Where am I now?

Just so this seems slightly more than a mess of poorly constructed anecdotes, I figured I`d make a post outlining what I`ve done so far.

May 10th
Arrival in Tokyo. I stayed in Tokyo until the 17th, checked out such things as the Meiji temple, Akihabara, Shibuya and Disneyland among others. I`ll be going back there on the 9th June I think, this time without Alex, so I`ll do some more exploring on my own then.

May 17th
Alex and I activated our 21 day rail passes and rolled out to Matusmoto for the night. We got there too late in the day to be granted access inside of the castle, but we checked it out from the outside and meandered around the town in the evening. Found a damn good used CD shop too. Really nice area in general, sort of like a small and cosy city.

May 18th
We checked out Matusmoto castle. It was incredible, the architecture alone was a bit mind blowing. But the history there is of course, also phenomenal. That afternoon we headed off to Nagoya. Nagoya didn`t gel too well with me. The part by the station was incredibly trendy, sort of like a Japanese Oxford Street, but everything else surrounding it was less impressive. Nothing wrong with the city perse, but it just seemed a bit more uninviting than what we had seen so far. Again, we were too late to get in to the castle, but we didn`t really mind this time.

May 19th
We went from Nagoya to Iseshi. Iseshi was cool, we had a look at the two large shinto shrines there (I can`t remember their names right now, I`m tired and lazy), both of which were rather spectacular. This was only a day trip, as for that evening, we headed to Nara. Nara was great. Whilst the first hostel we turned up at was closed, there was a handy map linking us to another one close by. We mainly chilled that evening, (I ate possibly some of the worst cup noodles ever, but then again I paid 50p for them) as it was too late to do our exploring.

May 20th
Leaving the hostel early, Alex and I went to look at Nara`s sights. A really nice city in general and it`s Todaji temple is possibly one of the most mind blowing structures I`ve ever seen. On the outside, it`s a ridiculously well crafted and beautiful structure, with a size that`s difficult to comprehend. Add to this the fact the entire area is surrounded by deer, you get quite a unique area indeed. Inside the temple is one of the largest Buddha sculptures, and you really have to see it to believe it. I still don`t understand how anyone can so masterfully sculpt something on such a large scale. We explored the shrine and temple grounds for quite a while, venturing in to the attached forests, before heading off to Osaka. Our evening in Osaka was spent in a capsule hotel。 We explored around town for a bit and in retrospect, I`m pretty sure our hotel (which in itself was a bit dodgy, but interesting none the less) was situated in Osaka`s red light district. Lovely.

So that takes us to today. We`re still in Osaka, but we`ve moved over to a Youth Hostel, mainly just to see what it`s like. This one so far seems much nicer than the other YHs we`ve experienced thus far, and there`s an acoustic guitar here so I may have to go rock out on that.