Next week, I’ll get my Japan Rail pass. I ordered it in New Zealand, as you can only acquire it from abroad.

Two weeks for 330 Euros, (nearly) all trains except some few super-mega-express Shinkansen trains. But most of the high speed Shinkansen trains are covered… You just can’t beat that.

So I had to have another round of bookings and, first of all, decide what I wanted to see.

I know I should not complain, but that process, the decision-making and booking the best possible route is what I am most tired of on this trip. It never ends…

However, it is vital, as I learned. I had pushed it back and back, looked at places in Kyoto and other cities… until I received a mail from booking.com saying that Kyoto was 98% booked for the days I had looked up…

Yeah, right, they always say that, but this time it was true. Cherry blossom side effect, I guess. There was simply nothing left in Kyoto.

The only solution was to stay four nights in one of this ultra modern capsule hotels where you sleep in something that looks like the docking system of the star ship Enterprise. Or some ultra-expensive hotels.

So in the end, and thanks to Japan’s ultra-fast train network, I opted to stay in Osaka for eight days and to make day trips from there.

Kyoto is only 15 minutes from there in the Shinkansen. And I can also visit Nara and other places in a day.

Second, Osaka was somehow my favorite to stay for a whole month in Japan. My sister once brought a Japanese exchange student from Osaka to us to stay over Christmas, as he could not fly home.

He sent my Mom flowers for about a decade after that… Unfortunately, I do no longer have his address. It would be fun to meet him, he must be around 50 by now.

I’m curious to visit the city, I found a nice place on airbnb again, under Osaka’s castle.

From there, I head on to Hiroshima for two days. I simply have to visit, I have read so much about the city, already as a kid. I think I’ll also manage to visit Miyajima Island from there.

Then I head back to Tokyo for the final two days, make a visit to Nikko with its temples if I feel like it, before flying out back to Zurich on the 29th.