Tokyo

Loving Japan but as expected things are a bit more tricky here because of the language barrier. Even signing in to the blog here, google thought i'd be able to read kanji script. 2 days really isn't enough to become fluent. However it's not as difficult as we anticipated, partly because many signs are translated and partly because many people speak enough english to help us. We've also mastered the metro ticket system and felt quite smug when a group of foreigners held up the ticket machine queue next to ours and we sailed through without even changing to the english setting!

So we flew into tokyo 2 nights ago and, as we'd not slept on the plane over we passed out and woke up nicely refreshed at 0500hrs the next morning. We went to the gym - still trying desperately to work off those many american burgers. Then we headed out for a day in the city. That's where the refreshed feeling ended. It was not as hot as we've become used to but much more humid. All the japanese were walking around in jumpers and we were sweating like we'd been in a sauna for an hour!! This made me very unhappy and I may have been a bit grumpy for a while. We (begrudgingly- for me) went around the Imperial Palace where the royal family still live. So we weren't allowed in the nice air-conditioned palace, just around the gardens. Apologies for any very sweaty Kim photos which Colin is bound to post in the next few days.

Afterwards i indulged Colin's need for geeky stuff by going to the very techy district of Akihabara where you can buy every cable known to man. We decided it's like Tottenham Court Road on acid! Then we went for beer which was nice.

Today we went to Ginza for a spot of window shopping (Tokyo's answer to Bond St.) and then on to Roppongi (potential to be Soho, i think) where we went up a tall tower. Then we went for beer which was nice.

Not quite sure of the plan for the next few days. We could go to a shrine which has the powers to to aid fertility, child birth and prevent flooding. We thought this an odd combination! We haven't done any shrines yet but there is time for that in Kyoto. So we might just go see some really fat men wearing just belts throw each other around for our amusement.