We deliberately left Tokyo to the end of our tour of Japan for two reasons. Firstly, we thought that we would better appreciate the more traditional areas of Japan like Kyoto, Nara and Takayama if visited them first. Secondly, we expected a side effect of this would be that we would have overdosed on temples and shrines by the time we hit Tokyo and so that these wouldn't be so much of a distraction, allowing us to concentrate on Tokyo's particular highlights.

Tokyo (which means Eastern Capital) has only been Japan's capital city since 1868 when it took over from Kyoto. It is an extremely modern city which is only partly due to the Japanese flair for technology - it is mostly down to its almost complete destruction in both the great earthquake of 1923 and the intensive bombing during the second World War. Tokyo has since been completely rebuilt and is now a very large city which is far too large to explore on foot - even if you restrict yourself to the central districts. Luckily, it has an excellent public transport system which is reasonably priced and fairly easy to use - if a little crowded!

Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world and it can often be extremely crowded - particularly around the major train and underground stations. We deliberately avoided travelling on trains during the peak periods as they were supposed to be uncomfortably packed with people. However, despite our efforts, we still occasionally experienced some incredibly crowded trains.

Tokyo's roads, however, didn't seem to be that busy with traffic - which is probably because of its excellent public transport system. This allows them to allocate a reasonable amount of time at traffic light controlled junctions to let the mass of pedestrians cross over. They even have zebra crossings that go diagonally across major junctions so that people only need to make a single crossing for wherever they want to get to.

Most of these major junctions sport a huge TV screen mounted on the side of a building which spends most of its time displaying adverts (usually for Nescafé) to the waiting pedestrians. They also spend some of their time showing live footage of the people near the screen - particularly when there is some event being staged nearby.

Tokyo is divided into quite a number of districts with over 10 in the central area alone. One of the hardest decisions we had to make during the planning of this tour was whereabouts we should stay while we were in Tokyo as picking the wrong location could mean a lot of unnecessary commuting around the city.

We were given quite a few hotels around Tokyo to choose from and we eventually selected the Keio Plaza Intercontinental Hotel in the Shinjuku district as it wasn't overly expensive, it was quite close to one of Tokyo's main rail stations with good connections into Tokyo's underground system and our guide book described Shinjuku as containing a bit of everything that Tokyo had to offer. We think we made the right choice.

We'll now spend the rest of this page showing you around some of these districts starting from our hotel in Shinjuku and taking a roughly anticlockwise route around the city.

This is where the greatest concentration of Tokyo's skyscrapers are located and the twin towers of our 30+ storey hotel were amongst them. Our guide book said that Shinjuku contains a bit of everything that makes up Tokyo and is therefore ideal for people who don't have very much time in Tokyo. It is quite good for shopping as it has a good selection of large departments stores, shopping centres and it has a few streets lined with hi-tech stores (which seemed to specialise in mobile phones and accessories).

We can easily believe that Shinjuku's station is Tokyo's busiest as it was always extremely crowded no matter what time of day we used it. Many of these people were probably just changing lines as six of Tokyo's JR rail lines connect at this station including the Chuo rapid service line to Tokyo's central station and the very useful Yamanote loop line which circles the central area of Tokyo passing through many of the districts we visited. This station also connects with two of the lines in Tokyo's extensive underground network.

The west side of Shinjuku is the business district and is dominated by skyscrapers. However some of these are open to the public and are worth a visit. The NS Building is a hollow skyscraper with a glass roof but you can only get a view outwards if you eat in one of the restaurants on the upper floors. The Sumitomo Building is also a hollow skyscraper but this one is triangular shaped and it has a free observation platform on its 51st floor. This, unfortunately, faces away from the centre of Tokyo - probably towards Mount Fuji but it was much too hazy when we went up to to be able to see that far. The Mitsui Building contains the Pentax Forum which has an ever changing photography exhibition and you can also play with some of their enormous camera lenses. Unfortunately these were on the ground floor so there was no opportunity to use them to look out across Tokyo. The Mitsui Building also contains the Museum of Future Science and Technology (which sounds like a contradiction!) This was free to enter but it mostly just contained the usual hands-on science museum exhibits.

The east side of Shinjuku is where most of its shops, restaurants and night life are located and it is also the home of Tokyo's red-light district. We also found one narrow street which seemed to specialise in Karaoke bars. We could hear people's attempts at singing as we walked past each establishment one evening and it was excruciating. Everyone of them sounded absolutely terrible! We weren't at all tempted to have a go.

