Lost in Translation - it’s all true

  15th July

Goodbye Heathrow...early afternoon

12 hours later, Narita - but it's 10.30am the next day - very confusing..

Hi

Tokyo!

We're here, my various paranoias failed to be realised, the imminent threat of the plane being downed by radical Siberian Inuit, crash landing in the tundra and being devoured by carnivorous reindeer or arriving in Tokyo only to spend the entire holiday circling Tokyo's spaghetti-like subway....no, we survived it all and are now safely, if somewhat blearily ensconced on the 17th floor of the Washington Hotel, watching the lights of metropolitan Tokyo twinkle beyond slabs of Shinjuku's towering, post-modern skyscrapers.

What can you say....it's the most intense, noisy, full-on urban environment imaginable (bloody hell! - we're just having an earth tremor!)...hmmm, that's not something that happens too often in Burbage, everything gently swaying and bumping as if the whole city was a tram crossing points.

Anyway, where was I...yes, Tokyo - Manhattan on speed, stretches as far as the eye can see, working like some kind of huge well ordered urban machine - no graffiti, not even one dropped Big Mac carton - how is such conformity manufactured - perhaps we'll find out. But on the face of it - all the locals we've met are friendly, charming, keen to help the bewildered Brit.

The earth tremor a couple of minutes ago has just featured on the TV news - 4.5 on the Richter scale it would seem.

So, we arrived at the hotel around 2.00pm - had a bit of a snoop around the locality, found an ATM which does take European cards (not all of them do), had a snack in Tokyo's version of La Croissonerie - and it's true, the Japanese version of the quiche lorraine is a fair facsimile of the original - at least in terms of taste and texture - a bit odd that in shape it resembled a large pork pie.

At about 5:30pm we returned to the hotel, had a few hours kip (we're all feeling really wrecked, not a wink of sleep on the plane) woke up about an hour ago, the clock read 6:50 - none us could work out if it was morning or evening - it transpires it's evening - so we'll probably take another trip around the neighbourhood, then try to get a full night's sleep. Anyway, enough exotic travellers tales for now.

Mum did log on, no news on the interview outcome yet - it seems that won't happen now until early next week....difficult to muster a full-on anti-Tory rant while jet-lagged and culturally bewildered - the cost of the airfare is worth it alone just to be a month without seeing Cameron's pneumatitic, over-inflated, baby-oiled, jelly-like ugly old Etonian visage on the telly. Hah, I CAN muster a good old fashioned anti rant...even here.

Hi All - Mum here...We'll try to send an email tomorrow....after we've tried to make more sense of where we are. I'm not sure if we have internet when we get to Sydney

Take care all....

Love Mum, Dad and Laura.