Flew from Tokyo to Hong Kong via Taipei again. Again I flew on a hello kitty plane. The same plane was used for both legs of the journey and I sat one behind the previous seat on the second leg. I was a little stressed since there was exactly 1 hour 20 minutes between the landing and take off in Taipei. Fortunately we landed half an hour early so I had adequate time. I also saw that there was rain forecast for Hong Kong and it was a longish walk from the metro st...

It's approximately a 2 hour bus ride from Tokyo to Mount Fuji. This week is a special holiday week and today is a special day, not quite sure what the importance is. This means extra traffic and people in the Fuji area. The countryside is very green and full of hills and mountains. We also passed a roller coaster park which has 2 rides in. The Guinness book of records. One is the highest at 79m high and the other has the most turns. Unfortunately, the peak of Mo...

Monday was a quiet day and did a little touring and more relaxing. I think I had a 4 hour nap. On Tuesday, I bought a hop on hop off bus ticket for Yen1700. There were 3 routes. The English commentary was pretty useless. There are Japanese guides on board who hardly stop providing Japanese commentary but the English version is pre-recorded and you hear music instead of commentary for 80% of the time. The only good thing about it is you get a sense of where to go ...

The subway system in Tokyo is massive but is very easy to use, in my opinion. There are actually 2 grids and I am only using the JR one which is quite comprehensive and gets me to wherever I need to go. All the stations and trains have very clear Japanese and English signage. They also allocate an alphabet and number to each station so it is even easier to use than the London one. Other cities could learn a few lessons from the Japanese! So for example, if you we...

I flew from Taipei to Tokyo in a plane covered in Hello Kitty drawings. The pillow and head rest cover had HK stuff on it. They gave free HK notebooks before boarding and the hostesses aprons also some HK stuff on it. The tops of the cutlery handles were in the shape of an HK head - enough to drive a grown man crazy! Going through immigration at Tokyo airport, for some reason they couldn't capture my entry after 2 tries. They then called a supervisor who took me...