Go go Tokyo!

Japanese facts:
1. They are incredibly polite people.
2. There is a high standard of food and general hygiene.
3. In most hotels or traditional Japanese Inns(Ryokens) you have to take off your shoes and wear provided slippers around the place. You generally sleep on futons on the matted floor, more comfy than it sounds.
4. Most cars driven here are box shaped....and white(about 90% of all the cars on the road are white).
5. There is 1 drinks vending machine to about 20 people, which is good for when you're thirsty, and considering there's 128 million people here that's a hell of a lot!
6. Older Japanese men are strange. They read comic book stories, which involve a bit of drawn schoolgirl porn, on the trains. There is also women only carriages on the train to try and curb groping incidents.
7. Apart from number 6, Japan is a very safe place to be.
8. It's not as expensive as you may think.
9. Japan and China do not get on!!

So, Tokyo. Huge. That's one way of looking at it. The airport was big enough. But once we arrived at our Japanese Inn, very excellent place too, we realised that this is a completely different place to China. Completely. For one it's clean. The roads and streets are litter free, although there are hardly any bins around the streets at all!
We only had 2 full days here so to see it all would be impossible. The transport system is excellent but a bit tricky to negotiate at first as there are soo many districts within Tokyo. Once you get the hang of it, which you quickly do, it's brilliant and ultra reliable.
Our first night was a shock for another reason though. We had no money and our cards would not draw cash out of any of the machines around Tokyo. We wandered the streets for hours trying different cash machines so we could get some money out to buy food, we hadn't eaten all day at this point. In the end we had to ask some other tourists for about 1 pound so we could get the train back to our place.
We asked around and found out that only a couple of banks in Tokyo would be able to accept our cards, we headed off there in the morning after borrowing money from the hostel to buy train tickets! We withdrew all the money for the coming 8 days as we were not going to risk running out again. Finally after over 24 hours we bought some food, I've never been soo hungry in my life!!
We got the underground to a really busy street to see the youth culture that hangs around Tokyo. Lots of people dressed as punks and dolls and all manner of accessories. Also a few surf shops, turns out Japan has a big surf culture and many surf spots and beaches along the coast. Shame we don't have the time to check them out. A big difference we started to notice was that even though there wasn't many white westerners like ourselves around the Japanese people don't stare at us and clearly aren't bothered at all by us like the Chinese were. Here we're not a target in any way. They have the 2nd biggest economy in the world, behind the US, so to them tourists are less rich and therefore not worth hassling. We walk down a street and people giving out brochures and leaflets selling stuff will hand them to everyone but us. It's great! You can really relax, more than in China, and just get on with enjoying the place.
We then scooted off to Yoyogi park, the best park I've ever been to. Everybody is out. It's a beautiful day and the atmosphere is excellent, added to with the hordes of people all doing different activities. Such as:
Large drum groups beating out endless rhythms,
Asian/African music troupes dancing singing and playing instruments,
Frisbee matches, football matches, poi-ers, baseballers, umbrella art(?), footbaggers, flute players hiding beneath trees, skateboarders, theatre groups, Japanese guys dressed like Elvis and taking turns to dance to rock and roll records....all day, cyclists, dog walkers, joggers, picnics, people rolling glass balls on themselves(?!), badminton players, tap dancers, jugglers and guitar players. The whole place just had a brilliant vibe and was a cool place to spend the day.
We crossed a bridge over the road to discover we'd just missed a full rock band playing in the street, bummer, but on the other side of the bridge was a really laid back hippy market. I for one never expected Japanese hippies but these guys were cool as hell. The usual arts and crafts being sold along with amazing(and cheap!) noodles along with hemp beer, very tasty. We're in love with Tokyo already!

As night came it was time to go to the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world at Shibuya. The high rise and high class buildings surround this place. People really have money here and it's the first place I've actually felt a bit conscious that we look like scruffy travellers to the hip and trendy Japanese kids. The pedestrian crossing looks cool in itself, 3 or 4 crossings merge and everybody crosses at the same time. Due to the orderly behaviour of the Japanese people it's fairly rare that anybody crosses the street, even if it's 12 at night without a car in sight for miles, when the red man light is on. Quite odd but funny.
After some good sushi we headed back knowing that we had to move on the next day and feeling like we'd seen hardly anything, but what we had seen we loved.
Next day we exchanged our rail passes that will allow us unlimited travel for 7 days on trains and some buses. Train travel is fairly expensive so it worked out a good investment.
This place so far is top of the list of places to come back to. I can see why they don't get on with the Chinese!
Next stop, on what is going to be a whirlwind tour of Japan in 7 days, Yokohama!

Below is a shot of the wicked baseball stadium in Tokyo, old style new style!