I’m currently sat on the sofa, as the afternoon’s light dwindles, with Chet Baker singing in the background. I am once again reliving the final day in Japan and I feel a tiny bit emotional. I’ll leave the summary to the end (oh, how cavellier, Ad), but it had been a most incredible holiday to this point, and there’s always a bit of sadness that clouds over the final day of a holiday. It’s like that Sunday night I-have-work-tomorrow feeling, but dialled up to 11.

We were awoken by a chink of light peeking through the panels of our ryokan by Lake Kawaguchiko. Well, that’s a good sign. This was the view once we pulled back the panels.

This was already better than yesterday’s cloudy weather. We packed up our things, said our goodbyes at the desk, and made our way to the lake (20 minute walk). The sky was.. inconsistent. One end was cloudless, the other thick with grey clouds. We kept walking to the lake, fingers crossed that we’d get a sight of Mt Fuji.

The lake itself looked beautiful bathed in sunlight, but alas, the mountain was still covered in too much cloud. We could just about make the outline, and could get a real sense of its immense size. We once again struggled to find much in the way of food until we came to a nice little cafe that overlooked the lake. We sat outside in the lovely weather, and the most gorgeous little puss came to join us. We fussed the puss for a while and then realise that the clouds were slowly rolling off Fujisan, and we were getting a better view by the minute. It was sadly never a clear view, but something about the way the clouds sat around the mountain was really striking and menacing, and it looked absolutely beautiful. Almost biblical. I can only really compare to seeing the Grand Canyon in person, you can never quite imagine what it’ll be like from photos and videos alone.

Oh, and if you’re here for the cat (and fair fucks if you are). Easily the best puss we met all holiday…

Just look at him. Gorgeous. It was hard to know where to fix my eyes. We decided to make our way back to Tokyo for one final time. We had one final stay at our base hotel, and we’d get an early train to the airport and…. well, you know what travelling home is like, so I don’t need to talk about that.

So what were our final plans in Tokyo? The truth is, we didn’t really have any. We decided to take a walk in and around Roppongi, an area we’d only driven through on our Mario Karts. So; this is where the rich folks are. Everyone was dolled up. I can’t remember what I was wearing, but I’m going to assume it was not a suit. Our final meal was… erm, what was it? I can’t remember too well, but it was very confusing. It was almost like a buffet; we had to choose the types of noodles, the flavour broth, and then various foods that were to go in the meal, including lots of breaded.. stuff. No idea, mate. It was nice though!

With the help of Googlemaps, we decided to go to a local hotel that, not only could you walk around willy-nilly, but allegedly had a beautiful garden and waterfall. It was a bastard to find. Basically, Gmaps is wrong. When we finally found it, we walked around a bit, felt like Leo Dicaprio in the posh bit of the Titanic, and eventually found the garden. And beautiful it was. Tastefully lit by lamps, with paths that snaked their way around various plants and rivers before meeting at a lovely man-made waterfall.

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We decided the very last thing we’d do was to go and see one of the many Christmas light shows that the city put on. It seemed like a fitting end to the holiday, a bombastic celebration of everything that had come before. This time it was on the grounds of a huge mall. Sadly, photos don’t do justice to the event in the slightest, but it was pretty breathtaking. The show was a 15 minute or so loop that went on all night. The must was incredible, sync’d to various lighting patterns. It all ending with bubbles being blown everywhere, except when you popped them, they disappeared into chalky smoke. Medievil shit!

We went into the mall afterwards and gawped at some of the Christmas decorations that were on display, and then decided we must call it a night. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was that.

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe this holiday. It was just.. something else. We had so much fun. Japan is an amazing country, and I feel like I saw enough of it to say that. Obviously, one may say that I’ve not seen Japan like a resident might, but from a travellers point of view, I would recommend a visit to all and sundry. Whether you’re amongst the neon glow of Tokyo, or the tangerine leaves of Kyoto, or in the shadow of Mt Fuji, or engulfed in the history of Hiroshima, there really is something for everyone. Here’s some holiday stats for you:

15 days
100+ miles walked
4 aeroplanes
4 shinkansens
Approx. 6 normal trains
Approx. 40 subway trains
4 buses
2 cable cars
1 pedal boat
1 go-kart
circa 1,150 photos taken
133 instagram stories
65GB Internet used
circa 8 bottles of Pocari sweat finished off.

Thank you for reading any/all of my blogs. This will sound incredibly selfish or arrogant, but I didn’t really write them for anyone but me. God bless photos and videos, but you can never really re-live holidays moment-by-moment unless you have to write about them. It’s been 147 days since we landed back on English soil, and obviously life is very different right now, but it’s been nothing but a pleasure to walk back through these amazing memories.

Take care of yourselves…. and each other.

So one of the most hotly anticipated parts of the holiday, especially for Julie, was seeing Mt. Fuji. There’s something starkly unique about her (I’m talking about the mountain here, not Julie, though she has some unique qualities too), the way she stands alone surrounding but flat land, makes her seem like the biggest peak in the world. And she loves pusscats. (hang on, who am I talking about now?).

In our research, we had many options to get that perfect view of Fujisan, and we settled on this particular lake despite it being a little trickier to reach, in the town of.. *inhale*.. Fujikawaguchiko. We had been keeping a close eye on the forecasts for this particular day and they had been all over the place. We arrived in Fujikawaguchiko to find full cloud cover. Sadness. We weren’t even convinced that the mountain was out there. Conspiracy. It did make for some nice dystopian photos, though.

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We had a long wait before we could check in, and it turned out that the area we were in was.. pretty quiet, to say the least. We could only find one restaurant within walking distance that we could possibly eat at. We arrived to find it barely open, with a table having to be laid out specifically for us. From memory it was about 11am at this point, but we still went all in as if we were having a 3pm Sunday lunch, eating a variety of miso soup and Sukiyaki (?). It was pretty delicious. We still had a couple of hours before check in, so we decided to nip into every souvenir shop on that side of the lake. I’m talking around 10-12 shops, all with very-similar-but-not-quite-the-same Fujisan merchandise. It was finally 3pm, so we headed to our second ryoken of the holiday, nestled in a little cluster of properties just off the coast of the lake. It was really was a lovely little place, run by a young family who were very helpful in giving us tips on where to go and what to do. We pottered around the grounds for a couple of hours and may or may not have had a nap (I don’t particular remember naps, after all, they are very overrated). We decided we’d wait for nightfall and go and see the local Maple Corridor; a large sort of trench, lined by beautiful trees who’s leaves gather on the ground below. The ryokan owner let us take a couple of bikes from his shed and we were on our way. I should point out at this stage, that due to our numerous stays at the same hotel in Tokyo, we were able to leave the bulk of our luggage there. This also meant that I was absolutely terrible at packing an overnight bag. This meant I had a t-shirt and small jacket to wear for our bike ride in zero celsius temperatures.

The ride across was pretty beautiful, the lake illuminated by restaurant lights and a bright moon. It took around 20 minutes to get to the corridor, and it had been worth the wait. It was breathtaking, though naturally the photos are absolutely bullshit.

