A letter from Tokyo Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

We arrived from Kyoto into Tokyo on the Tokaido line Shinkansen exactly on time, an unexpected event for one used to the vagrancies of the British rail system. Gemma visitied Osaka last week while I was attending the interoperability workshop, and apparently profuse apologies were given when the train arrived into Shin-Osaka station some 2 minutes late. Talk about culture shock...


Tokyo, from the 30th floor of the New Otani Hotel
The Tokyo subway system is perhaps the most complex and extensive system in the entire world, however it is claimed that it remains one of the most user friendly. However despite these claims, we were glad that the actual process of "getting around" is pretty much the same as it was in Kyoto and that we'd therefore had a relatively gentle introduction to the Japanese subway system. This made getting from Tokyo station to our hotel much simpler than we, or at least I'd, been expected...