Konnichiwa!
As always, hope that you're all well!?
So…TOKYO. Had a mammoth travel day last Wednesday involving a taxi, two planes, a train and a metro journey. We finally arrived into the right area of the city, again lugging our big bags. It felt FREEZING, the coldest we've been in a long time! We must have walked around for about a hour and a half trying to find our hotel. - we kept going into 7-11s trying to ask for directions but as we soon learned, hardly any English is spoken here and there's hardly any English sign-posting or general writing anywhere (we keep pointing at pictures on menus and hoping for the best!). As always we were linguistically-challenged ourselves but we finally found it, what a relief! We'd heard that all Japanese accommodation tends to be on the 'compact' side. We weren't disappointed on this front! Ha.
We attempted to properly tackle the metro the next day. The system is run by three or four different companies meaning that an all day pass isn't valid on certain lines (just to add to the confusion!). The map looks as scary as the London underground would to a first-timer but (thanks to my Tokyo travel book) we've actually managed it quite well. The people here are generally very polite and reserved yet seem to find us hilarious, at least once a day someone will nudge their friend, nod in our direction and start laughing. Honestly we're not being paranoid, two girls on the Metro today were in absolute hysterics, they were looking at the floor trying to control themselves. We're not bad sports though, we laugh along too! There really are very few westerners here, it's definitely the farthest from home that we've felt, absolutely love it though, a real adventure!
Made our way to Ginza on Thursday, the famous upmarket shopping district renowned for the famous 4 chome road crossing. We visiting the Sony building to view the latest (tiny) mp3 players and the 3D TVs. We also found a huge Forever 21 store (an American cross between Topshop and H&M). We've learnt that 'Konnichiwa' is a formal hello whereas 'Moshi Moshi' is more commonly used. The staff in Forever 21 literally shout it at the top of their voices all day long whilst they're working, so funny. We bought a few items of warmer clothing and I bought some shoes which needless to say, KILLED my feet the next day and were never to be worn again! Briefly visited the famous department stores Wako and Mitsokoshi and had a cake and a drink in a café in the Ricoh building overlooking the famous crossing. People are quite culturally regimented here - they literally will not cross the road until the green man shows, even when there are no cars in sight! The concept of ordering a mineral water in a restaurant or café is very strange to the locals, it's usually not on the menu as they tend to bring you a free one anyway. There's not a smoking ban over here but smoking willy nilly walking down the road is prohibited so every café and restaurant is full of a foggy smoke cloud - seems so strange now.
Visited the Tokyo Tower the following day - it is fractionally higher than the Eiffel tower but the base seemed smaller. Another lovely sunny day - ironically after buying our extra layers it was probably warm enough to go without! We then visited the Yasukuni Shrine - dedicated to the Japanese war dead, the architecture really is beautiful here. We visited the Yushukan War Memorial Museum next - saw a copy of R
ear Admiral R.Ichimaru of the Japanese Navy's
note to Roosevelt at the end of the second World War - very interesting.
We visited the Harajuku area of Tokyo on Saturday, my guidebook told me that this was the place to see the local teenagers dressed up in their quirkiest clothing - it did not disappoint! I tried to sneak a few pictures but wasn't particularly good at it, hence the blurry images! We visited the sacred Mejii Jingu Shrine in Yoyogi Park later on the same day - families bring their children there for their first official temple visit and many have their weddings blessed there - I managed to take a few pictures of the kiddies all dressed up for the occasion - so cute!
We moved to a new hotel in a different part of Tokyo on Sunday - decided to hop on the metro and visit the Tokyo Dome as we had a few hours to kill before we could check in. The Japanese are baseball fanatics - regular games are held at the Dome - we've seen a few on TV - even their applause is very regimented - short, sharp bursts of loud clapping! There's a whole complex outside the Dome and as soon as we spotted the massive rollercoaster, we knew that it was a must. Huge drop! Visited Roppongi Hills later the same day - an ultra modern shopping/entertainment complex, we had dinner overlooking the entire city with the Tokyo Tower in sight - lovely.
Visited another bustling area of the city, Shibyu, the following day - neon lights and skyscrapers at each and every turn. Another famous road-crossing site, I snapped some pictures of the action, it's crazy that there are this many people in the world! Really liked the atmosphere in this area, lots of buskers and street dancers - we've been back a few times since.
We visited Fuji-Q Highland Park on Tuesday, a theme park about an hour and 40 minutes out of Tokyo, at the base of Mount Fuji. Annoyingly the bus that we'd planned to catch was fully booked so we didn't arrive until nearly midday. Absolutely beautiful setting for a theme park, Mount Fuji was constantly in the background looking over us. It was definitely a lot colder out of the city and for some reason Matt had decided to leave the coat (which he had bought to keep him warm whilst here) back at the hotel! Needless to say, he froze, and despite having three layers on, so did I - our first real taste of winter! One of the three main rides was closed as it was too windy, disappointing in itself but this also meant that the queues for the other two main rides were ridiculous! We ended up only getting on two rides all day (I know! ha) but to be fair they were probably the best things that we have ever been on.
Eejanaika is the world's tallest and fastest 4D roller coaster and I can honestly say that we have both never experienced anything like it. The second was one which shoots you from stationary to ridiculous speeds in a matter of seconds - this one took you from 0-107 miles per hour in 2 seconds - no joke. Loved it! What sad little adrenaline junkies! Ha. On a side note, managed to sneak a picture of some girls posing for a photo whilst doing the infamous peace/v sign with their hands - the people here do this EVERYTIME that they have a photo taken - even the little children!

On the food front we've found that a lot of the food is poached in water/liquid - I took a picture of something yummy in our local 7-11. We were trying to find some breakfast the other day and came across this bakery - the only thing that we liked the look of was this croissant with a sausage in HA. It was a full on frankfurter (which tasted of smoked bacon) in a croissant - I must say we quite enjoyed! On another side note, there's a big cycling culture in Japan, it's nice to see that nobody ever locks their bike up- I suppose we are in one of the safest cities in the world!
OK, once again enough rambling from me - flying to Singapore for five nights tomorrow - looking forward to getting back into some heat but will be sad to leave this place….
Take care, email when you can xxxxxxxxxxxx