Konnichiwa!

So John and I have been in Japan 4 days now and are really having fun. We seem to have done loads and are just about getting by without being able to speak Japanese!
Once we had finally reached Narita airport in Tokyo after an eleven and a half hour flight, and an hour and a half delay at heathrow (due to a problem with the right engine!) It was friday morning Tokyo time so we were extremley tired as they are 9hrs ahead of the UK. First stop in the airport was the toilet which i was soon to find out is just a porecelin hole in the ground with a hood on which you squat over- i just had to guess which way round i had to go, and luckily it turned out ok!

After going through all the usual airport malarky we wearily found an information desk and showed a lady our hostel address where she wrote down the stations we needed to change at etc on the tokyo metro-the underground. Luckily the signs of the stations are shown in english on a scrolling electronic board we successful got to the area we were heading without going wrong. ticket wise they have a much faster system than the uk, you buy a ticket from a small machine which also has a touch button to convert info into english fares vary about 4 times on each machine- if you pay too little there is a fare adjustment machine at every station so you just pay the extra you need and you are on you way.We took a little while to actually find our hostel until a little japanese man came over on his bike asked us where we were trying to go he then signalled for us to stay there and cycled off, a few minutes later he was back, and told us to follow him, he took us straight there which was very sweet of him. By the time we had got to our hostel it was about 3.30-4pm, after checking in we fell straight to sleep until saturday morning!

Saturday we got up early- we had decided to go to sensoji temple and surrounding area today. The japanese love their temples and they regularly crop up in between random buildings. It was about 20degree and as we approached the street before the temple which is lined with small stalls selling various goods we were approached by a lady who works for the japanese government and she offered us a free walking tour of the area which was great as we learnt things we definatly would not have known without her. Before going into the temple you have to clense yourself first with some insense, where you have to waft the scent around your head, then with water pouring some on your left hand, right hand and then drink some out of your hand! We also got our fortunes, where you have to shake a tin of sticks until one falls out, and the match the symbols on the stick with that on the wall of boxes. I had a bad fortune but John had the best fortune- Johns first bit of luck for the day. Later that day we went to ueno park and John got his second bit of luck for the day as he was walking out of the toilet, a small bird pooed on him! Ueno park is nice, but full of quite a lot of tramps unfortunately. In the park there were stalls selling various foods that were being cooked there and then, we pointed to some fish which we think might have been squid but have no idea, and a man cooked it in soy sauce for us although it was a bit chewy, we both agreed it tasted nice. Food wise we have eaten a range of foods ranging from a mcdonalds breakfast! (breakfast is a hard meal to try and find to eat when you cant speak japanese! to foods that we have no idea what we are eating, we have had sushi, noodles, noodle soup, no idea what meats we are eating, we usually just point to the picture or object! in many resturants there are food machines, you pick which dish you want, sit down and a lady will come and take the ticket off of you- minutes later the dish will be with you. Everything about Tokyo is 'cool'! There is literally a vending machine on every corner, mainly selling drinks but then you get other types which sell ice cream, rice and noodles. Everything is designed with as little human interaction as possible, which is why its not essential to be able to speak Japanese to visit here.

Sunday we ventured to Harajuku and Shibuya. Harajuka is known for its amazing architecture which houses major designer boutiques. All the women in Tokyo are so fashionable, they dress so nicely. On Harajuku bridge there were these odd teenagers dressed in what is called cosplay- basically they dress up in unusual clothes, from maids to goths and go on the bridge so tourists can take pictures of them like paparazzi-very odd but cool to see! we then went to menji temple which as through this big park and were very lucky to see two japanese weddings. Afterwards we walked to Shibuya which is known for one of the largest human road crossings in the world, if you have seen the film lost in translation then you will know what i am talking about, basically where the lights turn red, HUNDREDS of people cross the road in a four way crossing, its enough to get lost!

Monday we went to Shinjuku and went up to the observatory of the government metropolitan buildings where you can basically see out over all of tokyo which was really nice as it was also free! We then went to Roppongi hills which was very modern and again had a lot of designer boutiques! and up Tokyo tower, by this time it was dark so we got to see Tokyo at night, it wasnt as high as the GM buildings, but we sat and had an icecream and drink at the top. TOkyo tower was nice but it looks pretty much like the eiffel tower- it is a bit higher.

Today- tueday we have just got back from Akihabara the electronic hub of tokyo, and is basically for gaming fanatics (George and Harvey you would love it!) Products are cheap but not at considerably cheap prices. We played on a few games and had our pictures taken in a print booth which we just pressed random buttons and hoped it worked- which it did, only we have about 25 copies of the same two pictures- one of which john managed to put an icon over both of our heads! We are just about to go to a sushi bar for dinner which is why the last few paragraphs have been slightly shorter as we are very hungry!

Tomorrow we are going up to Sendai to see Beth- about 6 hours North of here- and snowing!

Hope everyone is well.

Love Alex and John xx