Those of you who may frequent here or have read my previous posts will know of my love affair with Japan. This country is simply amazing and I wish I had more time to explore every nook and cranny of it, unfortunately though that isn’t possible so for now I’m having to make do with weekend roaming of places within reach of Osaka.

For the  first weekend off I’ve grabbed a work mate and we’ve dived into Osaka aiming straight for Dontonbori with the aim of two things, buy a new lens for my camera at the massive Bic Camera store and eat some takoyaki. All in all a rather full proof plan  that we pulled off quite successfully. After the lunch of takoyaki we headed in the direction of Tennoji to head through Osaka’s computer district and check out the zoo. We ended up skipping on the zoo due to the weather (just too hot to keep running around outside) and headed to some temples instead.

On Sunday the plan of attack was Osaka Castle and it’s surrounding grounds (whilst avoiding going in since we had both done it previously) followed by the Osaka Aquarium. All in all it was very good though unfortunately the aquariums main attraction (a large whale shark) was not there as it was receiving a health check-up.

As per normal photos are below. If anything else pops up during the week I’ll post it below but expect the next update next weekend.

After this I moved onto the Changdeok-gung Palace which has an amazing secret garden area as I got there though, closed! Turns out Monday isn’t the best day in Seoul if you don’t plan before hand.

On Tuesday with a bit more planning I headed out to Changdeok-gung and joined one of the guided tours in English of the secret garden section. It’s a rather long tour of about 90 minutes and can also be done in Chinese or Korean. It’s a simple 3km long walk around the closed off area of the grounds which the old kings used as their private area where access was by invitation only. I highly recommend the tour as its quite interesting and a lovely place to check out. If tours aren’t your cup of tea though the grounds can be roamed without a group in the summer months on a certain day of the week (not sure which one it is).

As usual there’s some photos below. We didn’t get up to much last night or today as we’re heading out of here tomorrow. We are off to the baseball tonight though so that should be fun!

Now onto Seoul itself. A good way to put it would be Tokyo but with wider streets and sidewalks (for the most part), a lot more Americans and far more drinking areas, all in all for a slightly cheaper price (though not on the same level as Taiwan). The hotel we’re staying in is actually a serviced apartments building smack bang in the middle of Insagong, an area that is fast becoming the major tourist section for Seoul. The hotel is called Fraser Suite Apartments and for three of us we have a three bedroom apartment and are paying about $80 USD a night which is just incredible (I’ll post photos of the joint before leaving… hopefully).

There was some other stuff I was going to say in the post but as I’ve been writing this over two days now I can’t remember most of it. Basically Seoul so far has been a relax and unwind and check out the occasional thing whilst enjoying the food and night life which hasn’t left too much time for the touristy bits. All I can say though the nightlife here is incredible with a huge choice of bars and very friendly locals who take any drunken opportunity to practice English or to “help you out”. Food wise its amazing with a huge choice of cuisines but for those who aren’t particular to spice its not a fun place, meanwhile for those who enjoy some spice it’s awesome. We have checked out some of the major palaces and gardens in the city for which there are quite a few photos beneath but I can’t promise too much more will be coming up post wise.

I’ll try and get a better post done next time though no promises. I can say though that on Mondays attractions in Seoul tend to be closed which is rather annoying but I did manage some good photos from the TV Tower here (known as the N Tower). I’ll throw those up some time in the next two days.

Now onto Taipei. To put it simply its amazingly cheap here. Food and services that are needed everyday are very very cheap. Think about $1-2 in Australian Dollars for a large drink anywhere and meals not much more if you eat like the locals. Public Transport is about 18 TWD which is close to 60c Australian to get across the town.

In regards to what we got up to today. We headed out to the Taiwan Fine Arts Museum at first and thought we could walk there, turns out the path to walk there wasn’t a straight line and we ended up walking in the heat and humidity for a good 30 minutes (hence the cool down drinks in the photos below). After that we journeyed across town to the Taipei 101 Tower to check out the lookout and see the surrounding shops and memorials. After all that and some occasional bites to eat we moved on back to the local night markets here near the hotel for a quick peek and a bite before passing out.

Tomorrow  we move onto National Palace Museum for a gander then onto one of the more major temples and its adjoining night markets. For now though here are the photos.

Note: I’ll be fixing up the thumbnails on the posts soon. I just need to make sure I set it up right again.

