Well things have been going wonderfully well... After arriving in Shanghai I had no problems catching a taxi and getting to the hotel. We visited some of the local sights and wandered around the city, then travelled to Wuxi. Unfortunately we didn't win our races but it was still great fun to row there. We got to see some of the local sights (including the chinese version of a theme park, which was actually a giant TV set for a famous story) and an almost ridiculously huge (bronze?) buddha who could be seen from miles away, with his head peering over the top of the nearest mountains.

Eventually we flew to Chengdu in Sichuan (Szechuan) province and ate a ridiculously hot black-chilli hotpot, travelled north to Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong valleys which were amazingly bright and vibrant colours and natural pools and waterfalls, but unfortunately extremely overtouristed, and also visited the giant buddha at Leshan and the religious mountain, E'mei Shan with its many temples and cheeky monkeys.

Finally we spent 3 days back in Shanghai doing shopping, sightseeing, shopping, walking, eating, and more shopping. The tourist market there has some nicely unique things around if you look hard enough, and I love the set of paintings that I bought. The flight to Osaka was quiet, probably due to the New York incident which occurred only a week before.

I've done so much sightseeing in Kyoto especially (wonderful city, very ancient lots of shrines and temples and old quarters and houses and rivers and alleys with little canals... and so friendly)... Himeji castle, wandered around Osaka and then Nara (temple city, huge temple with freeroaming deer around the city), Fuji (which i couldnt see because it was too cloudy), Tokyo (which is everything you expect about "Japan"), and I've been staying with a friend in Hiroshima prefecture, a city called Fukuyama. Theres some really lovely coastal towns to see nearby. Hiroshima city is very open and clean and happy, but the museum and memorials kinda made me feel sad and a bit sick but opens your eyes to the horror of the bomb.

I also climbed a small island mountain called Miyajima with a floating shrine gate in the middle of the sea, and visited an extremely secluded waterfall, Onose-no-taki. Later I travelled to the southern island of Japan, Kyushu, and went to Fukuoka and then climbed a volcano group called Aso (5 volcanos within an old 80km wide volcanic crater) with a green lake at the top, went to Beppu which is a hot springs town and took a sand bath (they pile hot sand on to you) and saw some strange coloured 90 degree pools called "hells".

After that I travelled north back into Honshu and visited Akiyoshi-do, which is some 10km long limestone caves and two very old towns, the first, Hagi, has some samurai history and quarters, castle ruins and a beautiful waterway in the backstreets, full of 10000's of the giant carp. I had perfect weather there and cycled around the city, there was also a shrine with 500 stone lanterns and the graves of some lords and important samurai. The second town was called Tsuwano, kinda small town with castle ruins at the top of a mountain, which I climbed up to, a shrine with 1100 gates (torii) before entering and a pretty central road with a waterway and lots of giant carp.

Then me and my friend drove north to a small cow and autumn-leaf area called Hiruzen, stayed overnight in Matsue and returned to an extinct volcano area, Daisen. It was totally covered in bright yellow and orange and red autumn leaves, it was just totally amazing and almost too bright for my eyes with all the colours.

Today I cycled around a kinda farm-plain area "Kibi" near Okayama, it has a 15km cycle path going through a few shrines, farmlands and archealogical areas and was quite peaceful.

I'm planning to travel back to northern Kyoto prefecture, a rural area near Fukuchiyama city next week, see the bright red autumn leaves and a really unique modern museum in the middle of a national park in Shiga prefecture.

I'm not having any trouble travelling alone in Japan either, it's quite easy to get by and most people here understand enough english words to get your point across - you can't use full english sentences with them, but you can state your point in 2 or 3 words and they get the picture. You just need to learn a few simple phrases, apart from all the usual civilities, the ones that have come in most useful for me so far are:

"... wa do chira desu ka" - "where is the ..."

and

"kore wa ... e ikimasu ka" - "does this bus/train go to ...?"

Will update again later. ;)