Thanks for this diary and the comments it produced. We have too few contributions about Japan from 'on the ground'.

I confess to being relatively ignorant on Japan, in spite of my company being named after a great Japanese artist, and my first act as an art student in the early Sixties being to saw the legs off all furniture in my flat.

It is an ignorance that should be put right. Except there are around 200 other countries and cultures to get through ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken