Visiting Ito on Monday on the first day of my JR pass I was at the beach when I noticed a bright red fire brigade rescue truck, lights strobing, parked on one of the quays. A few moments later I saw an ambulance running blues and twos turning onto the pier to join its big cousin. I assumed there had been some sort of accident and prepared to ( Read more... )

The wireless intanetto connection in this hotel went boink last night and I spent an hour (an unbillable hour at that) or so trying to fix my pasocon (personal computer = laptop). It turned out that it was the hotel's side of things that had gone wrong. A quick reset fixed things ("Have you tried switching it off and on again?").

Sunday I found the area local to my hotel in higashi (east) Ueno was holding a matsuri (festival) at the local shrine. Drums on carts were being dragged around the streets, more mikoshi (portable shrine) racing was taking place and tengus (long-nosed goblins) in magnificent costumes were scaring young children ( Read more... )

Met up with Dave at the Chuo Dori Mister Donut shop, a fixed point we both knew and after some coffee and rings went wandering Akiba. There's a new depato (department store) near the station based in the old LAOX building, six stories of nerdy/otaku goodness called the Akiba Culture Zone. This is a place which will repay return visits as it ( Read more... )

I didn't know this when I booked my trip here, but there's going to be an annular eclipse of the sun on the 21st of May. Guess where the line of totality runs? Right through the middle of Tokyo, believe it or not. I'll be travelling overnight up from the south but I'll be in Tokyo early enough (07:30) to catch the last part of the eclipse assuming ( Read more... )

Early morning on foot, walking through Tokyo as I often do, down through Kanda before the shops opened. The foots got tired faster than the rest of me and it was the Ginza line to the rescue returning my sore feet to my hotel room for some R&R ( Read more... )

The trip out to Narita from Edinburgh was blessedly uneventful, if predictably uncomfortable and tiring. The flights were on time, no luggage was lost. I sorted out my JR pass and booked some nobi-nobi tickets although I missed getting one of them due to that night being booked out. I have some fallback plans including investigating using the JR ( Read more... )