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April 12th 2013
Published: April 12th 2013
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Goodbye Southeast Asia, hello Japan. I've been here five days now, initial impressions are very good but I'll get to that in a bit.

Cambodia was... brief. Brief and very bloody hot. April is the hottest month of the year for most of Southeast Asia, and although it's only about 5 degrees hotter on average than their coldest month of the year you definitely notice it. Of the five days I had in Cambodia, three of them were spent sitting on a bus. Not the greatest use of my time, but the only reason I went to the country was to see Angkor Wat so it had to be done. Spent a fairly sticky night in Phnom Penh in a hostel with some dodgy air conditioning. It didn't work particularly well anyway, but the top bunks in the dorm were very high and as you ascended the ladder to your bed you could feel the temperature rising with every rung. I think the air conditioning unit was actually below where the top bunks were, quality Cambodian engineering.

The next day I took a bus to Siem Reap. What can you say about Siem Reap in the middle of April? One word, hot. It got to about 40 during the day, and stayed up around 28/29 at night. After a relatively tame night spent checking out Pub Street I had an early night as a couple of the girls in my dorm had arranged a tuk tuk to take them to see Angkor Wat at 5am, and I'd agreed to tag along.

We set out just before 5, obviously not feeling the freshest. As you enter Angkor Wat you pay for your ticket, which they take your photograph for. Mine (along with most others at that time I'd say) was not the most flattering picture ever taken of me, I don't do mornings. We were brought to Angkor Wat temple which we made our way to in the dark, as we planned to watch the sunrise over the temple. Unfortunately it was a cloudy morning and it just started to get bright without any real sign of the sun. After this we checked out the inside of the temple and grabbed some breakfast. The rest of the morning was spent checking out the other main temples in the Angkor Wat site. They are obviously very impressive and the size
Somewhere on Pub StreetSomewhere on Pub StreetSomewhere on Pub Street

Shortly before I fell off my perch
of some of the temples, as well as the amount is hard to believe considering they were built so long ago. They aren't in great condition however; the sheer amount of tourists that pass through the site every year can't be doing it any good. The heat started to get the better of us as the temperature began to rise, by 11am we'd seen the main sites and were taken back to our hostel. At this time of year most people either go to see sunrise or sunset, it's just too hot to be wandering around in the middle of the day.

We went out and did Pub Street proper that night, and I also caught up with somebody I'd met in Nha Trang a few weeks previously who happened to be there at the same time. Pub Street is a lot of fun and it felt like being back in Thailand, they even sold buckets and everything. Maybe a bit too much fun though, I have vague memories of falling off the top bunk in the middle of the night. I think I was trying to climb down the ladder and just fell off. I have the cuts and bruises to prove it anyway. Ah well, it was bound to happen at some stage and I managed to escape serious injury. Let's just hope it's a one off.

Back to Phnom Penh the next day where I'd booked another night in the same hostel for some reason. I was hoping that a different room and hopefully being given the bottom bunk this time would make a difference, nope. On my last day in Cambodia I planned to see the killing fields and the S21 museum. I booked a tour through the hostel, and ended up going with three English lads. They were keen to go to the shooting range outside the city, so I ended up doing this too. This time I had 30 bullets with an M16, I didn't fare much better than my last outing. The killing fields are fairly depressing, a tribute to the victims of genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime of the late seventies. Not much you can say about it really. The S21 museum is another tribute on the site of the S21 prison where political prisoners were held and tortured before they were executed. There's not much left of the killing fields, and a lot of it is left to your imagination. The S21 museum has some fairly gruesome photographs though and is probably even more depressing. Hard to believe something like this was allowed to happen just 40 years ago.

The next morning I flew with Air Asia first to Kuala Lumpur, and then up to Tokyo's Haneda airport. As my flight got in seriously late, I'd booked a tiny hotel room as close to the airport as I could afford. After having trouble telling the taxi driver where I was going, I arrived at the hotel just before midnight. €25 for a 5.5km taxi ride, welcome to Japan. I'm sitting in the hotel lobby checking my emails and in walks this youngish Australian girl, who'd obviously been out for a few drinks. She struck up a conversation with me as I think I was the first westerner she'd seen in a while, and within a few minutes she was telling me how much she hated the place and was practically crying. What she was doing in Japan I've no idea, but not the best introduction to Japan anybody has ever had.

