Our biggest news is that we are going to Japan this week! Much of the last couple weeks have been trying to save up money for all our trips, so we haven't done anything particularly exciting. Our flight is Sunday morning, and there don't seem to be an early trains on Sunday morning, so we have to go to Manchester the night before. We are staying with Jane, Victoria's friend who was also in Japan at the same time as us. It's a shame the train isn't running though, because it goes directly to Manchester airport from Sheffield. Our flight is with Air France, which means we change at Paris. I think the flight is about 14 hours total.

In Japan we are going to Tokyo, Nikko, Toyama, Kyoto, Nara, and then to Izumo for Paul's wedding. It looks like Chris, Victoria's friend who lives in London, will be in Tokyo when we are leaving, so we are going to meet him for drinks the last night of our trip. I'll write more about it after the trip obviously.