Day 3 – Tokyo

My body clock hasn't got back in sync yet, so I wake up early and head down for breakfast and although you would think that potato salad, sushi, pickles and toast would not work together, surprisingly, they do. Which is good for me as I will be having it for the next four weeks.

A bit of culture is the order of the day and we visit the Tokyo National Museum, some small shrines and have a good wander around the area being consistently amused at zebra crossings by the fact that when a red man signal shows, no one crosses the street  – even if there is not a car within earshot.

On arrival back at the hotel I asked to extend our stay for an extra two nights, only to be told the hotel is full. That is not good as I now have to find somewhere else to stay tomorrow night. We search around the area for nearly three hours (it would have been easy if we had wanted to pay £250 a night) without success but eventually give up and return to the reception desk to ask if they have other locations elsewhere in the city they can book us into. After some frantic crunching on the keyboard the receptionist returns with: 

'Everywhere in Tokyo full'. 

I was worried, this was not good.

'Shame, you not want double room' she muttered.

'Excuse me?'

It transpires that we are staying in what is classed as an Economy Double Room which is full tomorrow, however, the hotel does have plenty of availability in Double Rooms, Twin Rooms, Economy Twin Rooms, Smoking Double Rooms, Smoking Twin Rooms, Smoking Economy Twin Rooms and something called a Heartfelt Double Room. But not Economy Double Rooms, I didn't ask for any of the others

It was shortly after this experience that I decided to start trying the Japanese alcoholic beverages. They do fruit beers (known as Chuhai) which would have Audrey Hepburn turning in her grave (no, I didn't know she was from Belgium either, I had to go to famousbelgiums.net for that joke and I hadn't heard of the number one entry on their list so she got in). I tried one called Kirin Chu-Hi Apple Nouveau which I can assure you is easier to drink than to say.