I keep seeing midgets!

I've seen five in the last two days, and it's starting to get to me. And before you ask, yes they are shorter than English midgets.

Is this happening to anybody else?

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Little tiny men
Are following me always
And it worries me.

Lazy weekend

I'm eating yummy sushi. Mmmmm. Anyway, Mai came down to Tokyo again this weekend, for what will sadly be her final visit. I only have three short weeks left here, and then I go up north to spend Christmas with my sis.

We're both too poor to do anything very exciting, so we had a lazy weekend of just strolling around mostly. On Saturday we went to Yokohama, the city next door to Tokyo. It's a quaint seaside town, strangely reminiscent of Dunkerque, although much cleaner and with fewer French people. I think my sense of scale has become quite distorted owing to my living in the mind-boggling megalopolis that is Tokyo, but Yokohama seemed pretty small to me. It has a subway system and a skyscraper district, so I guess it must in fact be quite sizeable, but it still manages to retain a nice small-town feel.

First off, we went for lunch in Chinatown. That little blob under the archway is me.

Now this was a proper sized Chinatown - put the five-Chinese-restaurants-in-a-row Chinatown of Soho to shame. It's full of appetizing treats like these:
After lunch, we had a wander around. We walked past the Muscle Theater, whatever that might be. Yokohama became even more pleasant in the evening:
Sorry Mai, you're completely out of focus, but still: kawaiiiiiiiiii!!

In the evening we went to see this guy...
...playing a rather cool acoustic gig in the smallest bar in the world. It comfortably housed about 7 people. Junjun (his real name's Jun, but Junjun for short(?)) is a friend of Mai's, and I really wish I could speak better Japanese so I could talk to him. He's great.

Also playing that night, though sadly we didn't see them, was SFKUaNK!!. Isn't that the best name for a ska funk band you've ever heard? Also, Lorenzo Braceful is the best name for a band member that I've ever heard.


Here the pictures end, but our adventures did not. On Sunday we went to the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi. It's on the 53rd floor of the humongous Mori Tower. It had scary lifts that could ascend those 53 floors in a matter of seconds, and made my ears pop. On the floor below, they have a 360-degree observation deck, which was breathtaking, especially as we went after dark. You can see the whole of Tokyo, and on a clear morning you can even see Mt. Fuji. The sea of neon below us, and the thousands of red flashing lights on the skyscrapers, made me think of Blade Runner.

As per usual, we had a manic dash across Tokyo to catch the train, although this time it was Mai's shinkansen home that we nearly missed, so it was even more serious than usual. She caught it with a full 2 minutes to spare. Never missed a train in my life!

:-( My iPod's just decided that it has zero songs, which is 9540 fewer than it should. But all the music files are still on there. I tried hitting it. I also tried telling it in an authoritative voice that it has 9540 songs on it. But all to no avail. Looks like I'm gonna have to copy all the songs to DVD-R, wipe the ipod, and copy them all back on again. That'll be fun.

---

iPods are so cool
Until such time as they break,
When they become poo.

High tea

This weekend has been a bit of a mixed bag. On Friday I asked my school if I could move up a class, as my current class is a bit too slow. They said I would have to take a test on Monday to check my level of Japanese, and passing this test involved basically doubling my knowledge of Japanese grammar in one weekend. Hence, Saturday was a highly stressful day of cramming (in the last six weeks we have done chapters 9 to 18 of the textbook, and on Saturday I studied chapters 19 to 34!). But today (Sunday) I had a change of heart and realised that even if I did pass the test, it was a silly idea to move to a class that was that far ahead. So I'm not going to take the test after all.

