Himeji castle is the most spectacular traditional Japanese castle in the country it says here, and who am I to argue?  From Hiroshima to Himeji is such a short distance that by the time we've popped our luggage in the rack on the Shuinkansen, were being told..

"We  will shortly make a brief stop at Himeji, please make sure you are ready to leave the train before it stops"

I'm not pulling your chains here, such is the Japanese attachement to punctuality that the turn around for a lot of Shinkansen stops is a strict two minutes, to get everyone off whose getting off and, everyone on that's getting on and woe betide you if you ain't ready.  So you need to be poised, coat on, rucksack on back, at the door or in your place in the corridor queue when the train stops.

So we're bundled onto the station at Himeji, find our way to tourist information.

"How do we find the castle?" we ask.

She grins at us like a couple of retards and points toward the door.

As we walk out the station the mainstreet climbs he hill steadily in front of us, maybe a mile of wide open boulevard, tree lined leading up to a huge Donjon which glowers down on the town.

"Oh!...there it is"

We get checked into a beautifully luxurious (in the context of this trip...I must discuss our budget with Kim) hotel and we're out into the Himeji afternoon.

Up close the castle is awe inspiring, presumably exactly the response the builders would have wished for. Thye touyr through the buildings is captivating, the winding stairs past the weaponry racks, the cubby holes to hide platoons of soldiery to enable ambush, the false floors to allow rocks and the like to be dropped on attackers, the final room where the shogun and his wife would commit ritual suicide should attackers get this far.

After all this war like stuff the contrast with the sculpted rulers gardens could not be greater.  Apart from the fact that autumn seems to have set fire to the place.  The trees here blaze with colour, reflected in golden carp filled pools, lakes, babbling rock strewn brooks and runnels. 12 individual gardens, each themed to mirror a mood, a season, a time of year, day.  In the late pm early evening sunlight the gardens are a feast for all the senses except perhaps taste....We are scabby Horse hungry, Hank Marvin we are.

Christ! it's tough to find a meal here.  Most places shut up with the castle around 6pm, what's open caters for locals, no pictures no English language menus, we wander around for an hour or so, getting hungrier, rattier by the minute.  Back down toward the station, at last a place with what looks like pictures of Gyozo (fried dumplings) and stir fries, we're going for the door when a Japanese gent, all black suit and over coat sidles up and says,

"looking for something?"

Being a good Brit, all my suspicion hackles are up.

"Just some food"

"What kind of food do you like?"

"At the moment anything that has a face will do"

"This is a good place......... Chinese, cheap"

"Just my type" I say.

We sit down and start chatting, he orders what we want in Japanese and the food comes quick and is very good, no he doesn't want anything, he chats away.  He was an airline pilot with Japan air after serving in the Marine air corp, unbelievably he's 70 years old, he looks early 60s.

"Ok I'll just have a drink" he says.

"Here we go" I think.

In short, he chats away, he orders our food, takes maybe a bit of stir fried chicken and a beer, then pays the bill!  I feel a bit of a schmuck to be honest, and we stand and chat with Kito outside the restaurant and he wishes us good luck with our  travels, and hopes we enjoy Japan and thanks us for visiting.

Back at the hotel we have a guests lounge with free hot drinks and chocolate cake.  It's a beautiful high ceilinged room, wonderfully decorated and now complete with an enormous christmas tree ringed with parcels, Christmas hymns and carols are playing, with the decorations, the music, the cake and the crisp air outside were we not feeling so blessed to be able to do this we'd be getting downright home sick about now.

It's a short hop from Himeji to Osaka and we've taken the opportunity to forgo a bullet train and travel on the local rail network.  It's not the prettiest of trips but great for people watching as the good workfolk of Osaka and around make their way into work, almost invariably head down into a smart phone. 

Osaka is huge, and its station correspondingly so.  The crowds are vast and 80% seem to follow a fashion we've noticed  here by going everywhere accompanied by a large, almost square suitcase on 4 wheels which they wheel along beside them, looking for all the world like some metallic crufts best of breed trotting at its masters or mistresses side.  Apart from the fact of course that the buggers seem incapable of controlling them.

You walk toward a group of impassive Japanese faces coming in the opposite direction, each of them bent forward, looking down at their phone screen.  Phone held in one hand, the other guiding a metal sided oblong on wheels which appears to have a mind of its own, now rolling happily along beside its keeper, now squirming off to the left or right collecting flesh from shins and ankles like so many fiesty jack russells.

To get to our hotel we need to navigate Osakas' fairly substantial metro system.  Happily we're in our stride now and notwithstanding that a couple of station names consist of 14 sylables, far too many consonants (carol) and at least 3 sations have the same name...."But they are on another line!" we make it to Nippombashi.

