New Year's Eve...

Cocoon Building, a spectacular landmark in Shinjuku helped us find the railway station.

Our flight to Tokyo's city airport Handeda was uneventful in the end, but almost didn't happen. At Sydney airport we were asked the mysterious question "do we live nearby?", the reason being that the aircraft was having engineering issues, and we might not be leaving until the next morning. But it boarded only about 30 minutes late, and we found out what the engineering issues were. The seat in front of us had major electrical problems, and four burly technicians spent the best part of an hour on it before departing, without success it seems, because the passengers who discovered the fault had been moved somewhere else and were never seen again.

Twin towers of this imposing Tokyo Metropolitan Government building.

Love Object, Shinjuku artwork popular for selfies.

Passage through Haneda's customs and immigration was lightening fast and efficient, despite several incoming aircraft. Fingerprint and photos of course. Our taxi (and its driver) was immaculate, though not quite big enough to hold our baggage comfortably. The driver's English was good enough to understand our instructions. He took Credit Cards, which was a pleasant surprise. The trip to Shinjuku (on the western side of Tokyo Central) seemed to be mostly though tunnels, took half an hour, and cost JPY8000.

The Hilton Hotel is quite close to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government towers.

Waterfall feature called Niagara Falls in Shinjuku Chuo Park.

One evening, while we were in our Hilton Hotel room, we felt a mild but distinct earth tremour. It lasted maybe 5-10 seconds and the vibration was quite noticeable 28 stories up in our modern skyscraper building. We were reassured by the knowledge that these are frequent occurrences in Japan, and buildings are built to withstand them. Certainly, this one produced no fuss or alarm.

This ceremony at the Juniso Kumano Jinja shrine was repeated all over Japan on New Year's Eve.

Our arrival in Japan was on New Year's Eve. Like all big cities, there are fireworks, but the main New Year's custom is the ringing of 108 bells at shrines by Buddhist monks. Well before midnight people come to the shrine and ring the bells themselves in a ritual involving washing, clapping and bowing. And, for days afterwards, people queued up at at every shrine we saw to perform a small ritual at the front steps, including throwing a few coins to a receptacle. We suppose the purpose of this is to pay respect and pray for good health and wealth in the coming year.

Shinjuku is predominantly a business district and the streets were very quiet during our stay here for the holiday season with goes to 04 January. But our hotel was 100% packed with holiday-makers, almost all Japanese, with only a smattering of tourists like ourselves - we must have been lucky to get our bookings here. The region houses the Tokyo Metropolitan Office, a gigantic twin tower building. As a concession to the public, the observatories at the 45th storey of each tower were open (and busy) on 01 January, although closed on the other holiday days. These offered 360 degree fabulous views of Tokyo (through some haze), including the legendary, snow-covered, Fuji-yama (which we could also see from the hotel).

On our first day here, we had a prearranged meeting with Nakahara-san who was to assist us validating our prepaid rail passes, making reservations on the major trains, topping up our PASMO cards (like Opal cards but with wider utility) and showing us where to make other bookings. We could probably have done this ouselves, but finding the right counters at the massive Shinjuku Station (36 platorms, 200 exits, almost 4 million people every day) would have been difficult without him.

Glimpse of Electric City, retail outlet district in Shinjuku.

Shinjuku Station is only about 400m from our hotel which provides an excellent and well patronised shuttle-bus service. From the Station, we set about getting the hang of Tokyo's extensive railway system.

View of this iconic Mt Fuji from the Observatory of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office.

The mass of suburbia west of Shinjuku.