Owen and Donna's Adventure!

The weekend just gone we drove to the Coromandel and camped at Hot Water Beach...

The Coromandel is a beautiful area of unspoilt beaches and countryside just a couple of hours from Auckland. We walked along the coast from nearby Hahei beach to Cathedral Cove.

Donna: While I was regretful about leaving Japan after our brilliant journey, New Zealand so far has been breathtaking and we haven't even travelled outside the Auckland region! But more about that in a bit...

So what have we been up to since we arrived? Well we are now the proud owners of a sparkling gold Toyota Corolla:

We have moved into a house share with a lovely Kiwi/British couple and their pets. Owen has made fast friends with them...

and the couple too!

Here is what has become our favourite beach of the moment - Karekare. It's about a 45 minute drive from where we are living and is incredibly wild and unspoilt.

There is also an amazing beach about a 15 minute drive away - also beautiful but a more inhabited/convenient:

Tokyo such a vast and we only had a couple of days to see it so we did our best to experience different sides of Tokyo.

We stayed in Arashiyama to the east of Tokyo and enjoyed the colourful temple and buzzing shopping streets:

Next we visited the fish market and wandered amongst the stalls admiring all the varied seafood on offer.

We also wandered in the business district admiring the tall skyscrapers.

One of the first things we did when we arrived in Tokyo was get ourselves sumo tickets! We were lucky enough to be in Tokyo during one of the major sumo tournaments and the tickets were worth every yen!

At the end of the tournament the winner for the day performed a ceremony using a bow:

While we were in Nikko we stayed in a small minshuku (guesthouse) run by a lovely couple called the Satos. Because the weather was extremely wet they decided to entertain their guests with fortune telling and table tennis.

We also cooked Okonomiyaki - a cross between a pancake and an omelette - very delicious! It is a traditional dish in the Osaka region and we had tried it in several restaurants before we made our own.