The rest of Tokyo.

New Years celebrations at the temple.

The infamous omelette rice on plastic display. Check the one out that looks like vomit... There's even a kids version.

As close as we could get to the Imperial Palace.

Seriously?

So now gone from Tokyo, a quick recap. New Years was interesting. In our ever exciting schedule we were asleep by 10 and woken up at 11:50 by our expectant hosts awaiting our departure for the temple. Though actual New Years likely happened on the way there, we neglected a countdown and went straight for the sake. Before this though was another mammoth Tokyo lineup to ring a bell and pray to Buddha, though it was cool to be the only tourists there. 

The next day we had a meal Junko had sweated over for several days, and was a good insight into traditional Japanese cooking. As was custom, this meal lasted for three days and consisted of numerous plates of raw meat, from fish to horse. The other dishes might be best left mysterious, but it soon became clear the Japanese love their jellies. Overall it was a great experience and Junko and Ishiyama are amazing and warm hosts. We felt totally welcome and made ourselves at home. 

As they were making themselves busy with inlaws we decided to meet up with Brendan, mom's colleagues son and walk around electric town and the edo museum, then made our way to Tokyo's answer to Kensington for a beer and a feast. Beer was easy to come by, especially good beer. The feast proved slightly more difficult. We went into the most avant-garde restaurant we could find, which also happened to be the only one ope due to New Year celebrations. With a pint and a box of sake downed we turned to the completely indecipherable menu. This is one of the reasons we travel so well together. We love to eat, and are fairly indiscriminate about what we're eating. After finally giving up and using sign language to place 2 orders of crab we sat back and waited. While our mouths were watering we started to look around and notice that, my all the dishes were small around us, this may just be a tapas bar. Sure enough, two solitary crab legs and a lemon slice round the corner in return for our 1000 Yen. Needless to say, we made a hasty exit, found a supermarket and gorged on take away bar food and some more brew's.  You probably had to be there, but it was one of those look back and laugh at it moments.

Next... to Takayama.