It's been a good flight.  I've used my newly discovered technique.  Two beers pre flight, brandy pre dinner, wine with dinner, brandy after, wash anti hystemine down with final brandy, wake up, with maybe 2\3 hours of the flight left.

Landing in Tokyo isn't the confusing nightmare I'd half expected. Our luggage is out with extraordinary efficiency, staggeringly polite customs officers deal with the immigration formalities, I ask a young information person for directions to the bus stops, she walks me half way there to make sure I don't get lost and drops the deepest bow imaginable and holds it until I walk away.

The flights arrived an hour early so time to practice our Japanese and order a coffee while we wait.  A problem as we only know hello and thank you. As our bus wends into Tokyo we crane our knecks to get a glimpse of the city as the light starts to fade and the neon turns up a notch every minute or so.

We have a 10 minute walk from the bus stop to our hotel and the first thing we notice is that we can clearly hear our luggage wheels trundling along, they sound embarrassingly loud, they're not of course, it's just that Tokyo or the bit we're in, Asaku Tawaramachi, is incredibly quiet.  It's not that there's no one around, it's just they don't make any noise, just a tramp of feet and passing cars, no one shouts, no one blares a horn, everyone is just very very quiet and polite.

The toilet in our room resembles the flight deck of an airliner.  There are buttons which will make it do pretty much anything a relatively high priced hooker can think of, and a few she probably can't, to your unmentionables. Basically the bloody thing makes a waterfall noise for you so no one can hear you fart, a jet of water sprays your undercarriage, you have buttons to increase the pressure and or heat of the water, while another moves the jet forward or backward depending on whether you want to just clean your bot or squirt pleasantly warm water wherever you want it, you then get a jet of warm air, again you can control heat, pressure and angle of attack, I don't know whether to flush the thing or buy it flowers and a box of chocolates.

What with jet lag and everything by the time we're all checked in and through the post toilet afterglow we're a bit knackered but, determined not to waste our first evening.  We get out into the street and market area nearbye and start to soak up the atmosphere.  It's fantastic to be back in the East! The language barrier is a problem, it's tough to know where you are sometimes, but there's an indefinable buzz and alien-ness about being in an Asian City and we start to feel both excited and at home very quickly.

Don't want much, just a light snack and an early night, we stroll into our first Tokyo bar.  Ridiculously small place, rectangle bar in the middle with a young woman serving, behind her an open kitchen and sweating chef to whom she shouts orders, the whole thing is about the size of a medium sized lounge in a family home in the uk.  Half a dozen punters occupy stools around the bar and there's no room for anything else.  As we walk in every one stops what they're doing and saying but not in that ....."There be strangers int' village" way we have in the UK...... they wave to us!! "Hallo!!" 

As we take our seats a guy next to us, obviously keen to practice his English, clicks into conversation, all the usual "where you from etc"  but we move on to marital status, children, our travel plans etc.  Every now and then he reaches into a bag for a note book and asks us to write something down he can't understand, the bar girl and other customers all join in and try to find translations on smart phones when we get stuck, the definition of jealousy in particular sparks debate, anyone out there know the Japanese for envy?.......No? didn't think so, we're suitably embarrassed by our hosts abilities with English. 

It's really lovely!  We're not sure what to order to eat, the bar lady understands we just want a snack and suggests grilled sausage which we order, two minutes later she comes over slightly embarrased and whispers "No Have", the guy next to us orders potato salad for us for which he pays! "I think you will like"  he says.

When we leave everyone waves again, a wonderful big almost child like wave, huge smiles, bobbing bows all round the place, christ, we're going to love it here.

We have a hotel room that, while ridiculously small manages to contain two beds, desks, aircon, heater, fridge, a bathroom with jet age bog, bath and shower but we can't actually move around at the same time as each other. Nonetheless during the night the jetlag slowly unwinds, we've gone from 8 hours behind gmt to 9 hours in front. 

Out nice and early and on our way to the river front guided by the huge Skytree building.  On the way we visit the Kaminari - Mon Thunder gate.  A beautiful structure suporting a 500 KG paper lantern which leads to a stall lined pathway which leads to the magnificent Senso-ji temple, packed with supplicants, the air thick with incense, we munch on a couple of savoury, doughnutty things packed full of porky, spicy loveliness and watch it all go on.

