Akihabara is the electronics suburb and is lined with hundreds of electronics shops selling everything imaginable and many things not. The area is also popular for cartoon and magna, Japanese animation that is huge. There are dozens of shops filled with comic books or collectable statues of the characters. Young girls dressed as french maids usually with an assortment of stuffed toys hand out brochures to entice the teenage boys into their theme restaurnats where they can play video games or dine of sickly sweet pancakes or strawberry crepes. while being waited on by a maid or a young girl in some other weird outfit. It seems a bit weird but its meant all in good fun.

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The view from our hotel window is pretty unique, it faces a train track and shinkansen bullet trains flash past it every 2 minutes.

Ginza is the luxurious shopping district only metres from our hotel. All the the luxury brands are there. Tiffany, Apple, Lois Vuitton, Prada, Cartier etc., The perfect place to buy a $5000 hand bag so you can prance around looking like you have been shopping in a Bali market.

Tokyo Station has finally returned to its former glory after being severely damaged during the war. The restoration is huge, not only has it totally rebuilt the upper floors and the interior it includes huge shopping plazas, a maze of tiny restaurants and some enourmous office towers.

The curry is so good here and we found a great little cafe under the railway line to enjoy a tasty curry.

Many of the big department stores have huge food floors in their basement, these pictures are from one of them in Ginza. The food is incredible, there is every type imaginable from fresh fruit, to cakes to exotic sushi.

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Some might say this poor guy was hit with the ugly stick, he has certainly been hit with something….  but I suppose he will be very tasty.

We arrived into Tokyo on Sunday morning to a what was to be a day of rain. So after checking into the hotel lunch was the order of the day. Tokyo has some amazing little cafes and bars underneath the railway lines and we found a fantastic one for lunch. Whale was on the menu, you could have it cooked, smoked or raw. They had a choice of red meat or whale tounge- yummy too many choices, think we will stick to the chicken squewers- I hope that is chicken!

Yokohama’s other noodle museum is the Ramen Museum and we went there for dinner on Saturday night. This building is themed like a pre war Tokyo with lanes and alleys filled with mystery and ramen cafes. The food was all chosen from vending machines, and the ramem we had was delicious and was made better by when it was washed down with a nice cold beer.

After the car show we spotted a few busses and a few white tents and thought there must be some other sort of festival going on. As it turned out it was a bus show in a paddock full of rubble you could barely walk through. Things didn’t look to interesting, there was a few suburban busses, a few stalls and even a place where you could buy used bus parts- why I dont know. Then just as we were leaving we spotted a mascot, and then another, then another and they kept on turning up in front of this bus. So we went up onto the bridge to take a look at what was going on, and then a fox mascot turned up riding in a bus like trolley. It ended up being a tug of war competition where the mascots and group of kids pulled a bus along. – only in Japan

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There was a fantastic classic car show on Yokohama’s waterfront that keep us amused for a while. A great collection of vehicles and a whole line of beautiful fiats and mini

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We stumbled on a sort of market come festival raising funds for the earth quake. There was plenty of great food, and the most awful smelling rotting fish plus some entertainment. Ours was the mascot until someone saw the green bear.