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2010 is, we're told, the year of 3D television, so February 2010 was the month where I travelled to Vienna to see some of the new sets they'll be selling very soon. These are actually quite impressive, with the two caveats that they'll cost a fortune (in the region of £1500-2000) and there's very little to watch on them right now. And, obviously, the effect is somewhat better when you stack nine humongous sets on top of one another, like so:

But with that all dealt with I had three hours or so to see Vienna itself. Fortunately we were put up right in the middle of the city, at the rather posh Do and Co hotel, so I was able to stroll in a kind of circle around the town centre without wasting any time getting there in the first place.

The centre is dominated by the cathedral – huge, covered in scaffolding and with a remarkable roof that appears to have been made out of coloured Lego bricks. Past that, there are the usual shopping streets, stuffed full of horrible Mozart-themed tat shops and guarded by giant bears:

.. but then a block or so further and you hit the rather grand architecture. Incredibly grand buildings are to Vienna as fried chicken shops are to South London – one around every corner, and soon blending into one despite having actually quite different facades.

In fact, there are so many staggering bits of old architecture that people don't really seem to care – somebody was so nonplussed by this building and the statue in front of it that they saw fit to dump a huge ugly industrial generator there.

Note also the piles of snow: it was bitterly cold. Freezing slowly to death I headed further to Parliament and the Museums Quarter, which includes several apparently excellent art galleries placed around one square:

.. but it was cold, empty and desolate, and most of the galleries in the modern art museum were closed for rehanging. Not quite what I was hoping for.

Fortunately, there's one area in which Vienna can be guaranteed to excel: coffee and cake. Three of us took a trip to Café Central, apparently a favourite of Leon Trotsky, and stuffed down some of this:

And then it was time for the rush back to the airport, full of caffeine and cream, and a long time spent circling about London waiting for a landing slot at Heathrow. All in all, an interesting place – but if I ever go back I'll try to do so in summer and with time to check out the palaces properly. More photos here.

It's been a while since we returned from Japan. I'm not even going to attempt to explain what it was like – just go, see, enjoy – but I did think I'd jot down a few tips for anyone planning a similarly short visit to Tokyo. And so here's the ten things that I'd absolutely recommend seeing.

1) Tsujiki

Yes, the fish market. Every guidebook will tell you to go here, and the good ones will tell you to go early in the morning while you're still suffering from the kind of jetlag that makes a 4am start seem natural rather than ungodly. Get there at 5am and fight straight through to the tuna auctions at the back, then take a walk around while trying not to get killed by the motorised carts that whiz around. The size of the market and the variety of fish on offer is genuinely breathtaking – although that may also have something to do with the heady stench of dead fish and petrol fumes.

What the guidebook won't tell you: Tokyo's subway lines don't actually start up early enough to get you here by 5am. We managed to get there by 5.30 and caught some of the tuna auctions, but if I were to do it again I'd get a cab there a bit earlier.

Photos: lots, here.

2) Shinjuku

Thanks in part to a certain massively overrated movie, Shibuya has come to signify the neon heart of Tokyo for many westerners. While it is all very impressive and worth seeing, given the choice between spending two hours wandering around Shibuya at night gawking at neon or doing the same in Shinjuku, I'd pick the latter in a heartbeat. Surrounding the frankly enormous Shinjuku Station, it sprawls out in every direction in a maze of neon signs, electronics stores, bookstores, department stores, tiny restaurants, pachinko, arcades and general chaos. The effect of walking around for a few hours after dark is a bit like being bludgeoned around the head with the world biggest, sparlkiest, loudest novelty Pokemon hammer (that is to say, brilliant).

With Shinjuku station connecting the JR lines (including the Yamanote), Tokyo Metro subways, Toei subways (Oedo line) and even the private Odakyu lines, it's also a great place to stay. We stayed in the Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku – a chain hotel that was cheapish, scrupulously clean and generally nice.

