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We arrived in Tokyo after quite a traumatic flight, poor Sarah and Lisa had nail marks in their hands from me squeezing them so tightly! We were thrown from side to side as we took off, there was a lot of turbulence and we had to circle around Tokyo airport for an extra 40 minutes because the weather was too awful to land in! The only saving grace was that we had the best plane food ever which we happily tucked into and rated highly in our survey!

We got the Narita Express to Tokyo station and decided to walk from there to find the DLA Tokyo office, where Ian works, to meet him. We all immediately liked the feel of Tokyo, the area Ian works in felt a bit like Canary Wharf - but on a much larger scale - and it was so clean and neat and tidy. We were walking in the rain which wasn't particularly pleasant but were too excited to care!!

We eventually found the DLA office and got a taxi to Ian's where we showered and changed within half an hour (miracle!) and went out for dinner at Gompachi restaurant for some delicious Japanese food. George Bush has eaten at this restaurant before (and was apparently very fussy!) and it is also famous because Tarantino got the idea for the last scene in Kill Bill at this restaurant. The Japanese have a custom of welcoming you when you walk into somewhere so the whole place roared a greeting at us as we sat at our table and again when we left which was very funny.

We then headed to Roppongi Hills to a bar called A971 where we met up with Ian's friend Pete who had a friend, Pan, from London staying with him for the week and Ian's other friend Foxy. We sunk quite a few bottles of wine and us girls got very excited about our first Japanese toilet experience where you can press a button for a pretend flushing noise to mask the sound of you doing your business!

We woke up late the next day and had decided to have a lazy day in the luxury of Ian's apartment. Having come from some third world countries, horrendous bathroom conditions and prison cell accommodatin we were in pure heaven! Ian's apartment is amazing, we all slept very comfortably in his king size bed, made full use of the hot power shower, big fluffy towels, the bath that talked to you in Japanese and ran itself and the toilet with a control panel and the lid lifts up on your arrival! Some toilet seats in Japan are even heated and they have jet sprays, deoderizers and dryers!! I attemped my first bit of exercise in 6 weeks and just managed 1/2 an hour on the treadmill which proved a little difficult in my heavy trekking trainers but the view of Tokyo from the 30th floor helped the time pass!

We went out for a wander late afternoon and had a nice lunch at the Indigo cafe where a very friendly Japanse waiter went out of his way to find and draw us a map to the local supermarket. The Japanse people are lovely and very pleasant and polite. They wear face masks to cover their nose and mouth if they have a cold so as not to spread germs, they all queue and do not push and barge into you, the streets are very orderly and even the traffic looks like it queues up in a straight line at the lights and the cars aren't beeping madly or trying to weave in and out and overtake. The subways are easy to travel on with no one barging into you unlike the underground at home and if you were to start forming a queue for nothing in particular they would probably join in it anyway! Having gone from countries where you had to constantly watch your belongings and guard your purse etc with your life, in Japan, you could leave your purse on a table in the bar and no one would touch it and if you dropped it on the floor someone would rush to pick it up for you (obviously i didnt leave anything out on display after my previous experience in Ko Tao - better to be safe than sorry!)

....Deaks's cooked us a delicious spaghetti bolognaise that night and we watched "Lost In Translation" which was filmed in Tokyo so was cool to watch while we were there and it featured the New York Bar & Grill which Ian was going to take us to and the busiest crossing in the world which we were also going to visit at some point.

On the Thursday, we had planned to go to Disneyland, i wasn't looking forward to it as much as the girls were as i've thrown up 3 times before on rides and have avoided theme parks for the last 10 years so thought i might be spending the day as the bag holder! It was actually very exciting walking in (or skipping should i say!), the Disney music reminded me of the brilliant holiday I had in Orlando with my family when i was younger and because the Japanese were so over enthusiastic and friendly they created the same atmosphere as the American Disneyworld.

I'd decided as i'd paid all that money to go i was going to be brave and test out the rides - especially since i'd saved a sick bag from the plane for the occasion! Space Mountain was up first and i didnt like it AT ALL! I couldn't walk in a straight line when i came off and felt a bit sick. I also got dragged on to a simulator, again armed with sick bag, and i really thought i was going to be ill - how embarrassing would that have been!!! It started to chuck it down by this point so we put our "cag in a bag" cagoules on (how lucky we brought them away with us!) and soldiered on in the torrential rain not wanting to waste the day!

Because i felt so ill i had to request some nice calm rides so this time it was my turn to bully Deaks into going on a ride because she hates "It's a small world". The day was really funny we got absolutely drenched, completely soaked to the skin but persevered around the park with Deaks navigating us with her soggy map! I actually started to enjoy the rides - even the scary ones!!! The park was closing early for a special event so they were offering a reduced price ticket into Disneysea so we went there too and the girls bullied me into Tower of Terror the scariest ride there and i loved it i can't wait for a trip to Thorpe Park or Alton Towers when i get home now!

That evening we met up with Ian's friends again and also Natalie, a trainee from our DLA Liverpool office, and Pete, a friend of his who works in Hong Kong. We ate at an okonomiyake restaurant where you have a hot plate in the middle of your table, order the ingredients and cook your own food. It was really good, you can make Japanese pizza type things and i made a tuna and cheese one which i managed to flip over successfully without it landing in anyone's lap!

We moved on to a bar called Heartland and were going to have some self control and call it a night after that but most of us ended up going to a cheesy club called "Mo-town" nicknamed "Ho-town as Ian wanted to show us a variety of places in Tokyo so we started at the bottom end as this place was full of lady boys and hookers but was such a good place to people watch. There was a lady boy sitting pouting away in the corner who had totally modelled himself on Victoria Beckham, he did look great and Lisa ran over and demanded a picture with him. A guy started chatting him up a bit later on - not sure if he was aware what sex he was!

