So　we arrived in Japan absolutely exhausted and feeling slightly ill after our Finnair flight, and immediately had to stand in a long queue to check that we did not have swine flu. How ridiculous. We finally got through immigration and made our way to the train station, only to have to negotiate the complicated train system - and we thought that Japans was supposed to be the most efficient in the world. To be fair, the train arrived on time and we made our way to our subway stop. We got off and found that we couldnt find our way to the hostel. Our first experience of rubbish directions to Japanese hostels. But then a nice man who we asked actually got off his bike and walked us to our hostel - we were soon to find out that pretty much all Japanese people are that nice.

We got to our hostel and dumped our stuff before going to Harajuku Street. It was extremely busy but we saw a few Harajuku girls so it was worth it. We then made our way back　to the hostel and went out to the supermarket to buy tea. This is easier said than done when you dont even recognise the alphabet let alone can speak the language, and all the pictures on the packaging seem to be completely unrelated to the food inside.

The nexy day we took a day trip to Nikko. This is a really nice little town out in the countryside, which is full of shrines and temples. It would have been better if all the temples werent cordoned off so that you had to pay to get in -all the boards and tape spoilt the view a bit. But we still had a really good day in Nikko.

Other things that we did in Tokyo were the electrical district - just absolutely full of discount electronics; The Imperial Plaza - we couldnt actually see the palace because there was a big wall around it blocking the view; we went to the toyshop in Ueno - this is a 7 storey toyshop which sells every cool thing that you could possibly want. Both Alice and I got quite overexcited in that shop! We also went to a traditional Japanese restaurant where you have to take your shoes off before entering. We had some quite wierd food, including raw horse meat and chicken ears! This was also all you can drink abd we ended up staying up until about 2 - doesnt sound too bad until you realise that we had to get up at 4:30am the next morning to go to Tsukiji fish market, an absolutely enormous market where all the fish seemed to be at least 20 times bigger than normal.

Overall we had an absolutely amazing time in Tokyo - everything in Japan is wierd and amazing, and the food always has hidden surprises which are usually disgusting.