Gill & Kev's Excellent Adventure

Our first week in Japan was spent taking in the bright lights of Tokyo. Our hostel was in Asaskusa, a quiet neighbourhood packed with places to overindulge in Japanese food and home to the Sensoji Temple. On the 3rd February Japan celebrated Setsubun, a festival which welcomes in Spring and frightens away demons and we joined in the festivities at Sensoji.

As well as exploring the temples, parks and streets of Tokyo we also made a trip to the Tsukuji fisho marketo where we got indulge our love of sushi with a 6.30am breakfast of fresh fish.

We also got our fill of culture at the Edo Museum and the Mori Art Museum which opened our eyes to the history of the old city of Edo (which is now Tokyo) and the wonderful Japanese artist, Odani.

After our week in the city, we made the long journey up north by train to the island of Hokkaido for a week of fun in the snow. We headed to Niseko and strapped on some snowboards to enjoy the lovely lovely power we'd heard so much about, and we weren't disappointed. While Kev was lapping up the slopes as much as he could I spent a day in Sapporo to check out the Sapporo Snow Festival. The snow and ice sculptures, some of which were as big as buildings, were just starting to melt but still really impressive and there was plenty of Japanese food stalls to help keep people warmed up.

After our week in the snow we headed back to the island of Honshu and caught a Shinakansen train to Kyoto.

Here we really got to indulge our love of Japanese food! We pretty much spent 8 days restaurant hopping and started off with a gourmet 9-course meal called Kaiseki which included lots of raw fish (including raw prawn), octopus, roe, scallops, beef hot pot, tempura, soy roasted salmon and plum wine.

The Kaiseki meal was followed by many trips to Nishiki food market, lots and lots of udon and soba soup, tempura and more katsu-don than we've ever eaten before. We went sushi mad at a really cheap kaiten (conveyor belt restaurant). At £1 a plate we're ashamed to admit that one trip saw us devouring 20 plates worth of sushi!

We also went a bit temple-mad. Despite visiting Nijo-jo (Kyoto's castle), Kiyomizu-dera, Jishu-jinja (temple dedicated to love), Ginkaku-ji, Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion), Ryoan-ji and Myoshin-ji it was impossible to get bored because they were all so beautiful and impressive. We couldn't be in Kyoto and not visit Gion, the geisha district. On our last morning in Kyoto I dragged Kev around the empty streets trying to catch a glimpse of a real geisha or maiko – I'd seen enough tourists made up as maiko wandering the streets – and managed to see a geisha hurrying away, perhaps on her way to a lunchtime tea ceremony.

We spent the last part of our month in Japan in Osaka. The real highlight was a trip to Osaka Aquarium, one of the largest aquariums in the world, where I got a little overexcited. I didn't think it could get much better after seeing dolphins, seals, a whale shark and all sorts of ray until I saw the big tank of turtles! We finished off our trip with a visit to the plum blossom garden around Osaka's castle.

We had high expectations for Japan and weren't disappointed. We loved Japan, the sights, the people and, of course, the food and were sad to leave. We've already said that we'll be back!

We had a 4-day stopover in Sydney catching up with friends and squeezing in as much as we could before flying to Auckland for 2 short weeks in New Zealand. We're currently making our way around the South Island in a rental car before we head back to the North Island.

The fabled 72 peak mountain range of Huangshan (literally translated as 'Yellow Mountain') is found in the southern Anhui Province in eastern China. We braved the almost freezing temperatures and forecast snow because we'd read and heard great things about the scenery and sunrises. We were also assured by the Lonely Planet that trekking up the mountain in the winter is not such a crazy idea!

We left Shanghai on Sunday at 5.45pm on the K8418 train to Huangshan City (also known as Tunxi). The overnight train journey was broken up by an entertaining young boy call Jackie who was determined to have us both speaking fluent Mandarin by pointing to objects and shouting at us for poor pronunciation. After a cold night's sleep on our middle bunk beds we arrived in Tunxi at dawn. Luckily we didn't have to go far to find budget accommodation as the Koala Youth Hostel was down the road and promised comfortable, warm rooms. Although the rooms weren't as warm as we'd hoped we caught up on sleep and then went downtown to the Old Street to explore the ancient streets and shops in Tunxi.

