So if you’re looking at www.fly.com and wondering what part of Japan to visit, let me persuade you – Tokyo isn’t the only destination if you want a good handle on Japanese culture. Their temples – and Buddhism, for that matter – are very important to them, and their maintenance of these locations demonstrates this very well. But some of the temples seem mysterious at first, so it’s important to do some research to fully enjoy their majesty.

According to Wikipedia:

This temple is one of the most well known in the Kant region of Japan and is only surpassed in visitors during the O-shogatsu period (lit: New year period) by the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The temple grounds are composed of a main gate, a steep stairwell and the main buildings (including a couple of five-story pagodas), and a garden area with large pond. A very small zoo is also within the temple grounds.

One of the many temples at the Shingon Buddhist temple.

Cute turtle. There were hundreds of these all over the place.

Garden area at the Shingon Buddhist temple

Statues at the Shingon Buddhist temple

Nice view from behind one of the temples

I took the photos in the Black Forest in south western Germany.

Penguin Place is on a small piece of land on the coast. If you zoom in, you can see the constructions in the sand hills designed for tourists to watch the birds.

The birds aren’t caged, they’re allowed to come and go as they please, but are provided with warm, man made shelters which they seem to quite like living in. Before heading down to the main Yellow Eyed penguin area, we stopped to see some Baby Blue penguins which also lived there, you can see one sitting in it’s little hut in the photo below.

We watched the birds surfing in on the waves after a hard days work catching fish. This little dude took his time and sat out in the waves enjoying the scenery for a while.

But he eventually waddled his way out of the surf … 

and then met up with his little buddy who waddled back over the sandhill with him … 

but his friend treated it as a race … 

So he decided to lean back and have a stretch instead. All that fishing must have taken it’s toll!

He even posed for me

Rhyan McMillan and our uber awesome coach Jenel Bode

For her goodbye bash, she organised a goodbye party in a cave at Longbeach. It sounded boring, getting stuck in a cave all evening on a cold, wet, rainy day Luckilly Sarah was heading out to take Jane so I hitched a ride along so I could make an appearance and bail home early with Sarah. Darn glad I went though, coz it was totally awesome. The cave was wicked, the fire kept us all cosy warm, everyone had fun and there was loads of entertainment provided by my teammates who provided firebreathing, guitar and flame throwing demonstrations for us all. There were even baby blue penguins in the back of the cave hanging out with us!

Neil Dudley and Rob Owens demonstrating how much effort it takes to burn human skin

Neil Dudley pretending to be a dragon

Sarah MacDonald stumming on the guitar, Jane Soper sipping on her vodka and chocolate thingy

Neil Dudley trying to set himself on fire

The bonfire, Chris Laing in the background providing some music on his guitar

Bajeeze, two scary looking women! Thankfully they’re normally quite beautiful. The Beasts arch nemesis is on the left (she keeps scoring goals on us) Sheree Haslemore and ex Dunedinite Susan Green is baring her teeth on the right

Neil Dudley and Rob Owens lighting up the cave

Ryan sandwich? From left: Ryan Hellyer (moi), Rhyan McMillan and Ryan Wick.

Stupidly I didn’t think to take a camera, so thanks to Jenel Bode, Susan Green and Rhyan McMillan for the photos

The games were actually in May this year, but I didn’t get these photos till just now. Thanks for the photos Daria

Below is what the Hastings Caves look like if yer spinning round in circles – I dropped my camera

The bush outside the caves was very dense and full of wildlife including Wallabies, possums and the occasional Tasha and Lisa.

The route is quite old and hasn’t been maintained in a long time so picking out where you’re supposed to go was tricky. We didn’t get lost though However, later in the day the wind picked up incredibly strong. We were getting knocked off our feet all the time and we started to run out of water!

After much cursing from Daria and me getting quite dehydrated, we eventually made our way off the ridges, hence away from the wind and back to the water bottle I ditched earlier in the day.

All up it took us just over 13 hours to complete the tramp. En route I twisted my ankle a few times which I didn’t think was a major drama, however a week later was when I twisted the same ankle again and broke my leg