Tokio!

Now I am already in Tokyo!
The last day in Germany was a bit stressful: I wanted to send a suitcase with personal stuff, that I didn´t need and didn't want to carry during my travel, right to Taipei and this turned out to be quite complicated. I had to fill out a customs form that asked me to describe every single item in detail (not "clothes", instead "grey cotton sweater" plus specification of weight and value) and for this left me room on the form for maybe 20 words -.-
and what am I supposed to fill in for the value of my socks?!
Well I ended up just writing "clothes" and adding an additional formular with a detailed list of all items, that took me hours to write :-/ Now I just hope it will arrive without problems and damage at a friend in Taiwan who is holding it for me (Thanks, Iris!)
Finally I took my flight from Hanover airport at Wednesday with Aeroflot with a short layover in Moscow. That went all smooth to Tokyo, just with an one hour delay. To fight the jetlag, I had made the ingenious plan to get up on the last days in Germany very early (around 4-5am) to get used to the earlier timing in Japan (7hours ahead). I had even planned at which times to sleep in the plane to maximise jetlag-fighting effectiveness :D
Unfortunately my plan had a weak spot - the human component...
Thanks to seats made for people of normal size (excluding me), it turned out I wasn't able to sleep at all during the flight and so I arrived in Tokyo extremely tired and a bit desillusionized of my awesome plan...
While taking a train connection from the airport to my hotel, the first time I got outside was during changing at a train platform: It was like walking from the train into a wall of heat - 35° and extremely humid :-/ I didn't use to consider myself a belly-sweater but during my stay here it seems I have to change this view about myself. You go outside and immediately start sweating - and I heard thats its getting even hotter in Kyoto next week -.-

So finally I arived at my hotel, that was just fine. Bathroom a bit small - to increase legroom I usually need to leave the door open when sitting on the toilet^^

On the first evening I met two Japanese friends that I got to know at my US exchange pogram for dinner, which was very nice. I have to say that Japanese food is prepared with much more attention to the detail. I ate the most pleasently prepared veggies I ever had. Unfortunatley it turns out that you don't have it easy as a vegetarian in Japan (yeah, I became Vegetarian recently - not 100% strict though) - doensn't seem to be widespread here.
The next day I climbed the observatory of Mori building in Roppongi hills and had a great overview over foggy Tokyo and had my first ramen (noodles in a broth - very delicious) afterwards.

Mori building - what an architecture!

In the evening I met my German friend Manu, who moved to Japan to work here, for dinner and some drinks.

Manu

However, at that point I got problems with my stomach that worsed massively over the next hours what finally made me spend the whole saturday in my hotel room :-/
But at least this gave me time to write this post now...
here some last pictures:

temple

my first breakfast in Japan :D

nice garden/park Japanese style

Tak