Sayonara Japan!

I was originally going to finish off my Japan travelogue in the airport post, but I changed my mind. All the photos that I'm going to upload are at the Zoto site now for those interested.

So when I left the post, we'd just arrived in...

Nikko
While waiting for the rain to ease we grabbed some lunch at a Chinese restaurant that served predominantly Japanese food. We even dug out the phrase book to ask if the rain was going to ease up. The waiter assured us that it would so we set off towards the temple & shrine area. On the way we bought three pairs of shoes (one each for Cathy & I and a pair of ninja boots for Gene) and I bought a kimono. We also bought two umbrellas, so you can tell how the weather held up.

Nikko was a very picturesque part of Japan, but then again, I felt that way about most of the country. There were ancient bridges and many many temple buildings. Nikko seemed to be set in and around a series of forest covered hills and the rain just added to the beauty of our surroundings.

We were briefly amused by a gentleman in a cherry picker holding an umbrella (as it was raining) while apparently working with the power lines before we entered the temple & shrine area.

The temples were all stunning and I wished I could read Japanese so that I could have known more about what I was seeing. There was a school group having their school photos at the site while we were there and they took great pleasure coming up to us in small groups and saying hello and running away after we returned the greeting. I'm positive they all went home and proudly told their parents that they had practiced their English!

For awhile the rain just bucketed down but for about five minutes the rain just stopped and the sun came out. Within a minute the bronze-golden rooves of the various shrine buildings started to glow with an incredible shine and then the water started to evaporate.



We made our way through about five large temples & shrines that day before we headed to a small restaurant for a coffee.

After that Gene & I parted with his family as we had decided to stay the night in Nikko as we were hoping to enjoy the famous hot springs in the region.

When we arrived in Nikko that morning we'd booked ourselves into Nikko Park Lodge　日光パークロッジ. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was in our price range and there was a free pick-up from the train station where we'd booked the room.

It turned out to be a wonderful choice. We were picked up at the train station by the lodge owner and driven to the lodge. Our room was everything we needed, comfy bed and red velvet curtains that added warmth to the room. The bathroom was a great little "capsule" bathroom where the plumbing was linked to make the most of the space. The lodge owner also cooked us the most delicious vegetarian dinner that I've ever had. There was a seaweed omelette and salad with brown rice that you seasoned with roasted sesame & salt. Delicious! I'm planning to find the rice seasoning the next chance I get to go to a Japanese supermarket.

We didn't end up making it to the hot springs. The one we wanted to go to required a train and bus ride before a hike to the springs. We weren't sure that we were up to navigating the Japanese countryside just yet.

In the morning we headed back to Tokyo where I spent more money in one shop on my beloved Clover bamboo knitting needles and crochet hooks than I ever have. (Sarah's a very happy girl as you have no doubt gathered from previous posts and anyone who's seen me since our return).

While we were there we checked out the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices for a panoramic view of the city. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day so we didn't manage a glimpse of Mt Fuji. We also spent marginallly more time checking out the cool toys in the souvenir/toy shop that was on the same level as the observation deck.

After that it was back on the train to...

Narita
With our return flight the next day we decided to stay in Narita for our last night so that we could make the most of our last day in Japan.

I'd been really keen to stay in a ryokan, Japanese inn, so we booked ourselves into 桐之家旅館ホームページ - Kirinoya Ryokan. We'd read about this ryokan in the Lonely Planet's Guide to Japan and it mentioned something about a samurai museum so we just had to stay there. Again the pick up service was the inn keeper shuttling us in his car to our lodgings but we were also treated to a tour of Narita on the way. Restaurant district, shopping areas and more temples were pointed out to us before we arrived. It was wonderful! We were given two ajoining rooms with one as our bedroom and the other as our tea room.

After we'd settled in we headed back into town to have dinner. We were passed by groups of geisha, school kids and the odd tourist before arriving at a classy looking restaurant near the JR Narita Station. Gene decided to treat us to a lavish dinner to celebrate our last night in Japan and we went all out. There was a tataki-style beef dish, the best sashimi that I've ever eaten, a couple of inigari, grilled fish and much yakitori. We also sampled some sho chu and hoppy for our drinks and were quite happy with our choices.

Having overindulged ourselves we took a slow walk back to the ryokan before settling in for a quiet night of green tea and Japanese game show TV.

