But then there are also other moments where it seems as though somebody has pressed fast-forward.
Obviously it's all relative to what I have been doing, and how much I've been enjoying myself.
I find that it's been much easier to 'entertain' myself for longer periods of time in this final part of the journey, and I'd say that my days have been much longer as frequently I've gone out earlier than I would do usually, and on many occasions I've come back much later.
Probably since Vietnam I think the average time I've spent 'occupied' doing different activities has gone up, and also so has the number of different things I've been doing.
The cities I've visited in Korea, China and now in Japan are much more spread out than those in Malaysia, Thailand and Laos, meaning that more often than not it takes me a lot longer to get back which is something I don't often factor into things because I'm usually pre-occupied with whatever I've been doing.
I've discussed the element of time on many occasions in this blog, and I naturally it has played a huge factor in my journey, starting with how long I've been away from England for, down to how finely I can cut it before checking out of my hotel in the morning.
In the last couple of days I had to buy myself a new watch because I have lost-slash-misplaced the one I brought with me. I've always been someone who wears a watch, and I feel strange not having one on my wrist. I genuinely feel like it would feel more odd for me to go out of the house with a watch and no clothes on rather than fully clothed with no watch - I feel like it is actually part of wardrobe each day.
In the same way that I put my shoes on to go outside, I always put a watch on before I leave.
It's more of a ritual than a necessity these days as I rarely have any time constraints and there aren't many points when I need to know what time it is - perhaps when it comes to eating lunch and dinner, but I've tended to eat whenever I feel hungry in both cases.
I'm pretty amazed that I have an awareness to days and dates as aside from letting me know when I am going to move on they are fairly inconsequential to the journey. Perhaps if I was just worked from stop to stop and going to my next destination with less planning then I'd be less concerned. Sometimes I do have to remind myself what day it is.
I think the best days are when time doesn't really play a factor in anything that I'm doing. If I'm really enjoying what I'm doing then I guess it seems as though time is passing really quickly, and before I know it the day is over - that's the sign of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
Japan has definitely provided me with plenty of opportunities to be completely engaged and I feel like time has definitely been travelling very quickly in this last stage of my journey.
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Currently being in my fourth different stop in the Far-East makes it the country which I have visited the most cities in, and also where I will stay for the longest.
Whilst everything else has been chopped and changed, Japan's impact on my journey has remained the most influential. Aside from England, I don't think there are any other countries in the world that I have visited so many different cities in - perhaps the US, but I'd have to go through them and count to check.
My time in scenic Kyoto was at an end today, and I was having to go through an early check-out experience again this morning. I think it must be the standard in Japan that check-out time is 10am as the Cabin Hotel also required me to leave at the same time as my two hotels in Tokyo, and the first one I stayed in on my visit to Yokohama.
I don't mind checking out so early, although usually I don't appreciate the early morning. The issue comes when I can't usually check into my next hotel until the afternoon, and it was fine when I was catching flights to different countries that would see me arrive a little later in the day. But today for example I needed to ride the train from Kyoto to Kobe which is a journey of just over an hour.
I had so much extra time this morning that I walked from the hotel to the station after checking out, just so that I didn't get there quite so quickly. I wouldn't mind doing other things, but carrying my bags around to do anything is never ideal, and usually the hotel I am checking out from has a policy where they won't look after your bag after you've checked out, where as the hotel you're checking into will allow you to leave your bag there if you're early.
So that was my plan this morning; get on the train to Kobe, find my hotel and then if I was really early then at least they'd be able to look after my bag whilst I went exploring for a little while.
In order to kill some more time when I got to the station I went and used a vending machine that I'd seen which exchanged currency. There were a few countries at the beginning of my journey where I didn't quite use up all the money I expected to and I have been saving it for the right moment to exchange. The problem is that they're all quite low value (less than £10), but I also had some Thai Baht and Taiwanese New Dollar which were worth slightly more so I used them in order to get myself some extra money.
I wouldn't say that Japan is expensive; although I have had to pay quite a lot of money out of the cash that I brought with me on train journeys.
