Weekend with Mai

As I mentioned in the last post, Mai came from up north to visit for the weekend. We planned to go on a nice little boat trip to Asakusa to Odaiba (more on that later), but on the way we got distracted by Akihabara. Also known as "electric town," this is the geek district of Tokyo. There are loads of cool electronics shops filled with gadgets and digital wizardry the likes of which we in the west won't see for 10 years. This is the only place in Japan where geeks can truly let their lank, greasy hair down and relish their nerdiness without fear of mockery. Consequently, it's a bit scary. There were loads of anime freaks wandering around in full costume, people were making jokes about computer hardware without a hint of irony, and Mai (being female) was often stared at with a queer mixture of disdain and longing.

Here I am towering over two lovely ladies who wanted me to come to their "maid bar". There are millions of these places in Tokyo. They're just like a normal bar, but the waitresses wear those costumes and pretend to flirt with every single male customer.

This guy is a cartoon character on TV, apparently.

After Akihabara, we continued our journey to Asakusa. This is old-skool Tokyo, with lots of old temples and a big market. It's got a bit of a Chinatown feel. If there were a Japtown in Soho, it would be a bit like Asakusa I think.

All of the cruise boats displayed these rather profound signs all over the place. Certainly cheered me up!


This is the Asahi beer headquarters in Asakusa. The left hand building is obviously the world's biggest beer glass. My Tokyo guide book describes the right hand building as "another huge golden object." Well, there's no denying that.

Many, many people in Japan have entirely pointless and deathly boring jobs. A general rule is that the more pointless and boring the job, the more swanky the uniform. This guy, the "admiral in charge of standing on the deck of the cruise boat and holding a bit of rope" is a perfect example. Also, if you click on the image, you can note the terrifying possessed-ventriloquist's-doll look on his face.

As soon as we got to Odaiba, which is a big fancy commercial complex in the docklands area, we had to get on a train to see Mai's friend's band play. Unfortunately, we didn't realise the train journey would take over 90 mins, and we arrived in some random west Tokyo suburb just as they finished. Disappointed, we headed over to Shinjuku for dinner. In terms of places to go out at night, I'm a big fan of Shinjuku. It's like Shibuya without the inflated drinks prices and excessive gaijin population.

I have no comment to make on this picture.


On Sunday we got up late, had some lunch, and headed over to Yoyogi park. That's where I went last Sunday, and this was pretty much the same fare. On the way, we passed through Shibuya station, and I took this picture of what I believe is the infamous busiest zebra crossing in Tokyo (but maybe that's in Shinjuku, I'm not sure). Pretty crazy, eh?


And finally, isn't this the cutest escalator you've ever seen?


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A fun-filled weekend:
We traversed the whole city
And took in the sights.

A stroll in the park

Wow, the things you can find just 5 minutes from school!

My school is the heart of "booktown", an area of Tokyo famous for its myriad second-hand bookshops. I walk past them every day, and they look fascinating. If the books were in English, I feel sure I would be too distracted to ever make it to school. On Friday, it was the annual booktown festival of books and the selling thereof. It seemed to be pretty much the same as what usually goes on (viz. selling books) but on a slightly larger scale, and with more bunting.


Wandering further afield, I found a great big lake. In the middle of the great big lake was a great big park. In the middle of the great big park was all kinds of weird stuff: concert hall, science museum, you name it.



Note the perfectly framed massive spider in this photo. Took me ages!

As I left the park, I noticed I was on yasukuni-dori. "Yasukuni," I mused to myself, "where have I heard that before?" As I'm sure the more media-aware amongst you (hello, Alice) can tell me, yasukuni jinja is the shrine that the Japanese Prime Minister keeps visiting relentlessly, much to the chagrin of the rest of the world. For the less media-aware, here's a quick rundown: it was built in the late 1800's, and honours every one of Japan's war dead since then. Unfortunately, this happens to include 13 war criminals, and various other Geneva-convention-legal but rather nasty characters. I thought I'd better go and see what all the fuss was about.

