We checked out of our Taipei hotel, and while we did, the people there gave us coffee, snacks, a throat sweet for Jayna's cough, and two cans of beer! People are so nice in Taiwan.

We'd been told that the New Taiwanese Dollar was basically unchangeable outside of Taiwan . We were determined to use the remaining dollars well, so went and bought a takeout vegetarian lunch from a veggie restaurant, and made our way to the bus station for a bus to the airport. Except that the bus didn't leave from the bus station, rather from another place along the road. Jayna had also woken up with a bad back, and lugging heavy backpacks around and through the crowds was not ideal. Once we found the bus station, Ken went over the road to a shopping mall to change our remaining dollars. Except that they wouldn't change them, so he went to a bank and was successful in getting hold of Japanese Yen. We still had a good amount of time before our flight, but unfortunately we were sold a bus ticket for the airport on an 'express' bus which was much slower than the one we'd taken to Taipei when we originally landed. When we arrived at the airport, we found out that the flight time had been brought forward by half an hour. All of this combined meant that we were running a lot later than we had planned.

Unfortunately, the airport was also busy, and there was a long line at the check in desk . We waited and got through it eventually, and headed to security. After security, the chap who checked us in came and found us, and said that security wanted to search Jayna's big backpack. We went backwards through security and back to the check in desk, where Jayna, with her bad back, had to unpack the contents of her bag. The culprit was a battery in a torch, which was apparently lead based. We were allowed to bring it into Taiwan, and through 13 other countries, but not to take it out of Taiwan. Jayna was given a document to sign which was in Chinese, and after requiring a translation of what was happening, and the torch was confiscated, we were allowed to go back through security. During this time, Jayna's boarding pass had been checked no less than 12 times, and was checked yet more times through the security business, again.

After security we were fingerprinted again, and allowed into the departure gates. By this time, we only had 15 minutes before we were due to be at our gate, and typically our gate was the furthest away . We went and found it and had 10 minutes to spend our remaining New Taiwanese Dollars. We bought liquids, liquids and more liquids. Eventually, we were settled on the plane. Then the plane sat on the runway and took off an hour later than scheduled, for no apparent reason.

This was also frustrating, because we had pre-purchased our Japanese Rail Passes. The rail passes had to be exchanged at a ticket office in Narita airport in Tokyo, so we could use them on the train to get into Tokyo city. The ticket offices shut not long after we were due to arrive into Narita airport, so we were keen to get there in good time. The hour's delay on the runway, and the fact that we lost an hour due to the time zone differences, made the whole experience quite stressful.

There was an actual vegetarian meal for us on the flight to Tokyo, though it was a bit rubbish as is standard with airline food. At least the food existed this time . On arriving into Narita airport, we rushed through security, and were fingerprinted and photographed. The customs man asked us some searching questions before letting us through. Then we made it to the Japanese Rail Pass ticket office with about 20 minutes to spare before they shut. Phew.

We took an express train from Narita into Tokyo Station, and were pretty exhausted by this time. From Tokyo Station we needed to get to our hotel, which was a couple of metro stops away. Except that the travel network in Japan is not joined up, and the people in Tokyo Station claimed to have no knowledge of how the metro system worked, where we could buy a ticket, get hold of a map, or indeed get to a metro station. Someone eventually helped us out, and directed us to a metro station around the corner. After this, we had to walk for more than half a kilometre underground to get into the actual metro line. We were only two stops down the Hanzomon line, but emerging from the wrong exit meant we needed to walk another 400 metres to our hotel . It was suddenly strange to see people driving on the left hand side of the road.

The hotel was nice; our room was tiny and in an annex building to the hotel, just around the corner from the main reception. The room was small but functional, and was sadly rather expensive. We knew Japan was never going to be cheap.

As mentioned in the Taiwan blog entries, we'd opted to buy a Japanese Rail Pass for travel in Japan. We knew we would be doing a fair amount of travelling across the country, and, after reading about the pass, thought this would ultimately save us some money. It didn't come cheap but it was considered worthwhile. What we found with the transport network was that it was not joined up, and there was a general lack of information. So there were lines on which we could use the Japanese Rail Pass, and there were 'private' railway lines, some bullet trains, buses and metro systems where we couldn't use the Japanese Rail Pass . There was intra- and well as inter- city rail travel, where the Japanese Rail Pass was not valid. Basically, it was a confusing, mixed picture. Not even the search function online was able to reliably exclude non-Japanese Rail Pass travel.

For a technological society, Japan also did not have a technological solution to the Japanese Rail Pass. The Rail Pass itself consisted of a small piece of card with a ticket stuck inside, meaning that to get into a station, we had to present the passes to a person. We couldn't get through the gates electronically with our Rail Pass. We ended up relying heavily on the staff in the train stations for information on routes, seat reservations, timings, train changes, and
platform numbers. Without these people, we would have been completely lost.