The next day we planned to go to Sakae Town, one train stop away from Narita to check out Boso-No Mura, an old samurai village where you could check out and get into the Edo periods crafts and culture. So while we were checking out we asked for directions. What we weren't expecting was the opportunity to actually don a 400 year old samurai helmet. The owner of the inn's family were middle class samurai back in the day and his family had kept many of the pieces of armour and artifacts through the generations. All of which were stored and displayed in this ryokan. Photos taken, directions memorised (exit the ryokan, turn left at the white sign, walk along the school, through the park, temple, temple, JR Narita station) and we headed off for our trip.

Through the park involved a fairly steep hill and several backyards before we arrived at the temples. We had a quick look in the Narita San-Shinshoji temple where there were people practising their Japanese calligraphy before winding our way through the backstreets of Narita to the train station.

Once we jumped on the train we paid careful attention to avoid missing our stop, Shimosa-Manzaki.

I was fairly apologetic to Gene as we exited the station to be greeted with by the one-shop town. We rapidly regretted our decision to dine there as there was nothing open while we were there. Not even "Snack Jealousy" the local cafe!

We had been assured that it was a short walk from the station by both the inn keeper in Narita and the sign post at the station. It was apparently a 2.2km walk but the undulating hills combined with our dodgy sign reading technique (matching the characters of signs to those on our pamphlet) made the walk seem much further. We stopped by a lake for a quick break before continuing on.

Eventually we arrived at Boso-No Mura but not before stopping at Doramu No Sato for lunch. We dined next to a great statue of a dragon made of plastic bottles before heading to our final tourist site.

Boso-No Mura was best described as Narita's answer to Sovereign Hill. It was very quiet there but we didn't let that put us off. While we were there we explored the main street where there were various stalls and exhibits. We checked out the samurai house and took part in a tea ceremony that was a little confusing but rather pleasant. We finished off our time there making origami signs with flowers and "Boso-No Mura" on them to take home for our mums. Our hopes of dressing up in full samurai outfits were shattered when we were advised that the exhibit was unavailable that day.

While we were at Boso-No Mura we were given a map that showed JR Aijiki station to be just around the corner. Our laziness got the better of us and we decided to walk to the closer station. We walked around the corner from Boso-No Mura. Then we walked some more. We stopped to ask directions and were told to keep walking. There was walking and some more walking. A bit more walking and we finally (an hour later) saw a sign pointing to Aijiki Station. There was another 45 minutes of walking at least before we finally caught sight of the station. It was then that we realised that the map had also said there was a shuttle bus that went from the station to the corner of Boso-No Mura and it was an eight minute ride. We arrived at the station to be greeted by the Doramu No Sato shuttle bus as well. The shuttle bus gods were against us that day.

With aching blistered feet and holes well worn through socks that day we boarded the train for Narita Airport where we finished our trip with a couple of bowls of ramen and a long flight home.

It was an amazing trip and a truly wonderful culture to have sampled. The travel bug has bitten and I can't wait to travel again!

Eigo no menuga arimaska?

Well, it's been awhile between posts I know, but Internet access has been limited by time more than anything else. So here we are at the airport in Narita. Gene & I are sitting in the Yahoo! Cafe overloooking the runways of Terminal 2. It's been a fantastic week in Japan and we wish we could stay on. However, all good things must come to an end... and we're a little broke but rich for the experiences.

Before I continue, I'd like to appologise for any creative punctuation but I'm using a Japanese Dell laptop with Japanese keys. This wouldn't be a problem if I didn't touch type but suffice to say the apostrophe key is shift-7 and the @ is beside the P key... it's all a little screwy...

Anyhow, when I last posted (settle in folks, I've got just over three hours till departure and a weeks worth of goss) Gene & I were heading to Matsumoto, namesake of our favourite Japanese restaurant in Melbourne.

亜 Argh!!!! I just hit a random button and everything turned into characters!

Matsumoto
We decided to take a day trip to Matsumoto which is approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes from Shinjuku where we were staying. We didn't know much about the place, except there was a castle (Matsumoto-Jo) and we used to eat at a restaurant with the same name. The train ride was pleasant, as almost all train trips in Japan have been. We spent the time reading up on the town in the Lonely Planet guide and learnt a bit about the history of the town and what the local delicacies are. There was the usual city to town landscape followed by acres of rice & wasabi paddies. A couple of lovely looking mountains and fog covered hills and we arrived at the station.

