On the Tokyo-Atami train

The Japanese Rail Pass doesn't cover the super-fast Nozomi service, but this Kodama local train is fast enough to keep me happy. The Shinkansen bullet train is a beautiful creature. We're zooming along. High speed trains are the best.

Tokyo is a great place to start a journey like this because it's a safe, modern city and it's easy enough to find your way around, but you're definitely not at home any more. Though, that said, Tokyo's actually a lot like a politer New York if New York had more public toilets and fewer tiny dogs: it's a centre of culture and business and retail with buckets of history, flagship stores, lost tourists from everywhere, busy but generally helpful locals,  walkable and bikeable streets, excellent public transport (once you figure it out) and all sorts of crazy neighborhoods and subcultures... well, ok, Tokyo wins hands down on that last one. Did you know that there's a subculture of people who dress like broken dolls? I swear. It's a new one on me. Anyway, in some ways a big city is a big city and Tokyo is like any of what I think of as the Great Cities, except you sometimes (often) have no clue whatsoever what's going on. And of course you don't know how to read.

I've been here before so I thought I'd probably take it easy and not run around too frantically this time, but boy was I mistaken. It's been three days of wall to wall activity: eating super-fresh sushi just off the boat at the biggest fish market in the world (wasted on me; I can't tell the difference), looking at delicate paintings at the Imperial Palace, petting the dog statue and being impressed at the elaborate style of every single person shopping at at Shibuya, watching the red evening sun from the Municipal Government Office Observatory, gawping at the crazy geek/fandom kids at Akihabara, causing the Wrong Coffee Incident of 2011 (you can't imagine the flurry of bowing, apologies, thank yous and running in circles, and that was just me), and stopping myself from buying the entire contents of Loft and the Studio Ghibli merchandise shop. My bag's less than 20lb and needs to stay that way.

There was also a bizarre incident involving a theme park, but that's a longer story that'll have to wait until later.

It's been busy, is what I'm saying, and it's also been too hot for this kind of headless-chicken activity. It'll be good to get to the Izu Peninsula and spend a couple of days hiking and sitting quietly and maybe even drinking some tea.

Pictures later when I'm more online.