Japan

Well we have finally found an internet cafe that we can type an entry in english (its at the airport in the departure area, brought to you free by yahoo!)

After a crazy last week including hangovers and farewell dinners Emily and I boarded a flight to Sydney to meet our overnight plane to Tokyo. Dispite thinking we had plenty of time and dreaming of an hour relaxing in the Qantas lounge in Sydney by the time we arrived at the gate our flight was boarding! After being told the it was going to be 10 degrees and wind on our arrival i began to wish i had changed out of my shorts and into the longpants (there is no good place to do this in an airport).

As we settled in with the flight socks on and eye masks and a chicken curry dinner it became appartent that it is really had to sleep on a plane! Never the less we did our best and managed 6 hours between us. On our arrival at 655am in Tokyo we were tired put full excitment. After passing through customs we discovered that Qantas had negletced to put Emily's bag on the plane with us. A very helpful young fella help us sort it out and the bag was to be on the next flight from Sydney (thanks Qantas it ended up arriving on sunday night!).

We didn't let this slow us down, Emily to her credit took it all in her stride and so off we went to negotiate the Tokyo rail network (those familiar with this network will feel my pain). After a lot of guessing we decide to stand and watch what people did, this was no help, we then had the help of the station master who basicly bought the ticket for us, which wasn' much help for the next time we had to buy a ticket With our ticket to ride we headed to Asakusa and our capsule hotel.

Once we located the hotel we realised it was only 9am and could not check in until 2pm. Conveniently we only had one bag to store and quickly found lockers in the railway station (which are everywhere, as are lockers for hire, literaly just randomly on the street).

After lightening the load we set off to explore Asakusa, the guide book described it as stuck in the Edo period (which means it is an old part of town) and it was a fantastic way to take a first look at Tokyo. Shrines, Temples and stall lined streets greeted us and we spent the first few hours wandering the streets seeing the sites.

After a starbucks and rice and some kind of meat lunch we headed for Uneo and its parks. This area had the Zoo and lots of national musems and galleries for different things but our interest (due to tiredness) was begingin to suffer. We returned to the Capsule Hotel and check in.

This is were it got interesting. First we walked in and imediatley got shoo'd over to the area where you put shoes in to little lockers and put on the slippers in the locker. We then went through the process of checking in using a vending machine I was directed to a locker, while Emily was left in the "loby" and then told to put my stuff in it and get change in to the PJs provided (this is what i gathered from their Japanese instructions) after getting change i emerged to see Emily waiting with a confused look on her face and she had to go to the 8th floor (seperated sexes) to meet a similar locker. We agreed to meet in the loby for dinner at 6 and so than it was off to try out the Japanese baths

....to be continued (we may miss our flight)