Day 4 - Akasaka, Harajuku, Asakusa, Shibuya

On the way to the first stop on my list of places to visit, Asakusa, I thought about how much I loved the green attitude in Tokyo. There's recycling everywhere, smokers have neat little portable ashtrays and offices have adopted a 'cool office rule' where office employees must wear short sleeve shirts, no jacket and no tie, so that the air con can be turned down.

As I got out at the station, I realised that Asakusa was quite close in spelling to Akasaka, felt quite smug and applauded myself for having lived here and being so savvy, until I realised I was at the latter and had made that very mistake. Fool.

I inverted my itinerary as a result, and started in Harajuku instead, loving the memory flood, although not so excited about being in black jeans in the... well... scorchio weather. The forecast had been for rain, so I really was turning Japanese with my squinting, thinking that perhaps I too needed a parasol as I ducked into UT and got my fix of quirky manga Ts.

I continued through the leafy neighbourhood to Three Minutes' Happiness to buy a robot that should make J+J happy for, oh, at least three minutes, and then bought an egg garden to cheer myself up (you crack it open and water it and it grows into wild strawberries apparently. We'll see...) as well as a crazy gadget that simulates bubblewrap and 'pops' when you press it. All quirky shopped out, I went to ASAKUSA this time, feeling like I was in a bad version of a 70s town the whole time. This used to be the entertainment district (OK it was a few hundreds years ago...) and the huge temple is testament to how important this place must have been. But now it's just full of tourists, bums and bad plastic toys. There must be some reason Starck decided to build his 'golden turd' here... I did visit Japan's oldest rollercoaster nearby, although found that I had actually been taken for a ride - I had to buy a ticket to go in, and then another to use the rides! Scandalous.

As Krusty came home from work (two hours late...), we went to Shibuya to witness the world's busiest pedestrian crossing and then get lost in the side alleys looking for a place to eat. Lots of them would not let us in, although it was unclear whether it was because we were foreigners or whether two people weren't enough to be worth their while. In any case, lots of places were "full" when we walked in.

Despite enjoying one of the 'free hugs' that people were giving out in front of the station, the heat was really getting to me by then, increased by the number of people in the streets, and I felt The Hulk approaching. But thankfully Krusty was there to find an escape route and we found a tiny dive where we had grilled skewers (Krusty's new favourite food) next to a fluo girl watching a soap series on her mobile while she ate alone.