Backpacking

winding route to Tak's house from the tube station and knew I could follow the river down to the station. Unfortunately, when I got to the river, I went the wrong way, and so I ended up asking a Japanese copper for directions. He was very helpful, it's not as if he had much else to do anyway - the Japanese are very law-abiding.

I met back up with the others at Shinjuku station - well, eventually - it is a sprawling monster of a station, with no discernable landmarks and several thousand people to get in your way. We were planning on heading to Matsumoto tonight, up in the mountains. Before that, Emma needed to buy a coat, as she had forgotten to bring hers. We were pushed for time, but she managed to come up trumps and with a new pair of shoes to boot, inside the space of 10 minutes. I have never seen such an impressive display of speed shopping!

We went to get reserved seat tickets to find the whole train booked out, so we would have to fight it out with the proles for unreserved seats. When we got to the platform we found a queue forming and a train 40 minutes late. Not good. There had been "an accident involving a person" (as Tak had directly translated their wording) on the chuo Line, according to Tak a line notorious for suicides (Tokyoites call it the Chuo Dive). The previous train had been cancelled, which accounted for the sellout.

Unfortunately we didn't all get seats immediately, so we spent two unpleasant hours standing or sitting on the floor of the bloody smoking carriage of all places until seats became free.

We emerged from the smoking carriage like contestants from 'Stars in Their Eyes', with a plume of smoke escaping from the door behind us. We traipsed to our accommodation to find it to be a cosy, old-fashioned Ryokan with a friendly middle-aged woman patron. We were pleased to hear there was no curfew, so all except Emma headed out to an Izakaya in town, for beer, hot sake and the Japanese equivalent of tapas - chicken skewers, grilled mushrooms and deep-fried quail eggs. On last orders, we headed back to the hostel to play cards for a while and to feast and drink more. Pure debauchery...

Day 20: 19th February Hello (Matsu)moto!

Matsumoto, Japan

Tak and August had a bit of trouble getting their engines started this morning, so Dan, Emma and I wandered into town for a bit. Matsumoto seemed a fair bit more lively than the other Japanese alp towns I had visited. We stopped off for a kickstart coffee and then went