Tokyo

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After our 12 hour flight we finally arrived in Tokyo and another hour later we arrived in our hostel. ALL we wanted to do was sleep in our teeny Japanese size room but as we're such troopers we managed to stay awake until an amazing 8p.m. We went for a wee walk, had our first Japanese meal and unknown to us wandered into the grounds of Senso-ji temple.

The next day, after our 14 hour sleep, we went to Senso-ji temple (and realised that we'd been there the night before). There was a row of little shops running up to the entrance selling Japanese souveniers - fans, chopsticks etc. Once through the gates there was a huge incense burner which people put incense into and wave the smoke over them for good health.We gave it a go but it just stung my eyes and dried my lips out so it had the opposite effect really. We didn't go into the temple itself because there seemed to be people praying and we didn't want to interrupt! We got our fortunes outside which entailed shaking a numbered stick out of a container and finding the matching paper. I was told to "stand still on the shoreline" and Caitriona wanted a refund for hers because it wasn't very good 😉

We bumped into a parade then which called "Daimyo Gyoretsu" which comemorates the feudal lord's procession along the road between Edo and Kyoto. I didn't take that sentence straight out of the guidebook, I swear, this is the kind of stuff I know. Anyway the parade had lots of geishas, samurais doing tricks on a ladders and a dragon. Was great craic!

This was also the day of icky food and it started here at Senso-ji temple. We got noodles which had some mystery fish in it. We have no idea what it was but it tasted mank. Then to make things better decided to get sushi. Obviously, this was a bad idea. Anyone know what salmon roe is? Turns out they're eggs The lesson that I took from our sushi lunch was that sushi makes Claire retch.

Went to the electronics district that night which was great, lots of lights, music and people shouting trying to sell their cameras, mp3 players and dvds. We were expecting to find lots of cheap stuff but everything was the just as expensive as Ireland.

The following day we planned to go see the Imperial Palace. We set of to the Imperial Gardens because like fools we thought that, were there's a garden there's a palace. After a wander around the gardens we realised that there were two Imperial Gardens and we were in the wrong one. We decided to walk out a different way and on our way we found "The final checkpoint before the palace". So once again, like fools, we thought if there's a checkpoint for the palace the palace must be close. It wasn't. 5 hours later we still hadn't found it. So we gave up and I'd appreciate it if no one mentions this again, it'll take a while for us to get over it.

After our 4 days in Tokyo we headed of to Kyoto on the bullet train (the fastest train in the world....in the 70s. Sssh! Don't take it away from us!)

- Claire

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