Tokyo days

wrote this earlier in week but didnt realise it hadnt published! so here it is:

I'm currently staying in london with my friend Chris. Well actually that's not true: I am actually staying in Tokyo with my friend Hanae, but I FEEL like I'm in London again in Chris's house. I think because Tokyo is big, has subways, has people! I have been overwhelmed a couple of times. And because I am enjoying getting to know the new neighbourhood of an old friend.

It is LOVELY staying with Hanae. As I told her over breakfast this morning, she's about the first person not to complement me on how good my Japanese now is ... and thats a big compliment!! She doesn't want to just flatter me (when its not that true either). But despite never having spoke Japanese together, she sometimes just goes into it, without seeming to batter an eyelid.　She also lets me get on with my own thing while shes at work, and at night we sleep in her room side by side and its good.

One night I made a funny mistake. I thought I was meeting one friend, actually it was a different friend (with the same name) that walked through the subway gates. At first I thought it was co-incidence, that she just happened to be there too. Then I realised that I had obviously been emailing a different person, and had to quickly compose myself and get into a different mind set to adjust to my unexpected company! but anyway,I managed (I think) to hide my surprise, and we had a nice evening.

On the bus up I saw Mount Fuji. It was quite breaktaking to me. I am meeting up with the KGK office today (linked with IFES, where I worked in Oxford), and then with some Hosei students in the evening. The afternoon I will need to cart a suitcase of books I brought here last year from their storage place, to a locker in Tokyo station, ready for my return tomorrow night.