Paying for the Shinkansen train took a significant wedge out of the money and it took me ages to find a cash machine to withdraw from on that frustrating day in Tokyo, but aside from that my main costs have just been food and drinks as usual. There aren't a lot of things where I've gone out and spent a lot of money, but as I mentioned the amount of train journeys I've had to take since being here, and to get myself around the city has probably factored significantly into why I needed to get some more money changed.
Sadly for me that didn't take up a great deal of time, and so reluctantly I went and brought a ticket to Kobe which is the city I am staying in next.
Kobe is pretty close to Kyoto, and the JR Train services run out there which would take about an hour.
In a bid to try to fill some more time there was a train to Kobe on the platform when I got there which was a 'Rapid Express' train. Usually I'd like to get somewhere quickly, but as I wasn't in a rush I caught the 'Local' train which stopped at pretty much every station en-route and would therefore be slower.
The journey itself was fine, and it was a pretty quiet train when it left Kyoto as everyone going to one of the major stations jumped on the train I chose to avoid. It filled up on a couple of occasions, but one or two stops later everyone filtered out, and by the time I arrive at Kobe at about 12:20pm it was getting close to the terminal stop and was therefore pretty quiet.
The thing which I'd figured out last night was that I should actually be able to walk from the train station to my hotel, and I thought that this might allow me to get to know the area a little bit better, but also bring me closer to the actual check-in time.
The hotel I'm staying in about a 1.5km walk from Kobe Station and following the main road I eventually came across it without too many issues. How is it that when I need it to take me a while it doesn't, but when I want to get somewhere before it gets dark, I end up there ridiculously late.
Even though it's named after the city, Kobe Station isn't the main one in the city, with Sannomiya taking that honour, although having walked from the station to my hotel it doesn't seem like I'll have too many issues getting around everywhere quite speedily.
I think it was 1pm when I eventually got to the hotel, and I asked the lady behind the counter if they could look after my bags until it was time to check-in thinking that I'd go for a walk and then come back in an hour or too once it got to 3pm.
I picked up a map from the receptionist and set about plotting a couple of things that I could do in order to fill some time.
On my way over I'd seen a book shop which I figured I could walk around for a little while, and also there seemed to be a shopping arcade which led to a park nearby so I thought I'd start there and see how I got on.
The park was quite small, but it was packed with people and it looked like there was something going on there as there were lots of stalls set out with carnival games and also a number of food vendors spread around. I wasn't sure if that was the norm or if it was a one-off, but it certainly had brought lots of people out to the park despite it looking rather cloudy overhead.
After walking through the bookshop and leafing through some English magazines which had been translated into Japanese I decided to get myself some lunch and then consult the map.
It appeared that there was another park close by which I thought I'd walk to, and from there I saw that I could walk in a loop back to the hotel.
I'm not sure how great the scale on the map was as Suma Rikya Park didn't look that far away, but I think it maybe took me about an hour to walk to. I was starting to think I'd walked past it as the map I have isn't massively detailed, but I saw a sign for it near a train station eventually which let me know I had been going the right way.
Strangely the park was split in half over a major road. The first part I walked to looked as though you had to pay to get in, but after I saw a couple of people walking straight through the gate, I just did the same thing and shuffled off up a hill very quickly before anyone said anything! In this part of the park there was a botanical gardens, and then right at the top of the ramp I'd walked up was an area with a couple of fountains and lots of different coloured roses planted everywhere:
I walked down from here a different way, and on each of the two levels further down there was a small waterfall:
I climbed up another hill as I went across to what looked to be the larger side of the park, and there also appeared to be something going on here too:
There were lots of people around, and a stage had been set up at the front with a bang playing when I first got there. I walked in a loop around the whole thing admiring the flowers and the view.
It appeared that there was usually a huge fountain here, although I guess it had been turned off due to whatever was going on.
I felt like I'd spent long enough in the park, but before continuing on my way I noticed that there were two options for getting down the hill - a ramp or some stairs. As I got close to the stairs I noticed that not only were there stairs to go down, but there was also a massive slide to the bottom which looked like fun as children slid down it delighted to beat their parents to the bottom:
From here I carried on walking through the rest of the park towards the exit, and in the distance as I got back onto the road I could see what looked like the top of a very impressive pagoda sticking out.
There was a sign which said that Sumadera Temple was only 600m away, and I presumed that's what I saw sticking out through the trees so ventured off in that direction.
A couple of people followed me along as the path disappeared and started continuing by the side of the road. I didn't feel like this was totally the right way, and once I got to a tunnel with no pedestrian walkway whatsoever, I noticed that the people behind me were disappearing off down a staircase that must have been hidden somewhere so I walked back in the direction I'd just come from in order to not be run over!
Walking down a very dark path which was extremely sheltered by the trees and had lots of wet leaves on it, I managed to keep my footing and eventually come out in a park at the bottom which had a short path towards Sumadera:
As well as the very impressive pagoda there were a number of traditional wooden buildings and statues in what was quite a large but very peaceful temple.
I walked around the whole thing admiring the scenery, and then came across the pagoda which was buried in the trees and therefore pretty impossible to take a photograph of:
I got up close and around the outside there were stone statues which looked as though they had pestals and mortars in front of them, but I'm not really sure what what was for:
Whether it was the striking red colour, or just because I like the type of tower pagodas that this temple had, but it was a very impressive sight from close up also:
Around the corner there was another temple building which had some great landscaping around it, and I can imagine that it is a very peaceful place for the monks at all times:
I walked back up the stairs and back to the main road where I got back to the street where I'd crossed the road from the park before going to the temple, and I decided to walk down it seeing on the map that this would lead to the coastline, one of the many fantastic features of Kobe.
From where I was standing you could see that there were a number of boats out on the water....
....and when I got down there I discovered that there was also a little stoney beach also:
It had now become quite a humid day, and there were plenty of people sitting out on the stand, but the majority were fishing.
In the distance I could see that there was what appeared to be a fishing pier, and inquisitive I decided to head off in that direction.
I had to walk across the beach which went from stones to sand, before eventually being covered in massive rocks as I got closer and closer to the pier.
It was indeed covered with fisherman and I had to pay a small 'sightseeing fee' to walk out there, but immediately it became money well spent as very soon I could see the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge which is a famous suspension bridge in this part of the country:
I also got a great view in the opposite direction of the downtown harbour area of Kobe, and from the direction that I'd just walked I could also see the hills which the park I'd visited was buried in:
There were lots of people out there with their rods on the pier and it was interesting to just stand and watch them and observe if they caught anything or not.
The view into the distance was also great, although some of the low cloud made the suspension bridge look a little ghostly as well.
Spending a bit of time out on the pier, the sun disappeared and I then started to head back in the direction of dry land as the temperature dropped.
The tide appeared to be coming back in at this point so I headed back to the main beach itself, walking back across the big rocks, and then I spent about an hour or so walking back in the direction of my hotel in order to finish my circuit.
I'd seen on the map that there was a point where eventually you had to head in land in order to get back towards the centre of Kobe so I walked down the coastline until I reached that area - again it was massively mis-proportioned by the map as I think I was walking for an hour or so again.
On the corner of the land I reached the Noevir Stadium of Kobe which is where the city's J-League team places and also where three games were hosted in the 2002 World Cup:
I turned back towards the land, and walked back up and over a bridge which gave you a good view over the city. It wasn't the most spectacular, but I guess it shows that the sunset can enhance anything:
It took a while to walk, and by this point the sun had completely disappeared so I was relying on road signs to guide me back to the right place, and eventually I started seeing signs for Shinkaichi Station which is the closest one to where I'm staying. Thankfully my hotel sticks out a mile and has the name of it written in big black letters on a white sign so it's easy to see.
I was checked in, and a very nice Japanese man explained that someone had been kind enough to take my bags up to my room for me, and that all he needed to do was take a copy of my passport.
It has taken maybe five hours longer than I expected, but I took a quick visit to the shop and then headed up to my room in order to enjoy the rest of my evening, rest my weary legs and plan out what to do for the rest of the time here.
Time After Time
Cyndi Lauper (1983)
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