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We hung around for a while and then realised we were Absolutely Fucking Starving. Oh course, barely anywhere was open so we were cycling around aimlessly following Gmaps to big, closed eateries. I was the so cold at this point, that I was shivering and doing that “BURURUUREURRRRRRR” thing that I thought only happened in films about getting stuck on Everest and such like.

We finally found somewhere to eat. I don’t recall the name, but it was essentially an American diner kind of place. Fuck yr culture, I’m hungry yo.

We made our way back to the ryokan and had the perfect antidote for the cold; a little lounge area with a table sunk into the ground. You put your legs underneath and your feet are warmed by hot coals just below. It was an absolute joy. I also found a ukulele and no doubt annoyed the family who owned the place.

We had ourselves a cup of tea and copious amounts of sweets for the guests, and we got ourselves off to bed for our final day of the holiday 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 Hopefully Fujisan would come out to play tomorrow.

I write this immediately after watching Phoebe Bridgers perform her new song ‘Kyoto’, from her bathtub. I should probably point out this was for Jimmy Kimmel’s show, before you call the cops.

We rose from our hostel bunks one final time, ready for a final day of exploring before heading back to Tokyo for another one-nighter. Our schedule had gone a little haywire the last couple of days, but today’s plan was clear; visit Fushimi Inari-taisha. For those that don’t know it by name, it’s the famous orange gates that lead up Inari mountain. I’m going to level with you; I have zero recollection of how we got there. I remember and being annoyed that Julie checked the SUFC score (I wanted her to go into the highlights blind, in which I would add my own dramatic commentary), and then I remember being at the base of the mountain. This is why I should have written the whole blog in a few weeks, not 3 decades later. I do however recall the area not being half as busy as I had expected, which was nice. Whether it was just outside of busy season or we’d just arrived early enough, I’m not sure, but it meant we could take in some nice views in peace, and photos without people ruining it by being wearing clothes that clashed with their backdrop, or being blurry or whatever.

It’s difficult to give a blow-by-blow account of the walk, but just believe me when I say it was pretty magical. Essentially, it’s just hundreds or orange painted arches you’re walking through, but something about it feels poignant and important. Hard to explain really, but you can really feel history washing over you the higher you climb. Also, good for pictures, innit. Investigators of the syntax of the previous sentence will realise that “good for pictures” does not necessarily equal “I took good pictures”. But, here they are, warts n’all.

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Shout out to one of only two cats we met that accepted strokes, half way up the mountain. Hey, boo.

Once we reached the top, we took a different route down, walking through deforested paths down to the bottom. We found ourselves ‘natures bridge’ (yes, I coined this amazing term), that we both climbed up, to varying success; can you guess who was best from the below?

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That’s right, there’s no photo of me, bad as my climbing skills proved.

We had made some excellent time during today’s ventures, meaning we could make our way back to Tokyo early afternoon on another bullet train. We made sure we bought the correct tickets needed in order to have a good view of Fujisan, and bought ourselves bento boxes and a dessert for the journey. Now then. The dessert. Let me introduce you to – Yatsuhashi.

Ay caramba. It’s pretty simple really, it’s made from rice flour, sugar and cinnamon. That dark patch in the middle is red bean paste. Now let me tell you something. Are you listening? It was fucking DELIGHTFUL. We actually first had these on the aforementioned “samples dinner” we had earlier in Kyoto so we knew the hype was real. This little dessert goes into the upper echelon of exotic dessert finds, which was up to this point only occupied by kürtőskalács, discovered at a German Christmas market. Ah shit. Now I’m thinking of those, too. Now I can see them BOTH on a plate right in front of me. Christ. Both ready to be eaten. Shitting hell. brb.

OK so I had a long, hard think about Apartheid for 5 minutes, and my mind is clear again.

So we arrived in Tokyo once more, knowing we had one night before we were on our way again. However, our original plan was to arrive late at night so we had no plans at all. Well, not until Julie got on GOOGLE. As luck would have it, Tokyo’s first ever Nintendo store (believe it or not) had opened up in Shibuya. We ventured to the mall to go check it out.

We were saddened, disgusted, amazed, disappointed, and dumbfounded to find that there was a 90 minute queue to get into the shop. We both put our head in our hands. Disaster. Actually, no; I put my head in my hands, then looked up to find Julie calmly joining the queue. What the fuck was she doing? Quick bit of maths – we were going to spend 1/200th of our holiday queueing to get into a shop that we almost certainly were not going to buy from, that we could actually quite clearly see into without the need to queue. God damn. Well, I joined the queue as it was the only place we could argue this out. It went a little something like this.

Ad: Err… there’s absolu…
Nintendo chap: this way, please.

..and like that, we entered the shop. The wait had been a mere 7 minutes, tops. (Ok ok, so it doesn’t take me 7 minutes to three syllables, it was all for comic effect! Most of the blog is! I’ve never even been to Japan!)

The shop was definitely worth a 7 minute wait, but probably not 90 minutes. I’d say somewhere in the region of 36 minutes would be a fair pound-for-pound estimate. The shop had “lifesize” figures of Mario, Ryu, and the like, surrounded by all the Nintendo branded goods you could desire. Annoyingly, there were a lot of Nintendo/Pokemon crossover merch which was of zero interest to only a part-nerd like myself. Alas, it was great fun rummaging around the shop, dreaming of buying t-shirts had they been in an imaginary 90% off sale. Just next door was the Pokemon store. Now, honestly, I think there’s some kind of conspiracy going on with Pokemon. Not only have I never seen a single moment of the TV show, I also had in mind that it was ‘after my time’. However, everyone my age seems to know a lot about Pokemon, so.. *shrug*, who knows. Alas, I do not like it. It’s scummy, and full of chavs and stupid animals. We spent a good while in the shop, with Julie looking for presents for her nephew, messaging her sister for ideas. We were overheard by a couple who seemed rather giddy and utterly delighted to help us out. Poindexters.

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We finally left, and made our way to the basement in search of much needed sustenance. Sadly we found no such food, but we did find another record shop (I should have counted, but I probably went to around 20 stores all holiday) and this was our best find. It was actually a mini HMV store so I didn’t hold out much hope, but managed to pick up three records I had been looking for all holiday. Win.

The rest of the evening was pretty none eventful; we eventually found ourselves in some sort of cheese restaurant where I ordered Carbonara and was surprised to find bacon in it (as I say, very weary at this stage of the holiday..), but I ate around the bacon and it was FINE. We then headed to the Starbucks that overlooks the famous crossing to get some decent photos. Or try at least. Did we succeed? You decided. But here’s a clue. No. No we didn’t.

In the last blog, I apologised for going 18 days without writing a blog. This time, there is a cool 2 months between the last blog and this one. Of course, life is a teeny tiny bit different for us all now. I had planned to write this entire blog in December and January, but that all went out the window. And hence, today’s blog is likely to be riddled with nihilism. Reading this years in the future, I might question why. CORONAVIRUS, that’s why.

