companion since Norway, and you can always rely on them to find something tasty and reasonably priced with a minimum of hassle. It seems that this was going to be another difference in Japan. We were surprised to find that not a single thing had any English written on it. So finding something to eat was quite a mission!! I settled for a bowl of rice and some vegetable soup, which was surprisingly tasty, and Rob had a nice big bowl of tempura seafood with rice!! So after a decent feed we headed off to our bunk beds at a very early hour and were very much looking forward to our next days sightseeing.

We set the alarm for about 8 am but finally got up around 8.30 which wasn’t bad going really. We didn’t have any breakfast food so we just grabbed a coffee and checked out the metro map to try and work out which trains and more importantly lines we needed to use. Easier said than done, it was all

looking very daunting and extremely complicated. Our Japanese Rail Passes weren’t valid until 6th Jan so we needed to make sure we used the metro correctly otherwise we’d end up paying a hefty amount for unnecessary metro rides. Suddenly Tokyo was looking rather overwhelming, it was hard enough trying to work out the districts from the guide book let alone the metro system. Tokyo doesn’t really have a central part where all the tourist attractions are, it is more like 5 smaller cities within 1 big one! We had a rough idea of what we wanted to do and we obviously very willing to change our plans in case we didn’t exactly end up where we wanted to be!!! The only way to find out if we had it sussed was to get out there and give it ago!!! So off we went!!!

Our first stop was the Eastern Gardens of the Imperial Palace, basically the free bit of the Palace. The Palace dates back to the old