During our trip we learnt very quickly that the tourist information centre is our friend. It's your best bet for finding someone who speaks English anyway. The lovely people at the station's info centre gave us a map and directions to Matsumoto-Jo as well as showing us a picture of a landmark that we needed to turn right at.

Armed with this info we exited the station and stepped into a sleepy Japanese town near the Japanese Alps. The streets were small and quiet with a pleasant mix of modern and more traditional Japanese architecture. We did manage to find a goth-punk shop on our travels which we had to check out of course. Gene ended up with some badges and after a round of arigatos we were off again.

To be honest it wasn't that far a walk to the castle, but we managed to get distracted again, but with a slightly better cause. We crossed a bridge to be greeted with by a statue of two samurai frogs on top of a toad. Naturally we had to stop and investigate so we travelled down a quaint little street that we rapidly realised was a small tourist area. This would usually mean nothing but tacky little trinkets and overpriced postcards, but this place was different. You could buy some gardening tools as well as food and random gifts. We hunted around the street for an explanation of the frogs that had greeted us and possibly passed many, in Japanese, but finally I decided to buy a small glass frog for Gene's mum, Cathy, who couldn't join us that day due to work appointments. It was a good thing that I did that too, because with the frog came an explanation of its significance.

The History of the "frog" on Nawate Street
Before the Meiji Era, Nawate Street was just a bank lying between the river and the moat. After the Yohashira shrine was built in the year Meiji 12 (1879), the bank became an approach to the shrine.

Horse carriages were not allowed to pass through. The shrine began to promote various entertainments to gather visitors and prosper. People began to start businesses there, which attracted many visitors.

Because of the vehicle-free street, shop owners on the street said that visitors can buy kaeru (I wish I could post the three characters that formed this word) and go home kaeru (again with the characters but only two this time) safely.

Since then, people started to call the street "frog street" (kaeru = frog). So the shop keepers put a big frog statue at the entrance of the street to watch over us and keep us safe.

After browsing the rest of the stretch we took a detour through a Shrine enroute to the castle. We dug out our guide book which advised us on the ettiquette of visiting Shrines and managed, we think, not to make fools of ourselves passing through. There were many signs surrounding the Shrine, probably telling us what it honoured, but our Japanese reading is a little lacking, so its significance was a little lost on us. Sadly this was a bit of a trend, but we muddled our way through.

We finally arrived at Matsumoto-Jo and it was hard not to get a good picture of the place. It was a stunning castle. We crossed a moat which we later learnt was one of three that used to surround the castle and stamped our entry tickets with the free woodblock stamps that were at the entrance. If you make it to Japan, take blank paper with you to the tourist sites and stations, there are often woodblocks with the place name and pictures to be stamped. The gardens were meticulously manicured and even included some "space azaleas".


Matsumoto-Jo

We toured the Castle and I tried to capture it with my rather poor camera skills but was too excited to hold the camera particuarly still so there aren't many pics. Inside the many levels of the castle were various artifacts from the Edo period. Most of the signs were in Japanese, but we carefully read all the English signs. The rest we just had to guess at. It was like being in year 7 history again with Mr Sinclair making us guess what different objects were and their purpose. The stairs in the castle were all disconnected and crazily steep. There are many signs asking you to "mind your head" as the ceilings were Sarah height. It took us getting to the top level to find out that the reason the stairs were so steep was to make the castle easier to defend. I can't imagine how the fully armoured samurai who lived on one of the lower levels ever managed to get up to the war room on the second highest floor. We were struggling in normal clothes with our bags! There was also a hidden level which couldn't be seen from the outside where food was stored. There were wooden shelves on this level where stones could be dropped on any invading armies. Castle windows varied in size to allow for both arrows and guns to be used in the castle defence. Matsumoto-Jo is also one of two castles that remain in Japan (according to the guide book) which still has a moon-viewing balcony. It was a red painted balcony with a shin-height railing that offered a view of the moat, complete with Japanese koi and swans, and most likely the moon on a clear night. As it was day when we visited, we didn't get much moon viewing done.

