We're in Japan! Only cost us a few hours of flight and to move from 30 degrees in Cairns (where we stopped) to nearly 0 degrees of Tokyo ... we had to retrieve the winter clothes from the bottom of our backpacks ... was not complicated. us at the airport with my sister and Danis Patri, which landed 15 minutes after us from Vigo, a plane Pequenho were beating the poor.
You feel like the protagonist of the Sofia Coppola movie when it lands in the city. Trip to stunning and numbness of neurons joined by the terrible cold reality that this country is spoken and written Japanese. That bunch of nonsense simbolitos for us make a very nice subway maps but absolutely incomprehensible. I make a zoom of one of the maps ... the initial panic is great to stand in front of one of them. 
The reality is that this claim is unfounded because in our case we had local hosts, Amos and Rachel, who live here and took us and brought in the first days of labyrinthine subway stations, and asked for us in bars we were not able to identify only one of the dishes. Here is Amos, Rachel, and her brother, Avi, between the two. I must say that Amos, although Asturian and arrives here less than a anho, Japanese pilot as if he had several, at least it seems to us that obviously we have no idea punhetera. Rachel speaks Japanese, Chinese and Malay, among others ... We could not have better reception. The first impression of Tokyo was quite strong. It is a huge city, super cosmopolitan, modern, spotlessly clean, bustling. The night lights of the shopping streets we were not disappointed, nor crowded pedestrian crossings in which the three, about 500 people crossing at once straight and diagonal line creating a huge tide of people that appears and disappears in seconds. Here you have John and Dani mingling with the masses, or at least trying.
As for the Japanese to say about them?. Smiling and friendly, its almost perpetual smile and his passion for bows, make one feel bad about all the attention. In addition, here we remain exotic and sometimes irrelevantly watching us, greet us and we even take pictures. The truth is that, in my opinion, are people terribly inconsistent, extremely educated do not hesitate to jab rinhones elbows in and get you a boost of Ordago if you're in the subway at rush hour, your living space, surprisingly, lower than ours.
On the other hand people seem extremely shy, and yet do not hesitate to display all sorts of extravagant costumes and dance or sing in public, at least in regard to human animals are crowded on weekends near the station Harayuku. It's hard to explain, but for some reason, dozens of young girls gather to dress in anything from Ninh manga characters from "Blade Runner." 
To make matters worse, a few feet beyond the corner is the "rockabilly" where, every weekend, leaving a stunned madurito rockers extranhos own and giving the best of themselves to the rhythm of music . Top to bottom sheathed in black leather and displaying a Tupes that would make the envy of Travolta in Grease, choreographed dancing alone or in group, leave no one indifferent. Not far from there, the street becomes a makeshift stage where young groups in the city set up their amplifiers to give concerts in the sidewalk a few meters from each other. I could go on a long list of characters who fill the park with Harayuku staging plays, practicing tap dancing, martial arts or just juggling. It is clear that in Japan there is no sense of the ridiculous, even as a concept, each going about their business and do what they want to. Without doubt, a philosophy of life that we would have much to learn. Personally, I light anhos understand why some of these people do what they do.
Of course there is a more traditional Tokyo, we took a stroll through the Imperial Palace, well, actually in the palace gardens as you can not see more than that tiny corner you see in the photo. The gardens are great even though it achieved its best in spring and otonho, when surely are spectacular.
visited a few temples, one coicidimos with a wedding, it is impressive to see the costumes of the participants, but without doubt the most spectacular was the bride, wearing a stiff white suit he arranged every few minutes and you could hardly move, the poor girl was hard to see a smile. In another temple
agree with a ceremony involving youth who are 20 anhos, the girls were beautiful in their kimonos and readily accept the pictures with us, for some reason I was excited that we were spanish, if when I say are exotic ...
Lanterns and "toriis" (those huge doors that often painted bright orange to brighten driven away the evil spirits) are everywhere, the truth is that this is lovely .
Another key event in the tradition was to attend a sumo match, fortunately coincided with a quite important tournament. The fans were in front of the stadium watching the wrestlers come they did with this look so authentic. It was interesting but a bit boring, it is curious that more time devoted to the ritual accompaniment, to the fight than the fight itself. At the end of the day fought the great masters, which aroused a passion in the audience. Not all come to the end of the fighting, some were bored before, do not say names, and left the stadium to go compritas to Akihabara Electric City, a de los barrios especializados en electronica, algunos ya se imaginan de quien estoy hablando no? 
Salimos de Tokyo en el tren bala para hacer algunas excursiones, una de ellas a Nikko, el que dicen que es el autentico Japon, un enorme recinto de templos y santuarios nos ocupo la tarde entera. No os podeis imaginar la tortura que suponia con el frio que hacia descalzarse una y otra vez para entrar en los templos, eso si, vimos lugares bellisimos (aunque no es posible fotografiar la mayoria de ellos).
En la siguiente excursion visitamos Hakone, where we take a cable car to see smelly sulfur vents that open on the side of the montanha. In the boiling mud of these cracks cooked eggs that are left with the unappetizing appearance, but the test and the truth is that no one would feel bad.
From the top of the montanha you can see Mount Fuji !!!... we had to wait a bit but finally cleared we succeed, there is the highest mountain in Japan, the Fuji-san sleeping volcano. In ancient times, its top was a forbidding place for women, today, weather permitting, is a popular destination for climbers of both sexes. It's beautiful, do not you think?
Hakone
Before leaving enjoy another great Japanese tradition. We banhos at a spa onsen. Banhos are houses where women and men separately, enjoy naked, thermal pools. Before Banh must wash basins sitting on a Pequenho that everyone uses. A very intense experience and we went to a very Pequenho onsen, where, at least in our banho, there were only local. Patri and I did the typical: "there in Rome do as the Romans do", and we just do what others were doing. Of course there is no graph paper.
Before opening chapter I want to dedicate Gourmet a paragraph to another tradition has been surprising. This is a gambling house where people only play one thing: Pachinko. The mechanics of the game is understandable but the aim is to win a ball which is then exchanged for gifts, and as they say, also for money unofficially. These huge gambling halls are more noisy and chaotic places where I've probably been with hundreds of different musics playing at once and people of all ages for hours put balls in a machine that just look, because many just look a TV with built. I can not think of another way to describe that of a real hell on earth, totally unbearable until one gets used to noise. I understood then what is appropriate the title of that album of Mano Negra: "In the Hell of patchinko" 
Finally ... Japanese food, where to start?. Thanks to Amos and Rachel Pequenho we could go to some tourist bars where no one spoke a word of English, head immersed in the gastronomy of the country. Danis Juan and enjoy sushi as dwarfs, while Homer and I prefer all types of noodles and rice. Many bars have pictures of food or plastic reproductions (made with surprising realism) to be able to use the old technique of pointing the finger request.
In the photos above, mixed with local neighborhood bars and a "standing sushi bar, or standing as tapas but based on sushi. Down in a noodle bar and one of those amazing reproductions of sushi in plastic.
Pequenho In a bar Nikko with some gyoza (dumplings species) delicious, the duenha, a true visionary business, foreign asks them to write in a different language posters to hang in the window of the bar and attract customers. If someone walks by Nikko should see a sign like this in the window of a barcillo of the road leading to the temples. 
Finally, as a curiosity, we wanted to feel even more Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation" will remember that I was in Japan for an ad for a Japanese whiskey, Suntory. As the whiskey Marr is quite good (mixed with glue of course), we could not help notice view shooting, here you have a most worthy to batin Patri we had in the hostel. Really, this is like living in a movie. 
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