Japan Post 2 : Imperial Palace etc

Electric City
Originally uploaded by JohnConn.

Japan is experiencing unusually warm weather for this type of year and so it has been difficult to work out what to wear. Taking a jacket the last two days has just been a nuisance.

The Imperial Palace grounds tour was quite good (See the myriad of pics on flickr). Apparently only 100 people each day get to do the tour so we were part of the privileged many! The grounds are very impressive - a colossal compound right in the middle of a city of 20 million people. You really get the feeling of power.

After the tour we walked to Electric City which is a paradise for gadget freaks and geeks. Everything you could possibly want and much more. I spent 3-4 hours wandering around but bought nothing - I might pop back on Friday.

Today was the first day of our Workshop and it was quite enjoyable. A pretty full on day and we got through a lot. After the workshop we were invited to drinks a Minister's home on the Embassy compound. We then moved on to dinner at a Japanese restaurant for loads of weird and wonderful, but mostly weird, things. Raw fish, raw steak, cooked rice, sea urchin, raw squid...mostly raw stuff, oh and chicken wings...cooked! It all tasted pretty good, although I won't be rushing back for more sea urchin during the rest of my stay!