Well we made it to Japan! The flight was 12 hours but to be honest I thought it was quite quick - especially since I slept for over 6 hours! BA were great and we were well looked after.

So we arrived in Tokyo Narita at 9am and my Uncle Yukio meet us at the airport and took us to our hotel in the Shinagawa district in Tokyo. Narita is quite a distance from Tokyo so it took more than an hour to get to the hotel. We were feeling pretty good after getting so much sleep on the plane so we were ready to start exploring Tokyo.

After a quick shower and something to eat we went to the Imperial Palace Gardens. This is like a large park area in Tokyo which is home to the Emperor and his family. You can only visit certain areas as this is the Royal home but it really was very beautiful. There is a lot of history relating to the shogun taking residence here in order to escape the emperor in Koyto - the ancient capital of Japan.

In the ponds here there were lots of Carp which were huge and we also seen some young women in Kimonos.

From here we moved on to the Shinjinku Shrine. This was really nice as we seen two couples getting married and since today is Paul & I's 1 month wedding anniversary it was particulary nice.

We travelled about Tokyo on the train as since it was a sunday it wasn't too busy but I will tell you more about how busy the trains get later.

We then went back to the hotel for short nap then out for some dinner. I must admit our first night in Tokyo and we did not eat Japanese food - we ate in Outback and it was amazing!! Afterwards we went back to our hotel and went up to the 39th floor for drinks over looking Tokyo at night. It was totally amazing and I even had a glowing cocktail!

We then had a great night's sleep to prepare us for the next day of exploring!