While we were looking around the department stores in Shinjuku, we shared a lift with two sumo wrestlers. They were easily recognisable from their enormous size, their characteristic haircut and they were dressed in traditional looking kimonos. They are treated like minor deities in Japan and they certainly acted like they owned the place as they quite literally pushed their way into the lift. I guess that their usual resistance to movement must make this sort of pushing feel like nothing.

This district is just south of Shinjuku and its main attractions are centred around Yoyogi-koen park. We deliberately chose to visit this area on a Sunday as we had heard that this was when Tokyo's youth gather near the south eastern entrance of this park to express their individuality by dressing up in all manner of costumes.

A small selection from the Sunday youth scene near Yoyogi-koen Park, Tokyo.

Our guide book said that this practice had been banned by the authorities but, to our delight, it seemed to have been resurrected as what looked like an outdoor fancy dress party was in full swing when we arrived. Many of the participants wouldn't have looked out of place in the Rocky Horror Show. Other, more traditional forms of expression were also taking place nearby. There were a number of bands playing and there was also some street theatre being performed inside the park.

The Meiji-jingu shrine is located inside Yoyogi park and is probably Tokyo's best Shinto shrine. It was quite popular with the Japanese on Sunday. They seemed to be busy stocking up on good luck charms.

We were extremely fortunate to visit this shrine just as a Shinto wedding was concluding. The bride and groom came out to have their photographs taken in the grounds, which was quite a treat for us as they were both immaculately dressed in traditional costumes. This took a long time as somebody spent ages arranging their costumes for each shot.

The bride and groom posing for photographs after their Shinto wedding. Meiji-jingo Shrine, Yoyogi-koen Park.

The bride started off wearing a very decorative red gown but, after a few shots, this was exchanged for a thick white gown and her magnificent, ornamental hairstyle was covered by a strange looking headdress. This change-over seemed to take forever as these new garments were apparently very hard to get “just right” for the next batch of photographs.

This area is just south of Harajuka and is supposed to be very popular with Tokyo's youth because of its shops. We went there to have a look around the free TEPCO Electric Energy Museum which is basically seven floors of hands-on exhibits and activities advertising the myriad uses for electricity including ways to save energy. This was very well presented by Tokyo's Electric Power Company but unfortunately a lot of the exhibits were in Japanese only so we didn't get the full benefit.

The other attraction in this area that we wanted to see was Love Hotel Hill. The side streets that run off this road contain hotels where couples can go to ‘spend time together’. We had read that many of these hotels had themed rooms like gothic castles and Arabian nights etc. and we were hoping that these “themes” would be obvious from the outside so that we could have a peek at what was on offer. Unfortunately, the advertising was restricted to descriptive hotel names and their room prices. The rates were always quoted for either a “rest” (which means a few hours) or a “stay” (which means overnight). Our book said that it was OK to pop in and have a look around but they didn't look very inviting so we chickened out.

Ironically, the primary reason for visiting this area located in the centre of Tokyo is to ogle at the luxurious hotels that are concentrated in this area. We had a look around the very up-market Hotel New Otani which has been built in a 400 year old ornamental garden which they have preserved as much as possible. This was probably the best Japanese garden that we saw throughout our tour of Japan and so it was well worth a visit - especially as it was free to walk around.

The Akasaka Prince Hotel couldn't match the grounds of the New Otani but the inside was almost as opulent. The main attraction of this hotel, however, was that you could go up to the 40th floor for a free look out across the city.

We had considered staying in this district as we had been offered a very attractive price for the normally prohibitively expensive Hotel New Otani but there wasn't anything else to see in this area and it was nowhere near as well connected to Tokyo's rail and underground system as Shinjuku.

This is where Tokyo's main shinkansen station is located and where we first arrived in Tokyo. The Imperial Palace is located here but all we were allowed to see of it is shown in this picture. The Imperial Palace's East Gardens were, however, open to the public so we had a look around them (on a real scorcher of a day). We were hoping that they were going to be really ornate Japanese gardens but they were a little disappointing. The gardens were quite large but mostly nothing special. After exploring them for a few hours, we only found a small section which had the basic ingredients of a Japanese garden: water, rock and sculpted trees and this was where most of the visitors in the gardens were concentrated.

The Central District also contains the world famous Ginza shopping district. We were expecting this to contain really up-market designer shops but only some of the streets were like that. The others had a reasonable mix of shops which were worth browsing around.

Sony have a showroom in Ginza spread over 7 floors where people are free to try out all of their latest products without absolutely no pressure to buy. When we were there, they had just released their robot dog which was attracting a lot of attention despite its price tag of ¥250,000 (about £1300). One floor of the showroom was dedicated to showing you how things worked or at least what they looked like inside. They had working versions of many of their classic old products, as well as their current models, all with transparent cases.

