Tokyo Storm Warning....

Curtis loves Tokyo! The city at night, city at night..... Our favourite 'beware of UFOs' sign.

The train journey to Tokyo was as easy as we’d come to expect on our travels thru Japan, and we arrived at Tokyo station around midday to find….more snow.  Tokyo station is as big and bussly as you would expect, but it still has that Japanese ‘order’ with people streaming thru it, but always politely and efficiently. So, we leave our bags in the hotel reception as were too early to check in and trudge out in the Tokyo snow to find some food. Once again we stayed in a Citadines apartment hotel, this time for the whole 8 days in Tokyo, which turned out to be a real blessing as we could make our own breakfasts and some evening meals rather than head out into the freezing Tokyo night to find veggie food.

Susan and the Curtster drive the monorail train. The Tokyo International Forum, and above it's 'Death Star' like entrance.

Again, only the Japanese could stick a giant saw in the ground. The Fuji TV Building. More great towers around Tokyo Bay.

Tokyo was great, a real mish-mash of buildings, all different sizes, shapes, heights and colours and all standing next to each other in no discernible order, which is rather unusual for the Japanese. We made the most of our time here and visited lots of sights, but still hardly skimming the surface of what Tokyo had to offer. On our first full day we explored the Tokyo Harbour area, a large section of reclaimed land to the West of central Tokyo that forms a small island. Getting round the island was fun using the cool looking monorail and jumping off at various point to visit the sights. First off was the Tokyo Big sight, a strange looking exhibition centre that looks like Apollo 18 has hit the ground leaving just the rockets sticking out. It did have a giant saw stuck in the ground outside for some reason. Don’t ask.

Another giant robot, outside Diver City Plaza. And another cool building in the Bay area. Susan & Curtis on a thermal image video at the Science Museum. The dark Blue area is a bottle of cold water, the Orange is heat from the brain. Curtis's brain appears to be larger than Susan's....

Next we headed to the Science Museum, via Venus Fort, a shopping mall close by which had a whole shop dedicated to dog clothes and accessories. The best of which was a Woody from Toy Story costume for a dog and several doggy buggies for pushing your lazy mutt around in! The Science Museum itself, or to give it it’s full name The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, was very cool, covering space exploration, robot technology and weather, Curtis even had his thermal image taken. But the coolest of all was a demonstration of Asimo (get it?), a walking, talking, football kicking, disco dancing teen sized robot. Curtis loved him, and he was very realistic, apart from the way he walked, which looked like he was trying to get to the nearest toilet as quickly as possible!  Next we went for the Fuji TV building, but only to view the outside, and then to see yet another giant robot stood on the outside guarding the Diver City Plaza.

Creepy early robot design, huge live weather globe and, the star of the show... Asimo the robot. All at the Science Museum.

The following day was, for me, one of the best I spent in Japan. To kick off we went to the fab Ghibli Museum in the Tokyo suburbs. You have to book this in advance for a specified time, to stop it being too mobbed, and you weren’t allowed to take photos, but it was worth it. Curtis loved the giant Cat Bus play area, charging around with the Japanese toddlers, the mock up of Miyazaki’s ‘inspiration’ room was especially interesting, lots of cool books and toys and, of course, the gift shop!

Inside the amazing looking Tokyo International forum, and a Samurai statue outside the entrance to the same.

From then on the day just got better and better… we got the bus from the Ghibli Museum to the train station and back in to Central Tokyo where went to see the amazing looking Tokyo International Forum, an exhibition and arts space that looks like two ships joined together, with a ceiling made from 2600 sheets of glass, secondly we visited the National Film Centre which had an exhibition of Japanese Film Posters, with some stunning examples from the 40s and 50s. Once again you weren’t supposed to take photos although I did manage one or two before being rumbled. To round it off it was onto the Ginza Graphic Gallery for an exhibition of early works from the influential Russian designer Alexander Rodchenko, bit of a hero of mine. Stunning book sleeves, posters and artwork. A great, and it has to be said, very cultural day.

One of the posters from the Film Poster exhibition and a couple of the Rodchecko artworks at the GGG.

