Well, the Summer holidays are coming to an end. As much as I’d like them to last for ever, pretty sure that’s an impossibility. Perhaps for many of you it was business as usual, but luckily for me, I was able to sneak in a little traveling. Well, a lot of traveling actually. And just to give this post some focus, I won’t talk about the three weeks I spent back in Australia.

First stop was Odawara castle. As soon as I’d landed in Haneda airport I was on the phone to @Genshin, a fellow twitterer. And before I go any further, I need to thank him profusely for making the trip possible. We racked up many k’s in the @Genshin family car, and I repaid him by breaking the car’s antenna. Doh!

Roadtrip!
I now realise that I was a little too ambitious in the planning stage. And the plan was to head North from Odawara & see everything there was to see in Nagano Pref in under 2 days. Suffice to say, we didn’t quite see everything. We did see a lot & just to give you a small taste I recommend the following link: Views of Japan for some of @Genshin’s photographs.

The route we took, took us to:

• Odawara Castle (as mentioned)
• Kōfu Castle
• Tsutsujigasaki Yakata (video)
• Takashima Castle
• Matsumoto Castle
• Route inn (for any Aussies in the audience)
• Matsushiro Castle
• Ueda Castle

Suffice to say, the above destinations & some places in between will feature heavily in posts over the following months. Stay tuned!