2 - Ban-gohan, bewilderment, boiled eggs.

So, Tokyo's pretty big - London plus Manhattan, I hear. It's not too hard to believe as it looms over the horizon, the skyline burning orange in the early evening smog. Think Don Simpson meets Blade Runner. You come in on 5th storey overpasses as the streets spread out beneath; all hustle & bustle and fierce neon lights. We didn't reach ground level until the hotel in Shinjuku, so the journey had the quality of one of those theme park rides where you do a lap of the grounds from up on high. Surreal enough even without a mind-fogging case of jet-lag.












Shazam!

We were put up in the teeteringly impressive Keio Plaza, mighty skyscraping tower of mirth. Having spent 15 giddy minutes pressing all the buttons on the electric toilet in our room, it was high time to hit the streets in search of food. On to Problem One...

Despite learning a decent amount of basic Japanese before I came out, I quickly realised that reading the bloody stuff's another matter entirely. Staring in horror at the menu, it was apparent the waiter wasn't going to be successfully shooed away a fourth time. Panicked, we were clutching at straws. Well, beers, seeing as they were the one thing we were managing to order with increasing success.

"Okay okay, this this and this please. And this. Two of these. Plus one of this."

"Egg?!"

"Yes, egg! Thankyou!"

Well that wasn't too bad. Before too long a polite yet clearly bemused waitress arrived with our order. Surveying the table, we had:

Two sticks of chicken, one bowl of savoury rice pudding, one bowl of tofu and cabbage, two plates of udon, three more sticks of chicken and a single... boiled... egg.

Between 9 of us.

God knows what the chef must have thought. The "egg" turned out to be a garnish to a dish we'd failed to order, kind of like ordering cheese without the burger. We were going to need practice.

So, after a few more nervous requests for duplicate orders, we were back out on the streets pretty well fed and extremely chuffed about the price. Regardless of what you've heard, dining out in Japan is super-cheap - possibly by way of an apology for terrifying you with the menu. You'll quite often need to cook the ingredients at the table yourself too, which is an ingenious move by restaurant owners keen on lightening the workload, not to mention distancing themselves from that old "getting sued for inflicting food-poisoning upon the clientele" chestnut. Smart.

Next up was a Karaoke bar. Yes! Well, it would have been if we'd found it. After stumbling into a couple of games arcades and a sex shop, we decided to settle for a plain "bar." By now the jet-lag was looming malevolently and our plush new beds were beckoning with seductive coos. "Hang on," said one chap spying a brightly lit corner-store, "I've got an urge to buy crazy Japanese sweets. Be right back." "Me too!" I gibbered, quickly hurrying after him.

Hyperactively coloured treats beamed at us from all angles. "Ooh, what's this?" I said, picking a packet clearly labelled, "Tunes Cough Sweets".

"They're...cough sweets? No no, what about these?" he said, pointing at a bar of laxative chocolate.

"What about over here? I think it says,"Thrush.....Begone".

A bloody chemist's.














Still looks like a sweet shop to me...

Back at the tower of mirth, a last, great idea for the day was had by our fledgling hive mind. Tokyo from 47 floors up is really quite something, and sitting in the roof bar as they closed for the night, the whole odd situation came tumbling into view for the first time. 6,000 miles and 47 storeys didn't feel very far, but then I was surrounded by people thinking the same thing. In a month's time I'd be cycling past paddy fields as the sun set over distant green mountains. I'd get my chance to feel far from home then, but for now I had the comfort of fellow dazed Brits and one hell of a view.