Akita

Apologies for the delay in postings, but my laptop has decided to sh*t itself and it's a bit more tedious processing all these photos and text. Anyway...

After a brief relax in Tokyo, we jumped on the Shinkansen for the coastal city of Akita. I love the Shinkansen trains. All those years travelling Queensland Rail to Brisbane pushing the technology to 90 km/h and here we are, rocketing through Japan at over 300 km/h. And these things arrive and depart within seconds of schedule... I am in awe of these people.

A lot of the things we wanted to see and do turned out to not be so easily accessible by public transport in the north. So our cunning plan is to rent a car from Akita and drive north around the Tohoku region to see as much as we can.

Akita is where the famous dog breed comes from and we saw a lot of them. Owners love to show off their dogs and you can even go to the doggy cafe and have a latte with them.

One of the things we really want to see on this trip are the autumn colours. We're a month early, but the leaves are starting to turn, so fingers crossed we'll see some great displays when we get to the mountains.Read more