We were off to Nara today, Japan's very first capital city established back in 710 before it moved to Kyoto and then today's Tokyo. I was at the back of the hotel now after the room change. Don't know what the building opposite was but it had a well kept garden. Never actually seen or heard of Nara before until my friend mentioned it while I...

Our destination today was Kyoto because we wanted to see the more traditional side of Japan. Tokyo wasn't always the capital. It's a tradition for wherever the emperor dwells to become the capital and before Tokyo, it was Kyoto. Kyoto was the second capital of Japan between 794 - 1868.   Early morning - well, not really early. Just...

Today we were going to move base to Nagoya because it was in between the other places we wanted to visit next. It was also going to be our first time on the Shinkansen (Bullet Trains) which was exciting because they looked awesome to travel on. They also made the JR Pass worthwhile since you could go on them as much as you wanted and, a single...

Ah yes, Ghibii Museum! This place is so busy you'll have to book 3 months in advance if you want a chance of getting in. Especially during the holiday seasons. It was either a JR train to Mitaka Station or a Keio train to Kichijoji. We chose Keio even though we had a JR Pass because it was faster by a 5 minutes or so. I read the route from Mitaka...

Another nice day, around 20C and sunny. Today we were off to Chofu where the Kitaro O-cha-ya [Tea House] and Jindai Temple is. Early morning onigiri breakfast. This time I went to a nearby supermarket place instead of the Lawsons conbini. Didn't taste very good and they didn't support IC cards as payment so cash only ^^; I heard...

Since our hotel was in Tokyo, I decided we would visit Senso-ji first which was in Asakusa. Always see the temple in travel programmes about Japan with its giant red lanterns. We went out the wrong exit at Shibuya Station on the night we arrived so, we didn't really get to see the famous crossing during the night. This time we did early in...

I grew up with a lot of things from Japan even though I was born in the UK because my relatives would always send VHS tapes full of dubbed Japanese TV programmes and other goodies. For that reason I've always had this amazing image of Japan - a beautiful country where the old and new live in harmony, technology and lots of weird and wonderful...

When I bought a bunch of Ghibli papercrafts back from my trip to Japan I wasn't really expecting them to be hard to put together. I saw the difficulty rating that ranged from one to three stars and this was one star so I thought, "How hard could it be?" If I read the bottom of the box I probably would have known better ^^; So, I decided to put this...

Yet, another spin-off Persona 4 game from Atlus, exploring genres they've never been in before. Well, not really... Arena was developed by Arc System Works well known for their popular Guilty Gear fighter games and now DAN was developed by Sega who already has experience in rhythm games such as their recent Hatsune Miku series....

In the world of Yoru no Nai Kuni (Nights of Azure), a demon was defeated long ago and her blood scattered all over the world, turning everything it touched into demons. Now demons appear whenever it's night, causing a lot of unrest sleepless nights and that's why countries are now "nightless (yoru no nai)". Two girls Lilysse and a...