Day One - Arrival

We arrived at Narita airport and exited towards the train station. The humidity hit us like a ton of bricks. We caught the train from Narita toward Ueno at about 7am, unfortunately we did not read the signs properly and instead of catch an express that should have taken us about 50 minutes, it ended up taking us about 2 hours, but it did give me time to have a few power naps, so swings and roundabouts. Even though it was quite early there were a fair few high school kids getting on and off the train. All the girls were wearing navy knee high socks, but they had the playboy bunny logo at the top, which was weird. Any way after our long train ride we finally arrived at Ueno station. We took a leisurely walk through Ueno park reaching our home for the next 5 days in approx 10 minutes. The place; Ryokan Katsutaro (http://www.katsutaro.com/ryokan_index.html). The plan was just to jettison the backpacks as check-in time was hours away, but to our (delighted) surprise our room was ready. We were extremely grateful to be able to have a shower

and wash the smell of airplane and airport off us. The room is Japanese style, simple, pleasant and extremely clean.

Onward bound to get some sim cards, you can only get data cards in Japan if you are not a resident. We went to Yodobashi a HUGE electronics store, the sales assistant was very helpful and even set it up for me. It kinda sucks that the Japanese have a no tipping rule as this is the place you want to tip, everyone is really helpful and polite.

After this we wandered through 'American Town' (http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3012.html) which consisted of shoe stores, hawaiian shirt stores and bizzarley, kebab shops. We eventually found a Japanese tavern which sold little Japanese tapas dishes. It was great and it was cheap.

We then went to look at the Tokyo National Museum (http://www.tnm.jp/?lang=en), it was more of an art gallery than a museum, so we ditched it pretty quick and scampered over to the Science Musuem (http://www.kahaku.go.jp/english/), which unfortunetly for us it was remodelling and half of the exhibits were closed, although it had a really good taxidermy

room. It was about 600 yen per person per museum so it was not an expensive outing.

Trying to keep ourselves awake to get out body clocks back to normal (we didn't sleep on the flight), we took the subway to Asakusa for a bit of souvenir shopping browsing (it's a good place to do it) and to visit our first (of many) temples and shrines. I made a wish the temple and received a fortune, which pretty much told me things are going to stay exactly the same. Of course BF did the same and good a super fantastic happy fortune.

Next stop batting cages where BF strutted his stuff and then we stopped into a pachinko parlour (http://www.pachinko-play.com/en/). Oh my giddy aunt... The NOISE. It was deafening and was combining with the cigarette smoke to make the experience one to remember. There is no way this would happen in Oz and the OHS issues would be too many to contended with.

We came back to Ueno had some yakitori in a little restaurant and then Hit the hay, a long wonderful day. And another one tomorrow when we are off to Disney Sea!