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 ...

Today we went to see Kabuki Theatre which Ive always wanted to see. We took a friend from the hostel, another Canadian named Gabriel. Found the Kabuki-Za Theatre in Ginza relatively easily after navigating through the massive Ginza subway station, shops everywhere. Unfortunately when we got there there was a long queue and the morning performance sold out so we waited an hour and watched the afternoon performance instead. We got cheap seats, about a fiver so ...

The next morning its not funny at all. For unknown reasons Beth wakes me at 9am and it feels like there are skewers through my head. It hurts a lot. She wakes me up a couple of hours later. It still hurts, I go back to sleep. She wakes me up to tell me that she and the two Canadian guys we know are going to the Imperial Palace. So I get up. Have my usual cheesy toast - Japan does a good cheesy toast and its cheap - and coffee and feel better. So we enter ...

so right after my last blog I went for a sleep because I was knackered after hours and hours of travelling. then when I woke up and climbed out of my capsule I misjudged it and scraped all up my back on the one above. it hurt a lot but i managed not to scream as there were other people sleeping. really wanted to though. beth and i went to get some lunch and had japanese curry and rice in this fantastic traditional style restaurant just up the street. as soon as ...