So, I've been data enabled since landing (thankyou Softbank mifi hire) which means that you may or may not have seen my tweets/ instagrams on the #ntwjapan hashtag. If you haven't yet, never fear- here's my run down of what I've been up to.

After a pretty bumpy overnight flight (I left on Saturday and arrived on Sunday) and an exciting trip on the Narita Express train, I landed in Tokyo at about Midday. The wonderful Matt Ball was kind enough to meet me at Shinjuku Station (The largest underground station in the world, I'm told!) and showed me the way back to our apartments. I had approximately 30 minutes of looking out of the window going "wow! I'm in Tokyo!" before collapsing on the bed for a few hours of well needed sleep.

Sunday evening John, Alan, Matt, Abdul and Michelle and I went out for dinner in this amazing place where you cooked your own omlette style dishes on a hot plate in front of where we sat.

I think the dish was called Okonomi-yaki, and John wins the best prize for Okonomi-yaki flipping abilities.

Here is a bowl full of the fish ingredients, squid and Octopus!

The next morning, Abdul and I had a plan to explore Tokyo. We started off seeing where John had been living for the last month:

I thought it was really cool how the underground station almost opened into the Theatre public space.. such a good idea! John introduced me to the cast and crew and some of the Team at NNTT, and then he headed into the final tech rehearsal, and Abdul and I headed into the sunshine.

We went to Harajuku so I could see some cosplay. I wasn't ready for how extreme they all were.

The girl on the right was all smiles and then BOOM. Angry face.

We went to get a spot of lunch in this restaurant that my Lonely Planet recommended to us, and we got stopped by a camera crew, who asked us all about why were were in Tokyo, and why were were in that restaraunt, then made me show them the Lonely Planet app, and read the description of where we were. Apparently the show will be aired on Sunday Night- so if anyone in Japan spots it, please send me a link! Here's Abdul with the camera crew:

After a speedy look around Harajuku, we met up with Matt Ball and embarked on a massive queue to get day tickets for  some Kabuki Theatre at Kabuki-za. This amazing theatre had only just reopened that week, so we were very fortunate to get seats!

Here's the website of the theatre if you want to take a look (i advise you use google to translate the page!) http://www.kabuki-za.co.jp/

It was amazing how the audience shouted the names of the actors out as they entered and exited the stage. There are some brilliant Kabuki videos on youtube if you want to take a look.

This morning, Matt Ball and I got up super early to take the bullet train to Kobe, where I am currently writing to you from a hotel room at 2.30am (ahh, jetlag).

We had some amazing views on the journey:

Mount Fuji!

Matt gave a wonderful presentation about NTW and Waleslab for a consortium of Producers and Artists in Japan, we then listened to presentations by some local Creatives.

and a local government official told us about his city, using the most brilliant "paper PowerPoint". It was wonderful to see such a supportive government official at the event.

Below the government official proposed that we combine dance and civil service as a new city scheme. Here's his final "powerpoint slide":

I was then invited to join the panel session, where we talked about working with communities to make work (on and offline). Here I am with Matt and Manami, from the British Council:

We finished the night off with a meal with a huge group of artists from the local area, it was so nice to have time to sit and share food with such a wonderful group of people.

I also got some lessons in Japanese social networks.. introducing Line!

It seems to have lots of games, free phone calls and animated gifs! That's my kind of network!

I got back to the hotel a few hours ago, and I've been catching up on emails and skype calls as It's only 6pm in Wales. Tomorrow we head off early to Kyoto for a meeting, before heading back to Tokyo for The Opportunity of Efficiency's Opening/Press Night! I can't wait!

More soon,

Katherine