Ibis Roppongi Minato

... with series' of -chome streets e.g Aoyama Ich(1)-chome. Aoyama Ni(2)-chome etc.. Although i'm use to the odd vending machine here and there in the U.K, Tokyo introduced me to my first Vending machine restaurant- where you go to a machine, select and pay for your meal in exchange for a little ticket that gets exchanged with the restaurant staff for your food- quite efficient really since it lets the staff get on with serving instead of working out how to split a bill 8 ...

... We also took the path less traveled by and came across a second amazing extension to the park with tons of water ponds and bridges and an opening to the sea. We strolled around and took pictures and marveled at the scene. There were probably thirty other sketch-artists doing the same, which was sort of fun. It would have been nice to sit around and watch them work, but alas, we could not. We had places to go and people to see.

We ended up ...

... rings of our favorite character Naruto (we were on about episode 360 when we left) its about a young ninja called naruto growing up :) Anywayzzz back on the subway we headed to Ryogoku and through the muggy heat we found our location the sumo arena.... after some umming and arring we treated ourselves to some good seats for a few days time and continued to explore Tokyo. Next was Yo-yogi park, we managed to get off at the wrong subway ...

... infront of us is Ryokan Kangetsu, our home. Wow. It's a coming together of the modern and the traditional, to the left is the 'annexe' opened in 2004 its sleek and tidy, but on the right there is the more traditional side, almost shabby by comparison. Up the steps we go and are greeted by a muffled electronic voice from some, as yet, unseen source. What is said I have no idea but we are eager to get booked in so we push on up the steps. We pass through a beautiful gate its ...

... the curry itself was great...for the first few bites. The composition was too heavy on the spices and as a result, by the time I'm half way through the curry I'm already sick of it. My tongue has become numb with ALL the heavy-hitting spices that's dancing on my tongue, and I only barely finished the meat while leaving about a quarter of the plate intact... But this curry was definitely better than the block curries I usually have for ...

... the names of a few dishes that I will frequently encounter in that style restaurant if I am interested in going back on my own. Otherwise, the most exciting part of class was when it somehow came up that I played baseball in college--a few of us were talking about Tokyo Dome being so close to school and somehow it came up that I used to be a pitcher, at which point I got a nice little round of applause and many approving nods from a group of what can only be described as baseball ...

... I never realized we had forced them into an open trade agreement LONG before WWII (1800's) that opened their eyes to the use of/dependence on dead dinosaurs... I never realized we refused to lift the embargo.... partially because the Japanese were being a "bit" overeager in their "defense" of their territories from the encroaching west - read, they kept invading and occupying china and korea... it was very very interesting, and ...

... done. So we hopped back on the metro and headed that way. We emerged from the metro to find that it wasn't getting warmer despite the muted sun that was creeping up the horizon. The wind was brutal and not impressed with our fall attire we had donned that morning. But we forged ahead in the direction we thought the hotel resided. After several blocks and some lucky turns, we found ourselves in front of the massive hotel. It's immediately impressive, but so ...

This morning I took the subway to Ginza station where I bought a PassNet card. This cost 1,000 Yen (you can also get 3,000 or 5,000) and allows travel on all the subway lines in Tokyo - not JR though. Although it doesn't give you any travel discounts, it saves the hassle of having to work out what value of ticket you need and having to buy tickets all the time. I walked up to Tokyo stationto buy a ticket for the ...

arriving into a cacophony of chirpy ohios, sumimasens and arigatos, i stumbled out of the plane into the electric train and then into the historical district, where i was to spend my first night. there was a prolonged disorientation as i wandered about the streets labelled with unintelligible lettering ...