Update

What have you been up to since Yokohama?, I hear you ask.
Good question. And the answer is simple. Not a lot. And there are several weak excuses for this including rain, lethergy, and a bout of the runs.

Notable events of the last ten days or so include:

My housemate Irina's birthday, where a few of us went to eat at an Izakaya, a traditional Japanese restaurant with tatami mats, where you are expected to take off your shoes before stepping on them. Normally you are also expected to sit on the floor at a very low table which would be very uncomfortable to an overweight, tall Englishman who can even cross his legs properly. Luckily, though, they had cheated. The table was a regular table that had been lowered into a hole in the ground giving you the option to hang off the edge of the hole as though you are sitting on a chair. We ate a range of different things, all of which was delicious and none of which I can remember the name of. I also forgot to take my camera so that give's me an excuse to go back for another helping.

Harajuku. I've been there twice now, and I'll be going back again. This is where all the sexy people hang out. This is where trends are born. Not being a very trendy person I probably stood out as much as all the other westerners with short curly hair and plain t-shirt and jeans, but even I managed to find some shops that I didn't mind browsing through. This place is definately for skinny people, but I did buy a weird t-shirt cum jacket thing which is slightly too small for me. As I've been slowly losing my flab since I came to Japan I'm going to see if I can get it to fit within the next month. Wish me luck, I don't fancy taking it back because I'm too fat for it.
I also went to the "Design Festa Gallery" which is basically an old block of appartments that have been turned into an art gallery and cafe. Some of the work was pretty good, but art isn't really my bag so I didn't stay long. I got a few photo's of this and of some other parts of Harajuku, but my batteries died so I didn't get very many.

Today I went to Ueno Park with some of my housemates. This weekend is infact Sanja Matsuri, a three day festival, and apparently Tokyo's largest. It's in Asakusa, literally ten minute walk from our house, and we would've missed it, too, were it not for Sami's keen ears detecting some distant drumming. We made our way to Asakusa and there was a large crowd of people and not much happenning, so we decided to go to Ueno Park and come back later to see if anything more was happening.

The park was quite cool. I'll go back there and make a day of it soon but I got a few pictures and we went on the boat lake in a giant duck just as it started to piss it down. On the way back home we came across some festival activity so all was not lost. Three teams of about 20-30 men carrying these three "mikoshi" shrines.

I took a some photo's of this which I'll put up tomorrow along with the Harajuku and Ueno Park ones. I can't be arsed to do it now and I've gotta find out if theres a way I can watch the FA Cup Final which kicks off in a couple of hours.