I met some Australians in Hiroshima who informed me that there was a Universal Studios in Osaka and that it had a proper full on Jaws ride. After the emotional roller-coaster that I had been through at the A-Bomb Museum and the Peace Park I jumped on an early train over there.

I was a little disappointed with park, although I had just visited the same place in Hollywood which had updated a lot of it’s rides. The jaws ride was great though, you go on a guided tour of Amity Island, then you get a call from another boat in distress. As you go through the rest of the ride Jaws get closer and cloaser to the boat and you get more and more wet. It ends with him chewing on a powerline and being blown up by a nearby oil drum, shot by the guide.

The other problem was that it was so cold, I’ve managed to get this far on my travels just wearing a hoody, and I didn’t really want to buy a coat to last the last 3 days before I head to SE Asia where a coat would definitely not be needed. I ended up mainly going on the rides that where indoors and using the time in the queues to warm up.

That night I met back up with the 2 Australian girls and anther Australian guy back at the hotel. It was decided that we should have a real Japanese night out and go to a Karaoke bar. I managed to murder the pixies, blur and underworld and we all had a go at chanting along to tubthumping.

The next morning the 2 Aussie girls an myself went to the Dotobori district of town which must have been an inspiration for Bladerunner. Lots of industrial buildings covered in neon signs. It looks like quite a trendy place to hang out, it was full of big groups teenagers all dressed up as though they where going out for the night. I head back into Tokyo for the evening and just went straight to bed.

For my last day in Tokyo I decided that I would just catch the subway to Akihabara, then just walk in a random direction until I found something interesting or I got bored. I found a cool market selling all sorts for weird stuff as well as a whole load of fish. They also seemed to sell a hell of a lot of octopus which I’ve never really seen on sale before.

I ended the night at a restaurant with an English guy I was sharing a room with, he showed me Okonomiyaki which is like a pancake, cabbage and whatever other fillings you like. I had shrimp, they also topped it with a special Okonomiyaki sauce which tasted just like HP brown sauce to me. We had a really interesting conversation about how you meet people and have this weird little relationship with them where they become like your best friends and then a couple of days later one of you has moved on and all of sudden your doing the same thing with someone else. I’m sort of looking forward to doing an organised tour where I’ll be with one group of people for a few weeks.

I had to get up early to catch my flight to Singapore where I’ve got an overnight stop before I get to Hanoi. I flew on the new double decker super jumbo A380, Economy class was pretty much the same as on any other plane, but I did walk through business class which looked wicked. You get a double seat and a 21″ TV. Unfortunately I’ve been feeling a little rough since last night and didn’t sleep at all, to top it all off I was sick a few times on the plane. Hopefully it’ll not last to long and I’ll be good for my first Tour starting on Tuesday.

I’m not sure how the time difference works out, but I left Seattle on the scariest bus ride of all time in the early hours of Monday morning and arrived in Tokyo very late on Tuesday night in a state that would put a George Romero zombie to shame.

After a really good nights sleep and trying to work out how to use the toilet, I set off for a look around the neighborhood. I’m staying in an area of Tokyo called Asakusa. There is a huge temple just up the road and it’s surrounded by a market, a really cute little garden (complete with fish pond) and a maze of little store fronts selling all sorts of weird food and trinkets.

I was sharing a room with 3 Swedes: Gus, Linda and Robert who turned out to be great fun. Gus was very eccentrict but funny, he always wears a top hat when he’s out. Linda and Robert where a little more reserved, but still great fun. They invited me to join them out for the night to the Shibuya area of the city. It’s one of the more young and trendy areas of town which is probably most famous for a crossroads that was used in Lost in Translation. We went to a noodle bar for dinner and ate for about £3 each. The food I’ve tried so far in Japan hasn’t been too great, but I’m defiantly open to trying anything new and maybe I’ve just been going to the wrong places. I’ve made myself a promise that I’m going to eat at least half of everything I buy, no matter how bad it tastes.

We also went to a Manga internet cafe, which are littered all over Tokyo. It costs around £2 for an hour’s use of a private cubical in which you get a PC and comfy chair and you also have access to a very comprehensive library of Manga books and DVD’s. There is also bring food and drink to your cubical on request. Apparently a lot of people use them to stay in over night if they miss the last train home, although it did seem a bit seedy and Linda said that the guy in the cubical next to her was “making himself very comfortable” whatever that means to a Swedish.

I’ve also spent a day visiting the Ginza area which is full of designer shops and department stores but not really my scene and the Akhiabara (aka electric town) area which was much more to my liking. There is streets and streets of gadget shops (including a massive 7 storey gadget have called Yodobashi Camera) and an unusual amount of “adult” stores and quite often the 2 merge and you suddenly find yourself surrounded by vibrators.

I’ve started getting the hang of some of the customs , bowing at people and taking your shoes off at the door are the 2 biggest ones. I’m also really worried about unwittingly offending someone. I know it’s really bad manors to blow your nose in public (which doesn’t help when I’ve got the beginnings of a cold and there must be a stack of others that I don’t know about. If anyone’s got any ideas, let me know.

The Japanese people are really friendly, and always putting themselves out to help you out. I really wanted to go to the Studio Gibli museum and the girl on reception at the hostel wrote me a note in japanese saying “please can you help me buy a ticket” with all the information on I needed to take to take to the supermarket which has ticket machines within it. Unfortunately it turns out the the museum is fully booked the whole time I’m in Japan, but I was really impressed by the good nature of everyone.

I caught the Shinkansen “Bullet” train to Kyoto today it was really smooth and apparently goes at 285 km/h but on the inside it was pretty much like any other train.