Day 1 - Hong Kong, Narita and Shimbashi

And so, on day 2 of my freelancedom, Krusty took me with him on a business trip to Tokyo.

I only went along because he promised me he could get me into the business lounge at Hong Kong airport, but turns out Krusty's yeti-sized carbon footprint still isn't large enough to bring a guest in with him. We decided to give it a shot anyway, and I thought my bossing Krusty around while chatting loudly on my phone as I walked past the reception counter ignoring the lady calling me back was really convincing, but it turns out Krusty had to pay the front desk off with some air miles to make sure I could stay in... And as it turns out, the business lounge is just a large room with a view of the runway (exciting...) full of sweaty men having really loud conversations about money on their mobile phones. Not impressed. When we landed, it was Krusty's turn to be unimpressed as he complained that the landscape looked just like Britain and that there were no Samurais to be seen. I told him to hold his breath. Airports are all the same, but Tokyo is far from being just another, normal city...

Last time I landed here, it was to go and live in a tiny flat with an inexplicable hole burnt into the top of the fridge and a Korean prostitute neighbour whose three-year-old son would always find the way to unlock the door and run through the street at 2am to shout "where's Mummy?" This time, Krusty's company put us up in a room that, by Japanese standards at least, was huge. The hotel was pretty tired, with giant Italian style frescoes and gold fixtures, but it had... a bath. I had forgotten how much I missed baths!

Anyway, I took Krusty to try his first Japanese meal in a traditional (although slightly more upmarket than what I was used to as a student living in the red light district) izakaya under the Shimbashi railway arches. An izakaya is the equivalent of the British pub to the Japanese, a place where men stop off before they go home to have a beer with their colleagues and grab a bite to eat. They have delicious yet affordable food, and although to the Japanese it must just taste like pub grub, to us it tasted like heaven. We had yakitori (grilled chicken skewers), tofu (come on you know what that is), edamame (salty peas in the pod), mochi (rice dumplings) and green tea ice cream and he loved it all, thank goodness. I was a little worried he wouldn't after his "I don't like sushi so I don't like Japanese food" display back in HK, but it was a hit...