Today was very much, as someone famously said, a game of two halves. Perhaps an advanced mathematician but more probably a ball game based TV mouthpiece. I don't know or pretend to understand such things. Anyway….

Up at sensible o’clock for a change and on the hunt for breakfast comestibles. Having been pleasantly surprised by Jonathan's restaurants we checked if there might be one in the local area. Is there? Yep. Is it far? No, it's almost next door you great fool! We'd walked past it several times because it chose to be on the first floor and have the sign in katakana. (Sorry Yuka but katakana is the work of someone with a twisted sense of humour! At least with Kanji you know it's difficult but katakana lulls you into a false sense of security then laughs at your pathetic attempts to decipher what is usually your own language if you’re an English speaker!)

Lovely breakfast with copious amount of caffeine based accompaniments. For the record, the more I drink Melon Soda the more it tastes like Irn Bru!

Following this, (and watching the cutest little Japanese boy ever ninjaing his way to the drink bars while his gran wasn't watching) we headed off for a morning of culture and refinement with a trip to the Imperial Palace.

Dead easy to get to from Shinyuku and the place is huge. I read on Wikipedia that during the 80s property boom in Japan the grounds were valued more than the entire real estate value of California! No way of knowing if that is actually true but having seen it I wouldn't bet against it.

We rocked up at what we thought was the front gardens and watched the fountain installation go through it’s “attract” sequence. Stunning, there's no other word. Mooched around what the “front” garden (you can feel the tension brewing for a Scottish explosion can't you) for a bit then turned left and looked for the way in.

Note to self. Do your research properly you stupid ginger gonk!

Checked out the changing of the guard at the entrance to, as it transpired later, the Imperial family's part of the grounds. Took a load of photos including Tracey joining in with a load of Chinese lady tourists (accompanied by their obviously long suffering solitary male photographer) doing the Karate Kid’s crane technique on some stepping stones. Never mind G8 and shuttle diplomacy. The best way to promote international understanding and cooperation is to take photographs of bat shit crazy women doing dubious martial arts moves on bricks. In hats.

Following the performance of Mrs Miyage and her Asian Troupe of Wonders, we continued clockwise round the walls of the Imperial Place grounds looking for some semblance of an entrance. You can see where this is going can’t you? Indeed. We however, couldn't.

Kilometre after kilometre we walked, all the time being passed by endless streams of runners going the other way. Clue.

Half way round still no entrance. Did the light of realisation dawn? Did it heck as like.

More kilometres, more runners going IN THE OTHER DIRECTION and still no way in. Tracey dubbed it the Emperors New Palace by this point and we thought that if you took a drone shot there would only be a hut with two surprised guards playing snap.

Three quarters of the way round we found the entrance. Swearing. Really quite a lot of swearing. In multiple languages and when that ran out, interpretive dance and a puppet show.

To be honest though, despite the unplanned route march and cursing, the grounds of the Imperial Palace are nothing short of breathtaking in places. We spent hours just gawking and reading all the signs. An actually cultural morning rather than us just pretending to be adults for a change. 

Did watch an American tourist having a proper sterotypically "Amerca-centric" melt because the poor lady in the information centre told him he couldn't go into the actual Palace itself today. I suppose next week he’ll be marching up to Buck House demanding buttered scones and a tour of the Royal Kennels with Her Majesty. Eejit. She was very nice afterwards though when I treated her to a Lesson in how to actually speak Japanese. She's coming on very nicely now thank you and only looked mildly terrified.