After checking out the castle we headed towards what we thought were the souvenir tents but turned out to be two tents filled with bonsai. After a 5 minute game of charades with the attendent, a good will ambassador came over who translated for us. (Turns out we could have had a tour of the castle in English after all...) She explained to us that it was a bonsai judging competition and we had to pick our favourite bonsai and write down the numbers on the card. As you all know, Gene & I are highly qualified in bonsai judging... so we didn't take too long to finish up. We handed the cards to the nice men at the end of the tents who insisted that we spin a wheel. I spun the wheel first and a little white ball dropped out. The nice men spoke at me in Japanese and I looked puzzled and for some reason resorted to saying hai (yes) a lot. While I was trying to walk off with said white ball to work out at a distance what I was supposed to do with it, the nice men stopped me and it became clear that I was meant to leave it with them. Gene then spun the wheel and out dropped a little pink ball. The nice men then got very excited and rang a bell loudly before handing Gene a little box in exchange for the ball. We both then got a little excited and found in the box was a small clear ball with Matsumoto-Jo etched in the centre. Gene has since gifted it to me and it's going straight to the pool room. I love it!

We paused for a quick drink at the vending machines and were stunned to find Thorpie's drinks had made it to Japan!

Having toured the castle we headed to the Museum which had a few exhibits from the Edo period. We saw some more Japanese and Korean weapons, many little Japanese dolls from the doll festival, some brightly coloured textile balls which were the toys of princesses and their maids and, rather strangely, some large wooden phalluses. We learnt from the Lonely Planet that this was part of a festival that they held in September, however we can only assume that it has to do with fertility as there wasn't much information otherwise.

After all the stairs and bonsai judging, we decided there was only one part of our Matsumoto cultural experience left to fulfil, food. The local delicacies of Matsumoto were soba (my personal favourite), crickets (I believe they're deep fried) and raw horse meat. We headed off to the information centre and asked where we could find a soba restaurant as that was our priority and discovered that it was just two doors down from where we were. While at the soba restaurant we dined on zaru-soba and the raw horse meat, which we were fairly sure they killed in a very humane manner. There were two pieces each, one was a little fatty and the other was just a flesh piece. It was just like eating beef crossed with venison really. Except the fatty bit tasted like butter with the texture of meat. It was most odd but pleasant and we discoved the taste was a a gift that kept on giving. This prompted me to buy some chewing gum on our way home. Having sampled two out of three delicacies we had to get some crickets. With the help of the phrasebook Gene tried to explain to the staff at the restaurant that he wanted to eat some crickets. After we determined that we weren't talking about sport, the waitress walked out the door beckoning us to follow. She took us to the shop nextdoor and explained to the man at the counter what we wanted. They giggled and pointed us to some cans. Gene bought two so anyone who's up for some crickets head our way.

Thus ended our day in Matsumoto. We headed back into Tokyo and met up with Gene's family for dinner and a briefing on what was happening the next day...

Harajuku & Shibuya


We'd been advised by many people that Harajuku was a must see area in Tokyo. It was where all the goths, cyber-punks and otherwise oddly dressed people congregated in their spare time. It was a great little area and most people where happily posing for pictures as soon as a camera was vaguely in their direction. A highlight was they Tokyo Rockabilly Club who were dancing to some great hits from the late 50's. John Travolta eat your heart out because these guys had some seriously big hair. There were no poodle skirts for the girls either, they dressed in their leathers as well.

I'm not sure if it was planned but we stumbled across the Meijii Shrine which was fairly grand. It was our first big temple so we spent a bit of time there. We were lucky enough to see a bridal procession while we were there. It was a very elegant and dignified procession and very beautiful to watch.




We walked through the park and spent some time watching the people practice wooden sword fights, contact jugglers, poi and Mama Africa drumming (complete with didgeridoo). Gene says hurray for Japanese rastafarians.

Once we'd had our fill of people watching, Gene & I headed towards Shibuya. This was by sheer chance as we were actually trying to find the shops that the kids in the square had gotten their quirky outfits from. Through zen navigation (and some signs) we determined that we had actually left Harajuku. We saw many designer shops along the way and checked out the Japanese equivalent to Episode where there were ruby slippers and crazy costume fashion galore. Some more zen navigation found us in Cat Street which is home to the Pink Dragon, an impressive rockabilly shop with a very gothic interior. This shop had everything a rockabilly lover could want, down to the comb for the immaculate hair styles. We hung around for a while looking at the stock while enjoying a mix of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry Poppin' Daddies music before deciding that we were tired and it was time to head home.