It’s now 4 months since we went to Japan and it seems like a lifetime away. I’m pretty much at the stage now where I am piecing together memories through photos alone, longing for crowded places and human interaction. Thoughts of being in packed tourist areas almost seems like some kind of dream.

Anyway, enough of that. We woke up in our hostel again and decided, following the disappointment of missing the monkeys at Yamanouchi, we made a semi-last minute decision to go to Arashiyama Monkey Park to remedy that fact. We hopped on a bus and we were on our way. The area around the park was pretty beautiful, surrounding by mountains, sporting trees of all colours; the bright white sky only highlighting the fact.

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It’s difficult to see from the photos, but the bridge crossing the river was incredibly busy. Tens of military personnel were on hand to usher us across the bridge in a shuffling queue from one side to the other. We then entered the park and made the 20 minute uphill hike towards the ruddy monkeys. We were surprised to find not one single monkey on the way up, and worried that might either not be there or confined to the tourist area in some form. Neither was true as we finally hit the top, they were everywhere! Monkeys of all ages walking amongst us, hanging from trees, hanging off various ropes and objects. They were cute, obvs, they’re monkeys, and it was lovely to see that they were able to walk where they pleased. You were allowed to feed the monkeys as long as you went into the hut and went behind the caged window; i.e. WE THE HUMANS were the caged animals. I can just hear the philosopher’s salivating. Here are some monks.

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We spent a long time here, and rightly so. Just look at them. Cute little fuckers. We were right next to the Bamboo forest so we headed there. Now, we’d been to a few touristy places on our travels, but I feel like this one tipped over into too touristy. I appreciate the dripping irony of saying that, but here we are. We slowly shuffled around the tall, beautiful bamboo trees, with no opportunity to stop and take decent photos. To be honest, we were probably a little weary at this stage too. We didn’t hang around too long before heading back into the main town.

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I don’t think I have mentioned until now that all holiday, I had been deliberating whether to go to a gig in Kyoto on a bit of a whim. Those that know me know that I love a gig and I get all twitchy if I go long enough without one. Midori Hirano was playing at a venue called Sata, with support from Atsuko Hatano. I decided I would go along whilst Julie would go shrine huntin’. It was a long ol’ walk to the venue from the centre of town, around 50 minutes. It was interesting to finally walk around some residential areas of Japan; I was beginning to wonder where the fuck everybody lived. The venue was your typical gig room; I made my way up to the makeshift bar and bought myself a red wine, to then find that the room that the gig was taking place in was locked shut. This was the first time I had been alone during the holiday, and it was time to put my Japanese learnings to the test. The barmaid was putting bottles away with her back to me, so I had to get her attention.

“Arigato?” I said, trying to get her attention.

Of course, this translates to – “thank you?”.

She gave me a funny look, and I motioned towards the door. She unlocked it and I walked into a pitch back room, but for a lady with a violin and loop pedal dimly lit on stage. As my eyes began to adjust, I realised there were no more than 20 people in here, all on separate seating, everyone fully attentive. The music was glorious, Atsuko Hatano is an incredible violinist, flip-flopping between contemporary classical flourishes, and twisted avant garde sounds that a violin simply has no right to make. It was completely captivating. As she finished the set, the lights went up to reveal the bright white room I was in. I grabbed myself another wine and sat there, just taking everything in. There were certainly no tourists in here and everyone seemed to know each other so I just sat there awkwardly, looking at pictures from the holiday so far on my phone. Before long, the lights dimmed once more for Midori Hirano to grace the stage with Kaliber16 on visuals. The following 30/40 minutes were hypnotic and incredibly inthralling. Midori’s piano was drenched in various reverbs and manipulated effects, creating such ethereal atmospheres that put me in places much bigger than the room I was in. She was joined by Atsuko for her final couple of tracks, creating quite the wall of gorgeous noise. Please excuse my horrendous photos…

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As I left the venue, I was safe in the knowledge that I had absolutely made the right decision to go; consider me a new fan of both acts.

I walked to the bus stop and messaged Julie; she’d had a grand old time at the shrine, apart from the bit where she dropped her bag off a wall into the shrine garden and had to ask some people there to retrieve it. WHAT. A. WALLY.

We met back up and went back to the hostel. By now it was approaching midnight, and I had a date with the Mighty Blades at 1.30am, as they were playing Manchester United back home. I got some much needed 90 minutes of shut eye, and awoke on the bottom bunk of our bed to watch the match on my phone. Part of me wished for a dull-as-fuck opening 15 minutes so I could sack it off and sleep instead. And what happened? Only the best match of the season. We went 1-0 up and in my overzealous bed-bound celebration, Julie awoke with a “grrrrrr!”. We then went 2-0 up and I celebrated again in a similar fashion, this time thankfully without waking the beast. WHAT?! Julie, I meant Julie. Damn… autocorrect (?). Half time. 2-0 up. Time for a 10 minute nap (I believe I’ve mentioned in a previous blog what an incredible sleeper I am, and I proved this once more). Second half, and after some back and forth we ended up 2-3 down. Gutted. Shell-shocked. Why, God, why?! Alas, in the 90th minute, up pops hero of the day Oli McBurnie to score the equaliser. I had to physically hold my mouth to not wake Julie. Scenes.

Ahhh, crap. I was on a bit of a roll with this blog-writing business, and yet here we are; 18 days after the previous tale. I’m sorry, everyone. I know you were DYING to know whether we lived through the night. Well; we did. With aplomb.We awoke around 10am, shattered from the miles put in climbing Mount Misen. We decided to change our itinerary around a tad, meaning that we were going to visit Osaka today. I had found someone’s day plan on a forum I frequent and we just thought ‘fuck it, let’s copy that step-by-step’. I had heard wildly varied opinions on Osaka. One friend said it was the best city in the world, another told me it was dull and we should skip it. However, there’s only one true way to find out who’s right, right?

We arrived in Osaka and it was a balmy 21C (aahhh, remember when temperature got into double figures? #nostalgia). We first headed for TEMPLE, which was eerily quiet to say it was approaching noon, and was the weekend. It’s ok, everyone was around the corner. By this stage of the holiday, we were perfectly happy just looking at temples and not paying to go in. Taking your shoes off and putting them back on is a massive ball-ache after all. Just down the path was TEMPLE famous for the incense surrounding it. I’ll say. As if Japan didn’t smell good enough, this was the best thing to escape up my nose since that coke binge back in ’92 (jaaaaapes! I was 8 then! It was just heroin!). Julie lit a stick and stuck it in the… thing (google it for more info) and shrouded the mini-temple in smoke. It looked pretty cool, see..

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Our next plan was to see the tallest skyscraper in Japan, so we ducked into a nice little park that was packed full of families picnicking. Towering above us all, the skyscraper. Cool. But WAIT. Avert your eyes downwards and to the left and you shall discover a little pen with two llamas in! Due to the interest, it was hard to get a photo. At this point, the zookeeper (?) took one by the leash and actually walked it into a mall. Loads of people followed, trying to get a photo or video of this llama. Honestly, it felt like a scene from Charles Manson’s arrest or something, but with less hair. Here’s a photo of trendsetter Julie, before other curious voyeurs followed.