In all seriousness though this was MY Mr Miyage moment. To paraphrase the great man, "Either you Japanese do "yes" or Japanese do "no." You Japanese do "guess so," (get squished) just like grape." While Dwayne from Redneck USA was ranting on I had prepped up how to ask her in which part of the grounds the Emperor actually lived. Adjectival phrases and all that grammatical stuff. I was all pleased with myself. Once the American doughnut had gone away I appoached the nice lady and delivered my carefully polished phrase on its velvet cusion...and got a firehose of incredibly helpful and polite Japanese turned on me full blast! Everything from where it is on the map to special periods when you can visit and how to get tickets and special occasions when he comes out to see the crowds. I got about one word in 3. It was a bit like sitting the wrong level of the JLPT listening exam! I got the gist of it but the detail did get rather lost. So the lesson I learnt here in very short order:

• Don't speak Japanese - fine. Everyone will try their best to help in English/pointing/diagrams if they can, especially if you can chuck in at least the basics of  ください、ありがとう、and すみません。
• Speak Japanese fluently - fine. Everyone will be amazed and you can cope with anything.
• Speak Japanese "guess so" and occasionally you are in danger of people thinking "great, a foreigner who actually speaks Japanese" and you might get blasted off your pedastal by a verbal watercannon! 

Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't try eh! To be fair it only happened a couple of times on the trip and, despite the JLPT not being the "be all and end all" it does at least prepare you a little bit to cling on to the runaway language horse. And to mix metaphors too apparently. 

Anyhow, wombled through the grounds for hours including a visit to the Sannomaru-Shozo-kan (Museum of the Imperial Collections) which was showing a truly impressive collection of wall hangings. 

Ages later we emerged almost where we had originally started. And should have entered if we had had any sense!

A tad sunburnt and a bit sore of feet we decided to jump back on the tube to Shinjuku to complete our cultural tour with a visit to Shinjukugyoen (National Gardens). Yep, the ones we'd binned (as it turned out stupidly) yesterday. 

If you get a chance to go, go. Yes it will be packed with tourists and fifty bajillion local people having picnics but the greenhouse is brilliant and the park itself has everything you need for a day out. Walked until my feet hurt. Oh wait. That was several days ago. Anyway, still took in the whole place including the Japanese garden section which I'm still trying to find a way to fit in the suitcases. Bit of a hidden gem this one. Next time we visit we'll do it really properly and bring a rug and some bento. 

A very long time later we mooched back to hotel in order to do a bit of packing and, for me, more Japanese based fun and frolics booking the Takkyubin service to get our suitcases to our next but one (and unfortunately last) hotel in Ginza.

Again, bit of phrase preparation and then down to the front desk to get it organised. Oh how Nishida San tried not to die quietly as the Orange Gaijin with the terrible accent and obvious distain for her beautiful language hoved into view and decimated a thousand years of cultural development with but a few mispronounced and syntax bending phrases. God love her she kept smiling. Must be a course they take because I'd have thrown myself off something high about halfway in. She was, as usual with all the front desk staff (especially the APA Hotel staff) incredibly helpful and after a remarkably short time (which I'm sure seemed like an eternity for poor Nishida San) we got it all organised. Two cases to be delivered to the Hotel Sunroute, Ginza the day after tomorrow. Cost - depends on the size of the cases. (Turned out to be about £20-25 all in which is more than fair!)

An hour of furious packing cases followed, mostly due to the dizzy ginger sod here packing the wrong things in the wrong cases then sealing them up. Muppet.

And so concludes the first half of the game. All good fun.

Next…part two.

After I've had a shower......

Part 2

(Be advised this may contain swearing. Really genuinely quite a lot of swearing. You have been warned.)

Begin Rant.....

Did you read the disclaimer!? Ok just checking

Quick question for those of you playing along at home.

Is your life complete? Does IKEA pose no further issue? Have you solved all of life's mysteries to the point to where you are forced to exist day to day merely waiting on the sweet caress of death to bring to an end what has become a monotonous tumbrel of repetitive previously conquered challenges?

Good.

Then you are ready for the ninth circle of hell that is…..

Shinjuku station!!!!

(Queue ominous taiko rolls and thunder etc etc).

Seriously, what the actual F**k Tokyo? 

Who in their right mind designs a station like this? No one, that's who. This has got to have been put together by sadistic half stoned lunatics at three in the morning after a particularly heavily session on something illegal and injectable. All we wanted to do was check how to get to Hakone tomorrow morning. On the Romancecar preferably. Seems easy enough eh? It's obstensively a train station. How hard can it be?

