under another sun

A splendid clear day in Tokyo, I pulled back the curtains to reveal the city in its all glory seeming to stretch to the distant mountains. A frenzy of packing for today was the day we began the next leg of our journey. Lorraine and I met Toby and Romy in reception and then took the lift down a couple of floors, then a mazy walk through subways till we caught a train for a few stops and arrived at the Shinkansen station. As we had to wait 50 minutes for the train, we had a light breakfast in a cafe. Lorraine and I braving the purchasing transaction, but this being Tokyo this was done fairly easily. Into the Shinkansen. This really is the the rock star of trains. Our reserved seats were in the lower deck of a two deck coach, however, so we arrived at the next station at ankle level. So to see things we popped upstairs and stood in the 'vestibule'. Tokyo seemed limitless as we headed north through the city, but eventually the built up areas began to thin until the train bullet...

A night of anaesthetised unconsciousness alternating with wide awake spells where I hatched projects to design our new house exactly like the hotel we are in. Up early, and Lorraine brought me tea made of roasted tea leaves with a delicious nutty taste. Got ready in haste, and rushed downstairs to an irate tour company woman. We were all late to join the bus tour, and so they drove off, but we hopped in a cab, lurked in a nearby hotel's lobby and caught the bus there instead. This was a perfect start to the holiday. The bus took us to the  Tokyo Tower , modelled on the Eiffel Tower, but larger being 333 metres tall and painted orange and white. All good fun, and enjoyably cheesy "Welcome to Tokyo's Navel". It had a large Christmas tree outside, with lots of festively decorated plastic Towers. The Christmas trees here all seem to have their own music being piped in around them. There is lots of evidence of Christmas here. Romy said that they treat the day as somethin...

Dark night of the soul on board. Lorraine colouring in her colouring book and feeling too claustrophobic to sleep, me occasionally twitchy but mostly just bored. Looked out of the window at stars and the top of the clouds that we seemed to have skimmed over from London to the Sea of Japan. Both Lorraine and I dead beat and snuffling horribly with colds. Eventually the sun came up again and the end of the journey which I had been following on my plane tracker was nigh. I made Lorraine swap seats with me so she could see Mount Fuji rising majestically to greet us. At last we had landed, and apart from a tiresome Englishman in his late 60s who was boasting about his attractiveness to Japanese women, calling one of the English stewardesses Miss Bossy Boots, and raving on to anyone who would listen about Mt Fuji we landed and disembarked without incident. Lorraine and I marched through the foreign diseases part of the airport trying not to give ourselves away as being ill. Romy was wa...

Touchdown in Japan Set off at the crack of dawn from Edgware. The journey to Heathrow very simple but the airport itself a wretched and Dantesque spectacle. Queues hundreds of people long, of stressed out, crying and anxious people desperately trying to get home or away for Christmas. Fortunately, having checked in online, I managed to battle through in only 45 minutes. On the other side of security things much calmer and I did a spot of shopping, and settled into the bar drinking a brace of stiff pre-flight gin and tonics, and having a few last minute chats on my mobile. Boarding was only delayed by twenty minutes. Curiously the G&Ts had worked a powerful magic, and I felt curiously chilled out. I had booked premium economy this time and the extra leg room suddenly took away the horror of claustrophobia. Curiously I had what was almost an enjoyable flight after being so stressed about it for weeks. Dozing a fair bit. I pulled open the window at one point and as I did so I saw ...