Japan and home sweet home

We left Cairns on Monday and flew 8 hours to Tokyo on Monday afternoon. We left Cairns in 30c and arrived to 9c in Tokyo pulling the hoodies out of the rucksack as quick as we could. Emma, Matt and I headed for the toilets in the airport and there were shrieks from the cubicles as we discovered the great toilet seat additions. From heated seats to built in bidet to driers blasting hot air and on one toilet even a toilet flushing sound to spare the embarrassment of noisy toileting sounds.

Tokyo is insane. The noise, lights and staff employed to stand on the streets outside shops with a microphone advertising all the stock. Well as it was all in Japanese I assume that's what they were doing. Maybe they were just taking the mickey out of the dopey looking tourists. As a pedestrian you have to behave like a vehicle and walk in the correct 'lane' in the underground stations. The sheer volume of people was so unexpected coming from NZ were there are so few.

We picked up a map from the hotel and stood outside trying to make head or tail of it. As all the writing was in Japanese characters we had turned the map round and round trying to work out which way was up until we finally found a letter version on the back. We had a great day walking through the streets and trying not to gape at all that made Tokyo so different to everything we'd seen on our travels. Things that stand out are the skin whitening salons and the smoking rooms where you look in and see a bunch of people sitting at a long table just, well, smoking.

We collapsed into bed that night after all our walking and I quickly logged on to make sure our flights were ok for the next day. Lucky I did because it turned out that our flight had been cancelled due to the BA strike. Trailfinders very helpfully sorted it all out and we got a Virgin flight that was only an hour later meaning less of a wait for our London-Dublin connection. We arrived home on Wednesday evening not really at all sure what time of day it was or whether we should be hungry or not. Matthew and Emma were really excited to be home and dying to see Scruff who gave us a lovely welcome. We've all been waking up in the middle of the night and so we're exhausted by 6pm but this morning matthew and emma went into school to say hi to everyone before the Easter holidays. They both got a hero's welcome which they were overcome by. So our trip is over and we're home and getting settled in. We're browner (Mick) rounder (Me) taller (Emma) and with a few new teeth (Matt). It's lovely to be back, especially after such a great trip which so exceeded our expectations. Thank you to everyone who read and also to everyone who commented.