After checking out of the
Cat CafeCat CafeCat Cafe

€7? Bargain
hotel I set off for Asakusa, where I'd be staying for the next three nights. The hostel I was in was nice enough, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of a backpacker scene in Japan. You get the odd westerner here and there, but most of them seem to be in Japan for some other reason, and may just be doing a little bit of travelling before they go home. The majority of the people in the hostel were actually Japanese. I guess I had a bit of culture shock when I first got to Japan, and it wasn't necessarily from the place itself. It was difficult moving from the backpacker party atmosphere of Southeast Asia, to being largely on my own in Tokyo (on my Tokyown, you might say). I had become very used to going out for drinks with people I'd only met a few hours previously. That kind of atmosphere just doesn't exist here. The other thing I struggled with was that I was now in a proper working city, somewhere where tourism wasn't the main source of income. As such there were no tour operators ready to sell me a pre-made itinerary or tell me what there was to do around the place. I now had to research and plan everything I was going to see myself, which led to me pretty much wasting my first day in the city.

I spent my first day in Asakusa just getting more accustomed to being in Japan, and checking out the area itself. I started my second day by going to the local cat cafe. A cat cafe is somewhere you can go and pay around €7 to hang out with a bunch of cats for an hour. Japan, eh? It's actually a rehoming shelter for abandoned cats, but somebody got the idea to charge people to come and visit them, why not? It was quite a weird experience, not helped by the fact I was the only person there. Still I got some photos and Dan Stuart would never have forgiven me if I didn't go. After this I did a walking tour of Ueno Park, the first free walking tour I've ever done that was actually free. Finally I went to Shinjuku, a busy shopping district. I went to a large guitar store here and checked out some of the Japanese brands you
Tokyo MetropolisTokyo MetropolisTokyo Metropolis

It's the same on every side. Just massive.
can't get back in Ireland. Tried out a Bacchus bass I'd been hearing great things about for years. Decent, but not a patch on my Fender. Then again it was about half the price.

On my third day I was getting used to the fact I wasn't in Southeast Asia anymore, and got a lot more done. I went to the Sony building in Ginza; saw some cool stuff that hasn't been released to the public yet. I also saw without a doubt the best TV that has ever been made. 82" of pure genius, €13k might be a bit out of my price range though. After this I went to Akihabara, an area famous for its crazy nerd culture. It's basically full of video game arcades and cheap electronic stores. I hate Apple but €125 for a used iPhone 4 was tempting, even if I just brought it home and sold it. Onward to the Tokyo tower, which looks fairly similar to the Eiffel tower. I'm sure there's a reason for this, but I never found out. From here there is an observation deck 150 metres up. If you only do one thing in Tokyo, make sure you
Japan's Most Popular SportJapan's Most Popular SportJapan's Most Popular Sport

And there's nobody there
do this. The views are amazing, and you don't realise just how massive Tokyo is until you come up here. It is HUGE, skyscrapers and built up urban areas literally as far as the eye can see in all directions. My picture doesn't do it justice; it's like nothing you've ever seen before. There was a special observatory another 100 metres up that I'd have been tempted to pay extra for but I was running late for my baseball game. I went to the Tokyo Dome to watch the Fighters play the Eagles in the nation's favourite sport. Why baseball is so popular in Japan I've no idea. To be honest I found it a bit boring (not helped by the fact I couldn't really afford the beer there), but I'm a huge cricket fan so I can't really talk can I? Also I don't think either team were from Tokyo, so why they were playing there I don't know. Tokyo is a very nice city, just very clean and well run and pleasant to be in. There's so much more I could have seen too, maybe I'll get the chance to see more before I leave Japan. Also aside the from the taxi fare it's not that expensive, no more expensive than Dublin anyway.

So today I hopped on a train to the mountains, well actually I hopped on four trains. I took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagano, and then had to change trains another two times before I ended up just south of Hakuba near a couple of ski areas. It's coming to the end of the ski season and the place is almost deserted. I have a five man dorm all to myself, there's only about four other people in the entire hostel I think. It started to snow not long after I got here, should make for good skiing conditions tomorrow. Two days skiing here, then it's off to Mt. Fuji on Monday. A week ago I was wandering around Siem Reap in the 40 degree heat with a bunch of western backpackers. Today I had to brave a snowstorm on my way to seven eleven in the back arse of nowhere in the Japanese mountains. It couldn't be any more different, but I'm really enjoying it.

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13th April 2013

In Japan without me!
It sounds great, I'd love to go to Japan - maybe I will one day. It's good that it's not too expensive. Will you be going to look at some temples?

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