It is the land of sumo, sushi and kimono, a land where the delicate kimono clad lady fights against drunken salary men for a seat on the subway. A land where ones preconceived ideas are often shattered and replaced by something much more surreal.

Geography
Japan is in eastern Asia and an island chain between the North Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan, east of the Korean Peninsula. Here's a better view.

Accommodation
Like any big city, Tokyo can be expensive. However, there is no need to spend any more money for a decent place to sleep then if you were staying in a major European capital. Tokyo has more then its fair number of super expensive 5 star hotels, but tucked away down the back streets are some of the funkiest, coolest hotels anywhere in Asia.

A night in a love hotel will set you back upwards of ¥5000, which is about half the normal room rate for a conventional hotel. The only drawback is the rooms are only rented for the night after 11pm. But as most of these hotels are close to pubs and bars, it never seems a problem.

Here is a book source of information on hotels.
Long term residents details on housing.

Transport
Most people enter Japan through either Tokyo's Narita or Osaka's Kansai International (KIX) airports. Narita airport has recently undergone a face lift which means it is no longer one of the worst airports in the world. Terminal 2 is particularly impressive, though how long it will stay this way is another matter.

From there trains link to major cities in their respective areas and also to Tokyo station (from Narita) and Shin-Osaka station (Kansai) from where you can change to Shinkansen (bullet) trains which will take you to other cities in Japan.

Getting around is easy on the speedy and convenient subway. Although often crowded it is cheap, clean and safe.

Money
Yes please, lots of it. Seriously, Tokyo can be expensive, but it doesn't need to be. With a minimum budget of about US$80 a day, you can live like a king. If you start eating from convenience stores, sharing rooms in love hotels, keeping off the beers and getting round on foot or subway, US$50 a day would be sufficient.

Set price menus are generally cheap, especially at lunch time. As an alternative, all convenient stores sell tasty lunch boxes which range from the culinary incredible to the sublime. Check out the summer eel, which at about ¥500 for a box, is divine.

Traditional Japanese souvenirs need not blow a hole in your budget either. Check out the convenience stores for weird and wonderful things like sock glue, dried squid and sheets of seaweed.

For the best of the rest check out this site.

The Author
The author is a regular contributor to numerous journals including Tokyo Classified and Asian Eye. He has been in Tokyo for 18 months and has travelled extensively throughout Japan. He swears that the next Japanese person who seems surprised that he can use a pair of chopsticks will come to a bloody and sudden end.

His favourite part of Japan is Terminal 2 at Narita airport and he has most definitely never ever seen a Japanese nuclear submarine - especially not the one currently parked just outside Nagasaki bay.

If he was a fruit, the author would be a nashi pear, but these days his staple diet is airline food. He is always happy to swap stores with people and will reply to any emails.

Well, its been another rough month out here on the edge of civilisation. Aside from the normal day to day lunacy of Tokyo, I managed to squeeze a short trip in to Nagasaki.

Nagasaki is a great city with a real cosmopolitan feel to it. For example, I bet not many people know that Dutch used to be the official second language of Japan, and that the Dutch once had their own trade centre based just outside Nagasaki.

The other really amazing thing about Nagasaki is that most of the hotels seem to bend over backwards to give you a discount. No sooner had I turned up at the hotel on the edge of the Dutch Steps then the manager was profusely bowing and apologising to me for overcharging me. A similar thing happened a few days later when I checked into a hotel at Narita and in my bad Japanese asked for a significant discount. The girls at the check-in desk almost fell over themselves to cut my bill in half. I guess this is a real indication of the deepening financial crisis Japan is experiencing - or how persuasive I can be in a suit and tie. I am not suggesting that hoards of backpackers march into the Hilton and demand to pitch a tent for free in the lobby, but a polite request, in Japanese, and a winning smile can go a long way.

This last month I have been out and about sampling some of the country's restaurants - the country may be going down the economic tubes and the pre-millennium tension may be rising, but I still need to eat. First on my list of weird and wonderful dishes was Fugu.

The Japanese puffer fish is famous among gourmets the world over. Wrongly prepared, this succulent fish is toxic due to a build-up of poison in its ovaries and liver. Chefs have to receive a special license to prepare it (only 30% pass the rigid government exam), and even so an estimated 300 people per year die from eating fugu. The most coveted aphrodisiac preparation of fugu is made by mixing a teaspoonful of its testes with hot sake. Mouth watering yet?

