"Tokyo - The Eastern Capital" Tokyo by sjvessey

I arrived in Tokyo on 15th February 2001, and left on 13th July, two days shy of five calendar months since I flew in for the first time. During this whole period, I went back to the UK only once, during Golden Week, for six days. Four of which I spent packing my apartment up and moving to a new one. That was a whole lot of fun, I don't think!

Living in Japan can be... challenging... if you don't speak a word of Japanese and can't read any of the writing. Even the simplest everyday tasks you completely take for granted can become next to impossible. I went into a pharmacy to buy deodourant and came away with hairspray by accident. I bought what I thought was a jelly donut and it turned out to be filled with sweet bean paste. If you lose your way, forget asking anyone for directions. Most of the streets don't have names, and the buildings don't have numbers. If a restaurant doesn't have a version of their menu in English, then you'd better hope they have a display of plastic food outside that you can point at.

A showcase of plastic food is more common than you might imagine, actually. In the West, it's the sort of thing you might expect in a cheap greasy spoon. But over here, it's not uncommon even in the more upmarket establishments, and it's a lifesaver. Rather ironically, plastic food displays were invented after the war to show Japanese people what Western food looked like, as this kind of fare gained in popularity.

When I first arrived I was living in the JAL City hotel at Yotsuya-sanchome, a decent enough area conveniently located only a few metro stops from Shinjuku, and about thirty minutes from the nightlife of Roppongi. The hotel room was small, but I've stayed in smaller in the UK. But compared to a typical Japanese apartment that someone my age might occupy in the same kind of area, it was like a palace! Can you imagine living in an apartment no more than 15 square metres in area (including the kitchen space and bathroom)? No, me neither, and fortunately my company picked up my accomodation tab, so I didn't have to. After Golden Week I decided to go up in the world, and moved into a serviced apartment in Meguro. I swapped 30 minutes a day in additional commuting time for a place about three times larger than the hotel room, with a real kitchen complete with ice tray in the freezer. In Japan in the heat of summer, that's got to be the most important thing you can have. That and air conditioning. Indeed a palatial apartment, compared to the Japanese norm for a single 30 year old guy.

It may be a cliche but one of the first things you notice here is how the women dress. Zebra and leopard pattern skirts are pretty common, as are miniskirts and black fishnet stockings. Almost everyone seems to wear flimsy gold and silver stillettos, regardless of what else they're wearing. Dyed blonde hair and a tan completes the 'fake gaijin' look for those who are into that kind of thing. Other women are so afraid of going even slightly brown in the sun that they shelter under sun umbrellas even on cloudy days.

Did I mention umbrellas? Umbrellas are everywhere. They are almost the only thing in Japan which is cheaper here than back home. The Japanese seem to have the uncanny knack of knowing whether or not it is going to rain later in the day, and many's the time I wished I'd looked out my window before leaving for work in the morning, to check out whether or not umbrellas were in evidence in anticipation of rain in the early evening. Actually there are two kinds of rainy day in Japan. The 'folding umbrella day' and the 'full size umbrella day'. I never did quite figure that one out.

I was sorry to leave Japan, because I had a great time here and met some pretty decent people, both Japanese and Western. Maybe I will be back sometime soon, who knows? I'd certainly like to come back, not least because there's so many things I didn't have time to see this time round, despite being here for so long. This place certainly grows on you. It's pig-ugly, architecturally, and seems totally chaotic, but after a while it all begins to make a strange kind of sense and you realise that everything really does follow rules, and it's just a case of figuring out what they are. I now realise that the Tokyo Subway staff change, en masse, into their summer uniform on 1st July, and not a single day before, regardless of how hot it may be. And that although life here is fast paced, automatic doors always open so slowly you run into them if you walk too fast. Many Westerners I met only intended coming here for six months, and a lot of them ended up staying five years or more. I don't intend coming back for that long, but who knows, who knows...

NOTE: All the photos on this page have been taken by myself using a Canon Digital Ixus. For getting around and about, and finding places to see, my Tokyo Insight Guide (www.insightguides.com) has been well worth the money. The amount of text accompanying each picture varies considerably in terms of detail - mainly reflecting how much spare time I had when I uploaded the photos. I'll fill out the sparser entries whenever I get the chance. In the meantime, just enjoy the photos.

• Pros:One of the most interesting places in the world
• Cons:Expensive as hell
• In a nutshell:If you don't go you'll never know what you missed