A boat trip up river to  a very beautiful and ornate park. Packed full of stunningly moulded fir trees, including one over 300 years old, it's a wonderfully tranquill space to find in the middle of such a huge metropolis. 

We're pretty much determined to turn Japanese and with this in mind we go into a tiny resteraunt and order by pointing at stuff.  We get soups, pickled veggies, rice, a noodle and pork concotion and something which seems to resemble a fritata topped with smoked meat, a spicy barbeque sauce and a mayonaise like topping.  Sounds weird written down but it's actually pretty good.

Now, suitably re-invigorated, it's time to tackle the rail system.  The ticketing negotiated we succesfully make our way to the grounds of the imperial palace where we get to visit the royal gardens then back to tawaramachi for tea.  The restaraunt we end up in doesn't bother with staff to take your order.  Each table is furnished with a tablet, the menu is on there in every conceivable language, you put together your order then "check out" your order just like any on line purchase.  Scant minutes later your order arrives.  Green tea, some lovely pork dumplings, soy marinaded chicken, prawns and shrimp.  By the time it's gone and we make our way back to the room, to be honest, the last few days has caught up with us, we're knackered, tomorrow it's the Skytree and Shinjuku, the worlds busiest railway station.

It's a lovely walk through Tokyo from our hotel to the skytree. It's a wonderfully clean city and in the morning as the shops and stalls are setting up it's full of life. WE've noticed already thyat our Japanese brothers and sisters are in the main extremely friendly.  We stop at a crossing signal and a lady, observantly notices that our eyes don't slant, "where from?" she says.

"England" says kim.

"Ohhh Engrand" she says and pretty much claps her hands in excditement, eyes shining, "Engrand", shaking her head she walks away, turning back every now and again to wave.

The Skytree is a prtetty magnificent structure, we have a fantastically clear day, unbroken blue sky in all dorections, there are no queues! The elevator travels 350 floors (Three Hundred and Fifty Floors!!!!) in 15 (Fifteen!!!) seconds, it's not even enough time for me to shit myself! 

The view is staggering, mount fuji is there, clear as you like, the perfect vision of a mountain, and all of tokyo laid out like a toy town sparkling seas, bay, sky scraper district, monorail the lot.  Do we want to go the extra 100 (One Hundred!) floors.  Why not? if it doesn't kill me it'll make me stronger. And, here we are 450 (Four hundred and fifty) floors up.  The last floor is cunningly designed  so that you walk up an incline with a curvedn glass wall beside you, it gives the impression you're climbing the building.  If you don't stop to marvel at the engineeriung genius of it, so sublimely is it put together that you forget where you are.  It's a magnificent building and despite my intense fear of heights I actually enjoy the exoperuience such that we stop and have coffee and a cake while we drink in the views.

From here it's into the mayhem that is the Tokyo subway.  The train system of course runs like clockwork and Tokyo-ites negotiate it like Borg, ant like they scurry aroiund knowinhg exactly which track from 35 spread over six levels each of which serving 4 lines they need to take.  Kim and I blunder around, trying to keep our eyes pinned to the overhead boards searching for the tawamarachi oine serving Shinjuku, while walking and avoiding thousands upon thousands of fellow travellors all of whom seem to have their eyes pinned to their smartphone.

WE adopt a technique shown to us in Saigon when crossing streets packed with thousands of mopeds....Step out into the stream, maintain a steady pace and course and hope the stream parts around you.  For the most part it works!  We wind up at Shinjuku station, where 2,000,000 commuters shuffle through everyday.  I'm reminded of the Ray Davies line from Waterloo sunset (Thye most beautiful song in the english language by the way) "Millions of people, swarming like flies round baker street underground" as we gain a vantage pioint in a luittle restraunt overlooking the famous shinjuku crossing ( the busiest in the world)  The restaurant is one of those where the put a gas grill on your table.  We're in Japan so they bring Kobe beef, black pork and chicken to go with Miso soup, rice and teryaki sauce.  We look down on the crossing where around eight streams of people, held back by crossing signals, finally get the green light and march toward each other.  A huge starbucks has a window at te third floor of a skyscraper opposite, it's building wide window is lined with photographers and film cameras watching the spectacle.  Individuals try to rush ahead of the tide to set up cameras in the centre of the converging crowds, huge knots of mainly westerners mug for and wave at the seas of cameras, a final panicy run to get axross before the walk signal stops then the floodgates stop, and the tide starts backing up again for another five minutes until it all starts again, it's utterly mesmerising!

