Japan to Kuala Lumpur

From our long, lazy stay at Hozumi's mum's, punctuated by bursts of activity when we hit unexpected bureaucratic hurdles, to the big wide world outside of Japan and many more long, lazy days in the sun.

They've done a passable job of making the new Haneda international airport terminal evoke old-school Japan, with lanterns, wooden slatted windows and red cloth draped benches everywhere. They also decided to make the roof resemble a giant vagina, for reasons I can only guess at.

Okinawa and the end of our tour.

This is the picture I was searching for, my 'I drove to Okinawa!' shot. Nice location.

Okinawa

25 hours on the ferry to Okinawa, spent mostly dozing, reading manga and marvelling at how tricky it was to get any food while on board. If you missed the 20 minute window of opportunity to order breakfast you had no choice but to wait 2 hours for the shop to open, then you had 10 minutes to buy cup ramen before the harassed-looking lady closed up shop again and bustled off.

Round the world

Our world tour starts with Malaysia because the flight was (relatively) cheap. We're leaving tomorrow and I still haven't written anything about Okinawa. Slacker.

Hopefully I'll have lots of free time waiting at Haneda for our connection.

Yakushima

As expected, now I have tons of free time and no pressure, I'm not getting around to writing anything. Anyway, back to where we left off, about a month ago:

The ride to Kagoshima was miserable and terrifying in equal measure. We set off from Miyazaki around 3am to be there on time for the ferry so it was dark and none too warm. Two thirds of the way there the drizzle turned to rain and mist and visibility dropped to almost nothing. Riding double on a small bike at 40kp/h, cold, wet and peering through a misted visor isn't fun.