Japan - Tokyo

We stayed in a downtown suburb, Ueno, an area which we really liked. It was the equivalent to Paddington in London, the express train from the airport terminated there. It had a local market and lots of locals seemed to hang out there. We had a great time exploring our local park in Ueno, which is home to Shin Shin, Ri Ri and two year old Xiang Xiang, cherry trees and a lovely lake.

We had a great view from the 24th floor of our hotel. Tokyo is vast, and it took a couple of false starts to get to grips with the subway system, which, once mastered, was a great way to explore the city. Thankfully all the stations names were written in Latin characters (romaji) and each stop has a number which is well sign-posted. Each time we headed up from the subway we were surprised by what was often a remarkably different architecture and feel to the area.

Japan has two religions - Buddhism and Shinto. Shinto temples are easily distinguished by one or more Shinto arches. On our first day we visited Shinjuku Gyoen National Gardens and headed to the more touristy area of Shibuya and went across the famous 'scramble crossing' .

We visited the famous Senso-ji Asakusa temple where we had a dubious fortune from the Buddha (and so discarded it as advised). The Imperial Palace was impressive, but you couldn't get particularly close. Food was a challenge but restaurants normally display pictures of the meal so you can get a rough idea of what you will be eating. Sarah loved ordering on the iPad and cooking on the little burner at the table!

We took a tour to Mount Fuji and the area called the "Five lakes'. We caught some glimpses of the mountain, which is the highest in Japan. We were unusually unlucky with the weather. We could only get to the first station of five due to high winds.

The view of the mountain wasn't quite what was advertised...