We'd arranged to meet up with a couple of old friends in Japan. Luckily, we'd arrived on a three day holiday in Japan, which meant that our friends were not in work when we were in Tokyo . Bonus. On Tuesday 22nd, we met up with Rich, one of Ken's college friends, who had been in Japan for a couple of years, and had travelled and worked in various places around the world. Rich came and met us at the Ote-mon entrance gate to the Imperial Palace East Gardens, in a nearby district. These were extensive free gardens, with close views of the huge stones used to build the castle walls. The stones very much reminded us of the Inca stone buildings. We wandered around for some time, climbed one of the keeps, and took in the views over the gardens. Rich explained that, much like in the UK, there is a lot of secrecy around the Japanese royal family and that visiting the palace itself is strictly off bounds. He also gave us useful bits of information, like how there are no public bins anywhere in Japan. Plus interesting facts about the shaping of the trees into the preferred rounded top, and how the city is divided into business, working class and upper class sections.

We took a JR (Japanese Rail Pass) line to Akihabara, the electronics area of Tokyo, otherwise known as Akihabara Electric Town . It's now a place where people buy games, anime, manga and computer goods. It looked just as you might imagine, with big billboards and visually loud electronic signs everywhere. We popped our heads into a pachinko parlour, which was, frankly, disgusting. Pachinko is a mechanical arcade game where the aim is to capture balls, in exchange for prizes. Why the room had to be so loud and full of pinging noises, and full of cigarette smoke, was beyond us. (In Japan, you can smoke indoors, but not outdoors. It's very odd to us.) We avoided the maid cafes, and walked past a street market with the biggest turnover in relation to it's size in the world. The Japanese are very efficient.

We walked further on and went to the Shinobazu pond, to the lotus pond part of it, and admired the Bentendo temple from a platform on the pond. As we were in the lotus pond, the pond was full of... lotuses! These were fully grown and hid the surface of the pond entirely . Rich assured us that there were turtles and various wildlife in the pond, though we didn't see any of this. We watched as it grew dark and soaked up the atmosphere, which was lush.

We said a fond farewell to Rich on the JR train home, and alighted at Tokyo station for our stop to get the metro to our hotel. We had dinner in a vegan restaurant in Tokyo station, which was popular and very nice, before heading back for the evening.

On Wednesday 23rd, we took another train adventure to meet another old friend, Donny. Donny lived outside of Tokyo, in a place called Ashikaga. We had train times from the internet, but they turned out to not be JR compatible. As usual, we turned to the station staff for help, and were given an alternative timetable and route which was paid for on our JR pass. Unfortunately, this meant three changes and we were given an impossible connection to make at one of the stops. We did eventually get to Ashikaga, but this was nearly 2 hours after we'd planned to be there, with the whole journey taking us nearly 4 hours .

Donny came and met us at Ashikaga station, and we drove to Banna-ji Temple, in the city. There was some kind of event going on with lots of cameras trained inside one of the temple halls, but we were allowed in and went for a wander around the grounds. We also took a wander past Japan's oldest university, Ashikaga Gakko, established in the 1400s, and ate some awesome icecream from a shop down a tiny side street. Donny then drove us to the Orihime Park, and we climbed up several staircases to get to the Orihime Shrine with it's fabulous views over Ashikaga city. Donny got his fortune read by a machine - it was good by all accounts.

After soaking in the views, we drove to Donny's place and met his wife, who is lovely, and little boy, who is gorgeous. We headed out for dinner. The first place we went to started a fire alarm as soon as we walked in, and there was a lot of smeechy smoke hanging in the air. We scarpered and headed for another place down the road, and enjoyed a thoroughly nice dinner and catch up on all the happenings of friends, Tywardreath, Par, St Blazey, and the rest of the UK . Donny dropped us off at the train station and we said another fond farewell. It had been great catching up. We got a train to a connection for a Shinkansen bullet train - our first bullet train experience! It was, as you might imagine, fast, efficient and busy. We got seats after the first stop and were back into Tokyo station in no time at all.

On Thursday 24th, we headed over to the west of Tokyo. We'd run out of people to meet up with sadly, but hadn't exhausted things to do in Tokyo. We went to the famous Shibuya road crossing. This is the typical Tokyo scene of 2000 people waiting in a very orderly fashion to cross the road, surrounded by neon lights and flashing billboards. When the lights change, it's known as the 'scramble' to get to the other side. There was no scrambling from what we saw, just lots and lots of people. We found the Hachiko statue, commemorating the life of the famous loyal dog, and who is now a symbol of loyalty in Japan.

We took a JR train a couple of stops north to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, and went up the south tower . Here was a free view over Tokyo from 45 floors up. Unfortunately, it was hazy in the distance and we couldn't see Mount Fuji. On leaving the government building, it started to rain (hence the haze) and we walked to a nearby set of gardens, called Shinjuku Gyoen. They were closed. So we took a JR train a couple of stops south, and went into the Meiji Jingu Shrine and gardens. This was a shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. We wandered in through the rain, past donated barrels of wine from France, and more barrels of decorated sake. (Barrels of booze in a park wouldn't last two minutes in the UK!) The shrine was a solemn place, and we were moved on by a security guard after a couple of minutes, even though it wasn't busy and we weren't in the way. We took that as our queue to exit, and headed back to our hotel. We attempted to get an early night but weren't very successful. We had an early start the next morning to get to Nagoya, our next destination!