Ok, we’re hungry. We took a walk to Dotonbori, a place famed for its wild restaurant fronts. Well, they weren’t wrong. One restaurant had a huge plastic octopus above it. Another an animatronic crab placed on the front. Walking around, you feel like you’re in a theme park, but somehow without that fake feeling you get. Another restaurant had a huge pool where you could catch your own lunch. We opted for the most normal looking restaurant and had the Japanese delicacy ‘random food on sticks’.

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After ducking into a few Playstation shops and arcades, we headed towards a mall we’d read about with a lovely garden on the roof. On the way, we passed through the famous tech district of Osaka. It was quite bizarre in all honesty; I expected to see robot shopkeepers and iPhone 17s, but it was all VHS, DVD, CDs. Madness. When we reached the mall, we could immediately see why it had been recommended. It was quite the feat in architecture, and the garden was indeed rather lovely on the roof, and was nice to catch the final rays of the day.

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Next step was to head back to Dotonbori to see along the river, and on the way I decided I was going to head into another Towers Records because why not, right? Following a tip of, I headed for the rock CDs section and managed to find defunct Sheffield band ‘Screaming Maldini’s debut album.. sold out! Impressive stuff. On another floor I could hear a live gig. I headed over and it was 3 young women singing to a backing track. There was a makeshift stage, and a sandwich board that seemed to provide stage times throughout the day. They were playing, umm, J-pop (get out clause) and there was a crowd of maybe 50 watching intently. The crowd were almost entirely made up of men of, err, my age and older. There was one stage where the band asked them to clap along and as if some nightmarish devil had dreamed it up, about 50% of the crowd clapped on 1 and 3 and the other 50% clapped on 2 and 4. It sounded horrendous. I had to get out of there, fast.

We headed for the river, and were immediately excited by bright neon and the reflective river. We spent a good while here just marvelling, and discovered that I can change the aperture on my phone, making me want to retrace the steps of my entire holiday all over again. I checked my bank balance and I confirmed no, I would not be doing that. We were especially impressed by the huge misshapen ferris wheel that encircled the Osaka branch of Don Quixote.

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Ok, one last stop on this whistle stop tour of Osaka. It was an important one. A chocolate shop, bitchessssssss! It was a bit of a trek, and took a while to find, but it was all worth it. Delicious hot chocolate and scrumptious cake in a lovely wooden cafe on a mezzanine. We finished up and it was time to head back to Kyoto to meet our mate Pete. Once again, we’d never actually met Pete, but we knew him from the FAWM.org site. We have appreciated each other’s music for 9 years now, and I had promised to collaborate on his hip-hop album outside of FAWM, and I never did, so I did wonder if he’d stab me immediately upon meeting, or if he’d do it when I least expected it. We were back in Kyoto and we met Pete sat on a bench and set about finding some food. We found ourselves at a nice little ‘for the locals’ restaurant and enjoyed some noodles and wine. Julie ordered a side of plain rice and almost got laughed out of Japan. I’m trying to think of the English equivalent of this; perhaps asking for a solitary slice of bread? Who knows. I laughed along anyway, in on the joke with my homeboys. We started banging on the desks “Id-i-ot! Id-i-ot!”. I threw the pot of rice over Julie’s head and it only made people laugh harder as Julie cowered into the corner, wishing the nightmare would just end. Bah, fine. That’s all made up. Pick up again from “almost got laughed out of Japan”. We then left and headed to a pub called The Highbury which appeared to be owned by Asian Arsenal fans, naturally. Spurs (Pete’s team) were away at West Ham in an entertaining 2-3 scoreline. We chatted and drank more wine until it was time for me and Julie to leave. We were dying, man. Pete wanted beer, we wanted bed. A bad mix. We got an obligatory selfie, of course.

One of my biggest inspirations for wanting to go to Japan, was Grace and Hugh’s Japan blog when they honeymooned there a few years ago. It was so well written, informative, funny; all the things this blog is not. Their write up of Hiroshima comes with a warning that there’d be no humour. Well, I can’t promise that. What if I fall upon a particular humorous pun, am I just meant to ignore it?! Ok, ok, FINE. No jokes in this bit. I won’t even do a sarcastic bit in italics. You can’t joke about anything these days.

So, this was a long day. Emotionally and physically draining. We woke up really early for once; Julie with a hangover after her 2 sakes. I mean – a GIF of a cat can make me cry if I’ve got a hangover, so lord only knows how she’d get through today. We headed straight back to the A-Dome. Owing to our early rise, we pretty much had the area to ourselves, which was rather eerie. Seeing the dome in the light, you could really appreciate the lack damage done to the structure; yes, there was a tonne of rumble all strewn around the base of the building, but it was in remarkable shape for something built in 1915, never mind one that had a massive bomb explode above it. I’m sure you all know the story of the atomic bomb during WW2. I can’t remember the exact story, but I think Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (I’m sorry. I mean – it doesn’t even make sense) decided to drop a bomb on Japan, and it exploded directly above the dome, and because the blast went outwards, the dome remained relatively intact. Elsewhere there was absolute devastation; 80,000 or so people, mostly civilians, killed instantly, and they believe between 129,000 to 226,000 died later. Whether that was a day later or 50 years later, the numbers are astronomical. Walking around the dome, it’s so hard to envisage what happened. The surrounding area is built up with modern buildings, houses, and parks, with the faint hum of rush hour traffic in the background. Just across the river is the memorial park, which we wandered around, soaking in the sombre mood that hung on the area like a fog. The memorials were beautiful and poignant as you would expect. Interestingly, any plaques we read laid little blame on the Americans, and if they did it was 50/50 with blame for the Japanese too. The overarching theme was peace; the world must be denuclearised, to learn from past mistakes. Incidentally, we visited here the day that Jo Swinson was asked if she would fire a nuclear weapon, and she answered ‘yes’ with a smile, with little further thought.

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We headed inside the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, which once again, was completely empty but for us. As you walk into the main hall, you spiral downwards anti-clockwise, to symbolise going back in time. Events leading up to the bombing are scrawled on the walls until you reach the bottom, opening out into a huge spherical room. Above you, 140,000 tiles which come together to create a photograph of the aftermath of the city. You can spot the A-dome, and maybe a few more buildings, but mostly the city is flattened. Naturally, it was here that Julie’s hangover caught up with her. Pft, I don’t know, crying in the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims? How embarrassing!

Through to the next room was even sadder – a huge TV screen hung on the wall, showing pictures of the dead, complete with their name, occupation, age, cause of death (such as cancer, radiation poisoning, etc). We just stood staring as the screen cycled through so many pictures; young mothers, grandpas, babies. Some death dates were 1945. Some were 2019.

I mean – where can you go from here? A 7-Eleven. Now then, who’s been reading all my blogs, eh? Cast your mind back to Shibuya; remember Julie had that delicious ‘cheese corndog’. Ok well, I was perusing the counter and I spotted a corndog myself. I cast my mind back to that day, Julie’s teeth sinking deep into the breaded mozzarella. She let me have a taste and it was heaven. So, I wanted in. I bought the bastard. We started walking and I bit into it. Sausage. Wait, WHAT. But.. this isn’t right! I’m a vegetarian, you idiot! I spat it out, and gave the rest to Julie. It was only 5 or so seconds that I realised, hey wait, a corndog famously is made of sausage and I’d momentarily forgotten this and thought it’d be made of cheese. NOW who’s the idiot?

