Tokyo, Day 1

After landing at Narita airport and grabbing our bags, we hopped on a train in to Asakusa, which is where our hostel is. The train journey was straightforward and we only got minorly lost when trying to find the hostel itself. It's in a nice area, our double room (bunk beds) is clean and a better size than I expected, and there is free wireless internet access. I'm taking advantage of that to blog while I can! I have also taken my now-charged laptop and tiptoed off to another room so I can type away without waking anyone.

This hostel is actually fantastic. It is dirt cheap - only £20 per night for our room - and very well equipped for travellers. Right now I'm in the large kitchen/dining area, which also has four computers in it, all free to use and with internet access. We don't have our own shower room, but there are washrooms on this floor and shower rooms downstairs, and there's a bar on the ground floor too. Not that we have used that yet - we were both in bed for 6.30pm yesterday!

We took an hour or so in the hostel to freshen up, and then went exploring. Of course Mr Talkative had already found someone to show us about, in the form of another hostel dweller, Roman the German, who has been living in Japan for years and was able to point us at a few interesting things locally. We headed off to see a big temple and market area which is only a few minutes' walk from here. I don't know what the temple is called and I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but there were hundreds of people "washing" themselves in smoke, and putting money into fortune teller thingies to see what their fortune will be. If they don't like what it says, they can tie it up and that negates the whole thing, which I think it is a bit of a cop-out, but there you go.

Roman and his Japanese girlfriend took us to a little restaurant nearby and ordered food for us, as Skry was having difficulty finding anything vegetarian and none of the menus we saw were in English. We settled on a noodle dish each, which sounded perfect - until it arrived full of chicken pieces! Vegetarian food is practically impossible to come by here, I believe, and we had no way of communicating the problem to the staff (Roman had already left by this point), so Skry just passed the chicken over to me. I know he hates having meat involved in his food, but we really don't have many options in a situation like that. Anyway, at least the noodles were good! While we were eating, four women in full kimono outfits came in and sat at the next table, but I was too cowardly to take a photo of them, so you will just have to content yourselves with me eating noodles instead.

After eating, we strolled around for another hour or so, taking in the sights and sounds of the bustling market area and the temples. I found wig shops! Didn't buy any though, as our cases are quite full enough already. Most of the shops seemed to be selling novelty items, junk food, wigs, or ice cream. Of course we can't read the labels on anything, but the displays were very colourful.

Then we headed round to a sake bar that Roman works in, and he sorted us out with some sets of different sakes. I've never had it before, but it tastes like watered-down tequila or something. It was interesting to try the subtle differences between the sake made locally and made elsewhere in Japan. By this time it was 6pm and we were both asleep on our feet, so we headed back to the hostel and conked out. I woke up again just after midnight, and am still wide awake now at 3.15am, so I think that's it for me tonight, but at least we did get some sleep!