3 January 2009

A grey and chilly day for our first visit to Korakuen garden. In the entrance and dotted around, there were bulbs peeping through with cute little shelters set up to keep the frost off.

Nick spotted a phallic rock arrangement labelled the Male Stone, and nearby I saw one that had to be the Female Stone as it was a rock slab with a deep gouge running through it. The garden has a large central lake and a couple of smaller satellite ponds. Some pines were wearing strange triangular supports.

Trees were predominantly plum and maple, and there was a wisteria trellis and a rice paddy. So, like Hamarikyu, there is something of interest all year round. It's overshadowed by the Tokyo Dome theme park with its constant rumble of the very frightening-looking rollercoaster and accompanying screams. Korakuen was a good place for Emily, as there were several opportunities to crawl, the best being a bank covered in dry leaves. She was having such fun it was hard to take her away.

In the evening I went toTracy's hen party. They married quietly in Japan when she was 8 months pregnant, but are having a full wedding ceremony back in Scotland. The party was very civilised, at a restaurant on the 52nd floor of the Sumitomo Building in Shinjuku. As I made my way there, the streets were so deserted I would not have been surprised to see tumbleweed rolling past. Must be the efect of the New Year holidays. Over dinner Sharon got Tracy to play the Mr & Mrs game, having elicited responses from James previously. She didn't do very well, and I wondered how many I'd get right.

Six of the ten of us moved on to the nearby Park Hyatt bar, which by chance also happens to be on the 52nd floor. It was made famous in the film 'Lost in Translation'. I was amazed we could get in without queuing on a Saturday night, and we were given prime position by the window, with fantastic view over the nightscape. The cover charge was 2,000 yen each (about £13) and champagne cocktails were another 2,000 each, but it was a wonderful experience, to see how the other half live. The city was a mass of white lights dotted with pairs of flashing red aircraft warning lights. I finally plucked up courage to try some of the many toilet functions available on Japanese loos: soft spray and bidet spray. Both fairly pleasant, but not to my taste. I shied away from trying the massage setting though!