Konichiwa

Hello all

I arrived in Tokyo this morning and I am feeling very jet lagged. Yesterday I was on a boat coming back from Santorini to Athens for 11 freaking hours!! Furthermore I was sitting on a wooden bench for 11 hours. I even slept on the bloody bench. I guess it's handy to know I can sleep on a bench if I ever become homeless?? However, if I do become homeless I will need to use some newspapers to line the bench as it's pretty hard on your back and arse. Ok, enough homeless hypothetical situations. Yes, I am very tired. I have had 4 hours sleep in the last 48 hours.

Ok, Greece. The islands were amazing. Absolutely beautiful, stunning, picturesque. Imagine the most beautiful place you can think of and that would probably come close to Santorini. My birthday was spent in Mykonos which was a very beautiful place filled with lots of beautiful people. I had a very strenuous bday having a massage (remind me to find out exactly what a Thai massage is suppose to entail as mine was umm, interesting!), driving around on the moped (ok, so I wasnt driving but driving around sounds better than riding on the back) and lying on the beach. It was just too bad that the lying on the beach part was more like bracing yourself in the midst of a tornato as it was extremely windy. In Santorini we swam at more beautiful beaches, ate a lot (and I mean every day) of gyros and went and swam in the hot volcanic sulphur springs which was cool but stained your bathers and smelt like rotten eggs.

Tokyo is awesome. The people are so nice. This old couple I sat next to on the plane waited for me to go through immigration so they could show me what train to catch. They even helped me buy my ticket which was great until I tried to get out of the underground station and discovered they had got me a bus ticket. I visited the temple in Asakusa today and wafted some incense onto my face cause that was what everyone else was doing (nooooo, I wouldn't jump off a cliff if everyone else was doing it). I also bought some unidentifiable food which was very tasty and am shortly going to go to bed as I am kind of rocking (I think from the ferry) still. Tomorrow I am going to hit the metro again (eek) and get myself to Shibuya and Ginza.

Hope you are all well and I will be home soon. Not before I go CRAZY shopping in Hong Kong!!!!!