Back to Tokyo for the final stint of this trip and it's so comfortable. We've settled in a residential neighborhood in Nakano-ku, not far from where we used to live before moving to Berkeley. While a lot has changed - mostly gotten updated and evolved to

I took a couple hour wander through the lower altitude Berkeley Hills - the Berkeley Foothills to me - and took the big camera. This was mostly to test a new lens. I came back with some decent shots and this blog is just hanging out here, so why not.

Pink on White

Test of Morning Ghost

Time to move on from Fukuoka where we could have spent more time to further explore Kyushu - more ideas for the future. Next stop on the schedule is Hiroshima, another city neither Nobue or I have visited. Exploring the memories that still linger there is top of mind going

After the Atomic Dome, probably the most visited site around Hiroshima is the ancient shrine, Itsukushima Jinja, with it's huge off-shore bright orange Torii (gate). It takes about 30 minutes by what is essentially a commuter train and a short ferry ride to the island.

Sitting in Narita with hours to kill, I thought I'd try to get one more post out. I'm way behind, but I decided it is time to give my audience what they really want, some FOOD PORN...

While we've done a lot of good

Travel to Osaka was a short Shinkansen hop from Hiroshima. The trip was made to feel longer by the accumulated exhaustion catching up to us after a week of ambitious tourism and lots of walking in not always gentle terrains. Our energy level results in not much tourism stuff and

As I wrote before, Osaka is a good place for side trips. Since we've been to Kyoto and Nara many times, we decided to go to Kobe where we've never been.

It was a drizzly day as we started the trip with a walk to our