Fugu season is said to run from the end of September to the end of March, from when the waters grow cold to just before mating season. Slightly sweet and with the perfect tenderness, fugu sashimi (slices of raw fish) is the most popular recipe for blowfish, but fugu stew, fried fugu, and fugu zosui (rice porridge) is also an interesting experience. Last time I ate fugu the waiter kindly gave me the following leaflet.

"Fish poisoning by consumption of members of the order Tetraodontiformes is one of the most violent intoxications from marine species. The gonads, liver, intestines, and skin of pufferfish can contain levels of tetrodotoxin sufficient to produce rapid and violent death.

The flesh of many pufferfish may not usually be dangerously toxic. The first symptom of intoxication is a slight numbness of the lips and tongue, appearing between 20 minutes to three hours after eating poisonous pufferfish. The next symptom is increasing paraesthesia in the face and extremities, which may be followed by sensations of lightness or floating. Headache, epigastric pain, nausea, diarrhea, and/or vomiting may occur. Occasionally, some reeling or difficulty in walking may occur.

The second stage of the intoxication is increasing paralysis. Many victims are unable to move; even sitting may be difficult. There is increasing respiratory distress. Speech is affected, and the victim usually exhibits dyspnea, cyanosis, and hypotension. Paralysis increases and convulsions, mental impairment, and cardiac arrhythmia may occur.

The victim, although completely paralysed, may be conscious and in some cases completely lucid until shortly before death. Death usually occurs within 4 to 6 hours, with a known range of about 20 minutes to 8 hours."

I don't know about you, but it certainly had me reaching for the dictionary.

Follow the link for a complete list of places to eat in Tokyo.

After all this rich food, I feel the need to spend even more of my company's money. On August 25th, a theme-park-like shopping mall designed to attract spendthrift women opened on Tokyo's waterfront. In just the first five days after opening a total of 400,000 people, mostly young women, flocked to Venus Fort. The builders of this new female stronghold are pinning their hopes on women being likelier to loosen their purse strings than men and to spearhead a recovery in personal consumption.

From the outside it looks like a warehouse, but go inside and you will be in for a surprise. It is a giant replica of a seventeenth or eighteenth century European town (Japan is at its best when it can duplicate things). The shopping area covers about 21,000 square meters (226,000 square feet), or the same as two baseball fields, and there are five plazas, each constructed around a different theme - church, olives, fountains, hope, and happiness.

These plazas are linked by the main promenade, whose total length is 400 meters (1,300 feet) and is as wide as 11 meters (36 feet). You can relax and watch time go by, as every hour on the ceiling a vast virtual sky changes from bright blue daylight to dusk then to dawn in a similar way to Caesars palace in Vegas. This is a radical change for a country which traditionally shops only in small local stores or in the main department store.

A total of 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) of shopping streets are there for you to enjoy. Shops selling clothes, cosmetics, and trinkets, as well as beauty salons and cafes - 137 stores in all - line the streets; about two-fifths are the first-ever Japanese outlets of foreign shops. Crowds of students, housewives, and sightseers come in the daytime and, since everything is open until late (the shops close at 10pm, the restaurants at 11pm) it is also very popular with women on their way home from work and young couples out on dates.

Why is it known as a women's theme park? Well, the shops and cafes provide for everything a young woman could want in fashion, beauty, and dining - hence it's a good place to watch Tokyo's bright young things. The target ages are the twenties and thirties. Much more than a tourist attraction, repeat visitors are showing up in large numbers, as are fashion lovers. It is so big that it would take half a day to look around all the shops, and although you might get lost, there is no need to worry. A crew of attendants patrol the complex and will gladly give you directions. Adding to the atmosphere, they, too, are dressed in period costume - rather like the ANA airline stewardesses who dress in Pokemon outfits.

What About the Men?
One of the proudest features of this shopping mall are the luxurious ladies' toilets, the "Venus Restrooms." I have yet to experience them personally. At a total area of over 400 square meters (4,300 square feet), they are among Japan's largest. There are 64 individual rooms, eliminating the trouble of waiting in line. Amenable to women's needs, they are cozy and meticulously clean (I am told), resembling those of a top-class hotel. Yet there are hardly any facilities for men - most men just piss in the street anyway. They have almost nowhere to go at all. The truth is, it is not much fun being a man in this fortress of femininity. Men have only two possible functions here: as boyfriends carrying their partner's bags or as fathers minding the kids while their wives are shopping - something my girl friend has been saying for years.

The shopping centre can easily be reached from JR Tokyo.

Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our Asia Insiders page.