February Thursday 6th. News of the Diamond Princess docking at Yokohama arrives in the evening via Facetime with my husband back home. He and our son are home as neither wanted to come to Japan with us. I’m aware of the virus but it’s hubby that’s following the news and keeping us informed.

At this stage we are still not worried. I would say we were confident we would be fine. We still wore our masks and used our hand sanitiser and wipes while we were out.

For the rest of the week we were walking close to 25,000 steps a day and I continued to fall in love Japan and the people. We visited Shinjuku and Harajuku, caught up with two exchange students who stayed with us three year past for school exchange. There was an earthquake (actually there a quite a few but this one we actually noticed), not a big one but our room shook a little. We did A LOT of shopping and already our bags were going to be tight.

February Monday 10th we had to be out of our room by 10am and from there we walked back to Ueno Station and then to Tokyo Station to catch the Shinkansen to Osaka. With talk now about the virus growing a small part of us was please to be leaving Tokyo but I sure was going to miss it.

Our arrival into Osaka was uneventful. We caught a taxi to our airbnb and found ourself 10 minutes for Dontonburi - the most amazing shopping district I have ever seem. It’s miles upon miles of shops and honestly after an hour with no end in sight we called it a night.

Getting food in Japan is super easy and cheap. And we always picked up something on the way home to eat back in our room. We were Facetiming home every other evening and being kept up to date about the virus and by this stage I was checking the news for anything that might relate to Japan. I wasn’t worried but I was keeping an eye on things.