Travel diary

11th June 2002

So, Tokyo... Wow - it's amazingly huge. Imagine London and multiply it by about, erm, 5 or something. There's about 13 million people here. It's really weird, it's always quite busy, but not packed and noone seems in a hurry to do anything, although everything gets done. Everyone's so helpful aswell -

(interlude to explain the annoying keyboards as I just hit the "go into weird squiggly writing" mode - the spacebar is about 1/3 of the normal size, with a "go squiggly" button next to it which I keep hitting. Anyway, back to what I was saying)

if you look at all lost or stare blankly at a map, someone will come over and ask if they can help. However, however helpful they are, you always have to remember one thing: Japanese people seem as incapable as [insert your favourite word for people who can't read maps, my personal preference is women but that might offend some of you] of reading maps! I've only managed to get myself lost once so far, which isn't too bad going.

When I got here on Saturday, I met with Nobuko in a place called Shinjuku where I was staying that night. Went out to dinner with her, her mum and some friends, a really nice fish restaurant. Then went back to my hotel... Capsule hotels are cool! Well, not that cool, especially if all the people in the pods around you are snoring, but I'm sure I did the same! In each room there are about 30 pods, 2 high, infact there's a pic of the one I stayed in at. You get your own TV and radio inside the pod - it's somewhere between a single and double bed in size.

Didn't get to go and see the Japan v Russia game in the end :-( Apparently Nobuko had sent me an email about it which never arrived - in that same email she'd said that she could get me a ticket for England v Argentina, raaah! Still, found some American and English people to go and watch the game with in a Thai restaurant, where I did my bit for a school in a small village in Thailand that makes money for each bottle of Beer Lao sold, we probably got them an entire science block! The atmosphere after the game was amazing, thousands of people in the streets celebrating. One of the guys I met is going to the England game on Wednesday, and once again, one of them was talking of spare tickets but I'm not gonna hold my breath... He's going with some of his friends - traders from UBS, argh! Apparently they're the ones that might have spare tickets. We shall see.

Went to a traditional Japanese theatre performance yesterday, Kabuki, which was cool although somewhat difficult to understand! Got adventurous last night and went into a small noodle bar and managed to blag my way into getting a bowl of noodles with an assortment of nodding, pointing and the very very occasional word of Japanese. Anyway, better get going out of this internet cafe back to the gorgeous sunshine outside - off to Tokyo Tower to get a wicked view of the city, then a wander down to the bay area.