Tokyo

Arrived in Tokyo and managed to find my way to a cheap hotel (tip for people travelling in Japan: you put the money in the machines first and then select which type of ticket you want rather than vice versa - 5 minutes of prodding train ticket machines could have been avoided if I'd only known that!). The room in the hotel was tiny and I kept finding myself feeling a little itchy every time I went into my room, but it wasn't a bad spot even so.

Given the hectic nature of seeing so many people in Hong Kong, I decided to have Thursday to myself and so I went on a little trip to Yokohama. The science museum had a proper, rattle and shake style helicopter simulator which easily justified the entrance fee on its own, without the need for the rest of the museum. I also took the fastest lift in the world (45km per hour) up to the top of the tallest building in Japan, the Landmark Tower (which, after Hong Kong, was neither particularly high nor architecturally interesting). Good views over what they claim is the largest ferris wheel in the world. I began to wonder whether the world record for claiming world records was held by Japan. Also saw a nice church conversion on my way back to the train station (via, would you believe, the largest department store in the world).

Friday, I met up with Takuya (an Japanese friend who I met while studying in HKU). The weather was terrible that day and, although we went up one of the twin towers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices, we couldn't even see the other tower next door! We wandered around some of the different districts of Tokyo. The rest of the weekend enjoyed better weather. We took a look at the Sony Centre, had a night out in Roppongi with some of Takuya's JET friends, went to the temple commemorating those who died fighting for Japan and wandered around the Imperial Palace.

On Sunday, I went to Tokyo Union Church (which was very good) and then took a wander around Meiji-jingu and the Yoyoki-koen park surrounding it. This used to be the site of a sub-culture parade and still had a larger than average number of odd looking people knocking about (I met a couple of rocket scientists there, but they were normal). That afternoon, I had a wander around Ueno park before arranging to meet Takuya for a farewell dinner.