Day 2: Manga

Breakfast, Japanese Hotel Style

Early breakfast at hotel - first taste of Japanese style breakfast (there were more Western options available, but we mostly went for the Japanese dishes). Loved the burdock salad, and quite a novelty to have rice, beef stewed in garlic, sashimi, seaweed and the like first thing in the morning. We liked the Japanese plates, which made trying a taste of many different dishes easy.

After breakfast, we met our friendly guide for today and ventured out onto the Tokyo subway and JR train to attend a manga class at the Omiya branch of the Yoyogi Animation School. Ironically our guide didn't know this part of the city, but a brief stop at the very helpful police office near the JR station was enough to set us straight. The streets literally have no name in Tokyo (most of them, anyway) so addresses seem to be mainly by postcode.

 A charming and very talented teacher bore our faltering attempts to master this art with great patience; we learnt how to hold and use a nib and various other tools of the trade. A fair summary would be: adults hopeless, children much better, but we all took away our creations along with a set of pens and nibs generously provided by our hosts, and a newly increased respect for the masters of this very Japanese art. I think this was as much a novelty for our guide as for us, but he was an able and helpful translator.

After this it was time for lunch with our guide in an excellent noodle cafe. We learnt that you can add soy sauce to fried rice, but never to steamed rice.

After lunch it was on to the tech/anime district of Akihabara, to goggle wide-eyed at all the electronic stuff (games etc.) on one floor of a huge department store. Then up to the bookshop floor to peruse the English language section. (Mostly English textbooks here, but a few guidebooks and novels in translation.)

One thing we noticed almost immediately was that Tokyo subway signs are a little different from their London Underground counterparts.

For example, it probably wouldn't occur to us, when designing a poster warning against rushing through subway train doors when the train is about to leave, to illustrate this using lions, rabbits and cakes:

Mission Control

Back to the hotel, where we said farewell to our guide, and reacquainted ourselves with the mysteries of Japanese toilet technology (later in the holiday we'd meet similar beasts with translated instructions, which removed some of the mystery).

For the meal this evening we ventured out to an excellent Okonomiyaki (pancake) restaurant called Sometaro not too far from the hotel. Traditional Japanese tatami matting (leave your shoes at the door) with a charming interior. You order the pancake of your choice, they bring the batter and ingredients, and you cook it yourself on the heated griddle at your table; for some dishes technical help is provided (e.g. the pizza pancake) but it's not too difficult to master.

Back to the hotel, tired but happy after a first full day in Japan.