TINY TALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Trying to fit your entire life for the next five months back into a rucksack is like the world's most difficult game of Tetris....

Ploughing through the snow up the steep side of a cliff was a momentous challenge. Earlier in the day, molly and I had arrived at...

This is the Hokkaido I was waiting to see! Coming up here was supposed to drop us right into the mountains, in the midst of the national...

For any westerner, the idea of walking into a public bath completely bare is a daunting prospect. The Japanese tradition of the onsen is...

It's been a while since I wrote my last blog, as I simply don't know what to say. So far, sapporo hasn't quite been what we expected....

We arrived in the rain late last night and crashed out until late morning. So today, we took an easy day after the long and strenuous...

How many people can say that they have eaten at a fine dining restaurant, in a beautiful rooftop garden at the top of a sky scraper in...

It was hard for him to sit still. He could hear the bustling of people all around him, their voices sounded like whispers from all the...

The mountains and the hills we see are the creases in the Earth's skin. When mother nature smiles, great rifts and cracks appear on the...

An inspiring tale of love and loyalty; Hachi the Akita accompanied his owner every morning on his way to work and left his house in time...

Tokyo is exactly as I expected, a massive city, with so many people you don’t know which way to turn in a crowd, and huge buildings with...

Philosophers walk is very beautiful, with bridges hoping across the river every few feet, and pale pink mixed in amongst the shades of...

The heavens are full of tiny holes where the water falls through. In the garden, flowers were heavy with little orbs of half-rain,...

The fox moved effortlessly out of the forest, past the trees and through the red pillars. She paused to read the kanji, freshly painted...

This is the first attraction we have been to see that didn’t meet my expectations. I thought it would be like a forest of bright green...

An ache with the fire of a thousand splendid suns has hit me today. I think I have walked farther in this last week than the entire year...

It was mollys birthday, and we journeyed back to the deer park for the last time before moving on to Kyoto. We spent most of the day...

A quiet day, filled with just enjoying little moments. Even the simple things, like making it to the top of a steep staircase, or eating...

I had heard many stories about the bowing deer of Nara, but I still wasn’t prepared. There are deer everywhere, and they really do nod...

Throwing ourselves straight back into the complicated train system after yesterday maybe wasn’t the wisest idea, but turned out to be...