G8 Online

We'd arranged to meet Yuhei this morning, so we got up and set off for our scheduled meeting-point at Tokyo station, under some clock tower or other. Having found this slightly earlier than anticipated and changed some money into yen, we then had to hang around and wait. We saw about a dozen people that seemed to be Yuhei - the problem was, as George put it, that we were looking for "a Japanese bloke in a suit", which had suddenly become difficult ...

Anyway, when he did turn up, after some cheerful initial greetings, he bought us lunch at a "tempura" restaurant. Tempura consists of shrimps, rice and seaweed, essentially, and Sultoon and I enjoyed it while struggling manfully with chopsticks. George, underwhelmed by any form of seafood, was forced to resort to a plate of noodles which was just about the only alternative he was prepared to consider. Yuhei was in good form, but inevitably had to get back to work, having already dragged out his lunch hour for longer than usual. We accompanied him to his work building - a great big 25-floor concrete thing overlooking the gardens of the Imperial Palace.

It seemed a shame not to go to these gardens, so we did so, and they were suitably beautiful. Here are some pictures (1) (2).They were surrounded by a great big moat, which had been protecting Edo castle at some point. Not much remained of that, but here's the view from what little remains of Edo castle donjon (whatever a donjon is). Yuhei works in a concrete building like the ones in the background. There's a bigger version of the picture here.

The gardens seemed to be full of big black birds which kept going "aaah! aaah!" at anyone who was listening, which rather spoilt the atmosphere of tranquility, but it was still a nice contrast to our next destination, Shinjuku. Shinjuku seems to be at the centre of Tokyo's obsession with bright flashing neon lights, all competing with one another for attention, while giant screens show Coca-Cola adverts outside giant multi-storey department stores. In one of these, I bought a rather fetching Japan away shirt. After briefly wandering trying to find the apparently famous "Golden Gai" district of tiny little bars, we abandoned the streets and headed underground, since this was the easiest way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building.

This might not sound like the obvious attraction to visit, but it promised an observatory 100 floors up from which we could see the whole of Tokyo, and (on a particularly clear day) even Mount Fuji. Having struggled through the complex network of underground passages that branches out from every tube station, we eventually made it to the building and went up to the observatory, from which we got some pretty impressive views (although not quite as far as Fuji itself).

After watching the amusing spectacle of some Japanese lads playing football below the building from almost 600 feet above their heads (a great view!), we headed back down, and soon were off to meet Yuhei back near the ryokan. Having finished work, Yuhei took us to a restaurant serving some kind of barbecued meat. The value in this case was that they provided you with a little flaming barbecue in the middle of your table and let you cook the top-quality slices of meat yourself, while adding from the selection of sauces and side dishes. The meal was absolutely superb, punctuated by the usual etiquette competition as we all tried to remember not to leave our chopsticks sticking in our rice / soup when we put them down. Correct etiquette is to leave them lying flat, rather than sticking in your food : chopsticks sticking in rice is apparently only permitted at funerals, although I'm still not sure why. George managed to breach this on a number of occasions, to much hilarity. Here's a picture of us at our table.

Not much else to report, so it's on to Day Four.