Thu, 14 Jul 2016

Hi Bianca,

 

This just a short note to let you know we had a great holiday, already I miss the chop sticks and the heated toilet seat .

Thanks for all you help everything went to plan  the holiday was everything and more than we expected.

 

On our free day in Tokyo we tracked down the giant bronze statue of  Godzilla and  because we had a late lunch in Ginza we had the whole restaurant and waitress (English speaking) to ourselves. Following this  we went to the Shibuya crossing in peak time;  overcome with emotion and wiping back the tears  we managed to scramble up to Starbucks and join the  “Furious” thousand other tourists ogling at the crossing from the window. We finished the day with the late Robot show back in Shinjuku……biggest disappointment was I could never find the right exit from the station I wanted.

 

On our free day in Hiroshima we made to the Shukkeien Garden then Art museum. Following lunch we did a tour of the Mazda museum and car assembly plant….zoom zoom. Even though that day the guide was Japanese speaking only it was worth it.

 

On our free day in Kyoto we went to Arashiyma, yes more temples and shrines , bamboo forest and then off to see the monkeys. We made it back to Gion  to have Patricia’s make over  Neo Oiran photo shoot. While Patricia was having her make over I passed the time……you guessed it temples and shrines.

 

Special thanks I will send to Sumiko Fukami our 3 day guide for our  tour starting in Takayama. Apart from being an outstanding guideSumiko went out her way to make sure we found our platform for the bullet train she googled the net the night before to find our platforms for the connecting train at Shin Osaka for our trip down to Hakata and then even wrote a help note in Japense for us to use if we got lost.

 

I  was eyeing off the Asahi beer restaurant and the Tokyo Skytree, but I never got there…maybe next year ?

 

Thanks again

 

Regards,

Bob