Sunday turned out to be as far from stressful as it could possibly be. I went to a lovely old-fashioned garden called Happo-en and strolled around for ages. In the middle of the gardens there is this teahouse, where I did a tea ceremony and ate some intensely sugary sweets:

In the 16th century some guy called Sen no Rikyu (a.k.a. the "Tea Master") developed 'the way of tea', and I can see where he's coming from. I think the way of tea has to be one of my favourite ways. He took his tea very seriously, and wrote seven lessons concerning the tea ceremony:

1. Give your whole heart
2. Find out its nature
3. Cherish a sense of the season
4. Treasure the life
5. Have great breadth of mind
6. Be flexible
7. Have respect for your fellow tea-drinkers.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how all that links up with drinking tea, but next time you settle down with a cuppa, why not try and remember those lessons? Maybe you'll end up a better person.

After the tea, I had a nice (but cold) stroll around the gardens...

...and around the pond full of really huge fish...

...and then took a peek at the very impressive bonsai collection. Some of these babies are 500 years old.Did you know that Americans pronounce 'bonsai' as 'banzai'? I struggled to comprehend what a banzai tree would be, if such a thing existed.

Oh, all of this was a school trip, so now you can see what a bunch of Japanese language students look like, in case you've ever wondered.

I left the garden in a buoyant and placid state, but on my way home, I was quickly shaken out of it by... the SCARIEST SANTA EVER.
---

If life gets to you,
I recommend a pleasant stroll,
And a nice cuppa.

Last train adventures

Oh, I forgot:

On both Thursday and Saturday night, we had very exciting oh-my-god-we're-stuck-in-the-middle-of-tokyo-with-no-money-left-and-i-think-we-just-missed-the-last-train experiences. I had no idea when the last train was - I just assumed it would be sometime around midnight. Consequently, we ended up missing it at the station in west Tokyo, and having to try and reach central Tokyo before it did, so that we could get on it before it left for Funabashi. This involved a very hectic half hour of catching many random trains, sprinting through stations and trying to decipher maps written entirely in kanji. (If you're trying to picture the scene, imagine it set to the music from Bullitt.) On both occasions, we managed to catch it with about 30 seconds to spare.

I'd highly recommend it as an exhilarating end to any night out, and the feeling of satisfaction when you hop on that train home is beyond compare.

Weekend with Mai - Part II

Mai came down to Tokyo again this weekend. She arrived late on Thursday night, and while waiting for her train I went to her friend Yoshiko band's gig in Akihabara (now there's an exotic name for you, Rob). I'd already met Yoshiko on Monday, when we went out boozing in Shinjuku with her boyfriend and the bassist from her band. It seems that I've finally found some Japanese people who can drink as much as I can! We did nomihodai (all you can drink for two hours, for a fiver), and talked non-stop about music. Amazingly, Yoshiko's boyfriend and I have the same all-time top 3 bands. (Sonic Youth, Pavement and Blur, if you're interested). I also had fun teaching them the word "floccinaucinihilipilification".

On Friday I went to school and left Mai to hang around all day (sorry!). But in the evening we went to the Cirque du Soleil. What a spectacle! Who ever thought a circus could be so classy? Highly recommended, although I'm not sure it was worth 45 quid.

Mai is a big Disney fan (she can't help it - she's Japanese), so on Saturday we went to Tokyo Disney Sea. This is similar to Tokyo Disney Land, but with less land and more sea. Now, you can rant at me all you want about globalisation, capitalism and "the corporations, man" and call me a corporate whore for going to Disneyland, but still it was jolly good fun.

The Japanese have this tradition of buying "omiyage", i.e. when you go on holiday or on a day trip, you have to buy presents for pretty much everyone you've ever met in your life. This means that not only did everyone want to buy huge amounts of tacky Disney memorobilia, they had to. I bet the Disney corp loves this country!

Aww, ain't we cute? Here we are in the Mediterranean Harbour (or, in Japanese, the Mededoreeneearn Aarbaar).


The highlight of the day was of course the trying on of comical hats:


Oh, and I thought this picture was rather cool.


That night, we went out in Shibuya with another of Mai's friends. He was very cool, but the ratio of insanely fast, slang-filled Japanese to English was not to my liking, so I didn't get to talk to him much.

