The First Flush

It’s my first day in Tokyo and having slept reasonably well and woken somewhat early, I have the most fabulous of greetings. A heated toilet seat. Toilets are one of the things that continue to impress me throughout the day. They talk to me. They wash my nether regions. They give me a hot air blow after I’ve finished, and they are quite simply a highlight.

Since living on my glorious boat, I’ve had a particularly intimate relationship with toilets as my boat requires the emptying of cassettes from the toilet once a week. It’s not a particularly onerous job, and it saves me having to take the whole boat across the marina to the pump out station, but it does mean that one has to load the car seats onto a trolley and take them round by hand doing what is known as the trolley of shame.

I can only imagine how welcome my bottom would feel on a winters morning were I to have a Tokyo toilet installed.

The second highlight of my first morning here is my guide Mutsoko. She’s incredibly excited to meet me (I think somebody at the travel agents has told her that I’m something I’m not in terms of British television) and she’s full of gorgeous energy and brilliant ideas are on hand to spend my first morning in Tokyo.

Within the first hour, I’ve learnt the difference between Buddhism and Shintoism. I have lit a candle for my mother in a temple. I’ve pulled a very good fortune from the cabinet of fortune, I’ve tried on a kimono, and we are on the subway to the palace gardens.

Mutsoko has a leaflet for everything. She has a leaflet for me to understand the underground so that I can meet up with my friends tonight, although it doesn’t take long for me to understand that it’s just 17 stops on the same line. She has a leaflet for me to understand how the station works at Tokyo Central so that tomorrow I can claim my rail pass for my bullet journeys around the country in the next week. She has a leaflet for the sky tree tower which I will be visiting on my return to Tokyo at the end of next week. She has a leaflet for the kabuki theatre for which I’m already booked and I’m doing a Kabuki workshop with an actor. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere in her bag she didn’t have a leaflet as to why the Labour Party are in danger of not winning the next election if they don’t do something about Keir Starmer.

She is a joy to spend time with. The more evidence of this just take a glimpse of her on my two reels. I posted on Instagram this morning.

Reluctantly, I leave her at 1 o’clock, and I head into some of the big department stores. Japanese fashion is fabulous, but the prices! I need more than a second series of a television series to be able to part with £657 for a shirt, but it is a beautiful shirt, and of course I’m thinking about it.

I stop off at a little café on the way home for the first cup of tea of the day as I missed my breakfast tea this morning and I have soya bean toast. I’m still deciding.

It’s been a great introduction to what is a fantastic city. I’ve seen the castle or the Eddo. I’ve learned which side of the escalator to stand

on-the left. And I’ve spent the morning among people who seem to be cheerful and honest, and there doesn’t seem to be any threat of that “lets rip him off -He’s a tourist”

Back at the hotel. I think it’s time for an hours nap before heading out to meet some friends for dinner. Some full on English (well, Irish actually) conversation.

Tonight I went out for dinner with a good old friend Connor McVey. Connor worked with me when he was at McDonald’s Uk and he’s been out here with his fabulous wife Katherine and his family for five years now.

So good to get so much inside information, to relive old times and it felt like we could have been anywhere from Chelsea to Conisborough. Though actually we were in a fabulous fish restaurant I would never have found as a visitor. I crossed Scramble Crossing and made my own way across town and back on my own.

A brilliant Tuesday in Tokyo