Arigato Japan

More Japanese facts:
1. It isn't really called Japan. It's called Nippon. Japan is what we call it for some reason, it does sound better though.
2. Japan is made up of 4 main islands. It also consists of many smaller ones too, 3,000 in fact!

Although the place can be hectic and in your face it doesn't take long to get away from it all, as we found at Mount Fuji. The people on the whole are really friendly and try and help, unlike in China when sometimes you walk into a place the staff literally run off into a back room rather than deal with you!
There's no-one trying to sell you stuff, no-one staring at you and you're definitely not a target for con-men in such a strong economy. The food is great, unless you don't like fish as it seems most dishes are based around anything that lives in the sea. There are loads of good looking women everywhere, which always helps, and everything is generally very clean and well organised. These guys know what they're doing and the transport around the places are an example of that. It's streets ahead of England. But there are many similarities with good ole blighty that also make the place really cool. I'd love to go back to Japan and miss it immensely. The best in Asia so far!

Japanese fast food. Cheap and great!
Japanese beer. Fair cheap and great!

Yo Yokohama

Yokohama is half an hour down the road from Tokyo. We thought this would be our first use of the Shinkansen bullet train but alas a regular train was our transport. Yokohama is basically the port town to Tokyo. It's a very nice place too. Clean, friendly and a lot quieter than Tokyo. There are strong ties with San Diego here as it's directly across the water......a fair way but still. It explains some of the warehouses around the area, they're definitely more Western and standout a lot. There is a cracking pier and great viewing point over the city and back onto Tokyo. All curved wood and smooth grass, with views onto a similar(but newer) style of Golden Gate bridge.
Baseball is huge in Japan, it's on TV everyday, and Yokohama have a major team with a pretty large stadium and nice grounds around it. I like this place, it's more chilled if you want to get away from it and the sun was seriously beating down when we were there.
The city part of Yokohama is also quite impressive, they're mad on huge Ferris wheels and have them in every town city! There's also a theme park with roller coasters and a bizarre 'European' village. Strange stuff but good for the kids I'm sure.
I'll be honest that the only reason I'd even heard of Yokohama is because they make tyres but it turned out to be quite a cool place. It, apparently, has the largest Chinatown in the world but as we'd already been to China we weren't that bothered. However, this Chinatown isn't quite like China. It was clean.
As this is the busiest period of our trip we started hitting a city a day and got pretty hectic. Yokohama, definitely worth a visit. Time to move on!

Above, the Yokohama ferry terminal......it beats Dover.