Tokyo

We left the sleepy mountain town of Hakone and prepared ourselves for a different animal altogether - Tokyo. I can be honest and say I expected this to be like any major city I've ever visited, NYC, London, Sydney, but I was wrong. Having enjoyed watching 4 Shinkansen fly through the station we were waiting at, a couple definitely touching top speed of 280km/h, we arrived at Shingawa station and headed for our hotel. Deceptively steep hill up to the hotel tackled, we dumped our kit and headed out for Shibuya.

Now my only real information on Tokyo comes from a visit my mum had a number of years ago and the Bill Murray film, Lost in Translation. There is a scene in the film shot at the crossing at Shibuya and it encapsulates Tokyo perfectly. Up to 500 people cross the intersection here at any one time and the place heaves with a mix of businessmen, teenagers, very trendy Tokyoites and tourists desperately trying to get their bearings. We were perfect examples of the latter, more on that issue later, and were given some free time to explore. As it was such a glorious day, my better half and I walked up to the lovely Yoyogi Park for a wander in the sunshine. It is Golden week this week, a national holiday week, so there were a great deal of families and friends sitting on the grass, soaking up the sun. We sat amongst them for a little bit, then headed back towards the station for the hotel. Not before a few of us watched a street performer paint, while dancing to fairly heavy trance music. It was quite a spectacle and he was fantastic.

We wandered through the shopping district and window shopped, before heading for the hotel for our final group meal. We reconvened and headed out for tempura, those of us in group gracious enough to come, and then were taken by our guide to the man-made island district of Odaiba for stunning night views back of the skyline. This was a fantastic way to end the tour, as were the cocktails and desserts we had at the TGIs by our hotel.

The next morning was the goodbyes to those that were heading home or off to other parts of Tokyo, and to Masa. He was, on the whole, a good guide and he did his best with a group of strong personalities. Vicky and I headed towards our new hotel, confident it would be easy to locate. How wrong we were. I pride myself on being organised and knowing my way around, a few times on this trip, it hasn't appeared that way, this was the worst by far. We became very disorientated by the city and with less than useless maps to help, had a hell of a time. Tears and shouting followed, before an incredibly kind couple walked us to our hotel. They barely spoke a word of English and I'm only up to 3 Japanese words, so it was incredibly kind of them.

We decided to do another temple, Sensoji, before climbing our now customary 'tall thing' - the Tokyo Skytree - before heading to the Fifth Avenue esque Ginza district. The temples on this trip have been magnificent and this one was no different. It was, however, much busier than the others as we chose to go on a national holiday, it was chaos. I then got rushed 5000 Yen by a guy offering peace, I obviously wasn't acclimatised to the city, before we headed to the Skytree. Having adjusted to the subway system, almost, this was easy. We took in the slightly hazy views of the city and started to think towards the end of our time in Japan and home. They have created a whole city under this tower and it is choc a block with shops and restaurants, as are all the major train stations, which only added to our confusion!! We headed for Ginza and took in the more relaxed atmosphere. Huge buildings housing Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany to name a few, rose on each side of the street and having realised it looked like any major shopping district in the world, headed for our hotel. We knew we had to be up early, so wanted to get our rest.

Day three in Tokyo had an early morning start to head to Tsukiji fish market for the general opening at 9 o'clock. This is becoming more and more of a tourist attraction, although it definitely is not one. This is one of the largest working fish markets and they tolerate the tourists being there. The small group of us wandering around were nearly hit by the delivery men zipping between stalls on more than one occasion, but it was great to see the deals being done and the pride being taken in providing the best wares for the restaurant business. Some of which are on site and, after a fairly lengthy wait, we sampled some of the freshest sushi you could ever have. It was superb and well worth the wait. It had started to rain fairly heavily by this point, so we split up and agreed to meet later for dinner. Vicky and I headed to the Imperial Palace gardens and caught a glimpse of the impressive building, which still houses the government officials, before the rain drove us to seek cover. We rather soddenly headed for our hotel and watched some Japanese TV, not that we knew what was going on, and waited for the rain to stop. We headed back out for a goodbye dinner and rounded the night off with a few drinks.

Day four and our last day of our trip has seen us stroll around the shopping district of Shinjuku and take an age choosing lunch. Sorry again to Renee and Michael, we are normally so much more decisive, but the sheer amount of choice was a little overwhelming. We went our separate ways and did a little bit of souvenir shopping, before heading home to find somewhere to eat an early dinner. We start our journey home fairly early in the morning, so it was back to Ginza for a meal and a stroll. We didn't make it to the baseball game or the robot bar as we thought we might, as frankly, we are shattered. It has been another fantastic adventure, but we have both agreed this time in Tokyo has done us in!!!

Thank you for sticking with this if you have, bit of a tome this last entry! A few observations of Japan if I may,  before I sign off:

•no one here is actually that short, I thought I might be much taller than the locals, it hasn't necessarily been the case
•it has a much more westernised outlook than I thought. The biggest business seems to be white weddings, despite few actually practising Christianity
•the gadgets are insane. We wandered around the Sony showroom, some of the tech there was lightyears ahead of the west
•the train lines are hard to get your head around (or was it just me?)
•the Japanese are some of the most gracious, proud and helpful people I have ever met. Crime was virtually non existent and we were helped a lot, by people we didn't understand and who didn't understand us