Hard. Very hard. Man in a fedora hat tracking down the Lord’s lost coffee mug hard.

Start at the ticket office. Ask in your best (ok crap) Japanese. Wrong office. Different line. You need Odakyuu. Ok, thanks. Where's the ticket office for that line? You go down there, sacrifice a goat, turn three times withershins and wait for a full moon.

Er…..ok thanks.

Ten minutes and many swears later.

At the entrance to the Odakyuu line.

Sorry, where is the office that sells tickets for the Odakyuu line? Ah, you go five miles down there, balance a rat on your toe, traverse the fourth dimension and perform a haiku.

Ok, thanks. I think.

Much walking and swearing and muttering and swearing and cursing and swearing and swearing and swearing.

Erm, sorry. Really sorry. Where do I buy tickets for the Odakyuu line?

You go down the third fourth stairway on the West side of the counterclockwise facing contrapuntal strabismus. Then complete a crossword in Ancient Greek to find a clue which will reveal the location of a man who speaks only on a Wednesday and will draw you a map in ink visible under the light from a long dead sun revealing a puzzle in sanscrit which can be traded at the bazaar in Old Cairo for a small bronze figurine. Take this to the man at the souvenir shop in Kyoto station who will show you a secret sign known only to a sect of monks tutored by Ieyasu Tokugawa himself which, when shown to the girl at the linen counter in....

F**KOFFF**KOFFF**KOFFFFFFFFF!!!

What the actual hell is going on? We walked up and down the bloody station for ages, asking person after person until EVENTUALLY Tracey lost the plot and shouted at a man at a counter IN ENGLISH to tell her where the counter was. Confronted by a borderline psychotic English Woman who had quite clearly “had enough” by this point, we got to the counter to buy tickets.

From two teenagers.

Who didn’t speak English at all.

Now, I get it. You should absolutely learn some of the language of the country you’re visiting. I honestly love and adore Japan and I've spent over two years learning Japanese trying to not be a typical Anglocentric gaijin.

But seriously. If Tokyo wants to be ready for the world in 2020 it needs to try harder than this.

Shinjuku is utterly and unspeakably impossible. Even if you have some knowledge of Japanese language it's difficult as all hell. If you don't you are royally and thoroughly screwed. There doesn't seem to be a central information desk and the JR specific one that does exist shuts at 7pm. We were there WAY after that. 

We did get tickets though. Eventually. And primarily in Japanese without any of which I think we would have had to give up and take a (very expensive) taxi. But it doesn't need to be this difficult. On other stations, specifically Tokyo, there were people around who asked us if we were ok when all I did was check my phone but getting help on Shinjuku was almost impossible. They know it's difficult. Even their official website starts "Welcome to Shinjuku Station – if this is your first time, buckle up!" 

Shinjuku needs to sort itself out before the world descends in less than three years time for the Olympics. Perhaps it's better during the day but in the evening it was Olympic Level impossible.  

....Rant Over.

Anyway, despite any of this, love you Japan xxx

Oh, and then back to the hotel via Family Mart for a couple of cheap sakes and Jonathan's again for a meal. And again can't recommend it enough. Spot the Melon Soda. 

Actually also via an izakaya for a drink as we hadn't been in a proper one. A bit "local bar for local people" but they were quite welcoming. We might might have tried the food too as it looked like nice "meat of a stick" ...until a bug crawled across the the raw meat and was picked off and the meat served. Rapid change of mind. Didn't take any photos as it REALLY wasn't that sort of establishment. Well, maybe it was if we'd stayed longer.

Oh by the way. To the moody guy in the hat and shades who was feeding yakiniku to his two girlfriends. You are not particularly cool and you are definitely not a yakuza. Your name is probably the Japanese version of Dave and I would stake large sums of money on you working in retail Monday to Friday.

And so to bed….