The last entry. Today was uneventful. It rained and it was freezing, but I spent most of the day in the underground shopping centres of the the train stations. I came back to the hotel room early to pack and be ruthless in my throwing out of things. Which is harder than it sounds. Tomorrow I check out and then, probably, spend the day hanging around the airport. At 6.25pm I can check my baggage. At 8.25pm my plane leaves. At 9.25pm my plane lands in Osaka...

Today and yesterday were days for SHOPPING! I went exploring though west Tokyo. First stop - Shinjuku. Shinjuku's kind of boring and it was really really cold. It's more of an office area than anything else. I wandered through the park for a bit. There were a lot of homeless people and a tarpolan shanty town with businessmen eating their lunch right next to them without batting an eyelid. The park also had a gorgeous shrine in it that I seemed to find the ...

Yesterday: Ahhh~ no entry for yesterday. But that's okay; yesterday was a bit of a flop. I didn't get up until late and then I thought I'd go see the Imperial Palace. Except that Tokyo Station feeds straight into the Yaesu Shopping Mall (Underground shopping centre) and by the time I'd finally convinced myself to leave it I was all turned around. I found an exit to the street level and then proceded to spend a couple of hours completely lost in Tokyo. I sti...

Went to Akihabara today and played in Electric Town. It's so big. Shop after shop after shop with level after level after level of fun things. Gorgeous cameras and pretty phones and huge tvs and tiny laptops and weird electronic things that you never knew you wanted. I just browsed at the start - it was a little overwhelming, but then I got into it and really started exploring building after building. I spent over an hour in one store alone. So tempted by s...

I'm in Tokyo! Checked out perfectly on time and with a lovely clean room. I was going to just go to the subway but it was impossible to get my huge heavy bag down so many stairs so I walked the half hour in the fog (it wasn't quite raining) with all my luggage and went to Osaka then Shin-Osaka station. Got a ticket and left of the bullet train at 11.40am. Got into Tokyo station exactly 3 hours later. To the minute. Tokyo station is huge and confusing. Prob...