What the guidebook won't tell you: A good guidebook should mention that, with so many commuters passing through the Shinjuku area every evening, there are loads of cheap restaurants serving the usual counter-style food (katsu, don, curry, etc etc). This makes it a good place to eat for just a few hundred yen. What they don't mention is that the many ticket restaurants, where you order and pay at a machine, make life easy even for the kanji-illiterate. Oh, and there are some excellent ramen places, too.

It's also worth mentioning that Shinjuku has to be one of the biggest, most sprawling and confusing stations in the world, with about a million floors and exits, so don't ever make plans that require navigating it quickly.

Photos: a few by day, and lots by night.

3) Meiji Jingu Gyoen

The biggest and most important temple in Tokyo is probably the Yasukuni Shrine, but Yasukuni is also politically contentious – partly due to its enshrinement of over 1,000 convicted war criminals, and partly due to the Yushukan, a museum that presents a revisionist interpretation of the second world war. Both are the subject of fierce controversy within Japan. If neither dissuades you from visiting I hear it's impressive, but I decided not to attend.

Whether or not you visit Yasukini, however, the Meiji Jingu is well worth a visit. It's dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, and contains everything you'd expect from a Shinto temple on a massive scale, with unfeasibly huge and particularly beautiful Torri. On your way in, however, keep an eye to the left..

What the guidebook won't tell you: .. because otherwise you might not notice the entrance to the Gyoen. This formal garden, apparently "constructed according to the design of Emperor Meiji himself in order to give recreation to Empress Shoken", is beautiful and almost impossibly calm considering it's only a few miles from Harajuku JR station. Huge swathes are dedicated to special iris gardens, sadly not in bloom when I attended. It costs 100Y or so to enter.

Photos: here.

3) Odaiba

This man-made island is culturally about as far from the Meiji Jingu Gyoen as you can get. Guidebooks don't make much of it, and you can see why – there's a Disney-ish air to the place, all artificiality and crass commercialism – but it is, in many respects, fascinating. Go to take a look around huge, themed shopping malls such as Aqua City, then see the Statue of Liberty or even the (temporary, huge) giant Gundam robot. Odaiba also provides a great view across the bay.

What the guidebook won't tell you: Aqua City holds both the Sega Joypolis – an arcade of mindboggling size that's worth seeing even if you do have to pay to enter – and a smaller arcade dedicated to old arcade games (Namco, Taito etc) that's a must for video game geeks. Manga/anime fans should also look out for the Jump Shop.

Photos: many, including giant robots, here.

5) The Ghibli Museum, Mikata

Those who have not heard of Studio Ghibli should click here, buy a lot of DVDs, watch them, then return here. If you have seen the films, you'll want to visit this museum, located in Mikata, in the western suburbs – and in which case you'll need to buy a ticket months in advance (see below).

The museum itself is an entirely Japanese-only affair save for a single leaflet in English, but as it's targeted at kids this isn't really a problem – even if you can't read a word, there's lots to enjoy. As well as the exhibits on the making of Ghibli animations (all very hands-on, with flipbooks etc) and the reference material used (photos of European towns taken when designing the look of Kiki's Delivery Service, for example) there's a bookshop, a cafe and, best of all, a giant (as in life-sized) cat bus for small kids to play on while their older siblings and adults watch enviously. The grounds and the museum building are beautiful, and each visitor also gets to see a Ghibli film created solely for the museum in its own cinema – there are a few, and what you see is random, but ours was really rather charming.

What the guidebook won't tell you: Fortunately some friends warned us that tickets sell out months in advance, and with a very limited number released at any one time. To buy tickets in the UK, visit the My Bus travel agency – it's in the basement of the Mitsukoshi department store on Regent Street (tel 020 7976 1191). Passports are needed to prove that you're not a Japanese citizen attempting to jump the queue for tickets released in Japan. We purchased ours three months in advance. Also, the museum has a limited capacity and no timed-ticket system for international tickets – so show up early to save having to wait around outside.

Photos: are not allowed inside the museum, but a few of the outside are here.

