It's 3:30am and yet again a member of the wide awake club so here's what we got up to today.

Walking.

A lot of walking.

Up early for breakfast at the Gusto restaurant whose menu I've been studying for what seems like months during lessons. Nommed a load of eggs and salmon washed down with biblical amount of orange juice. And melon soda. Which is suspiciously close in taste to Irn Bru despite being radioactive green rather than nuclear orange.

Nipped in to the nearest tube station and bought Passmo cards for later just in case. Just as well really….

Explored a lot of Asakusa especially near the river then walked from Asakusa to Ueno and poked around there.

Found Ameyoko market which is properly awesome. Ticked off a bucket list item and got a hanko stamp made that says 馬鹿なスコットランド人 (Scottish idiot). Cost a small fortune but very very happy pixie!

Walked to Ueno park which is just as amazing as it looked on a recent Springwatch special, despite the cherry blossom having long since buggered off. The park is enormous and we visited quite a few shrines and temples in the grounds, including the big one that's apparently built on the grounds of Tokogawa Ieyasu’s house. Shōgun connection - tick!

Left a message for my dad. He'd have loved this. 😔

Was feeling a tad emotional which is probably why my "rip-off detector" was on the blink when an old Japanese lady approached us and handed us wooden bracelets and what might as well have been golden tickets. Then asked us to sign a sheet and make a donation to some nonsense religious thing. Sod it. Normally I'm pretty good at avoiding these but there you go. Only cost us some change for my lack of attention, although some people had obviously given her significant amounts. We saw her approaching primarily tourists for ages afterwards.

Ah well...

Wombled down to the lake and spotted a couple of old boys feeding the birds (Ignoring Signs Saying Not To: Level Boss!) with handfuls of rice. They spotted us, and were pretty insistent we join in. Tracey isn't normally good with birds but this was a bit special. Cue ten minutes of having an endless stream of small birds flying up and eating from our hands. No clue who the old boys were but they made a couple of dopey tourists incredibly happy. 

More park based footwork (brief pause to soak in the delights of the first Japanese squat toilet. Every bit as lovely as we'd expected!) then back through Ueno to Ameyoko again for lunch in a small diner. My donburi was brill. Tracey's didn't like hers much though as she changed her mind right in the middle of me ordering and ended up with minced raw tuna. That'll be a lesson then! Anyway, long walk back to Asakusa…..which very inconsiderately turned out to have moved when we weren't looking and become Akihabara.

Swearing.

Just to be 100% clear on this, it was a genuine mistake on my part and not a thinly veiled attempt to trick Tracey into visiting Tokyo’s geek central because;

1. we planned to go at one point anyway and
2. my feet were caning by this point and I really did want to get back to the hotel for a break.

Anyway, got to ride the Tokyo tube a bit earlier than planned. Not as complicated as I'd had expected and the official app is brilliant. Even shows you the time to the next train.

Back to the hotel and quick shower pitstop before going on the hunt for the Don Quiote store I hadn't been able to find yesterday despite Yuka’s directions. Would have helped if I'd been looking in the right place obviously. Hanko stamp…accurate! What a place…can't be many shops that sell everything from Pokeballs and bin bags on the ground floor to (genuine) Louis Vuitton bags on the top floor. The merchandising guide seems to be “cram 10 things into every square foot of display space and if possible make it 20”. It's ridiculously over the top but it's an incredible experience of a store. Bought sake. Well, how did you think this was going to turn out?!

More walking around Asakusa's back streets and a deep fried shrimp on a stick later and we were done. Back in bed by 9:45pm. Rock and roll!

Tracey's Fitbit will testify to the fact that we did over 13 miles today so we'd like that taken into consideration re: the early night m’lud.

And so to bed... to repeat the jet lag induced reawakening and blog writing. Ah well, it's only 7pm in the UK time. Time to annoy Lou with nagging Messenger posts….