On the way back we stop off at Tokyo station, just a beautiful building, all red brick and a wide open square full of people meeting from trains strolling around in the last of the early evening sun.  We sit and watch the sunset from a cocktail bar,what a great great day.

So, we have 21 day rail passes and we're determined to use them to see as much of Japan as we can.  As such we have put together a tour which will leave precious little time for the blog so I'll catch up when I can (I'm in Fukuoka and my little Geisha is running me a post red light district bath {More later!})

The tour looks like this

Tokyo.

Kyoto

Fukuoka

Kagoshima

Hiroshima

Osaka

Himeji

Tokayama

Sendai

Hakodate

Sapporo

Tokyo

Haneda

then Hong Kong!!

Such is our dedication to the cause that we have foresworn Alchohol for the whole duration, in part inspired by our great great friends Bob and Sharon back in the UK.

We intend to do as much of the travel in Shinkansen bullet trains as is possible.  We have been warned, turn up a second late and we'll be lucky to get a wave from the guard as our train leaves the station gracefully excelerating to 300KPH.

We find our way like clockwork (to the wrong bloody train as it happens) and take our seats.  It's really very comfy and very very clean.  The guard walks the length of the carriage, impeccably uniformed, removes his cap, tucks it under his arm and bows to both rows of seats, before walking down the aisle and inspecting tickets.

We've got on the wrong class of train, we're in a super express.  It doesn't travel any faster, but it has fewer stops.  On this bugger we pretty much get where we're going 4 minutes before we leave tokyo.  The guard very very graciously asks if we will leave the train at the next station, he shows us which train we need to get on (after a wait of exactly 2 minutes) in order to cover the last 50 miles in 15 minutes flat in the correct class of train.  I mean, in the 5th largest economy on earth why the hell don't we have these things?  I've spent hour upon hour trying to get to bloody leamington spa or some other god forsaken hell hole in a draughty, dirty carriage, half the time with no seat, eating complete shit, being served by some monosylabic genital manipulating knuckle dragger who's shirt appears not to have been washed for a month.  Here in japan we swish along at 300 KPH, served amazing food by uniformed staff who wouldn't look out of place on parade.  I wonder, is it because we give ministers cars?

Anyway here we are in multi story, christmas tree bedecked, hammond organ competition playing, sparkling, Unesco world heritage sites coming out of its backside, Kyoto.  Dear God, you need to see this place, believe me, you may not know it, but ya do! 

The station is like an ultra modern glass and steel cathedral.  It takes 7 long escalator rides to get to the sky garden where you can take a break from your journey beside fountains under trees, beautifully lit by night, seren and cool by day. Looking down you have a huge open space of steps set out like an ampitheatre, at the moment thousands of people are sitting here while while a 5 year old girl plays bewilderingly complex jazz music on a hammond organ, I have absolutely no f*cking idea what's going on but it kicks the shit out of waterloo!  Behind the girl is a five storey magnificently decorated Christmas Tree. On either side as we decend there are restaurants and shoping malls, the place is vast! 

At the foot of the escalator the huge staion concourse manages the half million or so daily commuters as they negotiate 30 train lines, countless local tracks, a metro and subway system.  Opposite us another bank of escalators take you to the huge hotel with restraunt overlooking the concourse, the Theatre, the museum and another mall.   

We trundle our kit up the main street just beside the Kyoto tower, just lighting up it looks like a 25 storey zwarovsky ornament, all blues, pinks and sparkling whites, past the restaraunt sectin we come to a huge timber temple complex, looking some what out of place in this setting at first, the incredible scale of the buildings actually allows it to work, it's a vast and very beautiful complex of temples and gardens.