APA Hotel Nishi Azabu Minato

... Hakone – a tourist town with hot springs and a unique tourist loop with many different types of transport. Stay tuned for our next update with all the thrills in store for us tomorrow. We will board our first bullet train, so that should be fun too.

That all for now folks. Cheerio from Tokyo and for us it is cheerio to Tokyo. We have marvelled at this truly magnificent city. We all hope to come back one day...

Sayonara.

... there is lots of chatter around me of friendly travellers exchanging advise and socialising. I have realised this way of travel is actually really good fun. Lots of kind people willing to help and great fun to chat too. I am glad I finally decided to do this. It is developing me in ways I never knew was possible.

Anyways I am running out of time and 300 Yen down...thats 2 drinks from the street vending machine. Bonus!... Got to go. Night x



Fian

Tokyo: 6 January This one is just a quickie, but I had to include our night out with a former colleage of mine in Tokyo. I have only conversed with Tomoko a few times via email, so it was really cool to be able to meet her in person. She was very kind to come and meet us at a metro station and take us to a very funky, tiny restaurant called Munch-Ya. We climbed up a ladder and sat on the floor at our table. Tomoko ordered the food and once ...

... with a curtain at the end. We had been told there was a typhoon coming and that we should stay in that night, but we were exhausted and didn't want to go out anyway, and it doesn't sound like the typhoon amounted to much! The next day was the last day we could us our Japan Rail Passes, so we got two trains and a bus to see Mount Fuji... unfortunately it was so overcast we couldn't actually see the mountain, but it was a nice little trip and we spend ...

... metal tube sticking precariously out from the back of the toilet seat that looks a bit like it will impale you when you sit down but actually sprays water, usually at the correct place! The worst I would say was in Western China in the Tibet Autonomous Region (yeah, right). It consisted of a semi-private rectangular hole dug out in the back of this restaurant where you lined your ...

... I went for a walk around the station area at around 2am, contemplating my options, one of which was to go to hospital there and then, but if I was going to be ill, I didn't fancy a stint there with my family having to travel over, particularly as most of them can't use chopsticks! So I decided to fly home pretty much immediately, deal with whatever was wrong, and hopefully return to Japan in time for my brother's visit in early January... A couple of days later, sitting ...

... about him, Morris seemed the obvious choice for who to ask for help...mainly because he was the only other white person on the train--in New York that would be such a racist thought but in Japan--when you don't know a word of Japanese--its just good common sense. Morris turned out to be more of a help than I ever could have imagined. Not only did he have a phone, despite being from a small town in Indiana and being ...

... I turn, and it is Ken Meyers our General Manager from the Big River Tour!! He is the GM on RENT, and the Big River PSM, Bryan Young is also the RENT PSM!!! So bizarre, but just goes to show the world is smaller than we think! It was fun and surreal to catch up with Kurt over coffee in Tokyo. They are going to try and see my show on Saturday, and hopefully I'll see theirs next Wednesday. Lucky scheduling to be able to make this work!! After coffee I headed to Shinjuku to meet ...

Not a great deal happens when I'm travelling by plane... it might be quicker but I miss the unexpectedness that I've had whilst travelling through borders on public buses! However, as usual for me during this trip, I had my bag taken aside for searching again before I left Mexico! I'm currently on the flight to Tokyo and loving the leg room! They had overbooked the flight (can you believe that, when I confirmed my ...

Aug 7,05 I went to a Odon-odori festival in a little village! Odon is the third week in August when Japanese people light lanterns and fires for their ancestors to find their way back home. There are tons of festivals during August to celebrate. I went to this festival with a few other JETS. There were children playing Japanese drums, woman dancing traditional dances in ukata's, and lots of food.