There are so many bars and pubs in Tokyo its hard to know where to start. We found some great ones under the train lines where you could kick back have a few pints of tasty Sapporo or Ashai and even a yakatori stick or two.

There are thousands of vending machines they are everywhere and sell a wide range of items. Hot and cold drinks are the most popular, but there are ice cream machines and plenty of smoke and even beer machines out in the streets, our drunks and kids would love them. Strangely we have not seen any chocolate or chip machines like we have.

We are staying in Ginza, one of the more upmarket areas of Tokyo. Many of the big brand names have their stores here. The main strip closes to traffic on the weekends and transform into a giant pedestrian precinct. There are vending machines everywhere, we even saw one selling stuffed toy cats.

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Our hotel’s bathroom is very interesting, none least than the toilet. It has buttons for everything – we are very very scared. Whats this button do…..AAAARRRHH!

Once we sorted out tickets, you need purchase one for the train and another for the seat. You then look at your seat number and head to the platform and match your number to the number on the platform. There is a bullet train every 3 – 5 minutes so once yours arrive you walk the short line and you walk straight into the cabin and sit at your seat. Amazing process that works so well. The inside is more like a commercial jetliner than a plane so comfortable and clean.

During the journey a hostess enters the cabin with a food tray. First she bows to the people in the cabin before offering various drinks and interesting treats from bags of octopus flavored chips to bento boxes full of goodies. You can even get beer.

The trip is fast travelling at over 300 km and so smooth. There are some incredible tunnels and bridges along the way and very little space that has not been developed.

There is some tasty beer over here and you can get it just about anywhere. You can even drink it in places we wouldn’t even dream of, including at the station. Some of the snackfoods are fun too, not sure what many of them are but they sure are interesting. There are some really weird soft drink flavours too, this one is melon, tastes better than it sounded.

There were dozens of countries around the world displaying and several multi national companies, the quality of the displays and attractions were great and usually featured a cultural show, some treasures or tourist information on the country, a gift shop and in many cases a place where you could buy a Japanese inspired version of their national food.

The German one one one of our favorites as they had some delicious German ales, perfect for lunch. When you finished you beer you could take it to the waste container, there were about a dozen bins one for just about every products, there was even a bin attendant to help you choose which bin to put your cup in.

Robots were one of the major features of Expo there were so many of them and many of them had advanced levels of smartness. We visited a robotics show and not only was there a baby T-Rex walking around and roaring there as a lady robot who although a bit creepy was incredibly lifelike.

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Nagoya’s Expo 05 was the deciding factor on visiting Japan. We had wanted to come for several years, but Expo made us actually do it, and with the help of a few of our websites we are invited guests of Expo 2005 and have been given complementary entry and special access to the monstrous event. We jumped onto the JR rail to the Expo site, it was a crazy maze of trains and buses and over an hour of travelling. Little did we know we JR as a major sponsor of the Expo had much of the transportation sewn up, if we had have jumped on the other rail company we would have been there in a few stops.

The expo site is massive, we can not do it justice in a day so we will do half today and then come back for another go later in the week. There is so much to see and do. The queues are a bit of a problem but we decide to do what we can without lining up too much and see how we end up. Some of the queues got quieter during the day once people had been through the bigger attractions.

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After a pleasant flight we touch down at Chuba Airport that is about 40 kms from our hotel in Nagoya. The airport is huge, modern and impressive, already Japan has won us over our eyes are as big as sauces with amazement. We find the train again a state of the art system,super clean, exactly on time and so well organised, we even work out how to buy tickets from the vending machine.

The trip takes about 25 minutes, within no time we are at Meitesu Station and only a few minutes walk to our hotel. We were not sure what to expect other than a small and cramped hotel room. After a few minutes of trying to explain our booking to the friendly concierge who about as many English skills as we had Japanese we go to our room and were pleasantly surprised about the size of the room, the big beds and best of all the toilet from the future, we even got tickets for breakfast- that should be interesting.

After we settled in to the hotel it was time to explore the surrounding area, by this time it is night time so there blaze of neon and LED bright enough to see from the moon. We find a few bars and a place to get some food, delicious, then find a supermarket. Cube watermelons, octopus flavored chips, dried cuttlefish and a huge array of cheap beer. We stock up and head back to the hotel to drink our
bounty.

After we settled in to the hotel it was time to explore the surrounding area, by this time it was night so there blaze of neon and LED bright enough to see from the moon. We find a few tiny bars and a place to get some food, delicious, then find a supermarket. Cube watermelons, octopus flavored chips, dried cuttlefish and a huge array of cheap beer. We stock up and head back to the hotel to drink our bounty and sample a few of our interesting treats. Nagoya a cross between Mars and Bladerunner. It looks like the next few days are going to be so much fun- cant wait to see what Tokyo and Osaka are like.

After a pleasant flight we touch down at Chuba Airport that is about 40 kms from our hotel in Nagoya. The airport is huge, modern and impressive, already Japan has won us over our eyes are as big as sauces with amazement. We find the train again a state of the art system,super clean, exactly on time and so well organised, we even work out how to buy tickets from the vending machine. The trip takes about 25 minutes, within no time we are at Meitesu Station and only a few minutes walk to our hotel. We were not sure what to expect other than a small and cramped hotel room. After a few minutes of trying to explain our booking to the friendly concierge who about as many English skills as we had Japanese we go to our room and were pleasantly surprised about the size of the room, the big beds and best of all the toilet from the future, we even got tickets for breakfast- that should be interesting.

There is only about 12 people on the flight, there is so much room and its no problem getting a beer.