Shit. I just realised, Dad, that I’d completely forgotten to let you know that I’ve officially not been dismembered by the yakuza yet. I was kind of hoping you’d be inferring as much through the prodigious blog output and daily Wordle score updates, but – just for the record – as it stands, I am currently sporting all my appendages (though there is still time on this front, of course…).

Anyway, my last couple of days in Tokyo were have been both busy and brilliant – hence it taking me a while to get everything all written up, and I’ve also ended up splitting this into a bit of a two-parter to keep this entry from running on forever… For now though, let’s rewind a bit and start back where we left off, after an admittedly somewhat meh type of a day in hazy Hakone on the Friday and the onset of sleep deprivation proper (I swear I could feel my brain literally seizing up at one point…).

Thank God, I finally managed to get in some decent sleep that evening in the end, and in fact was back up and out bright and early again the next morning to hit up the Tsujiki fish market over in the neighbouring Chuo district of the city. Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely bloody love me a food market at the best of times – but a Japanese food market on top of that…?!? My cup well and truly runneth over.

Not that I don’t also love a good supermarket visit in a different country too – particularly if the local alphabet is in a non-roman script for maximum confusion potential. For example, how many drink varieties can there possible be, and what’s inside them all…? Am I currently in the snack food aisle or the pet food one…?? Is that wine or vinegar or soy sauce or cola in those bottles, or none of the above? So many questions, so little time… 😉

Running with that theme a little bit, shifting from culinary blind spots to more matters of minor mystery encountered when in a foreign land. Here are some of mine from my time in Japan to date… Firstly, why is Japan’s toilet paper so inexplicably thin…? Why are the escalators insufficiently speedy and the elevators so overly effusive…? Where on earth are all the public bins…? Why the hell did the Japanese powers-that-be let an ephebophile design the school uniforms…? Why the ubiquitous vending machines – are the Japanese just congenitally thirsty…? Where did all the Harajuku girls disappear to…? What the eff are they putting in the matcha here to make it so god damn addictive…?  How come Tokyo city can put wifi on the underground and Transport for London can’t….? And I still seriously don’t get the deal with all that plastic food…

Anyhooooo, I digress – let’s get back to Tsujiki. Long story short, I spent a loooong time exploring here yesterday morning – and the below represents only a teeny tiny fraction of the several hundred pics I took in the process (when I said I liked markets, I seriously meant it…). As it was still breakfast time (at least in my book), I took the chance to try an amazake drink (a sweet, hot, non-alcoholic sake, which pretty much looked and tasted like hot, thin, sugary milk porridge) and grabbed a couple of white strawberry mochi (white strawberries being quite a ‘thing’ here) to set me up for the day – and I may well have to come back for a lunch or dinner round here before I go as well…!

By the time I left Tsujiki, it had turned into an absolutely glorious spring day – the first since I arrived that I haven’t needed either coat or jumper or both… And that means cherry blossom time!!!! Over the course of the day, I visited three prime sakura stops – Hamarikyu Park; Chidorigafuchi Moat and finally the Kitanomaru Gardens in the grounds of the Imperial Palace (where Tokyo comes out in force to picnic). The pictures speak for themselves in terms of the sheer beauty of Japan’s sakura season, but it’s definitely a case of ‘blink and you miss it’… The blossom is already starting to fall (a little earlier this year than usual) and I sense this may well be my lot for the trip in sakura terms – unless Kyoto can hold out just that little bit longer. All told though, I’m really chuffed even just to have seen what I’ve seen so far – it is something very special to behold here, that’s for sure.

Once again, these just a tiny snapshot of sakura pics taken over the course of the day (I’ve apparently still yet to reach my upper limit of photos taken of pretty trees from various slightly differing angles…). I have to say on that front, one of my favourite things about Japan is never having to feel self-conscious asking a stranger to take your picture (photographing anything that moves – or indeed anything that doesn’t – constituting something of a national past time here…). That, and the fact that the nearest toilet is signposted pretty much literally everywhere you go – which is, needless to say, eminently reassuring for us poor, long suffering, tiny bladdered types…

Anyhoo, I had been planning to go on to the Shinjuku Gyoen park as my fourth and final sakura stop for the day, but even I was feeling just a teensy tiny bit cherry blossomed out at this point. Instead, I decided to head up to Akihabara, Tokyo’s famous manga, anime, gaming and electronics area – not to mention red light district – to round off the afternoon’s activities.

However, I personally think that particular weird and wonderful little visit is worthy of its own entry in and of itself – please stay tuned for a further update shortly… 🙂