href="http://data1.blog.de/blog/j/jezjapan/img/59526404.jpg" target="_blank" title="Ueno by day">
Japan is this: quite extraordinary.
The first thing that hit me upon arrival, during the train journey from Narita airport and Tokyo central is quite how different even the smallest things are - the houses, the trees, even the little weeds in the tracks are all completely alien to Europe.
Another cock-up though, due to the late arrival of my flight I missed the check in time of my hotel, and so I am staying in a nearby capsule hotel tonight. Oho! I did plan to do this at some point, but not on my first night! Lets hope I don't get molested by a drunken salaryman.
People really are amazingly helpful - after looking lost at Euno station for about 5 seconds a couple took me to the ticket office, a cash machine and my platform
Met a few top american guys at the hotel one of whom is a strict vegetarian so we found a great little italian restaurant in Ueno which we joined in a wedding party which was funny.
Reasons why Japan is better than us #1: Mobile phones in Japan really do shit all over phones in the UK. I was expecting everyone would have what would be considered cutting edge back home, but seriously this stuff is like five years ahead of what we have. One I saw had a fully working TV in it for crying out loud, and it was still smaller than any UK 3G phone. Shame I can't buy one and take it home as they don't use SIMs so theres no chance I could get a JP phone working in the UK. Bah
Reasons by Japan is better than us #2: When people have a cold, they wear face masks. A bit disturbing when I arrived as I assumed I'd walked into a SARS outbreak, but people really should start doing this in the UK, especially on the tube where viruses spread like wildfire.