The next morning THANK GOD breakfast was buffet style, because loads of guests had arrived. Mind you it didnt stop the staff waking us up at 8am and taking away our beds. We went down the corridor to be greeted by the familiar smell of.. herring. Oh no!! But much to our relief for breakfast there was a choice of western style or japanese style. I have to say western style won and I have never been happier to see scrambled eggs in my life!! The breakfast w...

The only problem with a stay at a traditional Japanese guesthouse is that breakfast being served in your room (sounds all very nice on paper) means that at 8am the staff are in, folding up your beds and putting them away (hey I was sleeping on that!!), not to be seen again til the evening and that the breakfast itself is so so perculiar. It involved fish, herring I think so the first thing to greet your tired 8am brain is the very strong smell of fish. And then...

OK so I lied, where we went wasnt the Five Lakes area; thats an area with apparently MUCH more chance of seeing Mt Fuji, the Canadians who went there had it framed nicely in the window of the hot spring baths at their hostel! Hows that for luck! We went to Hakone. Departed Tokyo at Shinjuku station and managed not to get too lost in it, thank goodness (you could be in there for days) although the 'train' carriage that we had to sit on for about an hour was e...

Went to Harajuku today to see the fashion made famous when Gwen Stefani got so obsessed by it. Some of it is pretty amazing, like the girls who wear kind of full bo-peep outfits with bonnets and frilly dresses, the works. They like their frilly dresses. The hairstyles are cool too. But it wasnt quite as 'out-there' as Id expected. A lot of the outfits were basically just Goth and the main street for teenage fashion Takes***a could just as easily have been Ca...

Yesterday Beth and I visited Asakusa in northern Tokyo. This area is supposed to be Tokyo at its most traditional full of surviving craft shops etc. and its Buddhist temple Senso-Ji, the oldest temple in Tokyo, is visited by 20 million worshippers each year. We started at a magnificant red lacquer gate with a huge lantern, guarded by the god of thunder and the god of wind (of course!), and made our way along a street called Nakamise which was crammed with stalls ...