The room has the same surface area as a Fukuoka dancing girls G-string.  If we both stand up we can't actually move, if we both lay down, ditto.  Sod it, we dump the bags and out into the madness that is Osaka.  We're right in the middle of the action here and 5 minutes away from the hotel is the river on which clusters the main shopping, eating, drinking and entertainment area.  

A pair of cartoon girls are skipping about to a backing track on one side of the river watched by an somewhat creepily enthusiastic crowd of older men who look in from the other side.  The older gents, and I mean 30 or 40 years older than what appear to be 14 year old girls, seem to know the moves, when to do the hand claps, a couyple of them have iluminated batons which they wave above their heads in time to the music.

Along the food drink and entertainment street, the neon is harsh, the music loud, the hawkers vociferous, it's smoky, steamy, it smells, mostly good.  The speciality here are fried octopus balls..........I'll leave that there for a second........Nah, actually it's octopus, chopped, shaped into balls with egg and breadcrumbs with a filling, mayo, fish roe, shrimp, pork, you name it all at 800yen for 10. The other biiiiig deal here is spider crab, huge plastic spider crab dance up the walls of restaurants, light shows in the shape of spider crabs light the street scape, laser lit spider crab cavort on the rood tops, tanlks full of the poor buggers line the street, it's spider crab central here. We're off to Hokiado soon, so we resist, Hokaido we're told is THE place for seafood.

They have a slightly odd system at restaurant here in that you don't go in get a table, a menu and choose your food.  Oh no, that would be far to simple.  You look at a menu board outside, tell a waitress how many you are, then put money in a machine, on the machine are pictures relating to the ones on the menu board, you push the corresponding buttons, the machine coughs out your change and a ticket, a copy of the ticket has been dispensed in the kitchen and shortly after you sit down, along comes dinner.

This is a flaming nightmare for Kim who's renowned for her inability to just pick something off the f*cking menu for christs sake....... 

"Can I have number 4 please? only without the pineapple and with boiled potato instead of salad, also can I get the sauce from number 2 instead of the one it normally comes with? Oh and are the prawns hot.......temperature wise not spicy wise, only I'm alergic to prawns if they're hot, oh they're hot? Ok forget all that then, I'll have number six, but can I get that with mash instead of noodles, and you see the way the gravy looks on number 5? can mine look like that rather than the way it does on number six,......what's that?  Number 5? oh but that has peas, could I have number five then, only with beans instead of peas, will the fish have bones? If it's going to have any bones I'll go for number 11, with mash, no gravy, beans not peas, hang on....is that chicken?

We negotiate the ordering process and on our walk back come across of all things, an Hawaian cafe!!  Lovely coffee, beautiful cakes all acompanied by some lovely hawaian music while outside, the utter madness of Osaka, muted by the window, it's nose pressed against the glass, rages away down the street.

Today we are on a mission. We want to get out to Osaka Castle, the biggest tourist draw in the country, and then to Osaka Aquarium, reportedly the best in Japan and one of if not the best in the world.  Osaka was heavily bombed  in the war and the castle was a casualty, large parts of it have been rebuild such that the keep itself even features an elevator.  Recieved wisdom is you tour the grounds, the walls, thrill at the size of the donjon (missus) and move on, so that's what we do.  It's a pretty magnificent place, the walls are absolutely huge, individual stones in the wall measure 30 metres square! The moat is vast, the plkace was sacked in the 17th century, how they got across that moat and up those bloody walls is utterly beyond me, as usual by the time they reached them, the lord and lady had committed suicide, what is it with these people and bloody suicide?

After a stroll down to the river for lunch it's back into the labrynth that is the Osaka metro and off to the aquarium.  The setting of the place is amazing, a neon lit whale shark, overhead chaser lights, nets of fairy lights, the obligatory mermaids, the biggest ferris wheel I've ever seen and we're not in the bloody place yet. 

It's a wonderfully put together place.  You go up a few storeys to start, then in effect you follow sea life through the regions of the earth gradually going deeper as you wind down the building to subteranean levels.  They have whale sharks in here such is the scale.  They're magnificent creatures which ever way you look at them, but here as, depending on the level you're at, they swim at you, below you or above you, the spectacle is really quite breathtaking. I'll go along with them I think.  Osaka probably is the best aquarium I've seen.

When we get out it's pissing down so the ferris wheel is off the agenda, pity!! all in all a bit of a result!

Long trip today, we need to metro across Osaka, negotiating 3 lines over a 40 minute period to get ourselves in place and ready for a Shinkansen to Nagoya, we then have 9 minutes to effect a change in one of the busiest train interchanges in Japan to get a wide view limited  express train to Takayama.  It's wide view as we pass some of the most beautiful scenery in Japan.

