Our third trip to Japan!  We just love it there for so many reasons - the people, the food, the scenery - the respect!

This time we started in Okinawa, basing ourselves in Naha and hiring a car to explore the island, which felt like a cross between Hawaii and Cairns to me. The weather was a bit unkind to us, but we still saw plenty. We had a week, but in all honesty 3-4 days would have been plenty.

Next we flew onto Hokkaido, staying in Soporro and relying on buses for transport. Hokkaido prides itself on being a mecca for food and drink afficionados, and that claim is well justified in our opinion. We landed right in the middle of the Soporro Food and Wine festival, which is held on a kilometer long strip a city block wide right in the middle of the city. Normally a lovely park, the festival has it full of food and drink stands - and it was AMAZING!  We enjoyed every moment of our time in Hokkaido and would return in an instant.

Our last week was spent in Tokyo, where stayed in Asakusa, one of the oldest areas in Tokyo. The atmosphere is great, and it is local to the Skytree and Senjo Temple (both of which we'd visited already).  We had several day trips out to outlying areas like Yokohama and Kawagoe, using the amazing train system.

The only glitch was that the night we left Tokyo a cyclone hit, shutting down all the freeways and forcing our (very brave) Uber driver to get us to the airport by back road and country lanes, dodging road blocks and bursting river banks - very exciting! We were extremely relived to get to the airport, where we got held up for several hours because the flight crew got delayed too!

Once again, a very enjoyable trip and I say once again - if you haven't visited Japan - do it!

Pictures HERE

And here's our "As it happened" Blog!