Welcome to Tokyo

That's right, welcome to Tokyo, thats what we heard every 5 feet as we exited the airport and were guided by a yellow brick road of orange uniformed Jets to the bus - a sign of things to come. It then took us two hours to wind through the mercilessly traffic free motorways of Tokyo to get to Shinjuku and our beautiful hotel. Tokyo is huge, I knew this before I went but reading it and seeing it are very different things.

We were in a gorgeous hotel in the coolest part of Tokyo and though I was wrecked it was time to take advantage so I called my friend Yi ting to see if we could meet up that evening. Yi ting came over to the hotel and we headed out into the neon craziness that is Shinjuku and aside from forays out to find a bar or club on the other nights this was the only sight-seeing I did in Tokyo.

We wandered around and ended up in a sushi bar which made me very happy - much better than M&S or Aya even if the food was in something that looked more like a factory conveyor belt than the smooth aesthetic poshness of Aya. I could see the sushi chef working away through the conveyor belt gap, picking what to add to the pile up according to what was disappearing quickest.

After the sushi bar we wandered around the shops - imagine it was a Sunday and they were still open at ... Jesus it must have been after 8pm. I found a Starbucks and decided it was time to invest in some coffee (which has proved to be a very very wise move - which reminds me I need a top up). Of course wanting and getting are very different things in a country where you are linguistically challenged and illiterate. Luckily I had Yi ting with me to help buy the coffee but we hit problems when it came to deciding how it was to be ground. I knew I had a coffee machine waiting for me in my flat in Tottori but I had no idea what kind of filter it used - paper or otherwise. The conscientious Tokyo Starbucks employee was determined to find out and so we (by this I mean Yi ting) ended up telling him that I had a coffee maker but it was in Tottori in the flat I hadn't moved into yet. Response; Tottori? (with much incredulity) and then a short conference with his colleague. It seems that it was important for him to share this information, mainly so that they could both laugh at the gaijin who was moving to Tottori. More incredulous-seeming comments passed between himself and Yi ting who joined in the laughter too. So there it was, I realised that I really am moving into the sticks, my pre-departure fears that I was moving to the Leitrim of Japan were confirmed by this short interchange between two strangers and my friend.

Of course the idea was further cemented by the fact that every Japanese person I interacted with in Tokyo after that either laughed or tried very hard to reassure me that Tottori is a very good place to be going. And this all without me mentioning that I had heard anything negative about it.

But back to Tokyo, I ended my evening with Yi ting on a high, very literally because we went up the bar on the top (47th) floor of the hotel. Tokyo is huge, much bigger than New York to my eye anyway because the skyscrapers aren't confined to one small section of the city. There are huge buildings scattered for miles and our view that night was made all the more impressive by the fact that there were much bigger buildings blocking sections of the view over the city. A very nice glass of white wine and that amazing view of Tokyo seemed to confirm that it is a good thing that I am here.