6) Meguro

An odd one, this, but stick with me: one afternoon I found myself in Ebisu outside an annoyingly closed beer museum, so with two hours to kill I took a walk. I got totally, utterly lost, ended up in Meguro and was thoroughly glad I did.

Meguro isn't at all touristy, although it does play home to a castle-shaped love hotel, the biggest and scariest wedding shop you've ever seen, a rather beautiful shrine dedicated to the victims of a great fire and, apparently, the Curl Up Cafe cat cafe (didn't see this myself). It's worth visiting for an hour or so, though, to see a bit of everyday Tokyo life outside the neon-craziness of Shinjuku and the other central areas – it's full of coffee shops, pachinko parlours and people just getting on with stuff. Be prepared to be stared at a little more than usual.

What the guidebook won't tell you: Pretty much anything at all. I think mine mentioned the Meguro Gajoen, which is indeed worth seeing.

Photos: a few here.

7) The Shinkansen

If you go to Japan, get a Shinkansen at some point. If you have the time, I'd say Kyoto would be a good destination – we didn't, so we went to Hakone for the Onsen (see #8) – but the journey is, in this case, as important as the destination. Why so good? Well:

1. They are as fast as bloody hell. Or possibly much faster. When the really fast services fly past in bad weather you can actually see a shockwave push the rain out of the way in front of them. Zwoosh.
2. Despite this, the train runs so smoothly it could be gliding on ice.
3. They are so punctual that the average deviation from the timetable, averaged over 160,000 trips, is around six seconds. Six fucking seconds. In a country that gets regularly whunked by earthquakes.
4. People don't talk on the sodding mobile phone on Japanese trains.

Or to put it another way: ride a Shinkansen and the utter shitness of all other trains, everywhere in the world, becomes abundantly clear. This is how rail transport should work.

What the guidebook won't tell you: This isn't Shinkansen related, but it is to do with trains: when you arrive at Narita, buy the N'EX and Suica special deal. This gets you the fast service into Tokyo, plus an Oyster-style card that works on all JR and subway (Toei and Tokyo Metro) lines in the city, at a discount.

Photos: see inside the Shinkansen here and here.

8) Onsen

I don't have a photo of this one, for reasons that will become obvious: onsen are Japanese hot spring baths. In order to partake of a traditional one you'll have to leave Tokyo; we headed to Hakone, near Mt Fuji. Some can be used for a fee, while many are reserved for the guests of a particular hotel or ryokan (traditional inn). We stayed in a ryokan with its own onsen – I'd recommend this, although it is very expensive by budget-travel standards. Look for outdoor onsen with a view if the weather's good.

However you get to an onsen, though, you'll come out feeling either invigorated, broiled or both. I was sceptical, but it's absolutely worth trying: cooking slowly in a hot pond while looking out over the mountains and forests of Japan at 7am is a fantastic way to start the day.

What the guidebook won't tell you: Onsen etiquette is pretty complicated. At the end of the day, however, it boils down to something like this: make sure you go in the right onsen (learn the kanji for Male and Female, or just ask someone), get completely naked leaving your clothes in the ante-chamber, wash yourself thoroughly while sitting on a bucket type thing that'll be provided, then get in the bath and cook. I've heard that "modesty towels" are a must, but I didn't see a single person bothering with this – instead small towels were used solely for brow-mopping.

Photos: of the onsen? Er, no. Photos of the ryokan and beautiful Hakone are here.

9) Eat until your body complains, and then some more

If you don't like Japanese food then Tokyo is, funnily enough, not a good place to visit. If you do, then it's obviously time to get stuck in. We ate one formal dinner at the ryokan (above), then largely concentrated on the "great cheap food" variety: sushi, katsu, don, noodles of every shape and size, gyoza, yakitori and so on. Oh, and ramen. You can buy passable ramen in London, but nothing I've had anywhere else compares with the real stuff in Tokyo. And the grilled fish is also great. And there's good beer. And shochu.

What the guidebook won't tell you: Ordering can be tricky when menus are in kanji, but knowing the words for one, two, this one and that one can get you a very long way on most menus, especially when many cheaper restaurants include images of set meals. Also, try giru – cold soba noodles that you slurp through a small container of soy-ish broth. I'd never heard of them before, and they're great.