The next day we visited the Shibuya crossing outside Shibuya station, well, you have to don’t you, often photographed and filmed, it’s become a tourist destination in itself. We then wandered round the Shibuya area a bit before heading to the Yoyogi National Stadium, another great looking structure built for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. After that we walked to the Omotesando shopping area, home to some very nice buildings including the stunning glass fronted Prada building, and the teen shopping heaven (or hell depending who you talk to) of Takeshita St. 

Standing at the Shibuya crossing, and a view of the crossing from above. The lovely Prada building in Omotesando.

The Yoyogi National Stadium, West Tokyo.

Other highlights of the next few days included a visit to the area of Akihabara or ‘Electric Town’ as it is better known, home to any and every kind of electronic gadget known to man (and some not by then looks of them). The retro looking Tokyo Tower was great, our visit to the Imperial Palace was distinctly average, nothing very exciting to see at all really, even tho you had to book a place in advance.

Various scenes from Tokyo.

The Mori Tower was better, another example of stylish Japanese architecture, as was the Tokyo Sky Tree, which was just nearing completion, and the top of which when we visited was covered in a layer of thick fog, giving it a eerie Jack & the Beanstalk feel. That same day we also looked round Kappabashi or ‘Kitchenware Town’ as it is also known, home to every gadget and utensil you ever thought you’d need in the kitchen.

Those great platic food samples in Kitchenware town, and a giant robotic crab advertising, well, who knows....

The area is also home to the main reason we went there, a couple of shops the only sell the plates, and bowls of plastic food you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants and cafes. Very lifelike and colourful, these heavy plastic/rubber? imitations of every type of dish imaginable were brilliant, especially the rows of foaming beer glasses. Unfortunately they were much more expensive than we had thought, and much heavier, so the plastic burger and fries plate will have to wait till another time. 

One of the old trams still in service on Tokyo's last tram line. The new Sky Tree, who knows how high it actually goes!

Susan also found time to take a ride on Tokyo’s last tram line and get some photos of some old 40s & 50s trams, and she also visited a cat café! Yep, you heard right, it’s a coffee shop filled with 30 or 40 beautiful cats that you can stroke to your (and I guess their) hearts content. All the fun of cat ownership but without the cat litter and vomit. You do have to pay £8 to get in, for an hour, and your coffee is extra!

The one night we decided to experience a small slice of Tokyo's nightlife we visited the Golden Gai quarter, an warren of tiny bars, some named after musical heroes (Bons, Let It Rock, The Who Bar...). Very atmospheric, but each bar probably held no more than 10 people tops. I of course, managed to slot in my own Tokyo experience by visiting the many cool record shops in Shibuya and Shinjuku, spending too much money and far too much time standing around flipping thru 7” singles. I did do most of this illicit vinyl shopping after a days sightseeing after 4pm while Susan took Curtis back to the hotel for his sleep. Got some great tunes tho!

Let It Rock, one of the tiny bars in the Golden Gai area. My stash of 7" vinyl and Nobuo from Rock 'n' Roll Music Garden.

By day 7, we both felt exhausted, and that we had done as much as we could in Tokyo on this trip. You could spend months here and still not make much of a dent in what the city has to offer, but we felt like we’d given at a good crack. It’s a huge bustling city, with all the things that that entails, good and bad, and I guess, we’ve left plenty of things to do the next time we visit…..

Various cool looking buildings in Tokyo. The one one the right looks like a giant bull!

We’ve both loved Japan, as we knew we would, and even the sub zero temperatures we experienced at times couldn’t tarnish the place. Having said that, we’d both love to visit in the summer when Cherry blossoms are out and everyone is in t-shirts an shorts, I bet it’s a completely different vibe. Oh well, next time!

And so ends our trip, more than 4 months after we’d left for Sri Lanka, and two unplanned destinations, we were heading back home to London, on good old British Airways to an unsure future with no home to go to and the prospect of facing reality once again….

And we leave you with the best part of our trip... seeing the little fella grow from a small baby into a toddler, seeing him learn to crawl, laugh out loud, meet 100's of people and develop his own unique personality, I give you.... Curtis Joe Mowle.