Backpacking

After checking into the J-Hoppers hostel and meeting a couple of travellers including a black American geezer called Sam and a stoic Icelandic chap called Thor (only kidding, he was called Albert), we headed into central Kyoto, but not before waiting ages for a tube train just to go a couple of stops. The driver humbly and unreservedly apologised on arrival for the tube running 4 minutes late. Shock horror, the shame! I wondered how late the train would have to be for the driver to feel he should perform ritual suicide by slicing his guts open, as samurai used to do.

Tak took us to an English pub he knew, which turned out to be the Pig & Whistle, a member of the same small chain (3 establishments) I'd visited in Osaka. Once again we hit the cocktails and on leaving, we all spontaneously had the same idea... give me a k, give me an a.... k-a-r-a-o-k-e! We found ourselves magnetically drawn to the floors above, containing hundreds of tiny private karaoke booths, and we booked one for an hour and a half, ordered some drinks through the in-room telephone, and started queuing up and demolishing the classics... Black Sabbath, Primal Scream, Iggy Pop, The Smiths, Nena's 99 Luftballons (auf Deutsch!), and then descending into Britney Spears and S Club 7 ('Reach!') land... There was a close challenge for performance of the evening, with Tak amicably performing the

theme to Astroboy in Japanese, which he had introduced to our minds on the first day and we had been singing ever since, but the trophy had to go to Dan Brooke for a spoken word rendition of the Theme from Ghostbusters - in a thick Bristolian accent. Pure genius!

Four or five half-hour extensions later, and having sacrificed our voice boxes to the gods of Rock, we followed Tak following the river back to the hostel, who made a good job of not seeming lost when in fact he was. The ramble was punctuated with Tak falling over a lot, to our great amusement. Eventually Tak guided us home and we snuck into the hostel like a bunch of naughty kids.

Day 21: 20th February (...)

Hiroshima, Japan

We were required to peel ourselves from the hostel beds by 10am, which meant little sleep for us karaoke kids. We were heading to Hiroshima today, so we took the opportunity on a 3 hour silky-smooth bullet train ride to catch up on a few hours' kip.

We based ourselves in a Japanese-style place near the park in Hiroshima. The taxi ride there showed a beautiful city, with elegant buildings