Day 81 - Nara, Japan.

We've done loads of walking whilst in Japan and for the most part we've felt really safe and the countryside has been a real treat to see. However, things did get a little sticky a few days back as we were merrily walking along a little pathway into some forest area when a car stopped by us. The woman in the car wound her window down and tried to warn us about something up ahead and was gesturing with her hands that whatever she was talking about was quite big. Iain said that he understood most of what she was saying and that she was just warning us about some big cobwebs and spiders that were in the trees up ahead. We couldn't understand her concern and were all joking about it as we marched merrily on. However, we soon came across a big sign with a picture of a ferocious bear growling at those reading it. It turned out that the word for spider and bear are very similar in Japanese and Iain had misunderstood her - thank heavens for the sign is all I can say; otherwise we may well have had a rather more sinister story to tell!

The Japanese Alps, it has to be said, were a little disappointing. We arrived by bus into a very well constructed car park which gave way to the typical plethora of snack and souvenir shops, pristine toilets with heated seats and various vending machines which seem to adorn every single street corner in Japan. There was a clearly defined path which was mostly concreted over and there seemed to be no way up onto the mountains. This sort of summed up Japan in that anything that can be done is done to make their lives easier. The clearly laid out paths of the so-called Alps, the toilets that automatically squirt jets of warmed water around your bum so you don't have to wipe, the numerous convenient stores that sell everything from knickers to curry donuts and the bento-boxes filled with such goodies as re-formed fish on a stick, lotus roots and stewed bamboo are all there so nobody has to think too hard about what to do or what choices to make. It all seems so... nice. Scratch the surface however and you soon see a darker side - adult comic books feature school girls in situations that would have social services in a spin. In the Onsen (a sort of public shower/bath) there are many rules that you are expected to adhere to, and most of the time everyone does. However, yesterday morning there was only one Japanese person in there and he obviously thought that we Johnny-Foreigners wouldn't know what the rules were so he was breaking all of them from walking around without his towel covering up his modesty, to jumping into the hot bath without showering first. I'm sure that had there been someone else in there that was bound by the same rules as him he would have conformed like he was supposed to. It makes me wonder how much of this is all show and keeping up appearances.

We had a bit of a blow-out a couple of nights ago and yesterday I was feeling the little worse for wear. We went to an all you can eat barbecue in Beppu and decided to take the alcohol option too, so for 2800 Yen each we could stuff our faces stupid on beef, pork, chicken, unidentified other animal parts, sushi, beer and cake and we really went for it. The trouble is, you only have two hours to do it so we came out feeling decidedly brittle and one of the three of us (who'll remain nameless) spent the rest of the night 'regretting' his four slices of gateaux while hunched over the loo. It wasn't pretty. For our two nights in Beppu we were staying in a Ryokan, a sort of Japanese B&B, and although it was interesting two nights was more than enough. Every time we entered the place we had to take our shoes off and since I've been travelling for the last couple of months in the same shoes mine are getting pretty fragrant. I must try and find some industrial strength spray for them somewhere... When we left yesterday morning, I tried to put my shoes on while carrying my huge rucksack. That was a big mistake as I nearly keeled over like a top-heavy turtle and crushed the wildly lacquered hair of the Ryokan's hostess that was hovering behind me. She looked more than relieved as she waved us off the premises.

We're now in Nara and last night, after dinner, Iain and I were trying to find a second-hand book shop that he knew of but were getting lost so Iain decided to ask someone for directions in Japanese. The girl was really trying to be helpful by answering us in English but she just couldn't remember how to do it. She was flapping and pointing, umming and aahing and muttering 'Right' while tapping her left hand. This went on for a few minutes so we gave up in the end and left her to it while we carried on down the road. She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that we'd walked off so she was obviously enjoying it in her own little world.

We've only got one more night in Japan now as we leave for Australia tomorrow and I have to say that I'm quite looking forward to going somewhere where things are going to be a lot more familiar. I've really enjoyed our three weeks here, but the lack of communication and the constant rice dishes are beginning to wear me down a little bit. The language difficulties have made us laugh though. Before coming to Japan I thought that it was only a joke that the Japanese mixed up their R's with their L's, but having seen some of the signs around the various towns that we've visited it really is true. Some of the best ones were:

• Rist of Prices - This was spotted in a hair salon that was supposed to be showing the List of Prices.