We arrived at the ferry port and bought our tickets. It was time to get on the water, and make the short trip to Miyajima Island. Thankfully, nothing sad every happened there, so the lols might just come rolling back in; seatbelts on!

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Thanks to a spot of research, we knew that the famous Itsukushima Shrine, the huge gate that’s just plonked in the sea, is covered in scaffolding. Head to toe. We almost decided against the island, but were told it was worth going anyway, and by jove it was! After stepping off the ferry, we were met by deer again. These neanderthals couldn’t even bow! But they were awfully cute. One literally ate Julie’s map of the island out of her hands. I’m unsure what the nutritional value was, but they seemed to enjoy. A nice waiter from the restaurant just behind us brought out a brand new map for us; kudos to you, sir.

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We had a wander around the busy streets, ducking into shops and grabbing ourselves a sandwich and hot chocolate. There were a lot of shrines and temples compacted around here at the foothills of Mount Misen (there’s a Yorkshire joke in there somewhere). So yeah, who knows what all these shrines and temples were called (Google does) but they were all fun and nice and great. No but really, it was a lovely route to the foot of the mountain and some of the most diverse temples we’d come across so far. I was a particular fan of the stone ornamental buddhas we found, each with a tiny knitted hat.

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We finally arrived at the beginning of the mountain path. There was a sign that advised the hike would take around 120 minutes, with a cable car at the top. It was around 3pm at this point, so we decided there should be just enough light to get up there for sunset, and then the last cable car back down (5.30pm). It became immediately apparently that 2 hours of climbing stairs is warm work, even if the actual temperature is cold. We removed so many layers, that we were both practically dragging walk-in wardrobes behind, which only made us warmer. What a quandary! We eventually reached the top, and much to our delight it had all been worth it. Amongst the boulder rocks, we had panoramic views of both the island and Hiroshima. It was peaceful and beautiful.

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As you can see, the light was fading, but we had ample time to walk over to the cable car. Except – it was on the other side of the bloomin’ mountain, wasn’t it. We did a bit of a walk-run-walk-run-walk and managed to get there in time. By the time we were in the cable car, it was pitch black. Back on the ground, we walked back to the port to get a ferry home, but not before finding a deer who fancied a sit-down meal.

We made our way back to the main station at Hiroshima, hungrier than we’d ever been before. We dropped down a floor or two to find a foodhall, with the entire room smelling delicious. Seriously, I could have licked the walls, pal. We decided on okonomiyaki for the first time. Or should I say okonomiyaki, amiright?! We sat against the counter, the smoke billowing into our faces, as the cooks made the food right in front of our very eyes. Julie was screwing her face up as they threw on 739 bottles of ketchup, and 1,291 sachets of BBQ sauce, but thankfully the finished product was something special. One of our favourite meals. After this, we had a long trip back to Kyoto, and grabbed ourselves so well deserved sleep (if I do say so myself).

Today we planned a day-trip to Nara, famous for its free-roaming deer, and then travel to Hiroshima in the evening, so we had a full day the next day. We woke up nice and early, and got ourselves over to Nara in a good hour or so. It was sunny, warm, and we felt well rested (dunno actually, just making that up). We grabbed some pastries for breakfast and headed towards Nara Park. When Julie is browsing in random shops, one of my favourite past times is to open Google Maps and type ‘record stores’ and figure out how I can coerce Julie into them. The nearest one I found was called B-Sells. That name didn’t mean a lot to us until we read it was a Beatles shop (!). We got ourselves over there quick sharp to find the most amazing store; walls full of records; about 20 copies of each album, of varying rarity. There were hundreds of singles, some official, some Japanese promo, some bootleg. There was also a load of memorabilia I’d never seen before. It was a joyous shop, and the owner was such a nice chap; he was star-struck enough that we were from England. I didn’t dare tell him I was the Sheffield Beatles Project (you have reached the end of the free content of this blog. Please buy a ticket for our December 2020 concert to continue reading.. *fades writing away behind an imaginary paywall* https://www.gigantic.com/the-sheffield-beatles-project-the-blue-album-tickets).

Psyche! Got ‘eem! (old man, old memes)

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Before going to the park, we dropped our bags at the Tourist centre, where they did free mini-classes for various Japanese practises. We took the calligraphy class and learnt how to write our names in Kanji; please ignore the fact that I’m holding mine upside down. It’s actually Julie’s fault, I had expected her to take the photo upside down, but for some reason she decided to make me look like an idiot.

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Ok, fuck all that shit, give me some deers! Ok, ok, fine, give me some deer. Multiple deer. Upon climbing the stairs to the park, we were met with a huge Pagoda, and as luck would have it, a cute lil’ deer sat in its shadow. From there we wandered further in, and bought some crackers specifically for the deer (which is a shame as they smelled amazing). It was here that we were surrounded by the plentiful deer, all wandering up to us in the hope we might feed them. Which we did, obvs. The deer here have learnt to bow in order to get food. I mean; sure, there’s probably a boring explanation – deer would bow their heads to get food from the ground and over time, I imagine people would feed by hand, and they would associate that head movement with food. Pavlov’s Deer, or something. Alas, it was very cool to see, and squeeeeeeeeee, it was cute. We grabbed ourselves an ice cream each (I had a green tea ice cream, yum) and then the deer took a huge interest, headbutting our legs and having zero knowledge of the etiquette of personal space. They got a little bit aggressive, in a “alright mate, it’s just a kick-about!” kind of way, but it was all good-natured. I should have worn my shinnies. One deer even repeatedly stuck its head in Julie’s bag, almost bagging themselves our £700 bullet train tickets. That would have been HILARIOUS, wouldn’t it? LOLing our way into further debt. Anyway, it was time for another Japanese garden would you believe, so give your eyes a break from my words, and take a look at these animals.

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I can only apologise that we didn’t take more deer pictures.

We moved onto a lovely little Japanese Garden. Admittedly it wasn’t really different to any of the others, but when they look and smell so good, I’m happy living this Groundhog day. We did however get to witness a man taking photos of his girlfriend; she was stood by the lake and she kept coming back to him and checking his photography skills, of which he apparently had none, and would go back and re-do each pose. Sometimes, I wonder if they’re still there now. We had a stroll around the water and up into some magical colours.

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Alright, that’s enough day time for us! Let’s get to the night bit. We headed back to Nara and a pretty long journey over to Hiroshima, with multiple transfers. So yeah, that all happened, and we arrived at our hotel in Hiroshima. We got to our room, made tea from the weirdest little tea-bags, then Julie made the error of lying down on the bed.

Zzzzzz…. that’s it. The night is done. And dusted.

