First day in Tokyo

Tokyo is crazy! Cartoon and anime characters feature in most advertisements instead of regular actors, you can get anime characters on your credit cards and you can use your train card to buy groceries and drinks at touch screen vending machines. Everybody dresses so conservatively, yet there is soft porn advertisements everywhere for anybody to see. All the men wear white business shirts, or light blue if they’re feeling adventurous! Here's an example of one of their boy bands!

Below is a Miku Hatsune visa card. She is top of the J-pop charts, yet is an animated character vocaloide.

Such fresh, vibrant sushi here. I can only tell what's tuna and what's salmon, the rest is just trial and error. So far I really like tuna belly (toro) and an unidentified oily, slimy, white fish. The only thing I haven't liked so far is sea urchin...

I walked around the Tokyo food show which is effectively like the expensive delis in the basements of shopping malls like Marks and Spencer and found some pretty unique foods. Namely, this bright pink octopus tentacle that I just had to try! It was fun to eat, and not the worst thing I've eaten over here.

That night my family took me out to a sushi train restaurant. Every seat had an iPad to order off so you could either pull dishes off the conveyor belt or order them fresh. If you ordered off the conveyor belt, there was an actual train track above it with a mini electric bullet train that came out to your 'station' in front of you and delivered you your sushi. There was also a fairy floss machine which the kids went nuts with!

I had my first class today. They announced at the start of the class that they teach using an extremely daunting method of throwing you into the deep end by only speaking Japanese in class. As a result the teacher had to use a lot of gestures and pictures. I can see myself getting really good at charades, or really far behind in class.

All up, a very exciting first day in Tokyo. Looking forward to the next few days.