On our way home,we passed the worlds coolest car park exit which had a revolve to turn your car around so you didn't have to reverse out. Pics & movie to come.

One vending machine dinner, a train ride and we were lost. We decided to try and find the other train station that was near the Tokyo Hilton on the E-line. We'd been travelling on the Marunochi line and decided it was time to get adventurous again. We later worked out that we'd gotten off two stops early. We finally made it back to the hotel and decided to have a night in.

A 5 Star Night In
You may or may not have guessed that Gene & I don't spend a lot of time in 5-star hotels. We discussed this on our way back to the hotel and figured that we should probably try to enjoy the hotel a bit as well as Japan as both were experiences we were unlikely to share again soon. There was a pool, gym and spa listed in the services/facilities guide so we decided that was an excellent way to unwind after a day of walking.

Needless to say we skipped the gym.

When you arrive at the health & fitness centre you check your shoes into a little shoe locker and then head to your respective change rooms. The womens change room had lockers containing a towel and towelling robe as well as a rest area with television and chilled water. There were also sterilised hair brushes for your convenience as well as cleanser, toner and moisturiser for after your exercise.

Gene & I slipped into the pool and paddled around a bit before agreeing to meet back in the hotel room after our respective spas. You see, it wasn't actually a spa as such, but a Japanese bath so it there were seperate baths for men and women.

You enter the shower/bath room and there were mirrors along two sides of the wall. In front of these mirrors there are stools and shower heads where you sit and shower before you enter the baths. There are no clothes allowed in this room and coming from a western society where women are pretty seperated in showers it felt a little odd to shower with other women. Especially in front of the mirror. It was oddly liberating and a rather pleasant, almost ritualistic, experience. I was grateful to have an older woman there who showed me what the procedure was as I'd never been to a Japanese bath before. As I was just following her lead, I stepped into the cold bath before I knew it was the cold bath and as a result was a little shocked. Despite the cold it was quite pleasant and made the transition into the hot bath even more relaxing. By hot bath I mean scorchingly hot but I could feel all my muscles relaxing and the aches and pains from the day melting away. I hopped back into the cold bath briefly (very invigorating) before rinsing off and getting dressed.

The rest of the night we spent reading and catching up on some much needed sleep before the big day ahead of us.

Tokyo Disney Land
Okay, okay, I know that we've come to a country steeped in culture and I proceded to spend a day in Disney land, but it was such a great experience! I don't regret a minute of it. Except perhaps the 130 minute wait for Thunder Mountain (total ride time 4 minutes).

The trip to Tokyo Disney is in itself an experience as, from Shinjuku, it requires a platform change at Tokyo station. We thought Shinjuku station was big... We finally made it onto the right train, without getting lost, and in no time at all we were at Disney land.

