50, wheels-down 14:50, on stand 14:58 

Written c23:00 British tine / c07:00 Japan time: 

As I write this we are 33000 ft in the air over Russia, just east of Saint Petersburg, about a quarter of the way from London to Tokyo. This is my first long-haul flight, and I must admit that it's not as horrid as I expected. So far, anyway.

The Boeing 777 is a twin-engined long-range widebody jet, most easily distinguished by its notched tailcone. This one has nine seats per row and was full, and there are perhaps a dozen gaijin (Westerners) like myself, the rest being Japanese. I guess that is to be expected given I'm flying with All Nippon Airways, the Japanese's second national airline (after Japan Airlines). Nearly half the main economy cabin is filled with about 50 Japanese schoolchildren, about 16 years old or so, who are evidently returning from a school trip to England.

We took off on time from runway 9R at Heathrow, climbing quickly into the low cloud, and headed east over Suffolk, out over the North Sea, directly over Copenhagen, before tracking over the Baltic Sea, southern Estonia (from which we got wonderful silhouettes of the Gulf of Finland) and St Petersburg. Aside from the Gulf of Finland, there is very little to see thanks to the cloud and the night.

Flying, as we are, so far north means that, of course, we come very close to the Arctic Circle. As such it's never really dark: there's always a red spit of flame on the horizon to the north (I'm one seat away from the left-hand, i.e. north-facing, window).

ANA is still a full-service airline, at least when it comes to long-haul. We were each provided with a blanket and pillow for the journey. Dinner service started about half an hour after takeoff, but since I'm four rows from the back I had to wait. In the meantime I watched an episode of Yes Minister which I had downloaded to my iPod.

There was a choice of a Japanese meal of noodles with shrimp and other assorted seafood, and a Western chicken and rice option. Much as I know my stomach will have to get used to it sooner or later, I wimped out and avoided the seafood option. The chicken piccanta with rice was quite nice - the chicken was remarkably tender - and the Mediterranean vegetables with it were tasty too. It came with a side of coleslaw and a few other cold vegetables, as well as a roll and butter (which I left, being a bit full). Dessert consisted of what I think was banoffee, I couldn't be entirely sure of what it was but it tasted nice enough. All in all a good dinner, at least by airline standards.

Now, for some sleep, methinks. It's been a long day, but in some sense it's already Friday morning...

---

Written c05:30 British time / c13:30 Japan time:

Having cruised over most of Siberia, we're now just approaching the north end of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the Japanese islands, about an hour and a half from touchdown. Breakfast/lunch is gradually being served. I haven't slept much: I slept for half an hour or so around 07:00 Japan time, and about two hours from 10:30 to 12:30 Japan time; otherwise I just dozed.

I envy the schoolkids, though: while some of them have curledt up and tried to sleep, most have been up all night playing video games and watching movies. Ah, to be 16 again...

I've now had my lunch - a very tasty roll with cheese, ham and chicken which you put together yourself, and a yogurt and some fruit salad. Boy, was I ready for that!

---

Written on day 3:

We got away so promptly from Heathrow that we landed half an hour early. So much so that I disembarked, went through security for connections, and found my gate ten minutes before we were due to land!

Narita is a very pleasant, spacious, modern airport; on this occasion, however, I could find little to do. I used the Internet for half an hour, but otherwise I just wandered around, too tired to do anything serious. There was a slight delay in boarding the next flight:

Flight NH955: 17:20 Tokyo Narita to Beijing, arr 20:10
Operated by ANA (All Nippon Airways) by a Boeing 767-300, seat 24A
Pushback 17:33, wheels-up 17:47, wheels-down 19:51, on stand 19:58

While I would have considered a three-and-a-half hour flight as pretty long until today, next to the long-haul flight I'd just stepped off it was nothing. In the end the flight time was only three hours and five minutes, ensuring an early arrival after a slightly late departure.

We were served a meal, a choice of fish or pork stew. The pork stew was not stew: it was some pieces of pork and mushroom in a thick, gloopy, orange-coloured sauce, and didn't taste great. It was served with mash and a few vegetables, which were alright. I couldn't work out if the (cold!) noodles with soy sauce, and the random selection of things which could just about be described as a 'salad', were meant as side dishes or a starter: as it was I didn't eat much of either. The dessert was a creme caramel, which was by far the best thing on the tray, even though it wasn't brilliant. 

While I had a window seat, unfortunately I was right over the wing so I couldn't see much of the ground. On the other hand, most of Japan was shrouded in cloud, except Mount Fuji which stuck proudly up through the clouds. We then passed over South Korea before following the Gulf of Bohai up towards Beijing. The cloud didn't lift even as we came into land at Beijing, and only when we were a few feet off the ground could we see anything.

Beijing Capital Airport is, quite simply, enormous. Apparently Terminal Three is second in size only to Heathrow T5, but it seemed much bigger even than that, with a huge expansive roof and an internal subway system to move you from the gate (in T3E) to baggage reclaim (in T3C).

