Wednesday. Still in Tokyo. Day 5 of our Big Adventure.

On Monday night we went for a meal with Sarah, Wayne and four of their friends, and ended up hiring a room for Karaoke,and getting home at 3am. As anyone from The Economist who was at my leaving do will know, me and Karaoke is not a pleasant mixture, and this was a fairly small room where the eight of us sat round a table and "sang" our little hearts out. A weird experience I can tell you. Anne and I performed a stunning rendition of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" by The Beatles that will be forever etched on the brains of those who were there. Good fun though, weirdly.

Tuesday, and Anne and I went a-wanderin' in Tokyo town. We walked to a large park with good gardens. We paid 200 yen each for entrance and got one and a half hours entertainment out of it. Not bad. (200 yen is just over a pound.) We were very very hung over (the previous night's Karaoke necessitated wine, beer and sake). I was in a bit of a state, what with that and jet-lag. I did, however, discover the answer to a question that had been bothering me for some years: Why is Gary Linnekar (sp?) so obsessed with Walkers crisps? I mean, he doesn't just like them - he's mental about them. I've seen film evidence of him trying to con small kiddies out of packs of Walkers. The lengths that man will go to! Anyway, in that hung-over way I wondered if perhaps food would help. I couldn't face noodles or anything too adventurous, so we went into a convenience store in search of some crisps. Yes, I could have bought Pringles there, but opted for a Japanese variety. The pack looked fairly plain, so I was hoping for ready salted (my favourite). But no, they tasted like pineapple flavour. They were certainly sweet. I ate no more than three crisps. Yuck!

So I got to thinking, Gary Linnekar played for a Japanese football team for a while didn't he? Anne assures me he did. I reckon it's possible that he wasn't crisp-obsessed when he left the UK, but I hypothesise that by the time he returned he was foaming at the mouth in anticipation of some decent salty potato snack. I'm glad I figure these things out in the end.

My mood in the park was pretty dour. With the crisp disaster AND my hang-over I was all ready to give up on the Big Adventure after just 4 days and return to the safety of the UK. (I didn't know at this time that this "saftey" included tanks and army men at Heathrow!) I soon perked up though when I saw some big koi carp and about nine or ten cats. Easily pleased - me?

So after 200 yen well spent, we carried on into town, and daringly went to a cafe for noodles. There was no English writing anywhere, so we figured we'd get by on pointing, but the nice lady bought a menu with some English on for us. We were still worried that we may do the wrong thing and offend the Japanese in the worst way since Des Clarke got on the wrong side of Mr Oodigawa. It all went fine, fortunately, and we slurped our noodles merrily, along with the natives. (We didn't slurp the natives - I meant that they too slurped their noodles.)

We kept walking after lunch, and I reckon that by the end of the day we must have walked thirty miles. I'd forgotten to take my pedometer out so I could be wrong, but it felt like a lot.

Sarah and Wayne had also been suffering from the night before, so we settled for pizza and a film in the evening. Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. I'd seen the original Spanish film on which it was based. I'm obliged by pretension to say I preferred the original, but the US remake was pretty goood too, and Cameron Diaz makes a good mad woman. Four stars. Anne later pointed out that going travelling isn't just about watching films. I treated that outburst with the contempt it deserved.

Today (Wednesday) Sarah and Wayne left for Beijing. In China. That means we're alone until they return on Sunday (when we fly to Sydney). We do, however, have the use of their very nice flat, so you probably shouldn't feel too sorry for us. We went to a place called Nikko (about two hours away by train) to see lots of temples. I was set in a forest with beautiful mountinous surroundings. Really quite nice. I think that after a while you can see enough temples, but we're not yet templed-out. I did quite resent having to take my shoes off each time we went in one though - it was freezing up there and I think I may have frostbite. Not counting travel, it cost 1000 yen each to see the temples. That's about a fiver. We spent about an hour and a half at the temples, which isn't as good value as the park (and there were no animals), but it was still OK. We'd had an adventurous lunch before we went in, where we sat cross-legged on the floor. We're practically Japanese ourselves now.

I think I'm slowly getting over my jet-lag, using a course of alcohol and sleeping tablets. You can imagine my annoyance when I tell you that Anne doesn't seem to suffer at all with this malady. When I'm awake at 4am, she's sleeping like a baby. When I'm falling asleep in the afternoon whilst crossing a busy road, Anne's bounding ahead with a spring in her step. Still, I try not to let it get to me. I am something of a martyr.