We arrived in Takayama and it was cold. f***ing cold. Ok so we missed all the UK snow but we at least partially made up for it here. It didn`t help that the only shoes we owned had holes in them. Alex was in a bad mood because that morning in Kyoto all of his Cambodia photos had been deleted from his hard drive and we couldnt work out why. During the entirety of the beautiful train journey through Japanese mountains he sat scowling and mumbling.

Our hostel was not the most conventional. It was a temple which had decided to open its doors to backpackers so that it could remain afloat. Unfortunately for us this extra revenue had not translated into solid walls being built. Though this made it insanely cold it also made it ridiculously cool. Luckily gas heaters and electric blankets made sleep reasonable. The walls were all traditional paper and wood making them very pretty. Only a thin layer of glass enclosing the walkway kept the snow out. The real reasn we came to Takayama was for its sake. Hold off memories of foul tasting vodka/lager/crap for a moment as this stuff was the real deal. As the monk in our temple pointed out, the stuff in europe is used for cooking over here (he has taken to exporting the good stuff). There wasnt all that much to do in Takayama but we were there at the right time to do a sake brewery tour, an opportunity we felt should not be missed. The tour was in fact very definately missable. If you had blinked you would have missed it, and if you didnt speak Japanese you would not have understood a word. It did however have a redeeming feature...free Sake. MMMMM this stuff was good, and served warm was exactly what you wanted in the cold. We sensed an opportunity. Many competing breweries in Takayama offer free tastings to entice you to buy. We felt obliged to spend the day wandering from brewery to brewery furthering our sake education and progressively losing our senses.

"have we been in this one yet?"

"I have no idea, lets try it"

After running out of places to get it free we took the plunge and got a cheap but niceish one. We returned to the temple and proceeded to work our way through the bottle. Some Belgian people we met turned out to be wizzes with computers and solved Alex's photo disaster by destroying the dodgy virus he had picked up somewhere in Asia. Wahoo, and a reason to drink more sake.

What the Japanese fail to mention about their national drink is the particularly leathal 'sake head' which accompanies it. We got on the train the next day to Tokyo feeling pretty delicate. It was here that we stumbled across one of the many incredible technological advances in Japan. You can turn seats round on the train! Genius...why dont we have this in England? Like you can turn the whole row of three seats around on the bullet trains. Its awesome. This kept us entertained for most of the journey, which the Japanese simultaneously found quite entertaining.

Tokyo, the worlds largest city by quite a margin was a bit of a shock after the tiny town of Takayama. The culture shock is not quite as intense as portrayed in `Lost in Translation'. In fact the thing thats hard to get your head round in Tokyo is the way it manages to be both so similar and so foreign all at once. Unlike many other cities we've been to, Tokyo does not have many conventional tourist attractions. Instead the thing to do is explore its many districts, each of which has a unique character. Probably the most famous of these is Harajuku, in which you find dissafected teenagers dressed as manga characters, hairstyles which defy gravity and quirky shops (something like the lanes to be honest). Another disrict of interst is Akihabara (or electric city) in which you can purchase any electrical good ever produced. We got a chance to play with some of the latest additions at the sony centre which included 3-D Tv's and 3-D gaming as well as headphones that blew your mind. Fern however left dissapointed as there was no sign of the promised robot dog. Lies. Another highlight was our visit to the Ghibli museum where we met up with Fern's friend from school, Laura (she didnt live in the museam, we just met up with her there). We got to see a new short film which was incredible, as well as explore the building which was built around huge spiral staircases and three foot high door frames. We were denied access to the massive cushion cat-bus, which apparently only those under five would enjoy. What blatant discrimination. We sat, jealous of the childen who were allowed to enjoy their giant squishy playground, and took consolation in the vast array of amazingly cool ghibli paraphanalia for sale.

After dinner with Laura and co we played around in a Japanese arcade and watched in awe as a man played the electric drums so fast you couldn`t see his hands move. It was just plain silly. How could someone be this good at anything? We were amazed.

One final highlight of Tokyo was its fish market, the largest in the world. We arrived there at 5 in the morning to see the tuna auction in which a flurry of bidding secures restaurants all over tokyo with fish for the day. The market itself is huge and houses every fish imaginable. We had breakfast nearby of the freshest tuna money can buy. Delicious does not do it justice.

Sad to be leaving Japan, we got our plane to the warmer climes of New Zealand (which by this time, Fern`s toes were particularly looking forward to).