But NO! In most situations, the blog would finish here, but I decided to forcefully shake Julie awake, and Google some bars and food establishments. I found a decent rock bar that I had my heart set on until I decided to check one more place. A bar simply called ‘Macs’. It boasted a hipster vibe, run by staff with an encyclopedic knowledge of music. A hi-fi was set up behind the bar, all you had to do was request a song. Perfect, I thought, a sophisticated night of drinking whilst listening to John Coltrane, stroking our chins, and discussing the lovely low-end that protruded from these particular speakers. Imagine our surprise then, as we jumped out of the lift on the 3rd floor of this seemingly disused building, hearing King of Leon’s perpetually boring Use Somebody. I was disgusted. This wasn’t music that I liked. Nothing centred around me, and I did not like it; not one bit. But then he played Leonard Cohen, so it’s fine. Forgiven. Julie and I stationed ourselves at the bar, and requested the likes of Talking Heads, Kate Bush, Radiohead, Tom Waits, et al, whilst sipping on Hiroshima’s finest sake and red wine. In-between all our (ok, my) choices, a young lad at the other end of the bar kept requesting Oasis song after Oasis song, and eventually he came over and we got chatting. A Geordie chap, holidaying alone whilst his girlfriend was back home, jealous of all the photos he kept sending. He was trying to start a career in music, currently making money his money from covers bands, and to be fair, his singing was rather impressive, as evidenced by a rousing rendition of Under Pressure during a short “ok, not Oasis this time” break. He told us that he was doing a university course at the moment, composing music for film. I asked him what his favourite ever OST was and he said, in all seriousness, straight faced, full on eye-contact; Michael Bay’s Transformers. Right. We’re actually Facebook friends so there’s a chance he’ll read this so – Hi Tom! Sorry about all those words above. Actually, we’ll never meet again; listen to some Morricone, Badalamenti, anything! and then apologise to me, immediately. Get on your knees and say sorry. SAY IT.

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We left the bar about 11.30pm feeling rather tipsy and decided it’d be a most excellent time to go see the A-dome. Partaaaaaaaaaay! It was quite surreal seeing it in the darkness; the city reflecting in the river beside us, with the dome standing tall above us, preserved in it’s dereliction (apparently that’s a word, and I’m delighted). It was a sobering sight, literally and figuratively, which is also an exact quote that I self-congratularily said to Julie that very night. On the short walk home, we dove into a shop having not eaten since 1957 or something, and Julie grabbed herself a chocolate sandwich. Because. We then proceeded to purchase our goods, I said ‘konichiwa’ instead of thank you, and then we both tried to walk into a wall instead of the door. There’s a warrant out for our arrest in west Japan, probably. Damn those 2 small wines!

Ahhh, a new city. I loved Tokyo, but it was nice to have new surroundings and somewhere to embed ourselves for a few days. The weather was beautiful here too, albeit a drop in a few degrees. Our plan in Kyoto was perhaps a little more lax than it had been in Tokyo. Today we’d have a wander to a couple of temples and shrines, a walk down Philosopher’s path, a trip to Gion; as long as we made it to our tea ceremony at 6pm. THAT’S RIGHT.

Sticking to our unwritten ethos of “…ahh, let’s just walk”, we headed for Nanzen-ji. Immediately we faced with trees of blood-red leaves that we hadn’t seen in Tokyo. I know the cherry blossom is where it’s aaaaaat, but the autumn colours are quite breathtaking. Coupled with the ‘portrait’ mode on Julie’s camera phone, and we were basically world famous models.

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So, I’m not really sure what the different buildings are at Nanzen-ji, and I would only Google it and copy and paste what I find, so; sorry about my idle descriptions. The first, err, hall thing we came to had the morning’s prayer taking place. There was only a short gap in the door and it felt a little voyeuristic, but it was cool to see what was taking place. What was taking place? I mean – well, there was some sort of monk-esque droning low voices, punctuated by hypnotic drumming. Will that do? Is that enough for you? I’ll research it properly, but not, at the point where I’m actually writing about it, is not the time.

Across from this, umm, chalet (?), was another wooden building which maybe was the actual temple? Maybe the prayer bit was a staging area? Anyway, you could climb up this one which was nice. We took off our shoes and climbed the death-trap steps. You could walk all the way round the platform, giving lovely views of the trees and the other monk-chant-drone-hut-thing.

Pretty good. Prettaaaaay….prettaaay good. We walked north towards Philosopher’s Path, a lovely serene waterfront path, lined with little independent shops, of which Julie went in all of them. On our way to the path, we bumped into a nice lady who decided to speak to us entirely in Japanese and ask us to follow her; I think she was trying to show us where the path was, or perhaps she was leading us to our death but eventually backed out? Chicken. We dove into a lovely little cafe where I had a hot chocolate and Julie had a glass of dark frothy green. There was also a humorous moment where the American chap next to us said “Is that a 2000?” (i.e. a yen bank note, though curiously there’s no such thing), however what I heard was “is that muir2000?”, i.e. Julie’s Instagram profile. I mean, CAN YOU IMAGINE? But no – just a chap talking about fake bank notes. Which I very much can imagine.

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We found our way to the end of the path and were met with another path with street food and souvenir shops on each side. Here, we had our first and only rice ball. It was nice. At the end, another lovely garden called Ginsyadan. We paid our way in, and it was unbelievably picturesque. Get some pics up ya..

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We jumped on a bus and headed over to Gion. Now, Gion was pretty touristy (I’ll say) and was rather busy (I’ll say!). Alright parenthesis guy (or girl!!), chill out. The town is famous for its geisha culture, and we saw hundreds of women dressed in beautiful kimonos. Some walked in threes and fours with their friends, others had their partners taking their photos.

We walked up a narrow, hilly lane up past Yasaka Pagoda towards the Hōkan-ji temple. This area was jam-packed with people. To be honest, I expected the whole holiday to be like this, so we were lucky it was our only experience of it thus far. On the way up this path, we came to a Japanese sweet shop. We hadn’t really tried any Japanese sweets and given that there were about 8 separate people giving out free samples, now might be a good time. We tried quite a few things, none of which I can remember the name of despite them being amazingly delicious; look, this isn’t a food blog, ok? There’s literally thousands upon thousands of food blogs on the net, and I am not a sheep. I’m not a conformist. This is a travel blog.

We reached the top and had lovely views of where we’d just come from, surrounded by more kimono-klad people. Well worth the trip.

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Oof! What a day! Plenty of walking, as usual, and perhaps time for a bit of relaxation. Perhaps involving a pot of tea. *ethereal synth pads* . We found our way to a house down a little backstreet in downtown Kyoto; ‘Samurai Tea House’. We had pre-booked to take part in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, whilst wearing kimonos. We were separated to go and get changed, with the older chap taking me to the men’s changing room. He let me pick out the full length garb, the jacket, and the belt, much to my delight. Once dressed up, he gave a me a look up and down, and tried to hide my t-shirt by pulling the jacket up, and trousers by pulling the legs up. Given my penchant for incredibly up to date fashion, I was wearing brown chinos and they just would not go up my leg. “Maybe it’s better with pants off” he proclaimed. “Is that right!” I thought. I was 97% sure he had learnt the American translation, so I whipped off my trousers, leaving my underwear where it was. He gave a little nod of approval (at my actions, you dirty scamp!) and I put the costume back on. Perfect.

