Konnichiwa!!!

We arrived in Tokyo at 9am Thursday morning with 0 hours sleep, but with a bottle of champagne courtesy of BA airlines. Found the hostel easily enough (http://backpackersjapan.co.jp/english/), but couldn't check in till 4pm, so we were literally falling asleep in the hostel bar. Once we finally checked in, we had a tour around the hostel which is 91 years old and has been remodelled in the style of old Japan. The garden was a traditional Japanese style garden with a little bridge and pond full of fish. There was also loads of big stones which were brought all the way from mount Fuji which are protected by the government. They're sacred so no one is allowed to go on them, but people can come and pray instead of taking the long trip to mount fuji. We had our own double room, which was small to say the least, but it was comfy...apart from the air con not working properly so became a bit of a sweat box!

For the first night, we went to meet Paul, Hilary's family friend who's lived in Tokyo for the past 4 years. He was kind enough to take us out and gives a few tips about Tokyo. We went to the restaurant Gonpachi which is where they filmed kill bill (the fight scene with the crazy 88's). Paul ordered for us, we had all sorts of delicious Japanese dishes including our first Tokyo sushi. After the meal we headed back home as we were dead beat!

Day two and we're feeling the jet lag (we are 8 hours in front). We had breakfast at the hostel which included two rice balls, green tea and a bowl of miso soup, very tasty but a bit strange having rice for breakfast! We then headed to Akihabara known as the Electric City, it is crazy full of all sorts of electrical goods and gaming stuff, Bryn and Alex would have loved!! Sky scrapers full of arcades, one had 5 floors of slot machines which were all pretty much being used by people from school kids to old grannies. We get the impression the Japanese have addictive personalities everywhere you go they are on their phones/technology. So after wandering around for a while we came across a young girl dressed as a maid trying to get people into the cafe. Paul had told us about these places so we thought we'd go and have a look!

The maid cafe was like being on a different planet...a weird creepy one! We had to get the lift to the 3rd floor of this building, we were nervous as we had no idea what we were walking into! The lift doors opened and there were several young girls all dressed up as maids screeching at the top of their voices and music blaring out as they served men and woman of all ages drinks and food. We were seated and paid the earth for two beers and the table then sat back and watched. So what we worked out was that people paid to come and be entertained by these maids who are very child like and they sing and join in games with them. You can pay to play a game with a maid and you get a present. One guy must have done this as all of a sudden everyone was asked to stand and we all played paper, scissors, stone. He won and they gave him a badge!! There were teddies all over the place and the girls kept making heart shapes with their hands and our maid introduced herself as a cat to us in broken English because she had cat ears and a tail on!! Jamie looked scared for his life at this point as we didn't know what would happen next so we downed our drinks and got out of there!

Day three and we got up at 4am to go and visit the Tsukji Fish Market. You could smell the market before you could see it and there were loads of little carts zooming about all over the place so you had to be careful where you stood. There were so many weird and wonderful fish to see and we have never seen tuna fish so big! On the edge of the market were fruit and veg stalls and home ware stalls. After wandering around for a while we went to one of the little sushi restaurants on the edge of the market for a 6.30am breakfast. The place was very small but they were very friendly and the sushi was amazing, you got loads!! As it was only 7am we thought we would head over to Shibuya which has the famous six-way intersection which sees about 100,000 people cross every hour....we got there and not one person was on the crossing, ha, ha!! We got a drink and wandered about and by the time we made our way back the crossing was packed and living up to its name. They even had a Lush there which I went to :)

Day four and we went to the Zoo, which is in the middle of Ueno park. (Ueno park is one of the oldest parks in Japan). It was only about a fiver in and was really cool. Went to see the panda's...there was only one though and it was just lying there...looked dead to be honest! Don't think it was though. We ended up spending about 5 hours in there. Saw pretty much everything as you can see from the pics. After we'd been to the zoo, we walked around Ueno park which is gorgeous. Massive ponds that were just full of water lilies and there was loads of little stalls scattered about the park selling food. There's a temple in the middle of the park on a man built island. We bought our fortune from the temple and then tied it to stand, where other people who had bought their fortunes had tied them up on what was basically a washing line. We were sat on a bench over looking one of the ponds in the park and some old Japanese bloke came up to us both and started chatting. He spoke really good English and we was chatting with him for a while about all sorts and then all of a sudden he asked Hilary if she was into Hentai...she asked what it was and its Japanese porn! He soon left when we told him NO! We went back to the electric city and it seemed a lot busier with it being a weekend. They close the road off on a weekend so people was just walking about everywhere. We did a bit of shopping and picked up a few electrical bargains.

Day four we decided to go to the Edo Tokyo Museum and the sumo museum in Ryogoku. But when we got there both of them was closed! Typical. So we got back on the underground and headed over to Asakusa for the day. We were glad we did as its one of the old towns of Tokyo. There's loads of market stalls leading up to the Sensouji Temple, which is the oldest temple open to the public in Japan. Just next door to it is a 5 story pagoda which is the tallest in Japan. As it was out first night we headed back to the hostel to pack.

A few things we learned about Tokyo:

• Very clean.
• Feels very safe
• Massive!
• The women have weird twisted legs.
• Modern & expensive.
• It was difficult to get food sometimes as we didn't know what we were ordering, so we lived off of noodles.
• Chop stick skills are a must.
• Everyone slurps their food.
• Its considered disgusting to blow your nose in public, but fine to sniff really loudly!
• Fake tweeting birds in the subway.
• Heated toilet seats.

We enjoyed Tokyo, and we're ready to move on to our next destination.

Lots of love

H & J