My first foray into Shinjuku nightlife proved slightly confusing. I wanted to find some bars in a district called “Golden Gion”, but which ever way I walked around the blocks I ended back up in the Tokyo equivalent of Soho, albeit possibly a bit safer but much much weirder.

My local bar here is a place called “Heart Beat”. This is a common concept in Tokyo – a barman, a cook and about five seats in a bar the size of your average bedroom. The cook operates in something the size of a cupboard, from which he does the cooking (with a cigarette clamped between his lips). I drink Sapporo beer whilst helping out the barman with his English menu on his iPad. There are some wonderful misspellings! A bored businessman drinks Scotch and we compare watches. He wins as he has quite a rare Rolex Submariner that he seems to know very little about.

On my second foray into Shinjuku failure isn’t an option. Yuka steers me personally in to a small street close to the west side of Shinjuku station for a close target recce on a place that I would never find without her. In fact moments after being shown it, I can’t find it again.. If you ever saw those Harry Potter films, it’s like a Japanese version of “Diagon Alley”! It’s packed with tiny places serving food and drinks to salarymen who are not ready to go home. Their significant others would never hope to discover them in this hidden and secret enclave of underworld Yakatori and booze!

My firm and immediate favourite is the “Albatross Bar”. It has a rather trendy barman who plays very cool music and mixes cocktails for a couple of men in suits. He serves me like I have been drinking here for years – once I have worked out how to turn around and sit down in a space not big enough to swing a millipede.

The Albatross has made an extra effort with its chandeliers. These would be well placed in a small stately home, but in here I find myself talking to them, through them and around them at the bar as the dominate the inside of the place. Using a phrase “at the bar” might imply you have a choice where to be. You don’t as there is barely three feet of space in front of it.

I found these places incredibly friendly and safe to be in. If you are coming to Tokyo you must try and find this bar scene. It really is the “underbelly” of Tokyo and the kind of place Dechard would certainly enjoy a quiet beer in before pursuing and terminating illegal replicants.

Wikipedia suggests that its poison is 1200 times stronger than cyanide and close to Sarin or VX gas in the way it paralyses your central nervous system. You can’t buy a pufferfish as it is illegal to prepare one without the licence, hence they tend to be kept alive in tanks at special fugu restaurants.

I met up this morning with Yuka, my guide and fixer in Tokyo. Our first port of call is the Tsukiji fish market. It’s a huge and busy place selling 10% of the world’s fish every day. The prices of some of the fish are extraordinary, but still much cheaper on a kilo basis than at my local supermarket. There are not many tourists here as groups are not allowed into the wholesale part of the market, and I can see why with all that’s going on. (In passing, the whole market is being relocated prior to the Japan Olympic Games, so this spectacle may not be on offer for much longer).

Long cutting swords are an essential tool in the fish mongers arsenal. After a decade of fastidious sharpening they are several inches shorter though. Every famous restaurant has a local supplier here, many specialising in certain types of fish or fishy bits. And ninja snapper turtles..

After the market its time to taste some incredibly fresh sushi. It hasn’t even had to travel more than a couple of hundred metres from the market.

I’m immediately struck by some great sushi bar etiquette. All the staff literally all shout a greeting to every new customer, it’s kind of a lucky tradition and makes you think at first that you might not be properly dressed or have accidentally left the door open – but once you know, you certainly feel very welcome!

I try all the main sorts of nigiri (except smoked eel – I have never been a fan..). It’s got an incredible “melt in your mouth” feel, simply stunning. The chefs are great too – you can interact with them as you eat the nigiri that they carefully prepare, piece by piece. Until today I had no idea that wasabi was a root vegetable.

The day finishes with some sake tasting. I know so little about sake and its hard to know where to start. Hot? Cold? Pasteurised? Fresh? Which season?.. Diving in, we try three very different brands. Time to sweep away my memories of hot and tasteless sake in English Chinese restaurants in the 1980’s – this stuff is like fine wine.. Some of it with prices to match.

I’m going to look out for some good sake to put in my cellar when I get home. I didn’t have time for any official Japanese whisky tasting, but that’s now on my radar too..

I have had an interesting insight into Tokyo coffee culture today. I suggest to Yuka, my guide here in Tokyo, that we stop at Starbucks on the way to Shinjuku station. However she has other ideas. Our first stop of the day is a coffee bar in Shibuya with a difference. It has two resident goats. Apparently you can take them for a walk down to the local station, but when Yuka asks for their leads we find this is only possible after 3pm. The goats make a lot of noise until the barista fixes them some food.. They certainly didn’t teach me this skill on my barista City & Guilds course!

