We returned from Japan last night. Even though our vacation there has been wonderfull, it was quite nice to come back home to our own bed.
We arrived in Tokyo on April 4 and headed straight for our hotel, The B Akasaka. 
We met up with Kazue, a friend of Henrik's at the hotel. Kazue has lived in Norway for a few years, and trained Kung-fu with Henrik. She whisked im off to the K1 tournament in Yokohama, so Bernt and I had the night for ourselves. The hotel is quite cool, but the rooms were very small. If there'd been somewhere to unpack our luggage it would have felt less small, but it worked out OK. Our biggest problem was the heat. On the first day, we turned on the air condition to 20 C, and went out to eat. When we came back a few hours later, it was 30 C in this little room! Turned out the heating was still on, but not the cooling system. Fortunately we could open the window, but sleeping in a room with 27C wasn't too fun.
Tokyo is off course a more modern city than Kyoto. We spent most of our days shopping and just watching people and buildings. As the weather is a bit warmer in Japan than Norway, the girls were wearing spring clothes. Seems that trench coats, shorts and knee-highs are very hot. At first it was quite surprising and fresh, but after a week it seemed that japanese girls are just going for variations over a few styles. Still, I did get some inspiration for a summer wardrobe.
During our stay in Tokyo, we spent most time in Shibuya and Roppongi. The Center Gai crossing outside Shibuya Station was very busy. It's busy with cars and busy with people, mostly just one of these two. But one day we saw a rather adventurous guy who decided that jay-walking isn't all that dangerous. So when all the other pedestrians stopped walking, he just walked out into the street. By the time he'd got 15 meters from the pavement, the lights turned green for the cars. There are about 4 lines each way, and he was caught between all the cars. He survived, but I guess he might think twice before walking on red again. The Center Gai crossing also gave us a heavy feeling of Blade Runner.
We also checked out classy Ginza and electric Akihabara. 
In Ginza we found a department store with big signs saying "Scandinavian Fair" on the outside. Off course we had to check it out. At the top floor there were stalls with designs from the different Nordic countries. There were mostly design items from Denmark and Sweden, but we did find some from Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. But where were the Norwegian stuff? In the end we found some Ekornes Stressless chairs in a corner. Bernt says they are very popular, but they are also insanely ugly. I was very depressed for Norwegian design after having found thos chairs.
At Akihabara there were lots of electronics and gadgets. I'd read about Maid Cafés before I left home, and wanted to go to one. Turnes out there were quite a lot of them in Akihabara. We went to one from the @Home World branch. It was rather weird, but quite innocent. There are probably Maid Cafes that are more fetishy. Bernt and Henrik felt quite uncomfortable, while Kazue and I were not so put off by it. The ice cream was good, and it was an experience. We couldn't take photos inside the café, so I took a photo of 
their audition poster. Later we found a trio of cos players out on the street. One of these wears the uniform that the @Home maids wore. Not quite sure if the others in the photo are wearing uniforms, which is a bit disturbing. Having a man wear a pink maid uniform, blonde wig and ears is plain weird, having a Japanese guy wearing a Nazi uniform, denim skirt and purple hair is weird weird. And very Japanese.
On the last day, Bernt and I went over to Odaiba, which is an artificial island in Tokyo bay. It's a recreational area, with quite a few museums, a few shopping malls, a hotel and a beach. So we spent almost an hour just walking along the beach. It was tranquil and strange. There's also a scaled down version of the Statue of Liberty. We went to two museums there, the Maritime Museum and the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. The Maritime Museum was good. 
The best part was the models and pictures of old ships, like the ones Clavell writes about. Unfortunately there were very few signs in English, but we got a pair of audio devices with tapes with descriptions of the items. The most amazing thing was how they'd built it. Some of the pieces in the exhibition were too large to fit through the doors of the museum building, so they'd put them in the right spots first and built the museum around them afterwards.
The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) was brilliant. We only had an hour in there, which wasn't enough at all. We started with the exhibitions called "Innovation and the Future" and "The Earth Environment and Frontiers" and tried making nano figures. Then there was a session with Asimo, Honda's Humanoid Robot. It was great fun watching the little robot run and dance. After Asimo, we went to see the "Life Science" and "The Earth Environment and Frontiers" exchibitions. There was a model of a space ship capsule there, which you could enter. All in all it was a great museum, and I wish we'd had more time there.
But we needed to hurry back to the main land, as we'd agreed to meet up with Henrik and Kazue at Harajuku. And Harajuku was a feast for the eyes. Most of the people there looked like all the other teenagers we'd seen so far, but there were some who showed what Harajuku was all about. Gothic Lolita seemed to be the biggest trend, but there were all sorts of ecentric styles to be seen.