Long overdue new post - work has kept me very occupied the last week - my new office is in a very popular/expensive/nice shopping district called Ginza:

My Office Building (includes a shopping centre at the bottom like almost every building in Tokyo)

The place is most impressive in the dark when the lights are on:

One thing I noticed in particular is that shops aren't just a shop, they're a whole building - the Uniqlo (like a Japanese H&M) shop has 12 different floors - most of the menswear takes 9 floors of escalators to get to! Trek, but it's pretty slick:

(Image from tokyofashion.com - their photo looked better)

(From same site)

Nearby is Ueno Park, one of Tokyo's most popular, where it seems I just missed out on an ice sculpture competition (!):

Ice sculpture corpses were being hacked to bits when I arrived

Ueno Park




































My first water bill - I've no idea what the helpful water drops were trying to say to me, but happy to have them there:

Every object has a friendly personality here in Japan...they like everything to be 'kawaii' - 'cute', bless them

My area is very well located for me, as I only have to get one train line to work, and both train stations are right beside where I need to go. 

The green/white train below is the Yamanote Line, which does a continuous loop around the more central area of Tokyo, and carries 3.7m people on average every day - 1m more than the entire London Underground with its 12 lines. It gets cosy during rush hour...

JR Yamanote Line

A view of my area (Shinokubo - Korean Town) from the train platform