I retrieved my baggage, which successfully made it across Narita, and was met by my cousin Catherine. Catherine has been in Beijing for three years teaching in an international English-language school for ex-pats. She has a lovely flat in Sanyuanqiao in north-eastern Beijing, which she shares with her fiancé Martyn.

I got in to her flat about 21:15, had some cereal and got to bed after 31 hours being awake (well, that does include a couple of hours of sleep on the plane).

News of day 3 to follow shortly!                 

The Far East, Day 1

Well, I've made it as far as Heathrow, and I'm currently sat in an internet café killing time before my 19:35 flight to Tokyo, whence I have two hours to catch a flight on to Beijing, arriving at 20:10 on Friday, 17 1/2 hours after leaving London.

The day started all too early at 09:30 British time, which was especially painful having only got to sleep at about 04:30. I hope I'll get some sleep on the flight. A shower, some final packing and some photocopying of documents later, I left the house at 11:25. My mum gave me a lift to Belfast City airport, where I caught

Flight BD87: 13:05 Belfast City to London Heathrow T1, arr 14:25
Operated by BMI (British Midland) using an Airbus A319; seat 8D
Pushback 1304, wheels-up 1310, wheels-down 1407, on stand 1415

A routine short hop across the Irish Sea: my 58th flight ever, and my 67th ever crossing of the Irish Sea (inclusive of ferries). BMI are familiar to me, mainly because my dad used to use them quite frequently for trips to London (maybe once a month or so). I last used them in 2004 for a day trip to Imperial College London for an open day, back when I was choosing undergraduate courses. Since then, the traditional full-service model has been replace by the now-standard buy-on-board system, which I didn't end up using mainly because I was too tired to want anything to eat.

We got away bang on time, and landed in Heathrow early with none of the usual ATC delays, on runway 9L. We got a good view of Terminal 5 on our right as we came into land; I hadn't realised the network of elevated roadways that allow seamless access to every level, and it looked quite impressive from 50 feet in the air. Unfortunately being early meant the gate wasn't quite ready for us, and even when it was we still had a 20-minute wait for our baggage.

Once my case arrived, I went down into the bowels under the terminals, and went for a seemingly interminable walk past the Piccadilly line station and the Heathrow Express station to get to Terminal 3, arriving there about 15:00. Unfortunately, the flight doesn't leave till 19:35, so the check-in desks didn't open until 16:30 or so. So I went and got some lunch.

It was after that that it finally started to hit me that I was going to a far-off distant land: I bought 1400 Chinese renminbi, and 18,000 Japanese yen. (That's about £150 of each.) After killing time in bookshops and on the phone, I went to check in.

Check-in was, itself, not the simple affair I'm used to. Because I'm spending a week in China and two weeks in Japan, I couldn't book London-Tokyo-Beijing on a single ticket, so the lady at the check-in desk at All Nippon Airways (Japan's second national carrier) had to input my connection data manually.

After a few minutes typing away at the computer, I came away with both boarding cards. That was a big relief; if I'd had to check in again in Tokyo (Narita) it would have been quite tight. But now that both I and my baggage are checked through to Beijing, all I have to do when I get to Tokyo is clear immigration and find the gate. In theory, anyway.

Now, however, I have a dilemma: what time to think of it as? It's 17:30 in London, 00:30 in Beijing and 01:30 in Tokyo. And I only have one watch. This is going to be confusing.

Anyway, I'll try and write some stuff on the two planes, which are:

NH202, 19:35 London Heathrow T3 to Tokyo Narita T1, arr 15:20 (Fri)
NH955, 17:20 Tokyo Narita T1 to Beijing, arr 20:10

I don't expect I'll get time to post on Friday night, so Day 2's post will hopefully come sometime on Saturday, after I've settled into Beijing.

The Far East, Day 0

By the time you read this I will be on my way to China! I'm spending nine nights with my cousin Catherine in Beijing. Then I fly to Tokyo to meet up with Jonathan Elliott, who is in Japan visiting his brother. We will spend six days touring Japan, then he flies home and I have another week of tourism.

In full, I fly with Bmi from Belfast to Heathrow, then with All Nippon Airways from there to Tokyo and on to Beijing. I leave at 1305 on Thursday 10th June, and arrive at 2010 Friday (Beijing time), 24 hours later.

I then fly on to Tokyo on Sunday 20th June at 0830, arriving at 1300 (Japan time). Coming home, I leave Tokyo at 1130 on Saturday 3rd July and arrive home at 2055, 17 hours later.

Timezones are _weird_.

For the purposes of this blog, which I shall be updating as often as possible from my iPod touch, I define Thursday 10th June to be Day 1; that will make Saturday 3rd July day 24.

I have a Japan Rail Pass, which is basically like an All Line Rover, but for Japan. And only available to foreign visitors. And cheaper, at ¥45100 (£347). So I shall be doing much train travel in Japan!

As I say, I'll update when I can, and if all else fails I'll upload the story when I'm home. Watch this space!

Now, to finish packing...