We were up at 5.30am on Monday to fit in a breakfast of sweet, hot porridge and weak black coffee before we caught the bus from the train station to Tangkou, the overpriced tourist town at the foot of the mountain. From there we shared a taxi to Yungu Temple Cablecar Station which was also the start of the Eastern Steps and began our 7km climb to White Goose Ridge and the summit area. From there we continued up another 2km to Bright Summit peak (1860m) where we had amazing views of the the mountain ranges surrounding us and the dramatic peaks on the western side of the mountain. Because of the weather the frightening-looking and knife-like peaks were closed (phew!) so we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon trying to keep warm in our dorm rooms at the Baiyun Hotel near Bright Summit, along with people we'd met along the way.

More photos in gallery...

We got up at 6am the following day for sunrise but when we stepped outside we discovered that it had started snowing and the cloud meant we weren't going to get the sunrise we had hoped for. Although it was very difficult, we decided to not crawl back into bed and we set off walking down the Western Steps as soon as it was light enough. We saved the Western Steps route for our descent as it was almost double the distance of the Eastern Steps route and after an hour of the steep and winding paths we knew we'd made the right choice, even though our leg muscles started to shake uncontrollably after 2 hours of walking downhill! After reaching the Mercy Light Temple and the end of the descent we caught a taxi back to Tangkou to get a bus back to Tunxi. The snow and heavy cloud cover meant we didn't get the dramatic views we'd heard so much about but we appreciated the scenery under the white blanket of snow.

We left Tunxi late on Wednesday night and arrived in Guangzhou, in southern China, 19 hours later. As it's Chinese New Year on 3rd February we've discovered that well over a 100 million Chinese people will be travelling by bus or train over the next few weeks to be with their family. Unfortunately for us it has meant that we haven't been able to get bus or train tickets out of Guangzhou and we've have to sacrifice a cheap and chilled out week in Yangshuo.

Despite embarking on this trip to leave our city lives behind it was hard not to fall back into old ways. Overcrowding on streets and public transport, traffic jams, the Metro systems, shops, bars and bright lights all felt very familiar in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Especially so in the former British colony where the roads, road signs, double decker buses and even the street bins were spookily similar to those back home. In Shanghai there is a Starbucks on every corner, in fact opposite the street to each other more often than not. With these familiarities and our experience of shoulder barging our way through crowds we fit right in in both cities. Well almost... ordering food in Shanghai was perhaps our only struggle but we managed to point and mime our way around it when we needed to.

In Hong Kong we stayed in Kowloon and ventured over to Hong Kong Island most evenings to get food and drinks in Soho where the steep streets are packed with bars and restaurants. We also allowed ourselves to get lost in the shiny shops that line Queens Road, which on a Saturday easily resembled Oxford Street in London. We also enjoyed spending time walking along the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade taking in the dazzling skyline of Hong Kong Island across the river and paying homage to Jackie Chan on the Avenue of Stars (Hong Kong's very own Walk of Fame). We did our culture bit by visiting the Science Musuem and checking out rather weird art on show in various parts of Kowloon Park. The highlight of Hong Kong was taking the tram to Victoria Peak where we had amazing views over the city.

After spending 4 days in Hong Kong we caught the Intercity train to Shanghai. The 14-hour journey has definitely been the most comfortable of any overnight journey and we slept like babies in our upper bunks. Shanghai has often been labelled as a Western city by China's standards. The modern, shiny buildings, gleaming financial district, Western fastfood joints and neverending Starbucks all cry out in favour of this suggestion. However, we felt we got a good taste of 'China' while we were there. We struggled a little knowing only a smattering of Mandarin – ordering food and asking directions didn't always get us what we wanted. We stayed near People's Square and spent most of our time around there exploring the park and shops nearby, as well as appreciating some Chinese art at Shanghai's Art Gallery. We also ventured to the Bund, once the city's Wall Street, and took in the views of Pudong's skyscraper-skyline across the river.

We had our fill of the city after 4 days and braved the cold weather to head west to Huangshan City for our chance to discover the fabled beauty of China's Huang (yellow) mountain.