I headed back downstairs to the lounge area, a lovely dining table was the centrepiece, surrounded by beautiful plants, a sword, a koto, and a huge window to a garden. I was left alone as Julie would be a little while because women take ages getting ready am I right lads?? He came straight back in and asked whether I’d like some photos. Errr, fuck yes? He asked me to stand in a variety of poses, in front of a variety of backgrounds, holding an actual samurai sword.

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I sat back at the table, alone and awaited Julie. But then.. a knock at the front door. The old chap let in an American couple, who came and sat down at the table opposite me. We weren’t introduced. So – this was awkward. I looked down at my kimono. Do they think I’m running this session? Do they think I came here dressed like this? I decided to speak up. “Hi – are you guys doing the tea ceremony too?”. That’s right, I said too. Honestly, there are police detectives around the globe who are giving me a standing ovation for that. I added another layer; “gosh, don’t I feel overdressed!”. Not only had I made it clear that this was not my usual get-up, I had demonstrated my magnificent humour. We were now best friends. Julie eventually arrived looking glamorous AF, and we had a few photos together. Now it was time to get down to business!

The lady who had got Julie ready was to run the show tonight. She talked through the traditions of the building and the ins and outs of the ceremony itself. Once we knew what the fuck was going to go down, we moved into the tea room. Now we are talking! Flick your way through this video to get a good idea of what down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tt7NBIVeMY . It was great fun, like 45 minutes of real life ASMR, but with delicious tea and sweets. She then did a traditional Japanese dance for us, and showed us the koto and me and Julie had a play. What a pleasant evening!

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..but the evening didn’t end there! We walked back to down town Kyoto, and went our separate ways for 30 minutes while I ran (literally towards the end) between record shops trying to find some specific Japanese stuff. No dice. We met back up and headed back to the hostel, starving to DEATH. We found a late night noodle place (it was ace) and then went back to our hostel. It was here that I received a message from my colleague saying ‘Congratulations xx’. Huh? I also noticed my WhatsApp was blowing up. It was the work work group, and everyone couldn’t believe I’d got married. I’m sorry – WHAT. I mentioned this to Julie and she said “Ah yes, I pretended we got married on my Facebook group”.

Well, you didn’t make it very bloody clear, Julie! Now 126+ people potentially think I’m married. Remember, I’m not a sheep. I’m not a conformist. I’m in a hetrosexual monogamous relationship.

Early rise, for today, Julie and I were going to be Toadette and Koopa Troopa, respectively. I wasn’t hugely into the idea of doing this when I first heard the idea; around £60 each, and it sounded gimmicky as hell. Well, I’m happy to report that it was both £60 each, and gimmicky as hell. BUT, reader, in the Best. Possible. Way.

We woke up a little late so had a bit of a rush getting to the meeting spot, dragging our travel suitcases behind us as we were travelling to Kyoto that evening. We met in a little building and watched the briefing video, before being shown to a large rack of fancy dress costumes. Sadly, due to licensing laws, there was no affiliation with Nintendo, so no Mario costume for us. We settled on a couple of superheroes. Julie = Spider-man, Ad = Batman. (Yes, I did double check I stylised those correctly, the last thing I want is Marvel or DC drips coming at me). We were to go out with our guide and another two couples, and we bagged the two karts behind the guide. The karts themselves were pretty decent. Though I’ve no idea what cc they were, they were pretty fast. Seatbelt was optional even though we were going on the open roads. It’s ok mum, we went with them.

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We drove around the streets of Tokyo for about 2.5 hours, including a quick stop off, and it was glorious. We were straight into the thick of the action, driving on dual-carriageways, speeding alongside cars, trucks, buses and everything in-between, at times even losing our guide for a few minutes a time. Not once did it feel unsafe, even when I was undercut by a Land Rover; I just gave them a little toot of my horn and shook my fist. We went straight over Rainbow bridge and, although I was disappointed that it wasn’t a multi-coloured road littered with thwomps and drop-offs into eternal darkness, it was nonetheless littered with incredible views and incredibler speeds. All the way round, people in the street were pointing, waving, and taking photos. Obviously I was loving this, giving it the big one – rock horns, peace signs, kissing my bicep. Well ok, I didn’t do the last one. Only because I don’t possess any 😦

We had a little stop off opposite Rainbow Bridge so we could take a few photos, realising that we’d have to leave the karts and actually walk amongst actual people. I felt mega self-conscious, though we shouldn’t have worried. Straight away, three Japanese ladies beckoned me over, massive beaming smiles, asking who I was and where I was from. Julie came over as well, for some reason, even though the girls made it very clear they wanted to chat to me only. Julie didn’t seem to take the hint here, and hung onto me. So clingy.

We had a little walk around and Julie even spoilt a lovely moment between mother and daughter who will now forever have a long, blonde-haired Spider-man lurking in their photos. We made our way back to our gang, but not before a Vietnamese lady dressed head-to-toe in Christian Dior grabbed us for a photo. Julie was in awe, and she did not hide it well.

We had the opportunity to stop at Shibuya crossing, which was very busy at this point of the day, and meant that we felt like celebrities as every single person stared at us, thinking “they are amazing people”, probably. We made our way back to the start of our journey, and just like that, it was over; we jumped off our karts, took off our superhero costumes, and in an instant we were normal people again. We tried waving at random people in the street and were just met with odd looks. I resented this life. I still do.

We grabbed some food and then it was time to visit teamLab Borderless; a mind-blowing digital-art museum which was impossible to photograph well. You know when people say “photos don’t do it justice”? Well, that. I can’t really go into much detail of what we found within, but it was beautiful and we spent hours there. Some of the art even transcended rooms, following you around corridors, projections even interacting with you as you passed by. It was very busy in there and we even had to queue for some of the exhibits, but none of that dampened our spirits; if anything, it built anticipation.

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I really do recommend just going and seeing for yourself. Go tomorrow. No, go now. Get in a taxi and go now. What’s stopping you? The ocean? Oh, and all those other things, fair enough.

Upon leaving, it was time to travel to Kyoto which should have taken around 3 hours in total. In reality, it actually took 14 days, give or take. It basically took ages because the bullet train we chose did not resemble a bullet, far from it. It crawled at a snail pace, stopping at just about every station on the way. In hindsight, it explained why we had an entire carriage to ourselves. We moved onto another train, which also meant a couple of transfers. We were RATTY. We eventually got settled on the final train, and Julie double-checked our hostel details. Check-in closes at 9pm. It was now 8.30pm and we were two hours away. Oopsie. I mean – it probably just says that right? It’s a hostel; people come and go at all hours, right? I mean – the part of the email in big bold letters that says “YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO CHECK-IN AFTER 9PM AND WILL REQUIRE ALTERNATIVE ACCOMMODATION” is probably just a scare tactic, right? Balls. Big, hairy, balls. We spent the next hour or so downloading apps that let you call international phone numbers, using our 300 free tokens (a.k.a 30 seconds) to find that no one was answering anyway. Julie emailed the hostel through Booking.com but we held out absolutely no hope and started asking ourselves questions such as “how comfortable is pavement?”. Cometh the hour cometh the man, we received a reply to the email from a chap named Ken. He let us know the code for the door and where he’d hidden the key; legend. We’d grown all those grey hairs grown, and for what?

