Two Giants in Japan.

After the rigours of Russia what would Japan be like?

Tokyo a city of neon, advertising on every building, huge tv screens in the street and very busy as we arrived Friday night. And the toilets...after some fairly basic facilities in Russia the fully automated toilets were a revelation. Mind you it took a while to understand all the buttons and a few surprises as heated water at various pressures jets up from below.... and the heated seats. Enough said.
The trains are in everyway as good as described - clean, spacious and meticulously on schedule and the staff so helpful. In fact, all the people are so polite and helpful you have to be careful what you ask for as they seem to take it as a duty to help even diverting from where they are going to lead you to your destination if their English is not good enough to describe the route. A great and efficient way to see the country as you glide past.
In Tokyo the palace gardens and hunting park, the old quarter bazaar and Senzo-ji temple complex, sky tower and early morning fish market ( up at 6 am much to Catherine's displeasure) were amongst the highlights.

To my surprise, being very traditional in the food line, you can get used to raw fish and uncooked eggs for breakfast!! This combined with little dishes of unidentified pickled fish and vegetables makes every meal an experience but we are becoming proficient with the chopsticks. Asking for a spoon can cause some confusion as Catherine found out...on this note I can confirm a slight weight loss of 5 kg in the first month, so looking good for the whole trip.

The biggest downside is that apart from the trains and highland coaches everything is designed for people slightly...smaller than ourselves. You also have to be quite flexible to eat sitting on the floor. Luckily many of the floor chairs have backs so you don't have to support yourself as well or we may not have made it.

One of our rooms had a massage chair included, one traditional inn had paper dividing screens and in one there was only room for the bed with a capsule type toilet/shower similar to a plane. It was interesting to try and open the rucksacks. We anticipated the challenges of being close for seven months but we didn't realise how close this would be at times....

From Tokyo we ventured to the foothills of Mt. Fuji and our only disappointment so far. It was so misty and wet that although being 2000m up we still could not see the peak. This was followed by a lake cruise on a replica HMS VIctory alongside various pirate ships. This country is full of surprises, one moment beautiful landscapes, pottery, woodwork and culture, the next Disneyland and some really tacky stuff....a country of extremes. We ventured into a Pachinko parlour, hundreds of people sitting almost stationary playing some form of vertical pinball gambling game for hours at a time, and the noise of all the ball bearings shooting round the machines...swift exit.

Then into the Japanese Alps and a traditional ryokan with hot sulphur water running through the streets and we relaxed in a private open air rock pool and gazed at the stars. Strange having to shower and get clean before getting into the bath but it makes sense. By the way all the towns and streets are immaculately clean, no litter, graffiti anywhere, very nice. I still haven't quite worked out the smoking controls. It appears that you can definitely smoke inside in most places but it is more controlled outside on the street. Almost the opposite of the UK.

Now making our way South from Tokyo more castles, traditional towns and Samurai...

By the way thanks for all your comments as it makes writing this (and the struggle with the technology) worth while. We even managed a successful video link with Catherine's family. It doesn't seem home is so far away.