Ginza is also famous for its all-male Kabuki theatre but after suffering an evening at the Beijing Opera during our tour of China we weren't at all tempted to sample Japan's version. However, we did have a look around the souvenir shop of the Takarazuka Review Company. This is an all-female group who perform famous musicals (West Side Story was on when we were there). The shop had many pictures of the women who perform in this group and what was surprising was that virtually no attempt was made to make the women who played the male parts look masculine. In fact, apart from the occasional fake moustache, they were actually made up to look extremely feminine.

(Electric Town)

This district is located to the north of Tokyo's central station and is Tokyo's discount electrical and electronics ghetto. Its streets are packed with multi-storey shops selling just about every electrical appliance and electronic gadget imaginable. The prices were surprisingly cheap too (at least compared with the UK). I spent quite a while browsing around these shops and playing with all the latest gadgets.

This district is located in the north east of Tokyo and is the centre of Tokyo's old downtown area. Its main attraction is the Senso-ji temple complex which is probably Tokyo's best and most popular Buddhist temple. Even though we went on a Friday, it was still pretty crowded - although most of the visitors to the temple were school children. The entrance gates, with their massive lanterns hanging above the doors, were very impressive as was the inside of the large temple building.

Another good reason to visit this area is the tourist shopping street, Nakamise-dori, which you have to walk through as you approach to the Senso-ji temple from the underground station. It was easily the best place we found to buy souvenirs of our stay and, because there were so many shops to choose from, their prices were very competitive.

A short walk from the temple area is a street called Kappabashi-dori. It is lined with shops selling everything you could want if you were setting up a restaurant. This might sound like a strange tourist attraction but it is here where they sell the incredibly realistic looking plastic food used in Japanese restaurant windows all over the world to advertise the dishes on their menu. These models have fascinated us ever since we first saw them in Hong Kong and they have helped us many times to pick tasty Japanese dishes. We were almost tempted to buy one as a souvenir.

This area is just to the north of Shinjuku and the main reason to come here is to shop because it contains two of the largest department stores in the world along with a couple of large shopping centres including Sunshine City which is inside the tallest building in Tokyo.

This district also contains the Toyota Amlux which is the ultimate car showroom spread over 6 floors. As well as containing many (mostly up-market) examples from Toyota's range of vehicles, it also contains a good range of other, mostly hands-on, car-related displays.

The star attraction was the sensurround, smellorama cinema in which we watched and ‘experienced’ a short film about 4-wheel drive racing. Our seats had vibration mechanisms in the back which would rumble whenever there was any racing going on. There was also a vent that occasionally pumped out appropriate smells during the film. These smells were quite spaced out throughout the film which was lucky as otherwise we probably would have hyperventilated while trying to work out what the different smells were. They used “new car smell”, perfume, popcorn, coffee, and flowers. They seemed to deliberately avoid the oily petrol smell that you would have expected whenever the mechanic was tinkering with the car.

We also had a go in a driving simulator which gave us a chance to try out Toyota's latest safety features in various emergency driving situations. The simulator was fairly realistic although it was a little slow to respond. We got to try out an emergency stop both with and without antilock brakes and then we had a go at breaking hard whilst cornering using Toyota's Vehicle Stability Control.

Capsule rooms in the Capsule Kimeya Hotel, Ikebukuru

We had been on the lookout for one of Japan's capsule hotels throughout our stay in Tokyo but we didn't find an example of one until our very last day in Japan when we were looking around Ikebukuru and we found the Capsule Kimeya Hotel. Unlike the Love Hotels we had seen in Shibuya, this hotel was a lot more inviting so went in to see if we could have a look at the capsules.

We had a bit of trouble explaining what we wanted to do to the woman at reception as she just kept pointing to the rates for staying for a night (which was about £13). She also looked a little concerned at the two of us which was probably because we were a couple and capsule hotels tend to either be just for males or with the sexes on separate floors - maybe she thought that we really wanted a Love Hotel as there was one nearby. Eventually our camera gave the game away and she happily let us have a look around an unoccupied floor.

The fairly compact floor contained 16 capsules arranged in pairs, one on top of the other. They were accessed by an opening in the side which could be covered by a curtain for privacy. They contained a light above the occupants head and a small TV above the occupants knees. They seemed very short in length - far to short for me (at just over 6 foot) to lie down in without having to curl up. The woman at reception was obviously aware of this as, when we left, she laughed at me pointing out my height.