Food

If you're going out for food the best place I can recommend is Shin Hi no Moto (a.k.a. Andy's Izakaya). It's run by a friendly English guy (Andy) and his family. It gets really busy later on so you're best to phone and book on +81 3 3214 8021. It's okay, you can book in English. They do amazing sashimi platters and big mugs of beer. Just make sure you don't order rice (there's no rice in an izakaya and they might scowl at you if you do). You can get there by taking the Yamanote line to Yurakucho.

• Andy's Shin Hi no Moto

For general daily eats, I'm addicted to Yoshinoya. Especially their Gyuu-don. Tasty, healthy and cheap. You can find Yoshinoya everywhere.

Walks

West Central Tokyo

If you're going to be there over a Sunday, you have to go to Harajuku. Even if you aren't there on a Sunday, the walk up Takeshita-dori is great fun. Here's a map of a little walk you can take up Takeshita-dori, round Harajuku and down to Shibuya:

• Takeshita-Harajuku-Shibuya

North-East Central Tokyo

If you fancy some culture, try this route. It takes in the Imperial Palace, Sumo museum and Edo-Toyko museum. You can finish off in Akihabara for sheer geek awesome or save that for another day.

• Imperial Palace-Edo-Tokyo Museum

Tokyo bay/Odaiba

Some people called me crazy for enjoying it but I like the walk across the rainbow bridge to Odaiba. Take the Yamanote to Tamachi and wander east-ish. You'll see the bridge once you're closer to the shore. You can take the lift up to the start of the walk and then wander out for some amazing views. It is, unfortunately, very noisy due to all the traffic but it's worth it. Head right across the bridge and follow it down, it'll probably take about an hour. Once you're on dry land again on Odaiba, you can wander around the shopping malls there (Aquacity, Seaside mall), take in the Statue of Liberty, go for a bite to eat and eventually head back. If you time it for getting dark, you can either get some amazing views of the bridge lit up at night or just enjoy the Yurikamome ride back (it's a completely automated train with no driver).

• Rainbow Bridge-Odaiba-Yurikamome

Views

For the best view across Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building (a.k.a. TMG or Tocho) really can't be beaten (especially as it's free to go up). It's in Shinjuku.

• Tokyo Metropolitan Government building

Music, much like mathematics, is a young person's game. If you haven't made it by the time you're 25, your chances of making an impact on the world are significantly diminished. That's not to say it's impossible, it's just much less likely.

Basically, I'm beginning to come to the realisation I'm not going to be a rock star. I might not even make it into space. To that end, I've decided that, instead of scribbling away at writing and rewriting the same songs I've been trying to improve for the last 10 years, I'd go the other way. A few months ago, I put a dictaphone next to the piano and started recording the occasional random improvisation. Originally, the idea had been to pick the best bits and rework them for some reason or another but after listening back to them, I found there's some appeal in just hearing the raw first-take complete with do-overs and occasional accidental 'quotes' from other pieces.

Over the next little while, I'll be uploading some of them just so that I know I've done something with them other than leave them on a tape in the back of a drawer. When listening to them, bear in mind two things:

1. The piano needs retuned almost every week so some of it might be a bit rough.
2. This is, as the title says, 'Uncooked Composition'. I come in from work, take my shoes off, sit down at the piano, press record. There's no post-processing anywhere so there will be mistakes and do-overs.

In one of my day jobs I do something involving education, large public institutions and web stuff and a while back I thought it might be an excellent idea to have a go at designing some cool educational toys. Learnin' 'n' Fun! At the same time! omg! And so forth!

The idea was to build the kind of thing you could use to squeeze knowledge into people's heads without them complaining. Y'see, it's never a good thing to trick people into learning. If your educational toy/game/experience relies too much on hiding the information behind the fun then the big reveal at the end – "Ha, I tricked you into learning something!" – will leave the player feeling cheated and not change their attitude towards learning. If, on the other hand, you try and push the ideas you want to get across at the expense of the core game mechanic, you'll end up with a bored user. My opinion is that you've got to be up front about the learning. You've got to say to the user "Look, this is learning and it's fun. No tricks here, it's exactly what it looks like". As for getting it to appeal in the first place, I find that very few things can beat extremely cute cartoons.

To that end, I present my first dabble in interactive educational whaddyamacallits: The Elementals, a fun periodic table where every element has its own unique personality.

It's available as an iPhone app initially but I'll be venturing into the Android Marketplace soon and putting it online as a web app.