what do you see?

[There's a Hong Kong blog now! I'm about 2 weeks behind with it, but working hard to catch up
And don't forget the pictures on Flickr too.]

The 7 hours at the hotel passed quickly, as expected! But it was a comfortable night anyway, and we left the next morning in good spirits. The organisation at the hotel was really good, and we got bussed back to the airport efficiently. As we were pulling out of the hotel car park we ironically saw a famous symbol of Japan for the first time ever - the rising sun, exactly as you'd imagine it: an oversized glowing fiery red disc appearing in the hazy distance behind some small pines.
The flight got underway on time, and we were treated to some great views of Japan all the way from Tokyo down to Kyushu, before the clouds won out. This included the most spectacular view ever of another great Japanese symbol, Mount Fuji, standing magnificently alone on the vast Kanto plain, surrounded by wispy white clouds. We flew almost directly over it and could see it's brown bare flanks and the dreadful crater. Goodbye Japan; we will certainly never forget you!

When I said "Later" I didn't mean it to be quite so long - sorry! So, what did we do...I'll give you a brief summary in this post (which I've back dated just for tidiness). The first night in Tokyo we went down to Ginza and had a look around a bit for old times sake. We ended up eating and drinking at the Lion beer hall, which was somewhere we'd always wanted to go. Things are a bit overpriced there, but it's still worth it for the atmosphere and the decor.

The next day was quite warm and humid, a great day to hear the familiar shrill sound of the cicadas. There seemed to be hundreds of them in the trees of the shrine dedicated to Confucius, near Ochanomizu, where we went first.
For lunch we went to a very old soba shop, Yabu Soba in Kanda (virtually behind the Green Hotel of Colin-and-Phil-in-Tokyo fame!) which is apparently almost legendary. It's a beautiful place, still in the same family after 6 generations. The husband and wife behind the counter make a very interesting team, with their chaotic but very efficient system of keeping track of orders, which the wife literally sings out to the kitchen staff. The soba was excellent by the way!

After that we went down to Tokyo station and looked around the Marunouchi building, and then eventually made it across to Harajuku and Omotesando. We had a crepe and went in some shops, including ones in the newish Omotesando Hills shopping centre. It's actually quite cool I suppose, with the interior based around a gradually ascending spiral hill. But there didn't seem to be many very good shops, to just...buy stuff in. And I still prefer the old apartments that were rather callously pulled down. It's good to see they left one of them standing at least.
That night we went to one of the small yakitori shops almost under the railway tracks at Yurakucho - somewhere else we'd never got around to going back in 2002-3. That was a great experience, very atmospheric, with, of course,plenty of delicious food - a good memory of Japan to take away.

The next day didn't provide so many good memories. We took a taxi the couple of minutes to TCAT, and then a bus out to Narita (perhaps the most awkward to access major city airport in the world? Bar Gatwick maybe). So far so good. Check-in early, have a final set lunch, get to the gate with plenty of time to spare for boarding at 3:20pm...only to wait beyond the boarding time...and wait...and wait some more. Soon, the dreaded recursive announcements along the lines of "we'll make another announcement in 15 minutes" began, and so did the familiar sinking feeling. Eventually it was: "Flights to Hong Kong are all suspended at the moment due to bad weather [a typhoon] so your flight maybe cancelled; we're making arrangments for a hotel and transport if this should happen". It seemed we wouldn't escape Japan so easily!
The flight was confirmed cancelled just before 5, but it took until well after 9 to get to the hotel. That interlude contained a lot of very badly organised parts which I can't really go into too much here (but briefly, because I just can't resist it: sorting people out to go back through immigration by (after the Japanese customers had lined up separately, first, ahem, going one-by-one through a vast stack of exit-cards reading out names; assigning people to hotels without writing down names, and then much later on having a complete free-for-all and re-assigning people who could fight through the scrum with their boarding pass; announcements of departing shuttle buses made not using the PA system but by a diminuative ANA representative in a tiny voice to a hall full of hundreds of people...)

We were assigned to "the Hilton". However, the sinking feeling came back when our bus sailed past the Narita Airport Hilton and onto the expressway for Tokyo. Rumours flew around the bus - we were being taken to the Tokyo Hilton in Shinjuku, the opposite side of the sprawling metropolis; it would take another hour and a half to get there, and none of us had eaten, drank or even had a chance to use the toilet for hours. There was a glimmer of hope as someone managed to produce a bag of mixed nuts which were duly passed around. Time ticked by, and it really did look like Shinjuku for a while, but then the bus cut off at the Disneyland exit and we eventually arrived at the Tokyo Bay Hilton, where a huge (by any country's standards) room with a harbour view, tickets for a pretty decent dinner buffet and a free international call awaited us. Shame we could only enjoy the hotel for 7 hours, before our 5am bus back to the rescheduled flight departed...

And we are here in Hong Kong now, as of yesterday...I'll have to write a longer entry later to explain all that happened!

Hi - we're here in Tokyo - ah the big city! Got here no problem, and as a bonus we got to ride on one of the ANA Pikachu planes again, upstairs again (just like old times Colin, except the stewardesses weren't so crazy!). We managed to lug our lead cases to the Hotel Kitcho - I literally almost didn't make it up the many many flights of stairs at Ningyocho station. Out to find some food soon.
(PS - thanks for the well wishing emails everyone!)