Which way is home?

Drop everything your doing (now!) and go to your nearest travel agent to book your trip to Japan. This place is THE business! Whatever takes your fancy, nature, culture, technology....this country is great, safe, well organised and, hands-down, overall awesome. We spent 2 weeks here, slowly travelling the country from South to North.
Arriving with the ferry from Busan in Korea our first destination in Japan was the seaside city of Fukuoka. There we stayed one night to acclimatise to the record-breaking heat above 40C. Then we moved further inland on the Southern island of Kyushu to the city of Kumamoto, where we met Taro and Verena, my high-school friends.

Then on to the organic farm of Taro's friends in the Aso-caldera, the world's largest extinct volcano crater. The picturesque train takes you through a gap in the caldera rim into the 20km wide ring that houses many small villages and some towns around two or three further volcanoes that have sprung from the centre of the ancient volcano ring.

The whole sight is rather surreal actually. Somewhere in the caldera is the farm of Taro's friends and our hosts: Kota and Eri with their two twin sons Kipe and Renzo.

We spent three days with them, just chatting, barbecueing, laughing in their garden, bathing in Japanese 'onsen', picking cucumbers, walking in the rice fields and just taking in the life around Aso-san. Absolutely fascinating!

A HUGE thank you has to go out to Kota and Eri, and their family and friends for making our stay so enjoyable. We look forward to welcome you one day in our homes! Eri and Kota's website is: http://www.aso.ne.jp

From Aso we took the train to Kyoto, Japan's capital of tourism, I guess. There is so much to see here that our three-day-stay still wasn't enough to do it real justice. That doesn't mean we didn't try and make the most of it. We cycled most of the time through the city going from one cultural attraction to the next. That in itself provided a great change from our habitual public transport. Taro obviously provided the invaluable guidance and knowledge to make it all the more interesting and enjoyable. Another welcome change from the usual limitation of reading your country guide and local brochure. Kyoto is also the home of Japanese Geishas and we even managed to take a picture of one as she was walking through an alleyway in the geisha-quarter Gion. She didn't seem overly pleased to pose, I don't think, but given that I had chased her down like Taro chasing down Helena Christensen in Copenhaguen years ago, she couldn't refuse my wish.

Our next stop was Kamakura, a small town just South of Tokyo, where Taro's 'Japanese home-base' is in Japan. They organised a huge welcome-barbecue for us in their garden with friends and ex-colleagues of Taro's.
It was great. In fact, the Kikuchi's spoilt us rotten with their food, hospitality and generosity. In the following days we visited the area around Kamakura, its beach, the great buddha and even got to drink tea out of ridiculously expensive bowls.

Another big thank you has to go to the Kikuchi's for our time in Kamakura.

After kamakura it was time for our final stop in Japan: Tokyo. The first impression was quite intimidating as we hit the rush hour on our way to our hostel and stations and publis transport turned into very busy commuter-beehives with very little room for backpacking tourists like ourselves. Eventually we settled into the rhythm and started our own busy sightseeing around town. We saw some of the shopping streets with some impressive modern architecture, went to see the capital's imperial palace gardens and shrine, saw a rainy Tokyo skyline from the Metropolitan Government Buildings, got up early for sushi at the fishmarket and more... In general Tokyo felt like New York. Very busy, upbeat and modern. Suddenly our quiet days at the farm in Aso seemed so far away...

Anyway I think that's our Japan-stay in a nutshell. A final HUGE THANK YOU to Taro for being the best Japan guide we've ever had! ;-) and to Verena for providing all the laughs.

We're now off to Seoul to spend some time with Verena and Taro in Kimchi-land. Hope you readers are all well and dandy. We'll write again soon! (hopefully from Thailand).
To see some more pictures of our time in Japan and Seoul with Taro and Verena check out Taro's galleries on Flickr:
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