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.

Day 3 - Roppongi, Ginza and Shimbashi

I decided to give Roppongi-by-day a chance to check out the museums (and maybe get another glimpse of that lady and her poochmobile, a pushchair designed specifically for her dog). On the way, I really enjoyed seeing the "women only" carriage on the tube - men feeling up women on trains is a real problem here, and although I know it happens in other countries, the Japanese have taken the perversity to the next level - apparently there is a bar/train wagon full of women in Shibuya somewhere that men can pay to enter and fondle the women to their heart's content. Sick. Anyway, at least girlies have a solution during their commute now...

I made my way first to Nogizaka. It was nice and early, which means I was alone in the quiet garden of the house of General Nogi and its nearby shrine. In 1912, the General and his wife, to prove their loyalty to the emperor Meiji who had just died, committed seppuku (sacrificial suicide) in their house, which still stands here. It's only open two days a year, on the eve and anniversary day of their death, but you can still peak through the window at their bloody shirts, which have been specially preserved.

Down the street, I found Tokyo Midtown, the newest and highest tower in Tokyo, set in incredibly minimalistic gardens with designer children's playgrounds and the Tadao Ando/Issey Miyake 21_21 Design Museum. From here I called my friend Nick, for whom I used to work in the bookshop. I invited him to travel the hour it would take him to get here (Tokyo is a VERY spread out city) to see the Turner Retrospective with me, but he called me a cultural bore so I joined Krusty for lunch in Hibiya Park instead. It's not like I see much of him, so I thought I had better make the most of it (he was off to Brisbane this week and probably Korea next week...). I then went back to see the Turner show, and found it be absolute pants, not because of the space, which is good, but I mean, some of the winners are just taking the p***, like Creed's lights switching on and off... Come on... I enjoyed Grayson Perry's ceramics though, and even though I LOATHE it as art, it was quite interesting to see Hirst's dissected cows up close. From a biological perspective.

Finished the experience off with a look into the frilly basement Cafe Fontana and its muzak, where I had a 'peechee pai': a whole peach, pit and all, covered in pastry and cream in the company of a rouged old lady. Wow. And after that gluttony, dinner was out of the question. Good job Krusty was stuck at work...

Day 2 - Ginza, Hibiya, Imperial Palace, Roppongi, Nishi Azabu

As Krusty disappeared off to work (I kept forgetting that this was a business trip...) I was a little disorientated, as I didn't really know this part of Tokyo. I just wandered around a little aimlessly until I reached Ginza to do a spot of Ginbura - or "Strolling in Ginza". Not that I have nearly enough cash to afford any of the luxury labels that the hoards of ladies who lunch covet as they sip their iced tea covered from head to toe in them... No literally, head to toe - the weather was perfect, very hot but with a regular breeze to keep it comfortable, but these gals were tightly clad in boots, sweaters, gloves and hats, topped off with sunglasses and umbrellas. No chance of them catching a tan and ruining the effects of the thousands of yen they had already spent on whitening cream. Anyway, I sweltered sans parasol around the eight blocks to marvel at the facades of the 10,000 shops, like the sparkly mirrored Swarowski boutique, or the luxe, golden Cartier one...

Of course I also couldn't really afford anything to eat, so I dashed into a side alley to find something cheaper, loving the balance of really wide roads that allow complete appreciation of the buildings and the smaller side alleys full of secret pubs and tiny shops. I found St Marc Cafe, which looked good enough, and enjoyed a Chococro (chocolate croissant) served by polite, smiley, helpful staff, which makes a change from Hong Kong service standards. There was no English, though, so I had to dig deep into my memory to act out the words for tea (cha) and cold (samui), forgetting what iced was. Surprisingly, I remember quite a bit, and once I got into it, I realised I miss this place and the challenge to learn its language. I somehow don't feel the urge to learn Cantonese in HK, perhaps because I don't need to. Here, without Japanese, it's really tough. Although it's become much easier than it was in 2004.

Unfortunately, at the end of my Ginbura, and even after fighting past the hoards of businessmen reading comics on their lunch break in the 7-11 combini (convenience store), I had failed to find a place to buy a sim card for my phone (or rather failed to find the Japanese words to locate the person who would sell me one), so I shuffled back to the hotel to get in touch with Krusty. While I waited for his call, I flipped through the TV channels, settling for TV Asahi. I think you can learn a lot about a country by looking at what's on TV (like the insane number of debates on TV in France, or reality TV in the UK...). Here I found that what's on people's minds is... well... I'm not sure. I saw a man trying to jump off a high rise only to be convinced not to by a policeman, whose best argument was to whip out a pair of scissors and a sheet of red paper and then cut out a heart shape out of it. This seemed to give the man the will to live again, somehow. Then I saw a man in a leather gimp costume singing karaoke, and a tranny in a rice paddy learning all about the harvest. What?!

It was time to leave the hotel again before I myself went to jump off the roof without any number of paper hearts to stop me, and so I went for a walk through nearby Hibiya Park. It's so lovely to see all of these people after work just talking the time to sit and enjoy nature (or were they just putting off going home?). Tokyo is full of green spots, and they really do provide oases of calm where it seems that the rest of the city and its incessant soundtrack just melts away. Nature is really important here. As the heart and soul of the park demonstrates - when Dr Seiroku Honda (the park's designer) heard that his giant gingko tree was to be felled to make room for a road in 1899, he said "move it elsewhere, or put my head on a stake." A little extreme, perhaps, but the Kubi-Kake (Head Stake) Gingko still stands.

The park opens out onto the Imperial Palace, or rather the moat and gravel around it, as us mere mortals have no right to go any closer to the Emperor's abode. After a long stroll admiring the palace from afar, I dove into the bowels of the subway system armed with a strange drink of almond milk with mango chunks, being careful to obey the vendor's request to "bewaru chokey topping", and made my way to Roppongi, the new business hub where Krusty has a business meeting. When I lived here this was also the absolute heart of sleaze, so we were sure to encounter a completely different type of "Nature" that night...

But Roppongi seems to have cleaned up a bit, and even though it was early, there were no signs of drunken expats throwing up on policemen's shoes, as there were last time I was here... We didn't take our chances though, and made our way to Nishi Azabu wih Krusty's colleagues for dinner in the feodal castle that inspired 'that' scene in Kill Bill, Gonpachi. It was a little Disneyesque, but very Japanese and Krusty loved it. He kept repeating that he was just expecting a load of ninjas to jump out and a take over. At last he was starting to get that 'Samurai' feeling he had been complaining about not getting at the airport...

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...

This is how we do it

We stayed in Tokyo for six days, all of which were jam packed with things to see, places to be and cultural differences to giggle about, so I'll make this easier for you and cut it up day by day. Then you won't be as out of breath as I was.

So here goes...

And so I'm back, from outer space

Wow, stepped out of the LSD trip that was Tokyo last night back into seafood smelling, siren wailing, rain pouring Hong Kong and am having a bit of culture shock I think. What a trip.

I covered LOTS of ground and took about a million photos, so as soon as I have gone through them and found the time to type up my thoughts, there'll be some wackiness happening on the blog. And some serene gardens, too. How can the Japanese be so calm and yet so crazy at the same time?!