It's not often I meet a toilet I'm afraid of...

Japan is mental.
Fact.

Having just spent 3 days trying to negotiate Tokyo and Yokohama on my own, I feel I am fully qualified to make this statement. Tokyo, a sprawling urban mass of some 12 million souls, is a steamy Miso soup of a city full to the brim with chunks of concrete, tarmac and neon all writhing and jostling for space in the bowl.

And god is it steamy. I don't know what the official humidity percentage was this week but it must be up in the 80s. Perpetual leaden skies overhead as the remnants of typhoon Krovanh rumble a few hundred miles offshore. Not a breath of wind and your clothes stick to you in minutes. Yummy.

And the work ethic here is insane. I sat next to a (bizarre but very nice) Japanese chap on the (hellishly long and uncomfortable) flight over here, who had gone for a holiday to the UK for 6 days.
Five thousand, nine hundred and fifty six miles there and back, 11 hour flights, 8 hours time difference, for 6 measly days. I asked him why he bothered and he said that it was very uncommon to be able to get more than 1 week off work in Japan, ever, but that he "really really love England!" so wanted to come anyway.

And yet and yet, despite all this, the Japanese here remain some of the nicest, kindest, calmest people I have ever met. On the (many many) occasions I got lost and had to ask in my horrible broken Japanese "excuse me, where *insert destination that is nowhere near where I think I am* please-thankyou?" they were infallibly helpful and patient. (I am resolved to being about 60% nicer to tourists in london from now on). Oh and some of them are also very cute...


-Baby Leo trying to eat his entire hand.

I got lost inside Shibuya station today for 25 minutes while looking for the train to Yokohama, finally ending up in the lingerie section on the second floor of a department store, with all my baggage, looking truly pathetic. The woman who helped me spoke no English, but literally took me by the hand to the platform, pressed the correct buttons on the ticket machine, and put me on the train.
If there is such a place as heaven, this lady has surely got a spot reserved.

Of course, there are mental people too...



For instance, I fell asleep in the park with jetlag on wednesday and was awoken by this guy^ sitting less than a metre away from me, drawing me! In the end we had a chat and it was fine, but ya know, bit odd innit. He also seems to have imagined me in this drawing as some kind of super tall, waif-like nymph and has omitted the glasses i was wearing, so actually i guess i didn't mind all that much in the end.

I am currently in the plushest hotel room I have ever had the good fortune to set foot in. It's so amazing. 13th floor of the Pan Pacific, woman playing a grand piano in the lobby, view out over the harbour, complementary monogrammed pyjamas and a fluffy white robe.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have arrived.

(and can never usually afford this when not on expenses and never will again, so i'm totally making the most of it). I feel like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, where he get's lost in New York and checks into that swanky hotel on his dad's credit card...

But the toilets here are terrifying. I am afraid to pee for fear of what might whoosh up out of nowhere. I mean, look at that thing.



It looks like something the CIA might use in one of its "enhanced interrogation" sessions.
I don't want to sit on anything that's plugged in thankyouverymuchforasking.

But the view at night here makes the toilet's worth enduring. Check out the ferris-wheel/clock!!

If you ever wonder where the electricity goes during power cuts back home.... it's here. 

All of it.

Right, enough of this prattling. We're all boarding the boat tomorrow so the actual work can start! Hurrah! Already met a few of the people I'm sailing with, and had a beer with the crew that's just finished the last expedition. 

So let's get this show on the road so the fun can really begin...