There is no doubt that Kyoto is capitalising on its assets - the youth hostel here is the most expensive place I've stayed so far, except for the Hotel in Chennai that Surya's parents generously paid for. And it doesn't even have a kitchen we could use (I ranted about this for hours to my poor fellow travellers).

When you tire of temples, Kyoto offers a whole range of alternative activities. Top of the list must be shopping. Chain stores have only a weak grip on the market here, so there are surprises around every corner. No shop is quite what you expect - neither the large department stores nor the small shops selling extensive ranges of both audio equipment and dogfood. And they sell those objects that you would have never imagined existed - but suddenly realise that your life has been impoverished without.

Predictably, the stars of the show are the electronic shops. Through these doorways lies the bleeping blinking hi-res future. Everything is easier, sleeker and in more colours. Every aspect has been considered and designed to the infinitesimal detail. The emperor of this gadget paradise must be the mobile phone: not only can you buy your multicolour-display, web-browsing, email-enabled microscopic mobile phone, but you can purchase a bewildering array of accessories for it. I saw hands-free kits in a hundred colours, funky cases, flashing aerials and things to hang from them. I never saw a mobile phone in Japan without at least one of these personalisation add-ons.

If rampant consumerism is not your thing, then instead of buying electronic gadgets you can spend your time feeding money into them. From the karaoke parlours to the clattering chatter of the pachinko parlours - vertical pinball gone mad - the range is endless. They even have a dance version of karaoke. A machine that requires you to dance out a rhythm on four floor pads in time to the music and signals from a gyrating 3-D figure on the screen. It's frenetic and the players are unbelievably fast - it would be a hit in Britain (if it's not already).

Another would-be British hit has already begun to leak into Britain: Print Club. The idea is simple: take a passport photo of you and your friends with a background and a foreground image, and then print it many times onto small stickers so that you can swap with friends and, more importantly, collect. We went into a Print Club shop, lined with a multitude of machines each with different themes and digital backdrops. I was way out on the edge of the demographics, which were centred, it seemed, on high-school girls. But, like Karaoke, I couldn't go to Japan without doing Print Club. So we did, and it was fun. And now I have a book to put them in - so watch out when they, and I, reach Britain.