I’ve been asked a couple of times for advice on visiting Japan and so I thought I’d just blog it and send everyone here.

I’m no expert, I’ve twice visited Japan, the first time was a hectic 9 day self-tour of Tokyo, Hakone, Kyota & Osaka. The second, a more leisurely 9 days in Tokyo as part of the Manga Tour of Japan which I definitely recommend although you should definitely have a few more days in Japan afterwards. http://www.japanjourneys.co.uk/manga.htm

Anyway, this isn’t a proper tourists guide to tokyo, more a anime/toy collectors guide and a memory jog for the next time I go but hopefully you may find it useful. Please feel free to let me know if anything has since closed down.

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This week it was my privilege to visit the Natural History and Science museums in London. Two of the most amazing places.

I have always enjoyed going to these museums, they are in the most amazing buildings and they have fantastic displays and exhibits. The main reason for being there is my sons love of the dinosaurs, he has been looking forward too going.

What can be more noble for an institution than to be one of the countries leading museums. They have a simple goal, to enlighten the general public to the amazing natural world around them, and to the wonders of science. These are things close to my heart and I am proud that my children love going to these places to the point they were happy to ignore the toy shops.

Tell me and I forget.
Teach me and I remember.
Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin

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We are still finding our feet here at BGR central command, but something I know is that we are enjoying our selfs. The blog is coming along nicely, so we are ready to try new things.

So the second phase of BGR is about to begin. We don’t only want to write a collaborative blog (though it is fun), we want to try out new things. We each have great ideas for fun projects bubbling away in our heads, and now we might just give them a go.

Nikobe has already started with a great idea that I really like, but I will let him explain that one. I have just started playing with my own idea, and it is already coming along nicely. Its going to take some time to make, then style. But it means I can get some practice in a new language (PHP) and get my head around the concepts in the CodeIgniter project. But so far, so good.

I will be explaining my idea very soon. Hopefully when I have something I can show, but even if I don’t I will put up what its all about, the decisions made, and what’s going to happen next.

Rough sketch I drew for some reason, thought I might as well share it.

After looking at the previous theme I though it would be nice if we could highlight the date of the post (I like to know how old the data I’m looking at is). So I came up with some rough ideas.