Day 2 - Tokyo

Well rested after a terrific uninterrupted 10 hour sleep, we headed out late morning into the craziness. Stopped for coffee and pastries first for breakfast and had a quick look around the Panasonic showroom (funky gadgets, such as a toilet seat that lifts as you approach it - how cool?!) before heading to Asakusa on the metro, to visit the Senso-ji shrine. Great people watching in around the site. Visitors pay 100Y, choose a drawer which contains their 'wish', and they don't like it they tie it to a stand - we did ours :-)

Back onto the metro heading this time for Shinjuku (seen above), a fairly gaudy and in-your-face area of Tokyo, with brash signs everywhere, a saucy red-light district, and arcade machine parlours (with the mysterious Pachinko machines luring in the punters).

We did a 2 hour self guided walking tour through the madness, stopping in a department store for some air-con and a gawp at the amazing food hall, then lunch in a bizarre little eatery that consisted of a machine where you ordered your food (dumplings in our case), and then a waitress brought them. Delicious and cheap though, and a welcome snack and break.

Back onto the metro just before the rush hour started in earnest - you don't want to be on it between 5 and 7pm by all accounts. We'll venture out again in a mo for dinner!

Exhausting, but fun, so far....!

More pics from today in the lovely new blipfolio - finally succumbed....!

EDIT: back from dinner - over to the Odaiba area at Tokyo Bay, by the driverless metro - dinner in a sushi restaurant, sat at a counter in front of our own sushi chef, pointing at samples we wanted and watching in awe at his effortless work. Picture added to the 'folio!