Tokyo day eleven

It was a bank holiday in Japan today so we decided to join the crowds at the Asakusa Kannon temple which is Tokyo's oldest temple and was packed with people and atmosphere. To get to the temple you have to walk up a shopping street about 200 metres long with shops selling everything from ice cream to lucky cat statues to second hand kimonos. There is a thing making smoke that people were waving on themselves as it is supposed to heal or prevent illness and we chucked 5 yen coins into the shrine which is good luck. We then decided to go to Shinjuku to look at all the neon lights as it got dark and see what was going on. If you've ever seen footage of Japanese commuters being shoved onto packed trains by guards wearing white gloves - that's Shinjuku station and pictures of neon lit Tokyo are usually Shinjuku too. There's a giant Tower records in Shinjuku which had a live band playing and any CD you could think of to buy. We went and had a look around Takashimaya Times Square which is another huge department store complex, we stopped off for matcha green tea and coffee with whipped cream and to admire the view of Shinjuku from the top floor before going back to Tobu in Ikebukuro because Chris really, really wanted some spaghetti. On the way back we found a mini branch of the ranKing ranQueen department store in Shinjuku station - this is a shop where every product in the store is part of a top 3, 5 or 10 list according to popularity, from chocolate bars to hair perfume(!). We'll come back to ranKing ranQueen later as we're planning to visit the bigger store in Shibuya another day, but we mention it here because the number 1 cookie this week (rankings are updated every week) are F Cup Cookies as heard on Radio 1, which promise to increase your bust size if you eat them every day. Not sure if they work on boys!

One final thing - we've done alot of riding around on the Tokyo Metro today and the Japan Rail (JR) trains have little TV's in the carriages which show adverts. One of these is '1 Minute English' presented by Berlitz, but instead of teaching phrases that might be useful in the UK such as 'Burger and chips please' or 'I have food poisoning. Which way to the hospital?' they're all business based, like 'appointment' and 'the report will be on your desk first thing in the morning'. Things we have learned today:

* Apparently Nic looks quite Russian
* You have tea before or after a meal, not with it, silly sausage!
* The Japanese love their boy bands
* F Cup Cookies really do exist and weren't made up by some idiot DJ