Tired Toes in Tokyo Town - Part 1

Ok, so its about 11pm in Singapore right now (it rocks here by the way, but that's another blog entry for another day) - time to finally get you up to speed on what we got up to in Tokyo!

I guess the main thing to say about Tokyo is that whilst it is a city of contrasts (new vs traditional) it is on the whole like being beamed about 10 to 15 years into the future. There are times when you just look around slack-jawed thinking the UK seems like the dark ages. Its not like they have teleporters or hovering jet cars or anything, its just that the overall infrastructure and architecture is so advanced and pristine that it looks like nowhere else on earth.

We were really lucky with the weather too, most days were bright and sunny - in fact the day we went to Harajuku we were sweltering carrying our jackets around the whole day!

I have never, in my life, been anywhere that has remotely close to the number of shops that Tokyo has. Every district, every neighbourhood, every street, every subway station, every street light seems to have its own mall. Or three. I cannot express in words the sheer number of retail outlets that exist in this city (Singapore is almost as bad by the way!). I guess only the worlds most populous metropolitan area can sustain such insane levels of consumer choice.

Ginza is New York's 5th Avenue on steroids. Like Tokyo as a whole it is sprawling and vast, and has more Gucci and Dior stores than we have Tesco Express. Its quite unbelievable when you consider Japan hasnt even recovered from the economic bubble burst of the 90's, let alone the current recession! But it is great to walk around and window shop and people watch.

Two brand new shopping and entertainment districts have recently popped up in Tokyo - Roppongi Hills and Ometesando Hills, both built by the same company. The latter quite a nice managable high end mall, the former a un-navigable, over-complicated, 6 floor, 5 zone monster where the mall directory looks like an Escher painting! Seriously we were stuck in there the whole day trying to escape only to end up at the same Starbucks about 4 times.

We did eventually escape and found solice in a Pool Hall in Roppongi High Street, which very conveniently had a phone next to the table to order beer from. Nice.

Roppongi Hills was actually the start of one of our busiest days of the whole week, after Pool we headed to Akihabara - "Electric Town". This is the hub for all things electronic, geeky and loud - so I was in my element, Sam...was not. However to her credit she managed to smile gratiously through gritted teeth as I dragged her through 8 storey amusement arcades, playing Street Fighter 4 and trying to understand how to exchange money for Pachinko balls (which I fear I may never).

After Akihabara we were both shattered but managed to muster the energy to head on over to Tokyo Tower. I cannot stress how KNACKERED we both were at this point having walked half of Tokyo and spending what seemed like a few days in Roppongi Hills, but the view at the top of Tokyo Tower made it all worth it. It was simply stunning to see the city of the future from that height. As well as an amazing view, Tokyo Tower also showed us something in the distance that we had no idea about - a mysterious, shiny, flashing multicoloured ball of light on the horizon that would end up giving us the best final nights entertainment we could of imagined.............

In Part 2: Ueno, Shimo Kitizawa, Odaiba, Sushi and more!