G8 Online

First up today was an excursion to Ueno Zoo. Yuhei was, of course, back at work, but Sultoon, George and I made our way there, scratching away all the while at our mosquito bites. The insects had been taking us to Sketchley's in the first few days, and I had acquired a couple of particularly annoying bites on my face. Fortunately, we were soon to acquire an anti-mosquito spray and some kind of plug-in device at the ryokan which kept them largely at bay for the rest of the trip.

Anyway, to the zoo. The conditions weren't great, and some of the animals had really been stitched up - cramped cages and enclosures with little in the way of suitable artificial habitat to make them feel at home. The rare panda, one of the zoo's biggest attractions, was found sitting disconsolately on a red tiled floor in front of a big glass window surrounded by gawping children. This rather spoilt the appeal of seeing such an impressive animal.

A couple of the animals, as we joked, had definitely come at the top of the room ballot - one dog-like creature called a "dhole" had somehow acquired the equivalent of 2:3, with an enormous enclosure consisting of an island full of foliage surrounded by a moat. The polar bears and hippopotamuses, meanwhile, were stuck somewhere at the top of staircase 9 with their terrible concrete enclosures. It all seemed a bit unfair, really.

There were some animals that looked a bit more cheerful, however, and the highlights were an amusing looking tapir, a disdainful-looking llama that reminded us of George, and a somewhat disturbing cage of bats in which all the bats (seemingly about 100) had coalesced into one big quivering, squeaking ball hanging from the ceiling. And then there were the hilarious penguins. These comical birds were coaxed out of their cage and paraded in front of Japanese people around the zoo, guided by their handlers (the jury was out on whether they found this at all enjoyable).

The zoo also contained a hugely impressive five-storey pagoda, at the foot of which sat dozens of Japanese schoolchildren drawing pictures of it - in fact, this was in many respects the most impressive thing in there. Having seen all this, we retired and grabbed some food - a kind of rice, onion and kebab meat concoction which is one of the fast food alternatives in Japan.

It was around this time that our barrage of jokes about DV being stuck in Denmark reached a crescendo. Poor old Schvett's flight was due to leave Heathrow at 6am British time, and then leave him with a six-hour stopover in Copenhagen, before eventually making it to Tokyo 24 hours after he left - almost double our journey time. We therefore adopted Denmark as DV's favourite team on his behalf.

After this we went off to the Sony building in Ginza - essentially a glorified showroom, but with some pretty impressive technology. We soon lost George, but found him (predictably enough) in the Playstation room. Having dragged him out, we went on to Harajuku to visit a Shinto shrine.

This is the entrance - highly impressive. Inside, we were introduced to the cleansing ritual, which believers must go through before entering the shrine itself. There's a large elevated bowl of water and some ladles, and the water must be used to rinse first one hand, then the other, then the mouth, before proceeding to the shrine.

Having partaken in this out of curiosity, we had a look at the place, and made a few gags about making offerings to Shints himself (perhaps a copy of the NME?). George believed that he'd even seen a vision of Trefor Moss. (Please ignore these jokes if you don't get them.) We also had a look around the rather attractive gardens.

Later, in the evening, we attempted to meet Yuhei again, but were stitched up by a fire on the train line which achieved what we had thought to be impossible and stopped Japanese public transport altogether. Yuhei had to go home with his girlfriend after she was taken ill anyway, so we grabbed some food in the area. This proved something of a struggle, as we found an entirely new kind of cafe which confused us a little. The system was that you bought a ticket from a vending machine according to what food you wanted, and handed it over at the counter. Sultoon succeeded in buying the wrong ticket thanks to an understandable mix-up, and after some rather difficult negotiation he succeeded in getting his rather intimidating-looking gigantic plate of noodles replaced with the meal he'd actually intended to eat. Having mildly irritated and probably amused our hosts, we eventually headed back. Poking our heads down Naughty Street on the way back, George noticed a comical sight. An ageing Japanese salaryman was emerging from a doorway, staggering as if his crotch ached and mumbling a little, while some lingerie-clad lady waved him goodbye from within. George naturally surmised that he had been saying "Cor blimey!", and this amusing thought kept us smiling well into Day Five.