I set the alarm this morning so that we'd be awake in case there was breakfast. When the alarm went offi ignored it, though, because the duvet was too comfy, the futon too warm and soft and the bedding (what Aussies would call manchester) smelled of almonds and lavender. At about ten, the smell of frying became quite strong and we dressed and headed downstairs to see what was going on.

There was some kind of family gathering in the hall, which was only big enough for two, and a massive barbecue in the porch being used for frying noodles. We escaped into the rain. Japan's cold, much, much cooler than we've had since Adeleide, with virtually no humidity. And the rain was the good old-fashioned English autumn kind that alternates pouring with drizzle all day long and where the air smells cool and fresh and of earth. I never thought I'd miss the rain. That feeling didn't last long, though.

We walked to the station, under raincoats and umbrellas but still got wet. The ticket machines were singularly unhelpful and all the maps were in Japanese. We watched other people and realised we needed to know te fare fir our trip. As a last resort I attempted the phrase in the guidebook and was rewarded with a smile and a number on a calculator. Result! We bought the tickets, boarded the train and found ourselves, eventually, in Ginza, the main shopping district.

After a quick sandwich for brunch (I was too hungry to start experimenting), Mikey directed us to the Sony Center, where you can play with boy toys. As Mikey's still recovering from SARS (just a cold but he gets scared when I mention the s-word on crowded trains and buses in case they decide to kidnap him and put him in quarantine) I thought I'd humour him and follow him around, nodding in mock appreciation at whatever was on display. Apart from an uncharacteristically attractive BMW on the third floor, I didn't really see the point in all the 'available soon' products that needed four hours of fiddling with to get them to do anything (unless you're a man, when somehow remote controls and new technology talks to you and explains how it works telepathically), until I met blu-ray.

Yep, I'm a girl, and yep, I know that technology isn't for the likes of me, but I have never seen anything like the picture on that 46-inch (LED projection, if you're interested) screen. Stunning and breath-taking. I know that there are a lot of people (mostly in Bath) who'd be saying 'I told you so' about now, but I don't care. I'm converted. All I can say is that I'd like to see blu-ray on that lovely Samsung DNIe telly that we've had our eye on but Mikey says we can't buy. Funny thing is, I was the one pointing it out to Mikey, which goes to show how wrong life gets sometime.

And then there was AIBO, the robot dog who's soooo cute and likes to be stroked under his chin. He makes little happy noises and fetches his stick and rubs his head against your hand and even puts himself to bed (on his charger) when he's tired. I had to drag Mikey out of there in the end.

It was late in the afternoon and I wanted to check our email. We were given a map by a helpful shop man, and an old Japanese guy accompanied us to a crossroads, which we could have found on our own but he seemed to derive pleasure from it. He left us with a wave and clomped down the street in his wellies. The computer shop turned out to be the Ginza Apple Store, and even I know that Apple products are Things of Beauty. This shop was no exception, with four glass-fronted floors, a totally see-through lift and an entire level of new iMacs to use free of charge. Surprisingly, what with Japan being the most expensive country on Earth, iPods were cheaper here than in America, nuch cheaper than anywhere else in Asia. Which is a moo point (like, a cow's opinion) cos we can't buy one. But I did get to check my mail and work out a few ways in which it wasn't Windows I was playing with (and no right-click?! What's that all about?!).

After we dragged ourselves out of the nice warm shop and into the torrential rain, we headed for a couple of department stores to have a look at what was going on. All the shops have umbrella wrapping machines that stop you dripping all over the floor, and there was a bag vending machine with instructions for use written as 'Method for a profit', which I thought was nice. The thing we liked most about the stores were the food halls: hundreds and hundreds of cake and pastry and chocolate stalls all offering free samples. It would, of course, have been considered rude to refuse. Everything looked superb: fancy iced gateaux; tiny chocolate roses; layered cream cakes; something that looked like wax made out of chestnuts; puffy pastel meringues and a whole host of other delights. We finally gave in and decided on a swiss-roll type creation and as the lady was wrapping it up in layers of paper and cardboard she said the word 'present'. I shook my head to tell her not to worry about all the gift wrap, as we'd just eat it once we'd left the store, but it seems that she was giving us another one as a present. Which was weird, but very nice of her. Clutching our bag of goodies, we had a bit of a look round the savory section downstairs, but they weren't offering any free samples so although it all smelled gorgeous and sounded like a giant barbecue party or Prior Park on Open Day, we had no way of taking it all home and heating it up.

