Photos so far

The plan has changed a bit on the photo front but I'm pleased to reveal that you can peruse the pictorial record of my travels so far by following these links:

Uganda
Tanzania - Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and Pangani River
Zanzibar
Malawi - Mzuzu and Kande Beach
Zimbabwe - Great Zimbabwe Ruins and Bush Camp
Zimbabwe - Antelope Park
Zimbabwe - more Antelope Park
Hong Kong
Narita
Japan - Sapporo I
Japan - Sapporo II
Japan - Sapporo III
Japan - Nagoya
Japan - Osaka's Rice Planting Festival
Japan - Kyoto, first visit
Japan - Himeji
Japan - Hiroshima and Miyajima
Japan - Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Beppu and Kagoshima
Japan - Nansei-shoto I

There are a few more to come from the past week once I work out what this computer wants me to do...

PS It's raining here too...

Typhoo - NOT tea

I was going to continue the post I've started detailing what I've been up to since leaving Sapporo about 5 weeks ago but thought, nah, I'm already behind so will make the shocking and unprecedented move of writing about something that just happened. I know, I might have to lie down in a minute too...

So, you may have heard that Japan is currently in the grip of a typhoon, either from me or because you've been intently monitoring the meteorological status of my last known whereabouts... Really, no? Maybe that was just a dream then... Anyway, I'm in Naha airport on Okinawa island an have to share the reason my current excitement.

I've just fulfilled one of my ambitions for this trip. After several false starts at trying to make it off Ishigaki island and being thwarted by the cursed typhoon (pronounced taifoo in Japanese, geddit??) I am finally a little bit nearer to Kyoto, where I had planned to be all along by tomorrow for their biggest festival of the year, Gion Matsuri (will report back on that once I've actually been to it) and the final step happens in 50 minute when my flight from Naha to Kobe takes off.

The ambition didn't have to do with a freakily accurate premonition of tropical-cyclone-stops-play proportions, but rather to do with the way I came about being on the flight... You see, I've always wanted to saunter up to the airline desk, credit card gleaming in my clammy paw, and buy a ticket for the next flight. Yes, there are Friends and Hollywood influences aplenty, and of course it's cheesy as all hell, but so what? So that's what I just did - and it was a bargain!

Check facebook for some recently added photos with some more to come. Apologies for the lack of photos on this blog and of links in this post, but hey, I've got stuff to be doing here!

Mata ne!