Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku Hotel Shibuya

We got up early this morning; this was our only full day in Tokyo and we intended to cover a lot of ground. First stop was a coffee shop over the road from the hotel for 'Coffee & a Danish' not exactly a traditional Japanese breakfast but what the heck, we needed caffeine! Suitably refreshed we were back to Shinjuku station to pick up 1 day metro cards and hop on the subway to Ueno Park in Northern Tokyo. Ueno Park is a huge area which as well as parkland includes temples, shrines, museum...

Having failed to check-in for our flight to Sydney online the previous evening, we tried again this morning but with no success. Claire was starting to panic that we would not be able to get extra leg room seats and that Mark would have to endure 10 hours in a standard seat (i.e. be extremely grumpy!) After checking out of the hotel at 11am, we leave our bags with reception and decide to fill the next couple of hours by exploring Shinjuku. First stop though is the Airport Limousine Bus ticket...

What a flight! 11.5hours of sniffing, coughing and trying not to sneeze, apparently sneezing is a sign of weakness in Japan? best to do it in private. I had a few sleeps 4/5hrs in total. We had dinner just after we left Paris - Japanese sakana (fish), miso soup and few other bits. Breakfast was served about 2 hours before we landed. I used my first Japanese toilet at the airport, didn't use the 'buttock cleansing' button this time! We're got the Narita Express to Shinjuku station, Tokyo. I ma...

Hello everybody! Jay has been doing enough of the writing on this blog so I thought it time that I did some. It's actually friday morning and we are at the hotel in Shinjuku but I thought I better update you on the last day. We got up at the Mt Fuji hotel and went down for another viking style-buffet breakfast. Food was much the same as all the other buffet breakfasts, a slightly odd mix of western breakfast foods, japanese breakfast foods and salad and spagetti. We then checked out of the ho...

Krispy Kreme's!!!!!!!!!! Mmm fresh off the conveyor belt! so yummy! Well it's Megan here and I figured it was my turn to chat. Our trip is doing very nicely and we are managing to get almost everything that we want done. With the exception of one minor detail, "Kawaii Kutsu" local lingo for cute shoes!! Trust me to ask how to say cute shoes before say "which train do I catch". But Chantelle has come to my rescue and has located a cheap shoe shop for me and we'll check it out on Sunday. But to...

Hello again! Day two in Sapporo now and today after checking out of the hotel we were meeting Katy and Yuki to spend the day. We caught the train out to ????? which is right on the sea and a bit of a tourist destination. We wandered around the town, looked at all the little shops in the area and stopped for drinks and cake. Glass products are common in the area and in Japanese tradition you can partake in making these products, so we did! We made cute little animals our of glass with much hel...

First impressions of Tokyo were not at all what we expected. It does not seem like Asia at all! Everything is so clean and quiet. I think I only heard one car horn beep. All the people were dressed in black expensive looking suits, including some of the women. Guess we must be in a business part of town, but you would never know this is a city of over 20 million people, as expected though it is dreadfully expensive. The hotel where we are staying has some shops downstairs and fancied a t shir...