A week from now I’ll be twelve hours from catching a bus to Heathrow airport to catch a plane to Paris where I’ll catch another plane to Tokyo and spend ridiculous amounts of money. Sitting on my desk right now I have ¥193,000 (£955 in real money) and a clean credit card just waiting to be blown on inordinate amounts of PSPs, games, DVDs, CDs, and alcohol. I’m getting really excited about it now.

We already know that we’re going to be hitting Akihabara almost as soon as we get there early next Thursday, then the next few days are going to be split between TGS, Sony’s PS3 event, and general Tokyo stuff. The Studio Ghibli Museum is booked for the Monday and we’ll probably spend a day in Kyoto (via the bullet train). After seeing the piece on Japan on a budget on BBC Departure Lounge we’re now thinking of visiting Edo Wonderland, which is a kind of a feudal Japan village populated by actors playing the parts like the “living museums” that you find across America. The best part is that if you book in advance you can hire costumes including ninja ones, complete with katana.