Having a whale of a time

There's always a chance that you take when you're booking your accommodation in new city. Now we've got trip advisor it's fantastic, which I input into myself, so the guess work is taken away from places. So I chose hotel Siena, right in the heart of the red light district and close to one of the main rail stations, Shinjuku, so it would be really convenient. With jet lag, I have been waking early and what a better start to the day than walking round the red light district at 6 am watching all the suits appear from the cellar bars and clubs, after their entertaining Saturday night, ready to weave their way down the streets towards the station, as their first trains to take them home had just started. Hilarious, but I know this seeder side of life has a horrible tale of exploited women and even here scary mafia run clubs, but it certainly was a sight to see!  Just to mix it up a bit I popped along to the local temple, which strangely enough was completely empty and joined the queue in the local 7/11 to get a black coffee to take the edge off the early start.  

Later we we met by an old travel mate of Rachel's, who she had worked with in New Zealand 15 years ago. He hade bravely brought in his wife and daughter,three and sone, five! This was their first family trip to Tokyo and was hilarious!!! We headed to the young and trendy area, Harajuku, to see what the trends were and there were some amazing young people around, my favourite, and of course I have a photos, was a girl with crazy bunches, eclectic clothes and white makeup with a heart sticker on her nose, not sure if that will catch on!!! Then we headed to the  fish market area and not only had our first amazing sushi meal, but we also had whale on a stick from one stall!!!! Mixed with the chicken gizzards from the BBQ selection that we had the night before, there's plenty of unusual things to eat here, but it's not for the faint hearted!

This was an incredible day of meeting people, so we headed back for a quick revitalising snooze (my 6am start was taking its effect). we met a friends' brother in law, who is a researcher at the university along with his Japanese wife, who has been amazing in offering us a lot of local knowledge via many emails, whilst we were planning our trip. So armed with bags of twiglets and a copy of private eye, we thanked them for their help and headed to an incredible restaurant, called Atika dining, where all the food, wine and beer came from a northern Provence, as did the local god, who twice in the night came to check on the customers, which was quite alarming, as he was huge, with a fiery red mask and covered with straw, wearing an amazing fringed wig. Mariko and Giles went here with their families the night before their wedding and the small children were reduced to tears! But what an incredible evening, we ate horse , snails, cooked soup at the table and gods even gave us sake, as they sat and preceded to chop our heads off with their mock saw!!! Just another crazy night in Tokyo!!!