We eventually arrived at the hostel about 11.30pm, tired and weary. We met a Portuguese chap in the reception who reminded me a lot of Jesse from Breaking Bad and hence he was Very Cool™. We chatted for 30 minutes, and I dragged Julie off to bed before she fell in love with him as we had a long day tomorrow.

It was time to do Tokyo like tourists. Or more – like touristy tourists. We’d seen a lot of Tokyo already, but we’d not seen the full-on hustle and bustle, bathed in neon light that we had expected. We arrived into Shibuya early as we were to go 230 metres upwards to the brand new observation deck on Shibuya Sky. We were unfortunately told that conditions weren’t great and that we’d have to try again later. We were a tiny bit puzzled as we were surrounded by cloudless skies with still air (errr, is that what you call the opposite of strong winds?). Alas, they probably knew what they were on about, so we thought we’d tick off a few things before returning. We went for some breakfast first, which we arrived at via the famously busy zebra crossing; Shibuya Scramble. We waited at the red light, and waited for more and more people to arrive. Except they didn’t. By the time the green man showed his little featureless face, there was around 20 people crossing the road. You know, like the crossing outside Debenhams on the Moor. Rubbish.

We decided to head for Don Quijote, which is basically the Japanese version of B&M. I expected to find some weird and wonderful toys in here, but it was mainly the same tat you find in the English equivalents – just more of it. I did enjoy that even the most mundane of items, for example a shoe-horn, had a tiny screen with a 5-minute promo video. Also, you know how some shops will have a song playing? Try having a different song playing every 10 metres or so – headfuck!

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Well, that was fun. Julie bought herself some insoles for her shoes as, WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT, her shoes were hurting. If only there was some historical evidence that this would happen for the NINETEENTH HOLIDAY IN A ROW.

Julie, having skipped breakfast, followed her nose and found a ‘cheesedog’ – basically fried breaded cheese. It was delightful, she tells me. This is important for a future blog, so remember this, please.

We went back to Shibuya Sky, and thankfully we were allowed up this time. We had unreal views, overlooking most of Tokyo and, owing to the beautiful weather, we could actually see Mt Fuji, a cool 75 miles away. It’s quite an overwhelming feeling having this view of such an amazing city. The way the deck was set out was great as well; big clean windows to take pictures through instead of the nets you often get, a little corner where you could queue for a short time, so you could get a picture or two with no other poindexters in shot.

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After a good 45 minutes, we abseiled down and it was time to go t…..oh! Oh! Wheeey, you fell for it! Obviously, we did not abseil down the building. Idiot. We took the lift. Actually, this might be the place where we took the 15 elevators down to get back to the ground level. Hard work.

And so, onwards to Tower Records, a humongous building of 12 or so floors, full of mostly CDs and DVDs, but a big helping of LPs too. It was pretty cool to have a rummage, but I couldn’t help but feel they were spreading out for spreading out’s sake. About 20 to 30 of the newest releases all had their own huge displays with posters, t-shirts, and different formats.

The plan from here was to walk toward Shinjuku, taking in various sites along the way. As we were making our way towards Shinjuku, we took a slight detour down Shimokitazawa, a mile strip of shops and eateries, like the Japanese version of Camden Lock (basically – black t-shirts with white slogans, everywhere). Julie found herself a shop to try on and buy a nice skirt. OK guys, time for another… Reeeeeeeeeewwwwwiiiiiiind…

At some point at the start of the holiday, it was decided that I would handle cash. It’s a skill on my CV, after all. The reason being that 99% of places only took cash, and we were regularly spending, and as such it’s quicker to dip into my pocket than Julie to rummage through her bag. However, on the way to this place, Julie decided that I could not be trusted with the money. What was this based on? I’m unsure. Unfounded rumours. I was doing so well up to that point; I hadn’t lost a dime. Back to the present, and Julie, who had taken around 8000 yen (£60ish) had realised that the money was no longer on her person. She stood opposite me, furrowed brow, asking me to double-check my four pockets. I say double-check, but she told me to double-check about 5 times, so really I was decuple-checking (yeah, I Googled it). Anyway, the money was gone, but given we were frittering money away every second on all sorts of shit, we soon got over it. Let bygones be bygones! It could be worse! Life’s too short! Worst things happen at sea! FUCKING HELL, JULIE! No, sorry, no, it’s fine.

It was time for my favourite part of, well, life. Food time. We found ourselves a lovely little ramen place; quiet, quaint, with delicious food, and we were able to order from a little ticket machine again, hooray! There was also some hilarious conversation between Julie and I, where we confused the reflective door with more patrons in the restaurant, until we realised that two of them were us. That conversation will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Onwards to.. well, right next door. Before our very eyes, an ice cream place. But not just ice cream; they also did cookie dough in a cone. Not cookie dough ice cream, cookie dough full stop. This momentarily confused me as my mind, body, and soul expected cold and it received lukewarm. Once I acclimatised to such madness, I enjoyed it immensely.

The sun was getting ready to leave by now, so we had to get our skates on to see Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. We walked like absolute beasts, and somehow managed to go the wrong way, only to then find that the garden itself had shut hours ago. So essentially, we re-tread the same half-mile path three times.

It was now the evening, and we were in Shinjuku. This was a conscious decision when faced with ‘which way round shall we do it?’. My research pointed to doing Shinjuku by night, and I reckon we made the correct choice. We seemed to walk around a hell of a lot, but it was all gravy; marvelling at the adverts that adorned huge buildings, each floor jam-packed with shops, restaurants, animal cafes, and other businesses, all with big video screens and brightly-lit signs.

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We wandered up Yakitori Alley which, to be honest, we hadn’t realised we’d done until we’d done it. We then headed to the Golden Gai, which was much better. It was a tiny little neighbourhood of maybe three streets, full of tiny little bars. True, it’s a tourist trap; there are door charges, mandatory drink purchases, even time limits, but the key thing was – there were actually barely any tourists around *stares intently at a mirror*. We wandered around, trying to find the best bar. We stumbled upon a cute little bar pumping out some Atlantic era Ornette Coleman (actually, it was some nondescript jazz, I just wanted to sound intelligent). There was no cover charge here, though drinks were about £7 each (me: red wine, Julie: sake). The barman was lovely, despite the biggest language barrier we’d encountered thus far.

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Yes, that is Julie feeling drunk after merely holding a drink aloft. One last plan before much needed sleep; another observation deck. This one was indoor, and less central, but it was free. It was a bit of a trek, but we made our way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Lovely views again, and nice to see the city at night. It had started raining which was a shame for photos, though I turned it around and won a Pulitzer Prize* for my arty raindrop photo.

*I did not.

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