The second coffee bar of the day, also in Shibuya, is no more mainstream. It’s a “cat cafe” where people go to stroke feline friends over a cup of coffee or a fruit smoothie. This place is just weird. It’s on the third floor of an anonymous block off a busy side street.

Reception has a little window, and it’s overseen today by a large black cat who looks through the glass like it might decide which humans to admit. We don’t actually spend time here as you pay by the half hour with the cats as well as for the coffee and cat food. I would also point out that I don’t even like cats..and I don’t think the cat at reception liked me either!

Our third coffee stop is at an amazingly zen place called Omotesando. It’s a tiny garden in a semi domestic street with a wooden screened platform like some sort of shrine. At the altar a kind of mad Japanese scientist barista makes very serious cups of coffee. If coffee were a martial art, this chap is clearly a black belt master. I’m deeply impressed when I watch him make a close to perfect cup of espresso and reject it for some tiny unexplained reason.

Between coffee stops I’m keen to see some pachinko. If you haven’t heard of this, its a form of semi legalised gambling using machines that fire ball bearings at slots like a pinball machine without the flippers. After WW2 there was lots of obvious spare capacity in the Japanese ball bearing industry and it took off. Inside the parlour it’s insanely loud and busy with some clearly addicted punters trying to get an edge on their chosen machines.

The best players have baskets of ball bearings behind their seats marking them out as pachinko “Top Guns”. The machines are designed to absorb every ounce of your senses and make you lose track of time. They even have integrated chargers for you phone if you are making a day of it.

Yuka and I give it a go, and it’s clear she is much better at it than me. However, we quickly blast through 2000 Yen without anything to show for it ten minutes later!

As a visitor to Tokyo things are not always as they seem, you just need to embrace the weirdness and enjoy it. I certainly am. I just wish I was in this great city a bit longer.. Never mind, blogging next about deadly fish!

You probably know that these days the word “Shinkansen” is used to generically describe a number of different types of Japanese high speed train. My train today is another Hikari Super Express, this time the 464, bound for Tokyo. The fastest, with the least number of stops is the “Nozumi”. You cannot use these trains with a JR rail pass, but you can use the second tier of trains (same type of train, more stops) called the “Hikari”.

Kyoto’s main station is a very modern place, integrated with shopping malls and hotels. The whole place smells of popcorn and freshly baked cookies. The soundtrack is a blend of indecipherable Japanese tannoy announcements mixed with the rumble of trains overhead as you emerge upwards towards the platforms.

On the platform a train arrives every five minutes or so and takes off after a loud electronic beeping noise warns anyone in any doubt on the platform. The trains themselves seem almost silent and so aerodynamic that they cut their own hole in the air ahead of them.

Time to put my feet up for the three hour journey. The snow slowly disappears even though we are heading north. The slopes of Mount Fuji glisten in the winter sun. The windows seem too big, but that’s because your mind confuses the cabin with that of an aircraft. There are no digital indicators of the train’s speed. The Japanese must just take it for granted that as its a Shinkansen train, it’s going to be travelling at Shinkansen speed. A lady greets each new passenger with a hot towel. There is a trolley service selling basic snacks, but surprisingly to me, no proper food is served on the train.

All too soon we pull into Yokohama and ten minutes later we are at Tokyo’s central station. I have forgotten that I’m actually staying near Shinjuku station and not this station, so my taxi costs a small fortune..

Time for what Louis Theroux would call a “weird weekend” in Tokyo.

The Shinkansen has its own dedicated “terminal” on top of the regular station, and I’m soon on the right platform. As this is a terminus, the train arrives on the platform more than 20 minutes before we are due to depart, so I can hop straight on. I’m in carriage no 9, which is “green”, or first class.

The guard bows at us when he enters and leaves the carriage, and the difference between sitting on the floor of unreserved limited express and sitting in green seat of the Hikari could not be more extreme.

Before we set off a very well dressed elderly man with big gold framed glasses and a Louis Vitton laptop bag greets me quite formally and sits down next to me. He looks vaguely familiar. I work out where I have seen him before. It’s “Sugai” (or his spitting image) – he’s the Yakuza crime lord from one of my favourite Japan based Hollywood films, “Black Rain”.

The train is delayed by about ten minutes due to snow. It doesn’t seem to be slowing down much though. No weak excuses about “leaves on the line” here! Mr Sugai and I both get off when the train stops in Kyoto and we go our separate ways. It’s time for me to get some well earned rest.