Onsen

We went to a beautiful onsen in Tochigi prefecture north of Tokyo called Kita Onsen. It had an amazing rotenburo (outside onsen) with a slide and inflatable rubber rings. Lots of fun!

Find your way round Tokyo

It's really easy to get lost in Tokyo which is why I always look up where I'm going on a diddlefinger map before I leave the house. It's great because you can input the address in English and get a map with landmarks in English. To save ink I usually take a shot of the screen on my camera but diddlefinger have just launched their mobile app so you can look up Japanese addresses in English on your phone. The only drawback is that it links to a Japanese map so all station names and landmarks will be in kanji.
Another great tool for finding routes around Tokyo is this website which plots your train route and tells you how long it will take, when the train arrives and how much it will cost.

A white pre-Christmas ski trip

I went to Furano in Hokkaido last weekend for some pre-Christmas snowboarding. Because the season hadn't quite kicked in it was a really cheap deal: just over 30,000 yen with number one travel. That included flights and transfers from Haneda to Furano, hotel and ski lift. On top of that you can rent ski wear for only 1,000 yen a day. The only downside was that on the first day it rained. After that though, loads of lovely snow. And unlimited access to the hotel's onsen. We stayed at Furano Prince Hotel which opens straight out on the slopes.
Going to try to get out again before the end of the season. I want to make it down a slope just one without tanking it. Click on this link for more pics.

Meiji era (1868-1912) sushi bar

This restaurant is just down the road from my house in Ningyocho. It's the first evidence I've yet found that this part of Tokyo escaped the bombing to some extent during the war. The design is a wonderful mix of old Japanese and art nouveau with beautiful dragon's scale metal tiling that has rusted green. Tucked between nondescript modern brick buildings on the busy high street by Ningyocho station, it's very easy to miss. I'd rushed past it numerous times and only really noticed this wonderful design when I was taking a more leisurely stroll about. You have to stand to get a meal but, being so near Tsukji, the fish is very fresh and prices are incredibly cheap (me and my friend stuffed our faces and only paid 1,200 yen for the both of us). You also get free tea and miso soup.

Eat as much as you like sweetie bar (adults only)

Any self-respecting child should draw a moustache on their lips with their mum's eye pencil, get on some stilts and make it down to this bar cum sweetie wonderland. My knowledge of kanji is pretty sketchy but I think the gist of the sign above is: 'Please help yourself, you can spend awhile visiting your childhood but you can't return' (please send me your answers if you know the exact translation). Okay, the catch is that to drink here you have to pay a cover charge of 500yen but back in the days when I was at school with a hardcore penny chew habit, I could have easily eaten my way through double that amount. Unfortunately, the sign rang true, after sampling only half of the wondrously coloured delights above I began to feel rather queasy and had to make a swift exit, frothing at the mouth with a toxic mix of beer, e-numbers and sherbet.

The world's most tempting door?

This bar seems to be located in another dimension (I found it after wandering aimlessly around Kabukicho). A sweet old lady in kimono told me the area, which probably holds the record for the densest population of world's smallest bars, is called Gozenga. This teeny tiny bar is featured in the Catsoup comics - which were condensed into the world's wierdest and probably most disturbing film (see http://www.centralparkmedia.com/catsoup/). I'm sorry to say that, put off by the 1,000yen cover charge, I didn't go in and have probably now missed my only opportunity to walk through into this particular space/time ripple. If you somehow manage to find your way there beware, there is a very small sign outside that reads: “Welcome, attention to foreigners, if you can understand Japanese, you can enter this yellow door”.