Tokyo
good evening from Tokyo!!
i don't have anything terribly exciting to tell you folks..
the trip over was ok, except of course for the part when sitting in the Cathay Pacific lounge that my parents were inexplicably upgraded to first class, while Andrew and I still had to sit at the back of a very crowded plane...
that was great!
got to Tokyo ok, it is very humid but not very hot
it has been sort of drizzling all day..
this is the most enormous city i have ever been in, it's incredible but not chaotic as i had expected. It is all very orderly and very neat..
and the people in the areas I have been in thus far (mainly Ginza) are very well dressed, I haven't seen too many crazy kids yet, but I suppose i will see that when we hit Harajuku on the weekend.
we're staying at the Imperial Hotel which is amazing, we have a view of the palace and its gardens!
and we're very close to Ginza where all the nice nice shops are
today, because Dad had some work to do, Mum, Andrew and I walked to Ginza and had a bit of a look around. There are SO many shops here, i never thought I would ever be overwhelmed by the experience.. but I think there are too many clothes in this town.
many department stores (including Printemps, Barneys, Seibu) i bought a couple of tshirts -but because clothes here are very very small, as are shoes it means shopping is a bit torturous, there are lovely clothes here, i wish i was tiny!
OH! and i went to the biggest stationery shop i have ever seen in my life, it was like my idea of heaven i am such a stationery nerd... so i bought a couple of cute notebooks..
everything here is cute, it's awesome.
also they wrap things really nicely. it's an art apparently.
went to have a look at the imperial palace in the afternoon, the gardens outside it are amazing, as are the moats surrounding them, all very beautiful.
Tokyo is a lot greener than i had expected, lots of sweet little laneways, treelined streets
it's a really nice city, what i have seen of it anyway!
I didn't realise, but Tokyo-Yokohama has a population of 30 million. Two cities, side by side, and a population more than Australia could ever dream of, it's amazing..
anyway, i have just come home from dinner at a tiny little restaurant (it would have seated about 15 maybe at the most) which one of Dad's colleagues loves, it was really cute! probably an experience some tourists wouldn't have, because of language barriers i guess, and because you would never have guessed there was a restaurant where it was!
it was great.
we're heading for the countryside tomorrow via bullet train i think, then to Kyoto, then back to Tokyo and THEN to my favourite place in the entire world - HK! i am so excited!
the end.