While I thought I'd end up with lots of pics from Disney land, I was too busy looking around at all the people (mostly Japanese) and enjoying the rides to take any pics. Our first stop was Adventure Land where we saw Tiki Town's animatronic birds singing classic hits like Fever and I Wanna Be Just Like You in Japanese. We didn't really understand much of what was going on but chose to sing along in English and clap our hands anyway. The guide seemed rather insistant that we hold our hands with our thumbs and little fingers pointed out and say "aloha" a lot which was amusing and confusing all at once. Thunder Mountain, my first roller coaster ride was next. I took a picture of some spanners at the 1 hour mark and after 130 minutes exactly (just as the board had promised) I got to go on my first roller coaster. It was good fun, but even better rides were to come! After that we trooped off to Pirates of the Carribean where we queued for about an hour and a half. We kept our spirits high and possibly the people around us entertained by saying "argh" a lot in our best pirate accents. There is something rather surreal about going on rides with commentary when you can't understand the commentary. The only English on that particular ride involved "Avast you scurvy scum" and various other piratey phrases. We ate some greasy but oh-so-good fried chicken before booking our "fast track tickets" for Space Mountain. We then enjoyed Micro Land (Honey I Shrunk the Audience in 3D) which had great special effects involving air jets that mimicked mice running up your legs and some impressive projections of the theatre being blasted with lasers. We also checked out the Haunted Mansion (also predominantly in Japanese) which was awesome. Moving walls and amazing projections once again. I have to hand it to the Disney folk, they know their animatronics. Next was Splash Mountain as Gene was positive that I'd enjoy a flume style ride. It was a 90 minute wait and we chatted happily with the American students in front of us who "loved our accents" and proceeded to apologise if they'd been offensive or had bothered us. They were quite lovely really! Every 15-20m or so there was a sign stating "you may get wet". Gene also assured me that if we were in front we might get a bit wet. So just before we got seated in the front row by the attendant, I took off my top layer and took the ride in my singlet top an jeans. Good move. We got absolutely soaked on the last big downhill. Gene's shirt was soaked (luckily he'd brought a spare one) and I got a face and lapful of water to boot. The photo taken by their camera was great though so we bought a copy to bring home to show our parents. We dried off in the Star Arcade where we played Mario Bros and Bomber Man. I sucked at both. It still wasn't quite time for us to ride on Space Mountain though so Gene & I checked out It's a Small World before we had a couple of Mickey Burgers to take the edge off our hunger. Space Mountain was AWESOME. They had a great hyperspace lasery bit before plunging you into darkness with the odd star to light your way. A series of extremely tight corners saw Gene & I swinging around in our seats (as much as our safety brackets would allow). If it wasn't almost 22:00 and the park about to close, I would have loved to have gone on it again.

After a big day of Disney we headed back to the hotel to try and work out our accommodation for the last two nights of our stay.


Nikko
The next day we headed to Nikko on the shinkansen with Gene's parents and their friend Ian. Nikko is a popular tourist destination and has more temples than we could have imagined. Unfortuntely the weather wasn't on our side and it rained most of the time we were there. We still saw 5 temples while we were there and admired the architecture while wondering what we were looking at (again the signs were in Japanese).

I'm going to leave you all here for now, and finish this draft later as Gene & I are going to get some food before wandering up to our departure gate, wherever it may be...

See you all back home!

A whirlwind of colour & noise

Wow what a day! Gene & I have been in Tokyo for 13 hours and have managed to pack in quite a bit.

After a day of flying we arrived rather tired but excited in Japan. Gene braved the complicated looking foreign exchange forms and I tried to get our rail vouchers exchanged. Gene was more successful as the JR Rail Offices had closed just after our plane landed. While we were hunting the correct (albeit closed) ticket window we missed our hotel shuttle bus by 6 minutes. After an hour waiting in the deliciously cool 17.6 degree celcius Japan night we finally made it on the shuttle. We spent our first night in Japan in the Narita Hilton which was wonderfully comfy and boasted beer vending machines about 10m from our room door. The view from our hotel room was pretty special.

Our first morning saw us enjoying a breakfast which melded Western bacon and eggs style food with rice porridge & miso soup. After this we headed to the hotel shuttle bus area where we saw a bus waiting. We tried to work out which bus we needed to jump on to get to Narita train station. As the bus was leaving, we worked out that it was indeed the bus we should have been on. Happily the next bus arrived and although it didn't go to the Narita train station, it did take us to to the airport where we could get a train from Terminal 2. It turned out that was ideal as the Narita-Tokyo express train we got on didn't stop at Narita station.

The trip to Tokyo took just over an hour and I took several (slightly blurred) photos of what could be rice paddies or could be wasabi farms... my agriculture knowledge is lacking I know.

We finally arrived in Tokyo's Shinjuku station at 12:30 and took in our first glimpse of Tokyo from the station. Our phrase book has come in most handy as I headed to the ticket office to ask for directions to the Tokyo Hilton. After securing a map with a friendly and simple looking red line to our hotel and the reassurance that it was only 20 minutes away, Gene & I set off to brave the streets with our luggage in tow. How lost could we possibly get when we had a map? Apparently a little... On closer inspection our map turned out not to have street names, only building names. Now you'd think that this would be really handy in a city of skyscrapers, but the thing that we noticed about Tokyo so far is the lack of logos and garishly bright signs at the top of buildings. They seem to be reserved for the lower levels. So we were stuck walking until we found a map in front of random building. Unfortunately the "you are here" arrow had been stolen so it took us a while to get our bearings again. We'd taken a turn too early or late, it was hard to tell, but we knew we were within blocks of the hotel.

