Tooling around Tokyo

We get up early in order to visit the sumo stable and see the giants of the ring practising their skills. Today is Emperor Hirohito's birthday so despite our 1 hour trip we only see one sumo; all the others were on smoko!

We return to Shinkuju in order to book our train tix for the rest of this trip-this only took about 2 hours and now we have to buy anew suitcase  to accommodate the reams of paper tickets.

We find a rather unusual eating shop and have some quite scrumptious chicken and rice.

The eternal question

Next stop is the big Takeshiama department store or more pacifically the food basement; this is food porn at its best

Food as art

Following a brief snooze we visit the overwhelming BIC camera shop and then it is beer o'clock.

We have just enough energy to visit the Don Quijote weird Japanese shit shop

and then chow down for some state of the art tempura.

Traditional tempura queue

Queuing for food in Tokyo

Following a somewhat tedious though relaxing journey by silver bird we arrive in chaotic Narita airport.
We decide to travel by iron horse to our digs in Tokyo. Ticketing by JR is a somewhat Byzantine affair; just buying the ticket is not enough one then needs to purchase the supplementary ticket as well; anyway after negotiating the ticket vending machines we arrive at Shinjuku station, rated as the busiest station in the world with 3.5 million passengers passing through daily. It is very important to take the correct exit otherwise one may end up in Okinawa or Fukushima; this entails a good 10 minute underground walk through the station but somehow it all works out OK and we find our hotel. Fortunately we didn't bring our cat as we would not have had space to swing it around our room.
Shinkuju turns out to be a rather lively part of town

but we manage to find the Ichiran Ramen shop famous for its extremely flavoursome broth and the duration of queuing time.

Vending machine for ordering

Eating in private boothe

Ordering extra noodles

Yummy delish

On returning to our digs we happen upon a whisky bar who suggest we pay a cover  charge of $60 each for the privilege of drinking their overpriced drinks-we respectfully decline but we did get a free hot towelling out of the exercise.