This is definitely the ugliest torii I've ever seen. It's made of metal and is all rusty and horrible. Also, look at the whole coachloads of people that have come to honour war criminals. It seems Koizumi is not alone.

After the nasty torii, I was glad to see this very impressive door. As some of you know, I'm a man who likes a good door, and this certainly fits the bill.


So here it is, in all its glory. In my humble opinion, it looks like every other shinto shrine I've ever seen. The thing about shinto shrines is that they hype it up with all those torii, and a big long beautiful path, but once you get there you discover it's just a big box housing an invisible spirit. Very anticlimactic.


After that, I went to school, then picked up Mai from the station. She came to visit for the weekend. More details in the next post....

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I strolled in the park,
Then visited a big shrine,
What a dull haiku.

Mr Chris's Grand Day Out

Well, yesterday was the complete antithesis of everything I was whingeing about on Saturday. It was the most fun day I've had in ages. The Swede didn't join me in the end, but that didn't matter. Let me recount my adventures...

Every day when I go to school I leave Suidoubashi station by the west exit. Yesterday I was feeling frisky so I decided to leave by the east exit instead. I was instantly confronted by this monster of a building.


Drawn by all that shiny chrome and plate glass, I ventured towards it. And behind it I found.... a theme park! That's right, in the middle of Tokyo, the city with the highest rent per square metre in the world, somebody's built a theme park!


I then got on a tube train to Shibuya. This is a trendy district, full of Louis Vuitton shops and beautiful people. Walking the streets in jeans and a t-shirt I felt deeply unfashionable. I was also quite grumpy about the number of gaijin that were crammed into Shibuya. It's strange but after a few weeks here I've really started to dislike gaijin, and especially tourists. Unfortunately, I am a gaijin myself, and I'm probably classed as a tourist too. Hence, I often feel quite ashamed of my foreign-ness, and this feeling is always increased when I'm walking round the gaijin districts such as Shibuya or Roppongi.

While strolling down Omotesandou I was approached by the assistant editor of Tokyo Graffiti magazine, who was eager to interview me. It turns out that interview was a bit of an exaggeration. I had to write down my worst feature on a little whiteboard, then hold it up while they took a picture of me. I have to tell you, it was quite hard to think of anything wrong with me :-) Apparently Tokyo Graffiti is pretty big, so I feel quite special now.

Next, I walked down Takeshita Dori. This is famous as a kind of punk/goth equivalent of Carnaby Street. I'm not the person to try and describe Japanese fashion to you. But this woman obviously is. Sadly, this street was also crammed with gaijin. Grumble, grumble...

Things were getting a bit hectic with all those people around, so I decided to chill out for a bit by visiting the Meiji jingu shrine. It's set in huge, luscious grounds, so it's easy to find a quiet spot to yourself. The torii (archway-thing) is apparently the biggest wooden torii in the country, so I thought I'd better take a picture.

While I was standing around gawping at the shrine, this procession came out of nowhere. No idea what it was about, but it was all very lovely.


I moved on to Yoyogi park. On a Sunday, this place is filled with interesting people. All the young'uns go there to hang around in silly costumes, play music, skate and do ridiculous things with a BMX. The goths are very well-defined into different cliques, and each clique sits in a little cluster on the ground. It's all very Clockwork Orange, the way each group has its own crazy uniform. Before long, I stumbled across these Japanese greasers dancing to Elvis. When I walked past 4 hours later, they were still dancing to Elvis. Different song, same dance.

All along the pavement, loads of local bands play impromptu gigs to plug their CDs or proper gigs. There are so many, all next to each other, that all the music blends into one big noise, but that doesn't really matter. It's all about the atmosphere.

I particularly liked this guy, who eschewed all traditional notions of music and decided to use acrylic paint as his instrument. While the rest of his band played this cool Pink-Floyd-esque psych-jam around him, he just painted. Moving on, I found a little hippy festival called 'Peace Smile' which was full of Glasto-style clothes stalls, chai tents and wacky characters. On stage, the band's entrancing djembe styles whipped the crowd into a state that I didn't think Japs could enter. I don't think I will ever see a crowd of Japanese people so excited and uninhibited ever again. Wow, that was pretty epic. See Rob, gotta keep the punters happy with lots of pictures. Only then will they read the blogger's meandering, self-indulgent monologues without complaint!