Photos: Not really, no. I was too busy stuffing my face.

10) Fuji-San

No trip to Japan would be complete without seeing the iconic Mr Fuji, right? Er, probably – except we failed on this count. Part of the reason for heading out to Hakone was to see Fuji from one of the many viewing points in the area, but sadly we were foiled by thick clouds at every turn. Hope you have better luck.

What the guidebook won't tell you: That even in the middle of summer it gets incredibly cloudy up in the mountains around Owakudani. Although, to be fair, we should have guessed.

Photos: fail.

And that's it. It's not a complete account by any means, but I hope this might prove at least vaguely useful to somebody. We'll be going back as soon as possible – next time to hopefully include Kyoto and a glimpse of that mountain – and I'll update this with any new information as and when I can.

I spent Tuesday rushing to France and back on the Eurostar, attending a Dell press conference at Versailles. About three hours in I spotted this plaque: it turns out the hotel ballroom was used to draft the famous Treaty – now it's a site for business meetings.

At the end of the afternoon a few of us had an hour spare, so we went around the corner to the palace. It's predictably spectacular:

.. and the gardens are something else:

.. but sadly we had no time to do any more than take a quick glance around. At 7pm it was back in a taxi, back to the Gare du Nord, back on the Eurostar and back to London. Eighteen hours, about 1,000km, three press conferences, one interview, two news stories, three glasses of wine underneath the channel and twelve photos here. Not bad for one day.

I went, I saw, I nearly concussed myself by walking into a signpost (top tip: if trying to compare a map in one hand with an email on your phone in the other, do so while stationary), but I escaped Cebit. And here's what I learned, in pictoral form.

First, the show. It's as large as everyone says: around 30 halls, each about so big:

.. so you walk for miles and miles each day back and forth. Inside each hall there are around 200 booths. Finding the one you need is a nightmare – often it pays to get a view from above, if possible:

.. and work-wise, the show went well. Everyone's there, and once you get inside the booths and out of public view there's some fantastic new stuff planned for the next year or so, some of it secret for the time being. Outside it's a deranged mix of exhibitors (many), businesses (many), press (a few) and the public (amazingly, loads – not entirely sure why). So, the Cebit show scores 8/10. No holiday, but it does what it's there to do.

And what of Hannover? Well, it's quite nice: fairly small, but with a nice central district and some beautiful places in the old town. Get away from the "Irish" pubs, for example, and you can find little places like this:

Sadly I can't even vaguely remember what that bar's called, but you'll find it a stone's throw from the old church. Hannover itself picks up 7/10: if going as a tourist them head to Berlin instead, but it's quite nice.

So, what went wrong? Well, apart from nearly decapitating myself, the one key thing I learned is this: if going to Hannover, first purchase a map. And, preferably, a car to go with it, as the transit system is totally, utterly baffling. We spent hours standing on train platforms, in the cold, waiting for a train with that sinking feeling that comes from being entirely unsure whether it's even going to take you in the right direction:

In fact, during three days in Hannover we managed to get on the wrong train entirely (some stations, we found, had no maps, and the platforms do not list intermediate stops), the right train only to find that it was turned around and sent back the way we'd come (I was shamefully pleased that we weren't the only people caught out by this), a train that turned out to be a tram and then went underground (WTF?) and trains that, for some reason, were not covered by our tickets (not an ICE train – we knew about those, at least).

And all this on top of at least 2 hours of train travel per day because we had to come in the (reasonably nearby) town of Celle, which was similarly devoid of rail maps. Compare this to Berlin, for example, where the complicated transport system (S-Bahn, U-Bahn, trams and buses all overlapping) is cheap and easy to navigate. Hannover scores 2/10 in the "getting around without a car" category.

So all in all, last week was a mixed bag. Good show, nice city, godawful trains – oh, and really, really bad coffee. Still after four days, it was time to leave:

.. and I can't tell you how good it is to be back in London. I may not complain about SouthEastern Railways ever again.

