I ride the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line. I get off the train at Nihonbashi Station to buy a drink. I recently discovered that there is a small shop selling ¥300 smoothies here. It is the same side of the crossing gate as the tracks so there is no need for me to buy another ticket. I buy a smoothie and hop onto the next train some two minutes later. Today I choose a healthy bright green plastic cup of crushed kale.

From Harajuku Station, I take the five minute walk to Yoyogi Park. There is a festival here today in celebration of fifty years of diplomatic relationship between Japan and Jamaica. The festival is relatively quiet, but it is still morning. There are market stalls selling jerk chicken, mugs, and adorable hats adorning the Jamaican flag; the usual. There is a stage and a choir, they sound good but they are only sound checking, so no one applauds when they finish. I wander for fifteen minutes before deciding to leave.

As I exit the festival a man with a shaved head and white clothing approaches me. He hands me a gold card with a picture of Siddhārtha Gautama etched to the surface. He is not a native Japanese person, and is probably not even a real monk. He tries to get me to write my name, address, and how much money I am willing to ‘pledge’ to him. I tell him that I’m not interested, give him back his card, and walk away shaking my head. Using religion to scam people out of money, that’s a first.

Around the corner from the park, opposite the entrance to Harajuku Station is Takeshita Street; a famous pedestrianised shopping street with an amusing name. It is lined with small boutiques featuring all the newest fashion, and far too many ice cream shops. There is nothing really of interest for me here so I walk the length of the street before returning to Harajuku Station and jumping back on the train.

Back in Asakusa I hire a bicycle. ¥200 for four hours, brilliant. I park my bike at the hostel and sit on the pavement to take photographs of a lit up Tokyo Skytree; I try to improve the image by messing around with my cameras settings. Someone shouts my name from behind me, “Luke, what are you doing sitting on the floor?” It is a woman who works at the hostel. I tell her I am messing around with exposure and shutter speed. “Oh,” she says rather confused, “I’m emptying trash!” I think to myself that I probably know more about emptying rubbish than I do exposure and shutter speed.

Back on my bike, I cycle around in search of food. After a while, I eventually give in to a Seven Eleven tartare sauce fish burger and a bottle of Pocari Sweat. Pocari Sweat is going to be the first sports drink that has a billboard on the moon, or so an advertising leaflet claims. I cycle around the quiet back streets of Asakusa, stop off for a rest outside the exciting World Bags and Luggage Museum. No idea. I randomly bump into a person I know from the Fuji TV show; he is stood talking to a man dressed as a tree. No idea.

Back at the hostel I chill out in my favourite room, the 4th floor laundry lounge. The room is actually an outdoor conservatory in a big tent. It features a ball pit, a lovely water fountain, and a bath tub full of soil. Cherry tomatoes grow from the soil. I sit on a chair and read the last thirty or so pages of Murakami’s ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’. It is here that I lose myself to the tranquillity of my surroundings. A staff member interrupts my serenity. She is here to do ‘maintenance’ on the ball pit, or so she tells me with a grin. She elegantly makes sure all the balls are neatly resting in the bathtub before leaving me in peace.

After finishing my book I pop over the road for a quick drink in A.S.A.B. I chat to the bar owner and ask him if he knows any good places to eat. “Yes,” he states matter-of-factly, “I draw you map.” He draws me a map. I thank him, pay, and leave the bar. His map is very accurate and I find the place with ease. Inside I take a stool at the bar and am handed an English menu, a nice surprise.

So, from the top left I have a pot and saucer of Japanese mustard for dipping, fresh cabbage served on ice, a side salad, spring onions, rice, a white box, some odd tasting red pickles, edamame beans, and the star of the show, cutlassfish marinated in soy sauce. The set meal also comes with miso soup, but it is pork based so I ask to have my meal without. I drink two Suntory whisky highballs whilst I feast, and pay ¥2240.

Now, that white box. Natto. It has no place with the rest of the meal so I take it back to the hostel. On the way I buy a tube of salt and vinegar flavour Pringles. I eat the natto using chop sticks, I wrap three to five fermented soy beans around a crisp; the correct way to eat natto, probably. The natto smells so bad that it even comes with a sachet of strong smelling mustard, and some red sauce that just about cancels out the disappointing smell.

In the hostel I meet up with a couple of guys from Hong Kong, and Aaliya, the Canadian I met during my first week here. It is her last night in Japan, so we decide to drink. We go to a bar, closed. We go to another, they’ve stopped serving. At the third bar, Asakusa OTO, we are humbly welcomed inside. It is a sake bar selling Japanese rice wine. It tastes okay, better than the supermarket rubbish I am used to. Sayaka, the English speaking Japanese staff member asks me to go through her English menu and correct the twelve mistakes. The owner of the bar puts on the ‘most famous’ Britpop band ever, Ride. I tell him I’ve never heard of Ride. Instead he puts on The Smiths.

‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ plays in the background while I eat crushed ice with sweet sauces. Delicious. It is time to leave after about an hour of sake drinking. We go to pay and the owner refuses to take our money. He says I should tell more foreigners about his bar in exchange for the drinks he has given us. It’s the least I can do, I tell him, scribbling his website on the back of my hand.