• Blidal Salon - Pretty obvious, but the funny thing was on one sign they had correctly put Bridal Salon whereas on the other it was misspelt.


• Lrental of bicycl - Seen at a bicycle rental place. Clearly they had no clue whether to use the R or L on Rental so they went with the safe option and used both!


• Hysteric Gramour - Seen pinned to a shirt in a second hand clothes shop. I think it was supposed to be Historic Glamour, as in vintage clothing but it's my favourite and me chuckle. A lot.

We're off to Matsuya tonight which is a sort of Japanese fast-food joint. We've used them quite extensively for the last three weeks and we're now quite fond of them. We pigged out on pizza and pasta last night so our last meals should be a Japanese one; I might even treat myself to a raw egg to stir into my rice. Flipping heck - listen to me!

Day 71 - Matsumoto, Japan

We met up with a friend of mine, Iain, at the airport last Saturday so we've been here for over a week already. It was great to see him and to have another English person to speak to, plus he speaks and reads some Japanese which is proving very useful. After settling into the hotel and seeing a bit of Tokyo, we met up with a couple of Iain's ex-students (he used to teach English here) and the five of us drove up to Nikko. It was nice being driven around and seeing a bit more of the country but Etsuko was addicted to a song called "Carry On" which is by a Japanese boy band and insisted on playing it at least a dozen times there and back. Not content with just the song, she was also playing the DVD of it while driving and singing along to it. Scary.

Japan seems a bit more developed than both China and Korea and feels very much like London in so many ways. The big difference is the politeness of the people though. In London you're lucky to get so much as a smile from the tired looking receptionists in the shabby hotels, whereas here you are greeted with a long string of politeness followed by a pronounced bow at the end of every sentence. The first few days of this were really refreshing, but now it's almost comical. In every single shop, station or convenience store, and there are hundreds of them here, you are greeted by a cacophony of "Irasshaimaseeeeeeee" and for some reason it's said in a high-pitched, sort of school-girl like voice. Even by the men!

Again, like China and Korea, some of the food is really bizarre. I love trying it and I've become hopelessly addicted to curry filled donuts. It's an odd combination, and really shouldn't work, but it does and I love them. Having Iain here has reminded me just how much he eats, his appetite is insatiable and if he doesn't have a bowl of cold noodles or a banana cream pancake at least every couple of hours I'm sure he would implode. Let's see how long he can keep it up. It's odd to see bags of octopus tentacles between the Green-tea flavoured Kit-Kats and the Pringles in a supermarket but the initial shock has worn off now. I might even try some.

We've been making great use of our Japanese Rail passes and have covered hundreds of miles darting around from one place to another. It's a brilliant way to see the country but I guess it must annoy the locals who aren't allowed to buy them as they're only available to tourists. The trains are a real pleasure to use; they are always spot-on with their timing and are spotlessly clean. Even the little trolley-dollies moving up and down trying to sell us burnt barley tea and wasabi coated squid do a little bow on entering or leaving the carriage. I still get a kick out of seeing it but the locals must be immune because they don't even look up from their bento boxes. I was watching a food program on the TV this morning which is a bit like Saturday Kitchen, only there was very little cooking being done and the presenter was snipping bits off of a live squid and eagerly lifting the still twitching cephalopod parts to his mouth with his chopsticks. It was an education.

Matsumoto feels like quite a young town even though we've only just arrived and it's weird the way the young people pick up on particular looks. It's almost like they've chosen which particular type of fashion they're going to follow and have bought the manual on it. They follow it to the letter but in some cases it gets slightly lost in the translation. We saw one group of Rockabillies who had taken the hair thing to an extreme level and another girl that had gone for the sixties look. It's fascinating to watch, but you see all these groups of little clones wandering around dressed in exactly the same thing.

Now we're in Matsumoto, quite near to the Japanese Alps which we've bought some bus tickets for. We're hoping to see them tomorrow, but I doubt there's any rush, they're not going anywhere.

