Side Trip to Japan

Japanese Macaques - snow monkeys

As our son has been in Japan for work we decided to meet up with him so have taken a couple of weeks side trip here. We drove the camper from Luang Prabang in Laos along the beautiful road to Vientiane where we needed to visit the customs department to persuade them to give us an extension on the vehicle visa. Arguing that we needed to visit family, so be home for several weeks over Christmas they extended the vehicle visa until mid February. A local garage in Vientiane is servicing the van and we have left it at his workshop while we travel. We flew from Vientiane to Tokyo and have had a couple of weeks exploring some of central Japan.

Japanese Serow antelope

Our timing was exceptional as we arrived for the peak of the Autumn colours. Starting with a couple of days in the Tokyo area we visited the old Imperial Palace and gardens in beautiful sunshine, before heading north to the Japanese Alps near Matsumoto. With peaks rising to 2500m they have a lot of similarities with the Alps and we enjoyed a wonderful walk through the wooded slopes, even seeing a Japanese Serow antelope.
The famous snow monkeys who live around thermal springs were very entertaining as they waded in the hot pools and scrapped over food.

Hiroshima Peace Dome

A couple of days in Hiroshima allowed us to visit the location of the first atomic bomb used in anger and to better understand the scale of devastation caused by this "primitive" device which killed 140,000 people over a four month period. We also learned about the less well known firebombing, before the A bomb was dropped, of 67 Japanese cities including Tokyo where over 100,000 people died in a single night. The largest number of casualties in a single raid.
The visit to Hiroshima also enabled us to visit the very peaceful island of Miyajima and climb its peak to get views over Hiroshima harbour.

Miyajima Temple Gate

Floodlit Eicando Temple 

Finally we moved on to Kyoto and managed to visit both Nara with its huge buddah statue in the worlds largest wooden building, and have marvelled at the fantastic temples and shrines of Kyoto which are surrounded by beautiful gardens of maples in full autumn colour. There are so many temples and shrines that we could only visit a few of the more famous ones, including one floodlit at night.





We return to Laos for a couple of weeks before we fly home for Christmas.

Nara Autumn Colours