Japan was never the primary reason for this trip – that was New Zealand – this part of our trip came from the fact that breaking our journey didn’t affect the price of our flights.
A few years ago Christine had been to a conference in Taiwan and had spent a couple of days in Hong Kong, she thought I would love to visit so we looked at making that our stop. We couldn’t do that so we chose Japan instead.
What was going to be a couple of days in Tokyo ended up being 12, allowing us to explore the country and see some wonderful things. And whilst we knew the romantic side of the country I was also keen to see the cutting edge technology which I’d always understood was a big part of Japan.
And yes, we saw heated toilet seats with built-in bidets; we were surrounded by chrips and bleeps; we ordered food from vending machines; we travelled on incredibly fast trains; and cashiers had tills that gave them the correct change. We also saw ASIMO do his stuff at the National Museum of Science and Emerging Technology.