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I don't feel inspired
To write a haiku today.
Oh wow, I just did!

Boredom

Hello,

I don't really have anything to report at the moment. Just blogging due to lack of anything else to do. I spent most of today trying in vain to learn some kanji, then gave up and watched some Japanese rugby on TV. "Three months in Tokyo" sounds like such an exciting prospect - I didn't expect a single dull moment, let alone a whole day of such mind-numbing ennui. My original plan for tomorrow was to do the same as today, viz. stay at home all day and study, but for the sake of my sanity I've decided to go and do something fun in Tokyo. I'm pretty ill-informed about what there is to do there, so I'm just going to get off at a randomly chosen tube station and start wandering around. My tall, blonde and Swedish fellow homestay said he was eager to join me.

Before you start worrying about me, let me assure you that my life out here is in general quite fun - it's just today that's been rubbish. Last night I had dinner with a charming young lady named Sakiko. She's a music student, she's in a band and she knows lots about obscure western bands, so we had a lively discussion about music. After a while I got too tired to speak Japanese properly, so the last half hour of the conversation went along the lines of:

A: Ettoooo... [band name] o shitteiru? (Umm... do you know [band name]?)
B: Aa, shitteiru! Ii desu ne. (Yes! Good, aren't they?)
A: Sou da. (Yes.)

On Wednesday I survived my second earthquake. This one was a big'un! It was Richter 6.2, although that's only a measly 3 on the more hardcore Japanese scale. It was really good fun, although it's existentially unsettling when certain assumptions you've made about the ground not moving turn out to be false.

It seems that I won't be able to partake of cult beef tomorrow night. The cult members rang the French guy to tell him where the beef would be, but he vetoed the whole thing. Sorry to disappoint. It seems that the old proverb, "never trust a Frenchman to help you join an insane religious sect" has some truth to it.

By the way, I'd encourage you to use the word "jaa" as much as possible. It's Japanese for "in that case...". I've found that round these parts you can say it in as Jamaican an accent as you please, without anyone raising an eyebrow.

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When things start shaking,
Run to the nearest doorframe
And say the word "jaaaaaa!"

Cult beef

On Saturday I realised I had been in a new country for almost a week without getting horribly drunk. To remedy this, I went out drinking in Funabashi with two Swedes and a Frenchman. My Japanese is bad and theirs is good, so they communicated in Japanese, I spoke to the Frenchman in French and the Swedes in English, and they all translated me into Japanese. I felt like I was boozing with the UN.

Japanese people don't go to pubs or bars, they go to these things that are half way between a bar and a restaurant. It's ok to sit there drinking all night, but you usually sporadically order small plates of food while you do so. I like the idea. We sat at a table with no seats. There is a big hole under the table that your legs disappear into, and you sit on a cushion on the floor.

Next to us there were three very amiable and gregarious salarymen. We got talking (well, I was pretty much mute), they bought us some food and drinks, we swapped business cards (see Oleg, I'm networking!). Finally, they invited us to their house this Sunday. The Swedes and I thought this was a great idea, but the Frenchman was pretty sceptical. They tried to convince us with offers of "Free beef! Free beef!" but the Frenchie wouldn't budge. Once they had left, he explained that they were members of some crazy (possibly tube-gassing) religious cult, and they were trying to recruit us. In my opinion, this makes the idea of going to their house on Sunday even more appealing. Especially since they don't speak English, and I don't know enough Japanese to allow them to brainwash me. (If they can brainwash me with just "1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Where is the train station? It is to the left of the supermarket" then fair play to them.)

Hopefully we'll be going on Sunday, so I'll report back and try to take some pictures.

---

If men in suits say that
You can have free beer and beef,
Why would you refuse?

Boing!

