Wow!

Visited 3 different areas today.
Shinjuku, the busy sorta main business area of the city where we walked around the huge buildings and made use of the free observation decks to view the city! Also dropped in at the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art which happens to house Van Gogh's Sunflower painting! Played with more toys at the Epson and Canon show rooms!

Headed to Harajuku for lunch in this really cool artist/graffiti space. Had all you can eat Okonomiaki. This part of town is the 'young' scene with heaps of clothes/music etc shops and loads of Japanese teenagers shopping for just about anything you can think of. Shoes, clothes, trinket things, bling etc. Pretty cool - might have to head back and explore a bit more. Only had limited time here.


Next stop: Akihaba Electric Town. Lights, cameras and action! Every electrical good under the sun is available here and the stores often span 6 or 7 levels of just electrical goods. It also has a very big Manga scene (Japanese cartoon/comics). Quintessential Tokyo!


The subway system here is so easy to use. The passes we bought you just swipe past the machine as you go in and it deducts the minimum fare. As you leave at your destination, swipe again and the system will automatically calculate if it needs to charge anymore than the minimum, and if so deducts that amount. Simple and easy. When the pass runs out of cash, just top it up again.
The subway map looks confusing, but its super easy to navigate. Find out where you want to go, the station you want to get off at and then decide which line(s) to take from where you are. Trains pretty much come every 10-15 mins and so far have always been very very punctual. You snooze you lose. No re-opening the doors for late arrivers. Trains are classed as late if they are 30 seconds behind.

Tokyo, and Japan in general are pretty expensive. I'm burning through the Yen pretty quickly. 130 - 250¥ for a subway ride. A beer costs about 600¥ which at the moment is roughly $10, a cheap meal around 1000¥. It's amazing how fast i'm managing to spend it. My stash of cash which I brought with me is getting pretty low!
My biggest purchases so far have been lift tickets. Haven't really shopped for 'souvenirs' yet! After the next lot of skiing!