And so I reach the final country on my travels. At 6pm New Zealand time on Monday I flew to Sydney where I was in transit for just over two hours before my connecting flight to Tokyo. As luck would have it I managed to blag three seats to myself en route to Japan so out of a total of nine hours in the air, I was fast asleep for five of them. I landed at 6.30am local time. After clearing customs I took a train to Asakusa, following the instructions I printed out when booking my hostel online. I also had a map which helped me find where I’d be kipping for the next two nights, the Khaosan Tokyo Annex. It’s quite a cosy little hostel with Sky TV and half a dozen free internet terminals, about 10 minutes walk from the Asakusa subway station.
I dumped my bags in my room and headed out, but not before changing into shorts and a pair of flip-flops. The weather was overcast but very humid and sticky. Certainly not combat and trainers conditions. I took a train to Ueno and walked around the huge public park, taking in a couple of temples, the lake and, at the far end, Tokyo National Museum. It’s Japan’s largest museum and houses thousands of artefacts from art to pottery, acient sculptures to legendary katana swords and everything in between. I strolled around here for a while and then had a bit of a browse around the shops. In typical Japanese cuisine fashion, I had KFC for lunch and a McDonalds for dinner. The problem is, all the restaurants have Japanese-only menus. And although there are plenty of English signs around the place I haven’t met many English speakers. Whenever I go into a shop I can see the person on the checkout start to panic as I join the queue to be served. And even though they know you can’t speak any Japanese they’ll talk to you in it anyway. You just have to sort of pretend you’re at least getting the gist of what they’re saying.
I found my way back to the hostel (after getting lost having walked across the wrong bridge) and chilled out for a while, watching TV and talking to some of the other people staying there. I seem to be the only one who can’t speak any Japanese. I decided on an early night so I could get up for the England - Sweden game at 4am. With no alarm, miraculously I woke up at 3.45am and scrambled some clothes together. The only place nearby showing the game was a fair walk away so I made haste and found the little underground bar just after 4am. And they weren’t showing the game. So I walked all the way back feeling a little wounded. I checked the score on BBC Online and went back to bed, as I had a big day ahead planned.