August 7th - in Tokyo

Phrase of the day: Arigato gozaimas (thank you)

Our bikes arrived at the hotel still in the boxes they travelled in. Brendan spent a sweaty few hours putting them together in the hotel carpark.














Then we cruised around Ueno, weaving between many other cyclists and pedestrians, before picking up some rinku bags [sic](train bags) from the cycle store. We're very impressed with how cycle friendly Tokyo is, the streets seem to be designed for multiple transport - you can even cycle up the stairs!















The intention was to put the bikes and our gear on the train and head down to Kobe. This soon changed when we learnt that iwas 36degC and extremely humid in Kobe. Tokyo was swelteringly hot as it was, at 30degC, and so we decided to head up to the Japanese Alps instead.

The evening was spent at the Oak Hotel culling our gear down further - we managed to set aside 10kg of cold weather gear, books and other paraphernalia to send home.