Viktoria's Blog: Konnichiwa!! Back from Japan Part 1

On the 29th of May Rene and I left Sydney for our first visit to Japan. We flew in to Narita Airport for our first destination of Tokyo. We arrived in the evenign and just made the last Airport Limousine bus for our hotel with one minute to spare.
We stayed at the Park Hotel in Shimbashi which was very handy to Ginza and many of the train lines. Our first full day in Tokyo we went to Ginza, Nakano and Shinjuku. we were on a watch shop hunt. Once again Rene was armed with addresses of many watch boutiques while I was ready for the big jewellery boutiques.

Tokyo was fantastic with so much to see, do, eat and drink. The biggest surprise was that food wasn't as expensive as we were expecting. Breakfast was usually around A$12-A$14 for both of us, Lunch was from A$15-A$20 and dinner around A$40. You could spend more if you wanted to but generally prices were much the same as here. The big shock was the alcohol prices in bottle shops generally around 1/2 the price of alcohol here eg a bottle of Cointreau cost around A$19 and Dom Perignon Champagne was around A$125... We know what to buy next time

In one of the back streets of Ginza we found the best little coffee shop where on a very cold day we warmed up with a cointreau coffee and cake, not cheap but certainly warmed us up. This was followed by a trawl through Bulgari, Cartier Tiffany and more of the Ginza area.

On our 3rd day we woke up to find the temperature was -2 celsius but the day was clear and we looked out our hotel room window to see Fuji-San in full view.

Then we went down to catch our tour to Fuji and Hakone

After Fuji went to Hakone which is a hot spring area. There are hotels and Ryokans dotted around and a gorgeous crater lake(Lake shinoko) that we went for a short river cruise on before heading up Mt Komatagake and a cable car trip to the top. From the top we had fantastic views of the coast, the lake and Mt Fuji.