Somewhere in Bavaria lies the city of Augsburg. Somewhere in Augsburg lies a Fujitsu-Siemens factory. Somewhere near that factory lies a conference centre. And in that centre, on Wednesday…

.. you could find this charming room, and me inside it. One conference keynote plus one interview plus one photo plus one comment from Greenpeace (and after factoring in about ten cups of coffee) you have one news story, and so before flying back out on Thursday I had time to check out the city. And here it is:

It's all rather pretty, actually, with cobbled streets, trams everywhere and fountains. Fountains that, for some inexplicable reason, are all covered by pointy wooden hats, as if to protect them from the rain (because, as we all know, fountains and water don't mix). And then there's the Fuggerei:

The Fuggeri was founded in 1516 by the Fugger family who, being both breathtakingly rich and Catholic, wanted to keep in God's good books and were able to blow vast sums on doing so. They did this by building a whole city district, comprising of really rather nice homes, and renting them out for a tiny fee – plus three prayers a day – to poor, Catholic residents of the city. It's still running today, funded by tourism (4 euros to enter), the Fugger family and, to some very small extent, the rent (just 98 euro cents per resident per year).

So, once you've seen the social housing and the Fujitsu factory, what else is there in Augsburg in November? Not much. The worst thing would be this fellow, staring out of a hunting shop window:

And the best thing? That'd be the cake:

If you like cake, you will like Augsburg. We found dozens of cake shops, including the one above, whose cake counter must have been almost 100m long. Hedgehog shaped cakes, cherry cakes, fruit cakes, cream cakes.. it's all a bit bewildering. So, we ate cake. And drank coffee. And bought more cake. And all very nice it was too. And then to the airport, through a slightly demented security check that took exception to my camera, and home.

So, Augsburg. Worth flying there? Not really. Worth a couple of hours if you happen to be nearby? Sure. Is that a glowing recommendation? I suppose not.

Travel certainly rates as one of the most pleasant surprises of my job: before joining Dennis as a Staff Writer I had no idea that magazine work would ever require a passport. As it is, I've done plenty of mundane travel around the UK – exploring the glamour of Sutton Coldfield, for example – but I've also been lucky enough to visit China, Korea, Singapore, the US and most of Western Europe over the past six or so years.

The downside of travelling for work is that, no matter how wonderful it is to get to places that I could never otherwise afford to visit, these trips are never holidays. For one thing, Helen's not there. And of course there's work to be done – never fun when jet lag is scrambling your brain backwards, for example, and you're trying desperately to plug credit card details into a completely incomprehensible foreign website to buy wireless internet access to send your emails.

And of course there's seldom any free time. Sometimes we get half a day or so off if the job runs for several days, and in Singapore our six-day schedule allowed a whole day to roam the city, but I flew in and out of China in 24 hours – there wasn't a free minute to look beyond the hotel, let alone explore the town. I'm still glad of the opportunity to see new places, but I can see why someone might want to pack it in for a year and travel the world properly.

And so tomorrow, if all goes to plan, I'm off to California. The first three days should be as usual: about 16 hours of travel to get there then two days of press conferences, interviews and, hopefully, some interesting news to write up. Rather than starting my fourth day in a mad dash to the airport, though, I'm picking up a hire car – I've delayed my return for a few days in the hope of actually seeing the America that lurks beyond the city limits, and which to date I've entirely missed out on (although having just read this I'll be sticking religiously to the speed limit, so who knows how far I'll get). Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but I'd expect a deluge of shoddily taken Flickr photos in a week or so.

.. and all I got were these lousy photos. And a news story about antivirus software, which was really the point of the exercise, but never let the truth get in the way of a bad pun.

Anyhow, I went for a walk, got lost, took photos, somehow found my bearings again and made it back to the hotel for the press conference, which was something of a relief.

On an only vaguely related note, I've tweaked the Wordpress template to make it play nicely with Flickr pictures (which are 500px wide by default). Looks OK to me, but please let me know if I done broked it.