On the way through, we had a quick look at the kimono department. I had never realised how expensive they were - we're talking ?00 upwards just for the kimono, then you have the accessories to go with it - belts and ropes and strings and shoes and hair grips and all sorts. It's quite frightening. There were some incredible fabrics on display, with landscapes or birds or things, with matching accessories. A little girl, about four years old, was being fitted for a lime green one with flowers all over it. The seamstress lady was tucking and folding and tying the fabric in all sorts of ways.

The rain had settled in earnest now, and the wind had picked up. It was just about dark, too. Walking to the metro station got us soaked through even with raincoats and umbrellas and the water was dripping through my trousers and into my shoes. We decided to have a look at a local cinema. The first two were not where we thought they should be, but the third one, which was actually two cinemas, was bright and warm. We had to decide between a very scary film I don't want to see in the dark and a film we'd never heard of. In the end it came down to price - Two Brothers, a film about tigers, won by four pounds each.

We bought the tickets and the lady kept pointing to a sign in Japanese and saying the word 'hurricane'. But she sold us the tickets, so it couldn't have been that important. We had a couple of hours to spare so we went out to dinner.

Tokyo has an excellent subway system, and much of the city is connected by underground tunnels - some of the stations are at least a mile long. We didn't need to go out into the rain at all as we'd already passed a couple of restaurants that looked interesting. We tried the second one (because it was open) and we were invited to remove our shoes, put our umbrellas into a bag and follow the nice man along runways of wooded floor, raised above lit gravel gulleys and into our own tiny room with bamboo window frames and a curtain across the door. The benches round the table were at floor-level, and there was room beneath the table for our legs. The man disappeared and another one brought us a menu in English, and took a drink order and then left us to it. The drinks arrived with something gelatinous in tiny bowls. It tasted like nail varnish and horseradish, at which point I stopped trying to eat it and looked at the menu. When we'd ordered all sorts of interesting things, I pressed the bell by the door and a man appeared and put our requests into a little computer. The food didn't take long and was really, really unespectedly good.

I'd been worried that all Japanese food was sushi and fried prawns, but there are actually loads and loads of types of food, and only a few of them have fish as a compulsory ingredient. We had thin strips of beef wrapped round asparagus, lightly fried in butter and served with salt which was mind-numbingly delicious. Then came the sizzling noodles in 'tasty' sauce, which was a bowl of sizzling noodles with a tasty sauce poured over it at the table. There were only three unfortunate ingredients but they were mostly easy to spot - three large prawns, something that looked like spring onion but was in fact squid (I found out by accident, nothing else in the world is that chewy and tasteless) and some tiny bits of yellow and grey shellfish that were chewy and unpleasantly fishy. But the rest, large chunks of onion and vegetable and chicken and beef in a thick stew-like sauce, was delicious. The third dish was pork and horseradish in a mashed potato dumpling which was a nice flavour but a bit sticky. I finished with a mango creme brulee which was gorgeous.

By this time we'd almost dried out, and we were escorted to the front door where our shoes were waiting, and then we went back through the tunnels to the cinema on the 9th floor of a shopping mall. I encountered an electronic loo here, with buttons on an arm. There were water squirting devices and little tubes that emerged uninvitingly from under the rim and my favourite - the 'flush noise' button that did nothing but play a recording of a loo being flushed. For that authenitc experience, I suppose.

The cinema (which had blankets for hire) was big and clean and had a huge, huge screen. It was also surprisingly empty for a Saturday evening, with only a handful of other patrons. Two Brothers, a film about tigers and filmed in Cambodia, with Ta Prohm in Angkor being one of the main sets, was lovely, if potentially sad (that's the reason we haven't seen a Japanese film called Quill yet, because it's about a dog and will probably make me cry).

By the time we left the cinema the rain had stopped for the first time. We decided to take a train to Shinjuku, the neon heart of Tokyo, to see what it was all about. We were surprised, and maybe a little disappointed when we got there. Aside from the guidebook being written by six people who haven't read one another's sections and giving contradictory advice, it was not what we expected at all. Yes, there was a lot of neon around, huge billboards with constantly changing displays and giant television screens, but there were only about twenty people on the streets and everything was silent. In fact, at times, there literally was no noise at all, and it was a bit spooky. I've seen Lost in Translation, I know about the karaoke and the parties and the music, but Shinjuku was totally dead. Maybe it was just the rain and the threat of a hurricane.

We arrived back at the ryokan after all the lights were out, and crept up the stairs. Its amazing how much noise a door can make when you're trying to be quiet! The station, just below us, continued it's PA announcements long into the night, and trains hurtled up to the station, slid to a halt and whizzed off again every two or three minutes. In a way, it was quite soothing.