Kyoto

In Kyoto, I wandered through a bamboo forest; heard geishas dangling in downtown Kyoto as they walked past the lantern-adorned wooden houses; found watermelons in department stores that cost over £100, but were not square; ate purple potato ice-cream; visited Ginkaku-ji temple, only to find it was covered in scaffolding, but there was still moss the interrupter, zen gardens with raked sands, a wishing pond, and many schoolchildren.

Ghibli Museum

We headed back to Tokyo and jumped aboard a catbus at a bus-stop that had a picture of Totoro on it, and it took us to the Ghibli Museum. The first Ghibli film I ever saw was Laputa: The Flying Island, when it was broadcast on ITV, and it appealed to the 8 or 9 year old me. Although I am now a bit older, meeting a robot soldier from Laputa on top of the Ghibli Museum, and finding a Laputa cube was still great. Inside the museum, Totoro, the Catbus and friends leapt around manically inside a stroboscope, brightly flickering and running in circles, and I felt like I was hallucinating. Another room inside the museum was decorated as if it was Miyazaki's office, and was covered in a jumble of random books and weird artefacts. Other rooms displayed sketches and zoetropes, and a weird miniature Louvre. There was also a large Catbus, but only children were allowed to play on it. We watched a short film - The Whale Hunt, which was amusing, and also saw clips from the new Ghibli film- Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.

Tokyo

Inside Sunshine City, in a corner of Namjatown, exists Ice-cream City. Strange flavours of ice-cream are stacked up in freezer cabinets, and these are the weird flavours you read about. fluffymark tried the shark fin soup and Dracula garlic flavours, where as I stuck to cherry blossom flavour.

Later that evening, just before sunset, we headed up the Tokyo Tower, which looks a bit like the Eiffel Tower, but is slightly taller and more colourful. From there, we could see skyscrapers glistening in the sunshine, and then as the sun disappeared behind the smog, we drank glasses of wine and watched the buildings, bridges and ferris wheels light up as it got dark.

The day after that, I wandered around Shinjuku, and then Harajuku, looking for cosplayers, and ended up at the Meiji Jingu Shrine, where there were many dolls, as well as a tree that had been impressively overtaken with cobwebs.

Soon after that, I left Japan and travelled to New Zealand.

More photos on Flickr: Japan.

fluffymark has also written more detailed descriptions: Japan - Part 1, Japan - Part 2.