Konnichiwa

I'd have to be a much better photographer — and have a much better camera than this iPhone — to do justice to the view from my room, here on the 35th floor of the Century Southern Tower in Shinjuku. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I've lived high up in London, and even a view which includes the Swiss Re and the half-complete Shard (like the background to my about.me page) pales against this sea of lights spreading far away to the horizon. The black void in the picture below is the Yoyogi Park surrounding the Meji Shrine.

By day the view is equally impressive. The annotated cityscape next to the window here tells me that that's Mount Fuji hidden behind the clouds in the distance there.

Since I'm being kept awake by jetlag — which sounds way cooler than my usual annoying insomnia — I'm going to note down my initial impressions of Tokyo while they're still fresh.

• Everything you've heard about how courteous and polite the Japanese are is absolutely true. I've turned up here, unable to speak a word of their language — well, I guess I can manage three or four, but I always seem to forget them when the time comes — and so far everyone I've met has been extremely helpful. I was worried about how to get from Narita to my hotel, having a vague notion of which train to take and which type of ticket to buy, but a few moments in the JP Rail ticket office and problem solved. Also, the amount of signage and the number of announcements which are in English is unbelievably generous.
• The thing where you hand over things — tickets, passports, cards — with both hands will take some getting used to.
• As will the toilets. I swear the one in my hotel room has more functions than my phone.
• Hats seem to be big over here.
• If those guys in the Economy cabin with me weren't a small-time rock group hoping to make it big in Japan, I'd be very disappointed, even if it is an almighty cliche. They certainly had all the stereotypes covered — long-haired and goateed prog-rock guy; large, curly-haired metal dude; goth girl who wouldn't take off her kitten-eared hat even inside the plane; trendy-haired too-cool-for-school in his skinny jeans. I should've asked them where they were playing. But it's annoying, because now the thing I was planning to write is going to look even less original.
• I took ages for my ears to pop. They didn't really clear until I started yawning. And every time I did, the city got a little bit louder.
• Shinjuku station makes the Bank-Monument complex look like an underpass. I have already spent a confused hour 'exploring' it.
• The "JP DOCOMO" carrier ident is so long that it forces the network activity spinner across onto the righthand side. Ugh.