Day 62 - Seoul, South Korea

I was dreading getting off the plane and having to negotiate the underground system between Incheon Airport and Seoul Central but I needn't have worried. The rucksacks were already on the carousel by the time we got through immigration and the train station was a short walk from there. It was all really easy. The trains were virtually empty from the airport, I've no idea where everyone else was and once we changed trains at Gimpo airport on the mainland that train was pretty quiet too. All in all, it was a really easy journey. Phew!

We've done plenty of walking and, as usual, it's a real eye opener. The traffic here is terrible as it is in most cities and that could explain why the underground was so empty. You don't really notice the traffic that much until you try to cross the road and it's then that you can see just how patient the Seoulites are. I guess because jaywalking is illegal here it kind of forces people to follow certain rules or end up being fined, but they'll wait ages for the 'green man' before crossing the road. The little side roads are fascinating and there are little market stalls everywhere selling absolutely everything you need from boxes of rubber bands to dried squid! We walked through a fish market this morning and it's obvious they're not constrained by minimum fish sizes or EU quotas as there was tonnes of the stuff and all sorts of it, too.

Yesterday we did a trip to the DMZ, or Demilitarised Zone which is supposed to be one of the most dangerous places on the planet. It didn't feel like that, though having to board a UN bus and be escorted by a United States UN soldier certainly made it feel authentic! The DMZ is the 4Km strip of land that separates North and South Korea and the name is a bit misleading because it is heavily guarded by the UN and a sort of Korean peace-keeping force made up of Americans and Koreans. The whole place is surrounded by barricades, barbed-wire and mine-fields so I certainly wasn't going to go wandering off anywhere! On the tour we were taken right into the hut where current, day to day negotiations are held and once in there we were quickly surrounded by North Korean soldiers staring through the windows to try and intimidate us. This is apparently an eye-war. It was only when we'd left the hut that the guide told us that they'd undone their holsters, making their guns more accessible to try and intimidate us further. Fortunately I hadn't noticed this, but if I had done I might have had to do a bit more laundry sooner than I'd anticipated! It certainly gets the adrenalin going...

The city is similar to Beijing in that amongst the outrageously modern buildings nestles a real feel for the old world. Temples and shrines are dotted around the city, and since they are all made of wood they've mostly burned down at some point in their history but the Koreans just rebuild them in the same place.

It's a good way of preserving them but the trouble is they all look brand new. There are huge shopping malls here and outside three of them near our hotel there are outdoor stages where kids perform. Last night was a little weird as there was a group of three kids, no older than about seven, dancing around to 'My humps' by the Black Eyed Peas. That just seemed wrong but the crowd seemed to love it. I'm guessing it was their sparkly boob-tubes that got the punters going.

There seems to be a real respect for old people here too. All the young kids on the trains give their seats up for the elderly and the specially reserved seats are left empty until they are filled by who they are meant for. You just wouldn't get that at home which is a real shame but as I get older I realise that my dad was right; a spell of National Service would probably sort out the kids at home. Military service is compulsory here and all young men must do two years before the age of 31 or they face a year and a half in prison. There must be something in that, but that's easy for me to say since I'm 40 next year and starting to reach the age where young people might look at me and wonder if I need help across the road...

Whoever said "time flies when you're having fun" couldn't have put it better, we're flying to Tokyo tomorrow and I just don't know where the time has gone!

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Day 58 - Beijing, China

Oyunbold picked us up, as promised, promptly at 7.15am in order to drive us to the train station to board our train for Beijing. The station was crowded and busy but Oyunbold waited to make sure that we got in the right carriage. We were running out of Mongolian Tögrögs by this point, so rather than tipping him, I palmed off a bottle of vodka that I'd been lugging around with me since Moscow. He seemed a little bemused but that's life. As we got on the train, it all seemed really nice; the train was almost brand new with lovely clean toilets, a shower, hot and cold water and TVs in the cabin! Our excitement was very shortlived though. I know those provodnitsas have a pretty fearsome reputation, but ours was a right spiteful hag. She's supposed to keep the toilets clean, the samovar hot and generally make everything go smoothly, but this one decided that the best way to keep the toilets clean was to keep them permanently locked! Effective I suppose. She also kept the shower room locked and it was only as we were drawing into Beijing that I realised why; she was using it as a storage facility for her own luggage. She didn't have a clue how to work the video system either so we were treated to over 24 hours of Predator, in French, with French subtitles. Useful.

Fortunately, we were only there one night but things were getting a big fraught when we reached the border between Mongolia and China as the evil provodnitsa had locked the toilet an hour beforehand (you can't use them at the station as they flush right onto the track) and we were stuck for over six hours without a loo to relieve ourselves. I'm amazed there wasn't a riot.

We reached Beijing at 14.30 the following day and it's a brilliant place. The hotel was just over the road from the train station so only a short walk but it was boiling hot and we were a bit sweaty by the time we reached it. We've walked so much during these past few days that we're both aching and a little bit sunburnt round the edges but in a relatively short space of time we've seen loads of the sights.

The Forbidden City is a massive place and it was funny to watch those that were obviously on organised tours being marched straight up the middle of the city, in effect missing lots of the more quiet and serene parts. It's interesting that before it was opened to the public, any unauthorised visitor would have been put to death instantly. The price for entry these days is a much smaller 60 Yuan.

Yesterday, we did an organised tour to MuTianYu which is one of the sites of The Great Wall of China. It was everything I thought it would be and luckily this site is one of the more quiet ones as it is further away from Beijing. We took the cable car up the moutain to the top, which was a good move as if we'd walked we would hardly have had any time up there to enjoy the views. Our guide, Joy, had obviously seen it all before because she just stood in the shade, looking as bored as a goldfish while we trudged to and fro trying to get that elusive, killer photograph. It was really hot up on the top of the mountain and not to miss an opportunity, there were people that had walked 3 Km from the nearest village to sell water and beer. I ignored them for the most part, thinking that I didn't want to part with more than 5 Yuan for a bottle of water, but when the heat got the better of me I asked how much a bottle was and the old man told me 10 Yuan! He could flipping well take that water back the whole 3 Kms at that price too!

We took the toboggan down the mountain which was hilarious and I managed to film the whole 4 minutes or so, much to the disdain of the security guards on the way down. What a hoot, I was grinning for an hour afterwards!

After the wall were were taken to a jade gallery, which was really just an excuse to take us to a factory and shop before we had lunch. This is quite common on all the tours in China, much to our annoyance but we didn't get suckered in and just patiently listened to the presenter on how jade is crafted and legged it thorugh the shop as quick as our legs would carry us. The afternoon took us to The Sacred Way which is the path that leads to The Ming Dynasty's tombs. It's basically just a long path that is lined with carved figures of animals and soldiers, but it's quite soothing to walk along. One of the most annoying things about walking through any of the parks in China though is the piped music! I've never come across this before, but Joy pointed out the speakers to us and they were diguised as little logs - very cunning. The trouble is the only music they seemed to play was their theme tune for the Olympics, which we're now both humming in our sleep, or a selection of Richard Clayderman classics. It's utter hell. Another annoying thing is the fact that China has gone electric-vehicle crazy. Everyone has them; either an electric bike, scooter or van. It's all very commendable for their green credentials, but the problem is you can't hear them coming up behind you so you're constantly under threat of getting squished!

Some of the translations that we've seen have been funny as many of them are either very direct or don't make any sense at all. In one toilet I saw some of those tissue paper seat covers that you put down on the seat before you use it, but the chinese had put an English label on them saying 'BUMF CUSHIONS'. We also heard of a story where a restaurant owner had used the Google transalation page to translate the name of his restaurant into English so that people coming for the Olympics would be more tempted to eat there. However, not understanding what it transalated for him, the English name above his door was proudly displayed as "Translator Server Error"!

We found a good restaurant for lunch today, and it was one that the locals use rather than many tourists. We massively over-ordered but managed to make a huge dent in the food. The menu was very interesting and included such delicacies as "Fried Silk Warm (sic) Larvae" and "Stir Fried Donkey with Cabbage". We passed on both of those and went for a nice bit of pork with some steamed dumplings. The waitress had an interesting way of opening the beer with a pair of chopsticks that I'd never seen before!