Tired and emotional

Pichinko hall

They don't call it the Land of the Rising Sun for nothing, but that was before the age of jetplanes. (Then again they said the sun never set on the British Empire). No sooner had we left Schiphol at 9 p.m. than we were heading towards the Arctic Circle and chasing the sun. It hardly got dark.
Our exit from Narita (Tokyo's main airport) 12 hours later went smoothly enough and within the space of 30 minutes (after tackling immigration and customs), we weer being whisked by the Keisei "Limited Express" into Tokyo, an hour and half away.
Temperatures were pretty much the same as when we left Holland the night before, though the sky was heavily laden with stormclouds as we pulled into Ueno on the northern side of the city centre.
Two hours' downtime (including obligatory shower in the smallest hotel bathroom I have ever seen) was followed by a brief sortie into the Ueno district of Tokyo. Talk about overwhelming: most of Tokyo was on its way home and the majority of those left behind seemed hell bent on their end-of-the-week frivolities. The bars and the restaurants were all in fuill swing, and when we returned to watch the football (some minor game between Holland and Brazil), we saw dozens of salarymen swearing undying friendships to their colleagues as they supported each other on the merry way home.