It was another early morning today, so I was aching and grumpy while we waited for the airport shuttle bus. But I woke up at the airport when we had breakfast. The nice Cathay Pacific lady gave us a spare seat for the six-hour flight, which was nice. After breakfast we walked around the ridiculously expensive airport shops and looked at the beautifully-packaged food. There was even candy birds' nests, where the ingredients were cave swallow nests and granulated sugar.

To kill time we walked to the gate rather than take the monorail, and I ran the wrong way down the moving walkways for fun, and no-one shouted at me. We boarded slightly early (and as I walked past the stairs, Mikey told me that one day we'll travel on the upstairs) and took off on time. The little map display thing showed that our flight today would take an hour. To Taipei. No-one told us we'd be stopping, but it wasn't a problem. I slept when everyone else got off, as it was a bit more peaceful then.

Japan's an hour ahead of Hong Kong, nine hours ahead of England at the moment. We landed just after 5pm, local time, and spent a long time in immigration. The guide book had warned us that Japanese officials, police included, are nasty people, not above using torture to extract confessions, and that immigration procedures can be very unpleasant situations. We were both quite nervous, but found the process to be quicker and much more efficient than we'd feared. Although the queue looked huge, it only took forty minutes to get through. Our bags were already on the floor, and after we'd made sure we had nothing to declare, we went through customs. The man looked at us, asked us if we were on holiday and then wished us a good trip. Nothing to worry about at all.

Then came the fun bit - the train to the hotel. We found a bank and got some money. It came in the equivalent of fifty pound notes, and no-one would give us change for the phone. We wanted to call the hotel to confirm the reservation, and I bought some chocolate to break the note instead. I think the lady was used to that. We stood, staring at the phones for a minute, when a girl with public school English explained the system to us. Nice, but not helpful when we were still waiting for a coin phone to be free. The hotel lady's English hadn't improved, and we were told that the place was full. We took that as a good sign, that they'd got our booking and that was why there were no more rooms, and then bought a train ticket. We had to wait for about twenty minutes, and I got to take the trolley down an escalator, and then the train arrived.

Just a normal, shiny train, coming into the station. Then, once it was empty, and all the doors were closed, the seats all span round so that they were facing the other way. Very cool. I was impressed anyway. Lots of legroom, helpful signs in English as well as Japanese, and very fast. We saw bits of Japan in the rain as we passed. There's something seedy about neon in the rain, the way it reflects off roads and pavements. Like old movies, olden days detective novels, anything set in '30s America with big black cars, and wet raincoats, it makes my skin feel sticky. I don't like it, but it felt cosy on the train.

We arrived at Nippori station at about 8pm. The first thing I saw, in the station, was a vending machine selling a drink called 'Sweat' which made me laugh. The second thing was the rain outside, absolutely pouring down. As usual, the Lonely Planet directions were incredibly vague, but after much searching, walking up and down hills and along dark alleyways, we found a sign to the ryokan. We went along the lane looking for a lit door and when we couldn't find one we opened unlit ones and called. I then checked the other side of the building and found a small sign declaring the entrance to be this way.,/p>

We were greeted in the hall by two Japanese women who flapped towels at us in an attempt to stop us dripping on the floor. It didn't help much, we were soaked through. But we took off our shoes and followed one of the women to our room. The hotel was all bamboo frames and pebbled floors (with slabs of polished tree trunk embedded in the cobbles) and our room was lovely. Very plain, tatami mats on the floor, a couple of futons and another little room with cushions, for drinking tea. We have a bathroom too, with a cubic bath, and a separate loo that has the Japanese interpretation of the Asian squat loo - this one has a ledge and a cylindrical splash-preventer. I might take a photo...

We put our bags away in a cubby hole, Mikey paid the lady and she said something about a hurricane coming, and I put on one of the kimonos that had been laid out. When I realised that the futons had feather duvets (which is what heaven is made of) it didn't take long before I was wrapped up in bed with a book, but I was asleep before I even found my place. The pillow smelled of sugared almonds.