I love that they sell hard boiled eggs here in the stations, the prefect packed lunch!   They are careful to ensure you take a small sachet of salt, a packed damp hand towellette and a bag for the shell.  Armed with my eggs and Kims Ham and cheese we get to our seats on the bullet train and we're off.  With only 9 minutes we're ready before the "Shortly we will make a brief stop at Nagoya, we will grind you under the wheels if you misjudge the leap from the swiftly moving train......" message.

We get to the wide view express with a minute or so to spare and settle down with our eggys and sandwiches and watch the stunning Japanese autumnal countryside wheel by.  Mountainous, pierced by wonderful waterfalls and rivers, through lakelands, past villages it's a fantastic trip. 

Takayama itself is absolutely no disapoinment when we arrive either.  There's a historic township area here that's ridiculously photogenic and in the distance we can see snow capped mountains.  A beautiful river runs through the town, lined with weeping willows, now, if I can just find my charcoal, bamboo brush and parchment.

The real reason for coming here is Hariyu, a famous area of natural springs which has spawned the development of a network of Ryokans (Traditional lodging houses) with attached Onsens (Hot spring baths) linked by hiking trails (Places were twats walk about). 

The area is an hours express bus ride from Takayama and Kim and I are checked out and in the bus station early enough to get our tickets, have a very lovely old Japanes lady give us some delicious white chocolate for checking that a bag left on a seat wasn't hers, (it wasn't) grab a coffee and be ready to shove our ruck sacks into the baggage compartment under the bus windows and get strapped in.

The bus climbs, ear poppingly, through steeper and steeper climbs, the air and trees outside growing first frosty, then snowy.  Finally a series of curves leads us into a very long tunnel, when we emerge it's like we've entered a hidden valley, surrounded by pine covered hills topped by snow capped mountains.  The bus terminal is pretty deserted and we make our way, trundling our bags down the melt water wet road toward our chosen Ryokan. 

It's very quiet here  except all around us is the gush of water from the hot springs, it's channeled everywhere for heating, cooking, not to mention bathing. As it rushes down the roadsides or streams over falls, runs out of rocks into (enjoy free) troughs for foot bathing it steams in the icy, slightly sulphorous air.

We have some time before checking in so we stop for a lunch of chicken and a noodle soup of pork and soy sauce (Ramen)  in a tiny restaurant, big enough for maybe a dozen customers, that's the food of choice across most of Japan.

When we check in we're shown to our traditional room.  All timber floors, timber lattice walls and rice paper and wooden screens. Heated underfloor by the hotspring water we have an internal balcony overlooking the village and up into the mountains beyond where we have a table and Japanese tea set, a pair of glass doors seperates us from an external balcony and the frosty air. It's an absolutely lovely room and the whole ambience of the property is as of another world or time, just what the doctor ordered!

On  the floor is our futon bed all ready for tonite and in the wardrobe our traditional Japanese clothes which we will wear while we're here.  What follows, as you no doubt guess, is a cackle fest as we try to get into the gear and character and capture the process on camera.

We are floating.........All around us steam is rising........

I lay back and watch it pulse and billow in clouds upwards, the sky is grey, heavy, pregnant with snow, flecked here and there with a welt of pink, a wound from the setting sun.  As the steam rises to the thatch eaves I fancy I can hear it crackling and sparking as it hits colder, icy air, freezes, falls floating, lace like and twinkling, delicate as mayfly wings, until, more steam carresses and melts, softly, surrendering like a lovers heart, it is falling back on us, as blessedly cool rain.

I say blessedly cool, as the water in the hot pool is just a gnats fanny hairs breadth of a degree below being hot enough to boil potatos, in fact my potatos feel as if they're already boiled and as my belly hoves into sight from below the water I notice it's the colour of a just done prawn, Kims birthday suit is a pleasing pink beside me, we wear, as etiquette dictates a small, tea towel sized towelette upon our heads.

Onsen etiquette is fraught with pitfalls and opportunities for social faux pas that could end at any moment in ritual suicide.  To a certain extent that is why we have hired a private onsen on this occasion.  It has cost us just 2000 yen (about 15 quid)  The other big reason is that we're on this trip together and we want to share the experiences, public Onsens are strictly segregated due to it being a passtime one enjoys dans la buff. 

To an extent I'm happy about this, I'm sick and tired of being treated like a sex object everytime I wonder into a swimming pool in my lemon yellow neon budgie smugglers and every young woman just gawps, it makes feel sooooooo cheap (Cheep?)

