Konnichiwa

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After a couple of days travel via Hong Kong (with food poisoning (better now)), it was a huge relief to reach our hotel in Tokyo. We stayed at the Tokyo Green Hotel. Our room was tiny but perfectly formed. And much to Paul's delight it was only 5 minutes walk from Akihabara, the electronics mecca, so we spent an afternoon or two wandering around geekville.

It was a huge change from our lazy sun drenched days on the beach to the biggest city in the world in winter. The only warm clothes I have are my crumpled jeans and a boring black jacket. I feel deeply unfashionable. I'm surrounded by fashionistas with perfect clothes, make-up and hair. So, our first day was spent shopping in Harajuku. I'm now the proud owner of a rather funky hat and scarf so I feel a bit more equipped for the sudden drop in temperature.

Even though we've been to Tokyo twice before, navigating the city still takes some getting used to. The train and subway maps are a messy tangle of coloured lines and kanji. Shinjuku station is the most 'fun', with about 3.5 million people passing through each day. We visited some of the smaller neighbourhoods which have a very different vibe from central Tokyo. Yanaka is a small low-rise, low key residential area with a main street full of interesting little shops and cafes. It also has a lot of well fed cats! Shimokitazawa is a great boho village-y place with loads of cool little shops. I could've spent all day and lots of money shopping there. Kitchijoji is apparently the hip place to be for an older crowd (us, then). We went there one night to a great jazz place called Sometime.

After the beaches we've been getting right back into urban life - a great contemporary art exhibition, an Ultraman exhibition (classic Japanese sci-fi series, so I'm told), cinema, seeing Johnny Depp live in the flesh (premiere of Sweeney Todd, but they wouldn't sell us a ticket), eating lots of yummy sushi & drinking hot sake. The highlight of the week (apart from Johnny) has to be the Sumo. We managed to get tickets for the opening day of the Sumo Tournament (held six times a year). We spent five hours watching these enormous blokes pushing, lifting, slapping and shoving each other out of the dohyo (fighting ring). Fantastic entertainment! I've started watching it on TV, it goes on for 15 days.

Yesterday we got the Nozomi Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto, which reaches speeds of 300 km/h. We'd barely finished our bento box lunch, when we screamed into Kyoto station. A big freeze has set in as well, so it's minus 5 at night and light snow showers are expected on Thursday. At least they have heated toilet seats.

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