We went out sight seeing the next day, we walked around Midtown where we'd been drinking the night before and then on to Roppongi Hills where we looked around the complex and at the "Maman" which is the giant spider sculpture which looks like something out of the War of the Worlds film. 'We then headed up to the viewing point in the art museum building which was 52 floors up for the view over Tokyo. Unfortunately an area was cordoned off so we couldn't see Mount Fiji. Deaks made us some burgerlicious burgers for dinner that night and we've decided she's out key to free accommodation and money making down the East Coast, she can cook for the hostels and we can make millions and stay away longer!!

We had planned a mammoth night out as it was Friday and Ian and Pete didnt have to get up for work and we had arranged to meet Felipe, the Columbian boy who pops up in every country we're in. We met him in bar A971 and then went on to bar 57 where we met the others and all piled into taxis and headed to Xross Club. We'd squeezed 4 in the back and in Japan the rear lefthand side door automatically opens and closes for you when the driver pushes a button. The driver didnt realise i was only half sitting on the seat and leaning on the door and so i went flying backwards nearly landing in a heap in the road when he pressed the button to open it but luckily Deaks' quick reaction kept me in the car clinging on for dear life!

We finished the night at Festa karaoke bar which was brilliant!!! We wanted to do karaoke and wear wigs after watching Lost in Translation and this place was perfect with a whole range of dodgy costumes to choose from. We had such a good night, we had our own private room and no one held back , tune after tune was belted out for 3 hours the time flew by and it was soon 5am when they came in and asked us to stop but we all pleaded like kids and demanded one more song and did the YMCA as a group effort!

It was 5am and daylight when we came out and we jumped in cabs and went to the famous fish market (Thsukiji) which is best seen at that time of the morning and there were fish everywhere!! The tuna were huge, they were slicing up eels and packing up lobsters. I was most disturbed by the poor crabs, they were covered with what looked like breadcrumbs and packed up in boxes together ready to be sent out but they were still alive it was so cruel, i was going to start a group on facebook to save the Japanese crabs!!!

Ian and the girls went home after the market and i stopped out with the others to sample some sushi for breakfast!!! I got in a bit of a mess with it to start with because i was trying to take delicate small bites of it and ended up dropping it on the floor and over everyone's shoes but i soon got the hang of it and loved the tuna and salmon and various other bits i tried, i even tried "uni" which is sea urchin which wasn't too bad. Poor Felipe got the salmon eggs which are bright flourescent pink and popped in your mouth - gross!! We washed this down with a lovely mug of green tea and then finally decided to call it a night about 7:30am.

We all wore our GBP 3.50 Khao San Road dresses out that night (the classiest outfits in our backpack!) with our wedges and fleeces and we were so under dressed whenever we went out in Japan. The Japanese are very trendy and look amazing and there didnt seem to be another backpacker in sight, we looked so out of place all week and i'm sure we didnt do Ian's reputation at his apartment block any good - especially when i rocked up on my own at 8.30am in my cheap dress saying he'd left the door open for me!

After a few hours sleep we got up for some more sightseeing. Ian took us out to Omote-Sando to wander around the very expensive shops and we ventured into Prada where they didnt even have price tags on the clothes - if you can afford to buy something you dont need to ask the price apparently! We then went to the Meji Jing-Gu temple where you had to wash your hands and mouth traditionally before entering the temple. The Japanese think that we're dirtier than them which we probably are, they hand out little towels to wash your hands and face at every opportunity! We saw a "shinto" wedding at the temple which is the traditional Japanese wedding and is a very small affair where they usually just wear black and white and the bride has a huge heavy headpiece and thick silk outfit and needs a helper to carry it for her during the day. Some Japanese just have this wedding and others have a Western style wedding as well (how greedy!) as they have seen them in all the magazines and the celebs having them so it is a much more lavish affair and they wear similar bridal gowns that we would wear.

Next we wandered to Yoyogi Park and then on to the Shibuya crossing which was also in the Lost in Translation film and was really mad. We went into Starbucks on the first floor of a nearby building to get a proper view and in the time we were there probably 5,000 people crossed it, it's unbelievable. Approximately 3 million people cross it each day.

We met up with Ian's friends again that night and went to the New York Bar & Grill on the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Shinjuku which was the bar and hotel where Lost in Translaction was filmed. The view was amazing, we just stopped for the one drink though as we were on our backpacker budget! We were all pretty shattered from the previous night so had a last drink in the Scramble Bar near the Shibuya crossing and said our goodbyes to Ian's friends as we were leaving Tokyo the next day.

On Sunday we did our last bit of sightseeing and went to a park where the cherry blossom were in bloom. We had arrived in Japan in perfect time for cherry blossom season but it arrived 9 days early and only lasts for about 10 days so we only caught the end of it. We then went to the Imperial Palace where the Emperor lives and Ian said that you don't really see or hear much from the royal family which is totally different to Thailand where they love their king and queen and have pictures of them everywhere in the street!

Deaks demanded chocolate on the way back to Ian's, she was happy to settle for a packet of M&M's but Ian said he knew just the place and took us to "Jean Paul Heiven" for our last treat - it was chocolate heaven, we devoured it in seconds!

We said goodbye to Ian and were sad to leave as we'd had such a brilliant time with him in Japan, thanks again Ian for letting us stay. Next stop is Oz and back to backpacker territory and experiencing hostels and dorms!

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