With that bit of weather pitch over its time to move onto the more interesting details of today’s journey, or at least just a recap. As I’m actually having weekends off while over here it makes it thankfully quite easy to plan when and where to go out to and today’s plan was to explore the CBD and head out and run around Kings Park, a giant bit of park land just over the Mitchell Highway from the city (seriously have a look at the size of it and its location to the CBD on a map, its rather impressive).

The CBD itself reminded me a lot of Brisbane, most people packed into some key areas with the streets around the edges of the CBD rather quite, whether this means anything I’m not sure I just found it rather interesting. First stop though was to check out the Swan Bells at the Bell Tower sitting along side the quite beautiful Swan River. The bells themselves have an interesting history to them but I passed on heading into the tower due to the cost of entry and well… It didn’t look like it would have much in it for the price.

After that detour I headed back into the city to make my way down to Kings Park along the way finding the lovely St George’s Cathedral hidden away between some giant sky scrapers. Eventually I made it to the base of the hill upon which the entry to Kings Park is. The hill I found though was a street named Mount St, which by the seems of things was where some of the wealthier families of Perth lived (some gigantic houses and fantastic cars here) and where all the fit people go to run up and down a steep hill. At the top of the hill is the entry to the Kings Park grounds  (while not really an entry its more the main point for cars to enter in and where people wander up). I proceeded to follow the crowds of people and work my way around the grounds until I found the walking trails and went exploring.

From that point onwards there isn’t much else to mention really except that the scenery is fantastic, the view of the city is incredible and the grass so well maintained and inviting in the afternoon sun on a day like today. Such a beautiful place and so close to the city its absolutely fantastic.

Other then that I worked my way eventually back into the city and to the hotel where I’m currently sitting here writing this blog rather then packing. I’m changing hotels tomorrow to something a bit cheaper to keep the budget down. Because fo this though I’ll have everything in the car and be cruising out of the city to discover some of Western Australia a bit more. I’m thinking to the north of Perth this time…

As usual photos below. Theres also an extra panorama included of the Perth CBD and the Swan River taken from Kings Park that I’m really happy with (note to self, consider printing this one).

Now with that out of the way on with the information on Sapporo. The main thing on Sapporo is its cold, its one of the few cities in the world to have the population it does and the average temperature it gets (average is 8.5c) and an average snowfall of over 6m per year. While I was there it was about -9 to -4 degrees each day which according to my friends is one of the coldest winters in a while (it definitely felt like it). Overall though it was beautiful to walk through the city with all the snow falling but its understandable why not many people go outside.

Well they do go outside, but only when the underground paths no longer go anywhere. One of the incredible things in Sapporo is the network of tunnels under the city which house all kinds of shops, restaurants and subway entries making it easy to walk from one section of the city to the next all under the ground and in heated corridors making it easy to escape the cold. Then again for the mad ones like myself it is quite pretty to walk above ground in the falling snow (then again I’m sure if I had to do it daily I’d take the underground path).

So what was my main reason for going to Sapporo? Well back in March 2010 I went to Sapporo to work in the Airport on the new terminal that was being built. While there I made good friends with the local staff who would run the products in the airport. At this point I made a promise that if/when I returned to Japan I would come visit and catch up. Simply put I was true to my word and returned to see them all!

Highlights include going out to dinner for Shabu-Shabu (hot pot), seafood (honestly so many different types I’m not sure if the place had a specific name/speciality) and checking out the view from both the Sapporo Tower (a mix between Tokyo Tower and the Eiffel Tower) and the JR Tower which sits above the train station. For anyone heading to Sapporo I highly recommend the JR Tower its view is from smack bang in the middle of the town and at night they dim the lights in the observatory to make it easy to see all of Sapporo light up, its very very impressive.

Once again that’s enough rambling here are some photos and its time for me to get some sleep. First day of working tomorrow so need to be rested.

Work wise it looks like I’ll be heading to Narita, Okanawa and Nagoya. No idea how much time I’ll get to post or get some photos but I do have my proper camera with me so I shall try to make the most of the weekends.

Anyway as promised, more pictures from Kyoto.

After a big night out last night not much happened today so I went for a wander around Shinjuku and checked out all the cool buildings.

And thats it! Photos as follows as per usual. The night ones are from the Metropolitan building at night. Probably should’ve gone up before 10:30pm though as a lot of the big sky scrapers had turned off most of their lights by this point.