At about 13:00 we made it to the hotel where we bumped into Gene's Mum, Cathy, who was in the lobby trying to find out if we'd checked in. We headed up to the hotel room and settled before heading to Gene's parents' room to snack on some rather beautifully decorated chocolates.

We headed out to the Keio department store to grab some food. It's great being in a department store trying to read the directory when it's not in English. It's even better trying to order off a menu when it's not in English. Our phrase book came to our rescue again and we managed to get a menu in English while providing our waitress with some amusement. Gene & I stuck to our usual favourites of katsu-don and oyako-don for our first meal.

After that we decided to find Kabukicho which was noted as the entertainment area where we could find all the latest Japanese arcades and more. We got there by means of a small alleyway that had stall selling everything from cheap sunnies to Japanese copies of Charlie Chaplin's short films. I'm amazed at what you can find in Japan! We entered the area which was hard to miss with all the flashing signs. I managed to find what I thought was a bead shop within two minutes of us arriving there and headed in to check it out. It turned out to be a craft department store with everything from "inner wear" (lingerie) to snake skin for craft use. I found the brand of knitting needles/crochet hooks that I was after (at 20% off!) but I'm holding out till we find the shop first.

Across the road from this shop was an adult toy shop (we think) which seemed to have vending machines selling capsules that contained everything from designer wallets to dildos. We were a little confused and somewhat disturbed but we didn't let it deter us from exploring the area further.

Walking around, it's hard to miss the multitude of pachinko & slot machine halls. Being the avid gamblers that we are, Gene and I decided that Pachinko, a game that apparently involved little skill and have little monetary incentive, was the way to go. In a whirlwind of colour, movement and much noise, we spent 3,000 yen shooting ball-bearings around the machine with gobsmacked looks on our faces. Unsurprisingly the clerk at the pachinko parlour was more than happy to give us a copy of instructions for the game in English. In all fairness though, everyone in Japan seems happy to help you out if they can. It's a wonderfully helpful and polite place to visit! Having not spent enough money playing games with little return, we both gave the slots a turn. We both got a pay out but not before making idiots of ourselves when we tried to store our tokens in the drink holder. It didn't go so well, mainly because there was a big hole in the bottom of the drink holder so all the coins fell out.

We decided we'd played enough confusingly noisy but oddly amusing games for the day and headed to another arcade for more familiar games. We played a Japanese drumming game before we decided to join in the photo booth culture. We spent what felt like an eternity posing for the camera, Gene was a little tall for some of the close-ups, but it was great fun. The language barrier proved amusing as we couldn't understand the instructions and were pressing buttons at random. We stepped outside to wait for our pictures, but they just didn't seem to be printing! We flagged down a clerk and after a game of charades pointed us to another booth where he demonstrated that we could add pictures to our photos. It was awesome! We spent another 5-10 minutes adding random characters and cartoons to our photos and then they printed. A game of Time Crisis 3, some poor drumming on my part and it was time to meet up with Gene's folks. On the way back we checked out a capsule hotel and saw many more interestingly named establishments.

The 100 yen shop grabbed our attention on the way to dinner but not nearly as much as the excitement of buying dinner from a vending machine. Well, that's not 100% accurate, we bought a token from the vending machine which we handed to the chef who cooked everything fresh. The main excitement came from not knowing what you'd ordered, just the cost. Gene & I ended up with some white meat and rice while Gene's parents ended up with some red meat and rice.

After dinner we explored the area further to find ourselves surrounded my men's clubs and ladies' clubs. We finally made it back to the Shinjuku station after Gene & his dad had been propositioned by various men offering to introduce them to lovely Japanese or Russian women for a while.

So here we are back at the hotel.

Now, it has to be done, it's an important topic of discussion when travelling, the toilet. When you sit down on the toilet, it flushes gently, apparently to help you pee if you're having troubles. It's actually a little disconcerting when you're not expecting it... Gene says "for all the good a bidet is, it might as well shoot water up my ass (or if you don't happen to be sitting on the toilet at the time, all over the bathroom)" Thank you Gene :)

Anyhow, accompanying pics to this rather long account are to be found at: my Zoto site. We're heading to Matsumoto tomorrow to check out the castle there.