konbanwa!

I thought I'd also update you all since Liam is in the amazing Japanese bath now!
I can't say that Russia was not up to my expectations, as I didnt really have any expectations for it, however, I didn't love it! It was certainly an amazing experience, the Trans-siberian is awesome in so many ways and I'm so glad that we did it and its so amazing to look at how far we've been on a map, the sense of achievement is incredible! But there was something that I can't really explain that I didn't like about it, I think a lot of it was to do with us not staying any where for too long and therefore dealing with Provindistas (train ladies) and customs officials more than with actual local people. In Russia's favour, all of the normal people (not officials) were lovely and nearly always helped us out when we needed it, we also had an excellent time at out homestay where we stayed with a really nice lady. It was brilliant buying food from the Babushkas at the stations along the way and haggling for cake and dumplings and seeing how simply some people live.
The ferry from vladivostok to Fushiki was an adventure! It is primarily a boat for gold-teethed Russian car dealers to ship second hand Japanese cars back to Russia. As 'foreigners' all the people who weren't Russian were treated like second class citizens, but we all (about 10 of us including a couple of Japanese people!) banded together and in the end had a really fun time! There were a couple of bars and a club and some cabaret, as well as a swimming pool (which we didnt venture into due to a little bit of spitting that went on in there). As ever on this trip we heard amazing stories of other peoples travels, probably some of the best were from a Dutch couple who were travelling for 2 years by car to everywhere! (www.chindia.tk ) This morning, despite arriving early, we ended up spending most of the morning waiting for the Russians to pass through customs before we could get in the queue. We even had lunch onboard the ship in the harbour, it was quite bizarre!
Once finally off the ship we were straight into a Japanese port town, I was so excited and squealed lots at everything I saw for the first few hours (well havent really stopped yet!). The vending machines was the first cool thing we experiences, and the excitement was doubled due to the finding of grape flavoured fanta (a favourite we found in Mongolia-its amazing). We caught the train back with some of the other foreign crew and sadly said goodbye at Takaoka station. Takaoka is beautiful! We are living on the same street as one of the biggest Buddah statues in Japan and near many beautiful monasteries and parks. Its also a festival here so the streets are decorated.
Our Ryokan is AMAZING! Its traditionally Japanese, so we have to abide by all the customs (http://www1.coralnet.or.jp/buddha/etips/index.html), we have to wear different shoes for the house, the toilet, the garden and no shoes in our rooms. We had special sweets and tea on arrival and after both having the most amazing Japanese baths ever (we have only had showers or sinks for the last month!) we are both relaxing in our yukatas and looking very Japanese! I think we have the most spectacular room in the Ryokan which overlooks the little garden, so that outside the sliding doors of our room is a beautiful ornamental pond with carp in it- the view is spectacular!
I was getting a bit peckish on our way into get some dinner and magically we were browsing a sushi stall and the lady just gave me a bag of some delicious snack thing for no reason! Japan is very magical so far and we are so excited about the rest of the month.
We will now attempt to post some of our pictures!
xxx