It's starting to sink in that I really am in a country where not only I can't speak the language, but I also can't read anything. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if menus weren't all written. As a result, we're currently relying a lot on what we call picture food - restaurants, that have plastic imitations of their food or pictures thereof outside. However, this doesn't always work. What I thought was rice turned out to be cold soup (hidden underneath all the random goodness) and what we thought was chicken turned out to be tofu. Oh well.

Other than that, it's all good. We're going to meet some folk from uni tonight who moved over here some 3 years ago I think, so they're going to take us... somewhere. This being them, it will be wild and crazy, but I don't really care. It'll be good to have some people around who actually know what's going on.

Yesterday we made it to the tourist information who solved a major riddle for us: how the hell does public transport work. We've now got these strange cards and they take us everywhere, but at the beginning it was just confusing as hell. Little pink tickets, big green tickets, JR, Metro and private lines... I mean honestly. The other thing that took some getting used to are the street lights, because they're just not where you'd expect them to be - they're about 3 metres further back, away from the street, clearly visible but just not where you'd expect them - and as a result, I don't.

Anyway, I've got to go, we're heading off to the Ghibli studios!