Spam sushi anyone?

If it don't appeal,
Let me say one word to you,
And that word is "BOING!".

Rush hour

So far the most exciting and most painful part of my life has been commuting. My host family live in a suburb of Chiba (which, although it's a big city in its own right, is in turn a suburb of Tokyo). The commute takes about 1hr 45mins, but this is completely normal for anyone who works in Tokyo. That thought doesn't make it any more enjoyable though!

At the station where I get on, people keep piling on to the train until you can't physically fit any more on, and so some people get left on the platform. However, this keeps on happening at all of the stations between Chiba and Tokyo, without anybody getting off. How is that possible?

Then, once you're on the train, things take a turn for the bizarre. Everybody, standing up and holding on to the handrail, falls into a deep and peaceful slumber. There's nothing cuter in the world than the sight of all those poor sleepy salarymen snoring gently to themselves, with the one gaijin in the middle, standing head and shoulders above them and looking bemused.

Part of the reason why I look so bemused is that the train system is fiendishly complicated. I keep thinking I've worked it out, and then suddenly the whole thing will turn sideways on me and I'm back to square one. But once I've conquered the greater Tokyo rail and subway system, it'll definitely be something to put on my CV.

Good news! I've just been told that I didn't fail the Japanese test I took yesterday. I was convinced I'd failed. This means that I can take afternoon classes, and so I don't have to deal with rush hour any more. I haven't taken any classes yet, but school seems ok. The only problem is that everyone I've met who is better at Japanese than me (i.e. everyone) is very smug about it, and likes to tell me repeatedly how much Japanese they know. Either that, or how much they know about obscure anime. Combine this with the fact that most of them are from California, the Hippest state in the Coolest country in the goddam world, and you end up with some very irritating people indeed.

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I'm very happy
'Cos I did not fail my test.
First class this p.m.!

Hong Kong

Wow, thanks for the zillions of comments everyone. I think I may have beaten Rob's record. To reward you all, you're going to get an extra long post with lots of nice pictures today.

I'm now in my host family's house in Chiba, having arrived from Hong Kong yesterday. HK is without a doubt the most ridiculous city I've ever visited - 7 million mad Chinese people crammed into somewhere the size of Norwich, all speaking Cantonese (conspiracy theory: I don't believe it's a real language. They were all making it up as they went along.) Everyone lives in huge, horrible apartment blocks that all follow an identical design but vary in the number of floors, and most of them seem to be held up by bamboo scaffolding. Here's a pretty standard example of HK architecture.
and here's a rather cool temple stuck in the middle of all this madness.
So, Mai and I arrived on Friday afternoon, went for some delicious dim sum, wandered along the quayside at Tsim Sha Tsui for a bit, then at night took a tram up to the top of Victoria Peak, where you get some incredible views of the whole city (some of my patented Birchall cool-panorama-thingies to follow, when I get round to it). Saturday, we went to that temple I just showed you, then headed off to HK Disneyland. I had been kind of forced into going there, but it turned out to be really good fun. The whole concept of a land of Disney is surreal enough, before you start filling it with grinning Chinamen!

On Sunday, we were feeling lazy so we stayed in bed all morning. Did some shopping in the afternoon, but that's not very interesting. Oh, also went to Murphy's Irish Pub for Guinness and cottage pie for lunch. In the evening, we went on the Panda bus. Cute, eh?

This was an open-top tour bus for Japanese tourists. As such, the commentary was in Japanese and the bus was full of 30 Japanese tourists and me. I felt extremely gaijin. Here's a picture of Mai and me enjoying HK panda-style.

And that's it really. It was short and sweet, and now I have to get down to the serious business of surviving in Japan for 3 months. Luckily, my host family is very nice and they speak a smattering of English, so I can have my basic needs catered for. I've got my first day of school today, so I'll report on that later.

Finally, in case you needed it, here is proof that Jackie Chan is an absolute joker.


Ooh, nearly forgot the haiku:

Hong Kong was wicked,
But now down to business -
Gotta learn some stuff.