Off to Tokyo today for a couple of nights, so I've created this album to share any interesting photos I come across during the trip.

Photo Key:

1-3) On the journey to Tokyo the bus always stops at the Yokokawa (横川) service area. (Props to the BMW GS1200 motorbike parked up, very envious.)

4) The queue outside きじ when we arrived for lunch on Sunday. More photos and a write-up here.

5) No accounting for taste! Hato Bus is a company in Tokyo organising bus tours in and around the city. Never been on one myself, but their buses are easy to spot because they're bright yellow. Obviously somebody working there loves Hello Kitty.

6) Something I haven't seen before. It's a price list of train tickets to all available stations, written in braille.

7) Tommy Lee Jones looking up at Tokyo Tower while enjoying a can of Boss coffee. Some of his amusing adverts for Boss coffee are on YouTube.

8-14) These were taken in and around Shiba Park (芝公園). I like the fact that in photo 10 the Tokyo Tower is reflected in the windows of the modern Atago Mori Tower. Photo 11 is the gate at the entrance to the Zojoji (増上寺) temple grounds, and numbers 12-14 combine Zojoji with Tokyo Tower.

15) View from the pedestrian bridge south of Shinjuku station, looking towards the huge Takashimaya Times Square department store complex and NTT Docomo's Yoyogi Tower (which looks a bit like a huge Big Ben).

16) Back at Yokokawa service area on the way home, a drink vending machine like you've never seen before! More than just giving you a huge range of hot and cold drinks to choose from, numerous cameras inside the machine actually show you your drink being made on the screen near the top. My "chocolattino" with Cinnamon topping took a couple of minutes to make, from the Columbian coffee beans dropping down, to the cup with lid making its final journey out of the hole at the bottom. Very impressive! And 200 yen per cup (about £1.30).