One of the things I found most surprising about Japan was that every hotel provides pyjamas. The PJs are usually laid out neatly on top of the bed, rather than tucked away in a wardrobe like robes and slippers often are in Western hotels. According to Google, this is done for a mix of cultural, practical and hospitality reasons. You can look that up for yourselves. We found that pyjamas were provided in both traditional Japanese hotels and Western-style chains. In every case,

A day spent mostly travelling. The day started with breakfast on the plane — 05:30 Tokyo time, or 20:30 London time. Neither is an acceptable time for breakfast. Not far to go now — two hours to landing. I can’t work out where my AirPods are, though they seem close… and charged. We had hot soba noodles for breakfast — a bargain price of £8 — before settling in for an hour’s wait for our next flight up to Sapporo, which promises to be snowy. This will be a surprising change fr