Tokyo, noodles and a giant golden thing

12 noon Wed Oct 24: Thanks for emails guys, great to hear your news. It`s a nice autumn day in Tokyo, about 22C in the sunshine and a lovely fresh breeze. Arrived on Sunday night and staying in a very homey but extremely small hostel with even smaller rooms and door frames (Mandar the giraffe would have bruises on the upper third of his body), near a kind of bizarre golden giant sperm perched on top of a flashy black building which is actually Asahi beer`s HQ.
Currently trying to burn pics to CD using Japanese-only instructions...a task which would test the mental dexterity of Mandar, Einstein, Stephen Hawking and numerous other clever people combined. It says squiggle...squiggle...squiggle if anyone knows what that means?
Had two days of neon lights, enormous skyscrapers, nice autumn colours and super-cool fashion stores which had Nati doing somersaults, and enough noodles to last a lifetime.
Been in brilliant but very busy cities for a fortnight - Cairo, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo - so now leaving mankind behind and heading for some space near the colossal Mount Fuji. My uni friend Andy and I actually climbed it when we were travelling here three years ago...but it's far too dangerous to climb outside summer unless you're Sir Edmund Hillary. So Nati and I are gonna admire from nearby in the superbly-named Kawaguchi-ko, before heading on to temple-and-monkey heaven Kyoto and a interesting-sounding large island nearby with ocean whirlpools, kayaking (don't worry Mum, not too nearby), vine ravine bridges, monster waves on a big headland and a white-sand beach with palm trees.
Might get the bullet shinkansen train once as very pricey (some things in Japan are double the England cost, others less) and then hop on buses.
One fantastic piece of news is that Japan is crazy about techno. Some of you might know that's right up my street...and even sweet Nati likes a bit of bass now! So back in Tokyo on Nov 3 to hit Layo-and-Bushwacka favourite Womb or another big techno club with a nice Japanese girl we met and some of her mates, before Bali and Indonesia.
Hope you enjoyed this blog...trying to give a flavour of our trip. Thanks for reading - drop us an email to say hi if you'd like to.
Sayonara!
Ali