So our onsen has a private sitting room, this is to rest and cool down after the hot bath. In a public version there will be drink machines dispensing cold drinks juices and alchohol. We shrug out of our Yukatas and enter a shower room and our private sauna.  The shower room (like the public version) is equipped with shower roses, and to our initial consternation  testicle heigh mirrors!!   Oh goody I thought I've always wanted a doctors eye view of my nutsack.

There are also small buckets and (Aha)  low plastic stools.  The stools have a cunning and thoughtful curve cut out iof the seat to accomodate ones carrot and sprouts (Merry Christmas!!) So, one sits before the mirror on ones' stool and showers, suds ineself up and then rinses with buckest of water.  Woe betide one if  one splashes oines' neighbour in the public version.  Kim and I saved ourselves definate duels here in that a significant amount of water chuckage occured.

At this point you use the tea towel sized towelette to dry ones self so you "don't drip on the floor of the bathroom"! and enter the bathroom.  Our private one is beautiful.  A huge steaming rock lined bowl of 4 foot deep hot spring water.  The pool is divided by a timper and cloth screen, pulling it back reveals the far side of the rock pool which is out of doors.  So we can luxuriate wholly indoors if we wish or float gently out in to the icy cold frosty air.  It really is wonderfully relaxing if a bit bloody hot!

Out of the pool, tea towel dry then into the sauna, showers and loaf, what a great way to spend an hour or two.  

After a cool down we're down for a traditional Japanese dinner, all as part of the Ryokan experience.   The meal simply amazing, not just as food but as a never to be forgotten experience in itself.  Bowed in, in our Yukatas the table has been beautifully prepared.  In about an hour it will lookm as if Ghengis Khan's horse men have ridden over it, but for now it looks magnificent.

4 candle fired burners are lit under stoneware dishes containing pork, chicken and vegetables and broths.  We have sushi, sashimi, shrimp and vegetable tempura, Miso soup, an egg custardy thing containing shrimp, mushrooms and the like, a huge rolled omellette wrapped around the local wheatflour noodles in a suace (Delicious!!!) wasabi, soy, sesame a salad of tuna and mixed leaves and a number of small pots containing pickled vegetables amongst the ones i recognise being ginger (sorry there were around half a dozen but I'm none the bloody wiser)

I have to say it was all bloody lovely and we leave the table replete and back to our room for a pot of beautifully prepared tea from a gorgeous tea set (Christ I'm starting to sound like bloody Gwok Wan) and then roll ourselves up on the futon. 

Brekky picks up where dinner left off.  In fact in a lot of Asia we've found that the line between dinner and brekky is pretty thin.  No bloody cornflakes here. More earthenware dishes on candle burners.  This time prepared veggies in one into which we crack our eggs and miso paste in the other to mix with our rice.  More poickled vegetables, a bowl of slimy stuff which we're advised to mix with soy sauce, as the soy hits it it sputters and sizzles......... it still looks and maybe, tastes like snail trail, we also have a box of 3 dishes featuring veggies and smoked fish, all washed down with green tea.

After that we need the 2 hour laydown we have time for before we check out.  AS I've probably mentioned, the Japoanese are absolute sticklers for punctuality.  We get to the bus station in time for a coffee before the bus is due.  The bus is supposed to leave at 11 am.  At 10:58 something has obviously slipped! there's no sign of it.  However, obviously conditioned to make the announcement at exactly 10:28 the announcer intones

"The bus for takayama is at bus boarding gate 3 (right next to her) please board the bus for Takayama promptly". 

There's one other western couple and we share bemused looks but the locals turn not a hair.  At 11:01 the bus pulls round the head of the valley and makes it's way toward us, no further announcements are made!  The ride to Takayam is through a gathering snow storm, as we leave the valley by a long tunnel it feels as if we're leaving one world and returning to another.  The snow turns to sleet, then rain, by the time we get to Takayama the sun is out.

Back in Takayama we pop into a Wifi Cafe.  Interesting concept, you pay 500 yen (3 quid) each and this gets you access to the top floor where there are Hot and cold drinks machines all on free flow.  The only rule is you only use 1 cup and 1 glass but refil as often as you will, you sit in comfy arm chairs, plug in your laptop or smart phone and enjoy as long as you wish.

A trot around the old town in the evening and a hunt for something to eat finds us in a great chinese place. There are only 5 things on the menu.  Dumplings, and 4 plates of noodles, topped with, beef. pork, chicken or vegetables.  Whichever you have, it's topped with a perfectly fried eggy. Just what the doctor ordered! Tomorrow we have a long long trip, 1 express and 3 shinkansen trains through Nagoya and Tokyo to Sendai.