Japan is one of my favourite places on the planet. You'll never find a safer, cleaner and more polite country and it's full of wonderful contrasts from zen gardens to electric city. Their healthy diet only went wrong because it's so easy to eat so much of it, but I will admit to one or two challenging dishes for the western palate.

But that pales into insignificance when compared to the biggest challenge...figuring out what on earth is going on and making sense of the Japanese language !