On Sunday, we went to the Mitsuo Aida museum. Mitsuo Aida was a poet and calligrapher who died in 1991. I'd never heard of him before, but now I'm smitten with him! His poems are very cool and his calligraphy style is really unique. It's not like any Japanese calligraphy I've seen before. As your attorney I advise you to check him out.


And finally...
I always knew they were up to something!

---

Just like my hero
Trevor McDonald, I have
an "And finally..."

Change of address

Hello all,

On Friday I moved out of my host family's house in Chiba, and into a student dormitory in Funabashi. This is great, as a) it's a 45 minute commute to school, rather than a 2 hour one; and b) I now have complete freedom to get up whenever I want, come home late if I want to, etc. I decided ages ago, based on Nicola's advice, that a host family would be a good idea initially but I would soon get sick of them and so I should move out after 4 weeks. It seems that they were sick of me too, so moving out is mutually beneficial.

I celebrated my new-found freedom by going out drinking last night, with the same Franco-Swedish crew as before. No cult beef this time, unfortunately. It was a very enjoyable night until we left the izakaya. I had only been to my dormitory once before, and my brain was rather addled by large quantities of nihonshu and cheap whisky, so I had no idea how to get home. Thus I spent the next 2 hours wandering the streets of Funabashi, pathetically whimpering to myself and becoming ever more convinced that I'd have to sleep on the street. I sought help at a koban (police box), and ended up with about 15 policeman trying to help the poor drunk gaijin get home. They scoured the map, while I did my bit by sitting in the corner and moaning, "I just want to go to bed" in broken Japanese, but all to no avail. Eventually, somehow, I managed to get home.

Just as I collapsed into bed, my mobile phone rang. On the other end of it was a certain Swede, who it seems had had an even more ridiculous adventure than me. He'd caught the last train to Chiba, but in his inebriated state had got off at the station before. "No problem," he'd thought, "I'll just walk the last stop." Unfortunately he'd walked in completely the wrong direction and wound up lost in the no-man's-land of the Tokyo suburbs. For some reason, he asked a passerby the way to Funabashi, even though he was trying to get to Chiba. She replied, "Umm... I'll show you the way," and then walked all the way to Funabashi with him, even though it took 90 minutes. Once she'd seen him safely to Funabashi station (it was 1am by this point), she said, "OK, I'll be going home now," and started the 90 minute walk back to where they'd met! He ended up sleeping on my extremely uncomfortable wooden floor.

Today, I went for a wander around Funabashi to see what's what. While the core of Tokyo is all a regular grid of streets, this place is a crazy jumble of exciting little alleys, so there's lots of exploring to be done. It seems like a pretty cool place, although the numbers of very old people and pachinko parlours (I think they go together) seem a bit excessive. At night, the very old people disappear and are replaced by drunk businessman doing karaoke. The nightlife here is really good - lots of cheap izakaya everywhere. Today there was a bit of a mini music festival going on in random places around the town. First I saw a rather mediocre pop-punk band, who were the smiliest group of people I've ever encountered. No rock'n'roll pouting and strutting for these guys. Next I watched a very impressive taiko drumming display. Taiko is just like normal drumming except that you wear orange jumpsuits and the drums are comically large (i.e. bigger than a person). Finally I saw a very cool folk-rock duo called Luck Lisence (sic). I didn't have the heart to tell them they'd misspelled their own name. I had a chat with them afterwards, and inadvertantly blagged a free CD out of them. I asked if they were playing any gigs soon, and from their incredibly speedy answer I deduced that the answer is: yes, they are. Sadly, I didn't catch the date or location of said gigs.

I've got an exciting Saturday night planned. I'm going to sit on my bed drinking a large beer and eating an unhealthy snack, and watch Scarface. Catch you later.

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Funabashi is
A truly labarinthine
Mess of alleyways.