First day awake!!

So after managing to sleep properly last night we got up around 8am without any jet-lag it seems, lay in bed a bit and watched crazy Japanese morning television, devouring a box of Poky chocolate biscuit things.

Finally got up and sorted, and packed the bags up as the hotel were going to move us to a non-smoking room so would be moving the bags for us. Thankfully they managed to get one sorted and we're still on the 23rd floor just down the other other end of the hotel.

So today we've been out to Shinjuku Gyoen (pics at bottom! Maybe!) which is a big park down the road. Apparently it has something like 1500 cherry blossom trees, i think we're a bit early as most of them weren't in bloom, so the ones that where had small hordes of locals round them taking pics... Had to pay to get in, but was well worth it as the place was spotless with out a bit of dog shit in sight.

We then went to find japans take on the Empire State Building, which you can see in a couple of pics, which was next to Takashimaya Times Square, a shoping centre home on one side to seemingly japans answer to Ikea, only 300x better, and on the other side all the usual expensive designer brands like D&G

Stopped for lunch about half two and went to a pretty funky noodle place just down the road. Food was nice, but the waitress was a pretty unhelpful, and it didnt help that they had some mad lunchtime offer on that we didnt understand!

Next up was a trip to Yodabashi Camera.. holly crap irs insane, think Rapid Hardware but good, full of tech, and all in japanese! We walked into the multimedia shop first which is basically were they sell everything that isn't a camera, and got completely confused. Finally figured out were the camera shop bit was (across the road!) and had a good mooch in there. Some interesting stuff, and was good to be able to pick things up and tinker with them, not just look at them behind glass.

We then went to Map camera which is a used camera store a few blocks down, caz was fading at this point so made it a quick visit. Some interesting stuff in there that i've never seen in the flesh. Best bit was the Leica/Hasselblad/everything else medium format and rangefinder floor. Never before have i seen so much Leica kit, there was so much exotic stuff in there, that all looked in top condition. Fav has to be the gold plated leicas worth something like £7000 before you even buy a lens!!!!

Back in the hotel now and caz is having a bath and hopefully not drowning in it as its rather deep... Annoyingly the room has sod all clothing storage so we're gonna be living out of the cases for a few days, lovely room though apart from that.

Tea time approaching and the mission is to find a sushi place..