Haiku adventures

Boozin' and yakuzin'

2007-07-25T17:34:00.000+09:00

Karen, I'm sad to say, is leaving Japan this week and going home to Australia. Before going home, she wanted to try all the millions of interesting-looking izakaya in Shiroishi that we'd never got round to. So we came up with the...

1st Annual Shiroishi Crew Izakaya Crawl! (a.k.a. "わかんない tour '07")

Present were yours truly, Karen, Kim, Chantelle and Wako. We also randomly bumped into Ewan halfway through.

For the first time on this blog, I'm leaping boldly into the realm of Web 2.0 by embedding some videos for you.

So, let's get started...

Pretty soon Wako finishes work and comes to join us.

While we wait an age for our dinner to arrive, Wako entertains us by trying to eat a lemon.

That was our first izakaya, Sasaki, taken care of.

Picture of frowning proprietor taken, time to move on! I'll let Wako tell you where we went next...

After that was Shimai, a very cool Korean izakaya. Here we bumped into Ewan, and the owner gave me a free can of Korean aloe drink with weird lumps in it.

Next up was Dream's Heart. This place has a certain sleazy charm. Very film noir - you could imagine a washed up journalist/private detective coming here to get drunk on cheap whisky and forget the woman who betrayed him. From the outside the place looks like a strip club, so we were relieved when we walked in and discovered it was in fact a bar.

By this time some of us were getting a little drunk and emotional...

OK, this is where the night starts to turn weird. There's a mysterious building called Latin Quarter where we've always wanted to go, and we decided this would be the night.

Given the name, I imagined it would be Shiroishi's trendiest not-refurbished-since-the-80's nightclub, filled with mirrorballs, smoke machines and desparation. But the place was actually the complete opposite - a very traditional Japanese-style nomiya. It was decorated to look like the inside of a samurai's house, and even had a fake thatched roof.

While we were in there, in walked this friendly old man wearing a traditional yukata. 'How quaint!' we thought, and we went over to say hello. He shook our hands and we took our picture with him.

Only later did we discover that he is the most dangerous man in Shiroishi. We had been drinking and bantering with the head of the local mafia! In fact, Latin Quarter is apparently the local yakuza hangout and everybody in there apart from us foreign idiots had been a gangster!

'Cool!' I thought, when I found out. Some of us, however, were not so happy. Here Chantelle is obviously the only person who's worked out what a perilous situation we're in. At this time, the rest of us were still blissfully ignorant.

Chantelle ordered a beer out of fear, even though she hates beer. Karen drank Chantelle's beer a little too quickly and is now rather merry. (Sorry the video is sideways.)

Kim, however, is more worried because she made the mistake of ordering water.

[Shiroishi scandal! STOP PRESS! See that bloke in the top left of the picture above? That's a well-known Shiroishi politician. Wako was on his campaign team during the elections earlier this year. Here we have photographic evidence of him drinking with his yakuza buddies!]

Next up, Kyo-zan. Dig that concrete windowless chic!

Not much to say about that, so let's move on to Run-run, the only place in town that was still open after 11 on a Monday night. It was tiny and looked like a portakabin. We walked in to find the cringingly stereotypical aging divorcee proprietress (on the right in the pic) getting quietly drunk on her own. She then proceeded to grope and molest both Karen and myself until we left.

The final stop was, of course, 7-11!

And so we come to the end of the 1st Annual Shiroishi Crew Izakaya Crawl. Let's hope next year is as much of an adventure!

Tsuruha Drug

2007-07-21T21:37:00.000+09:00

A few days ago I had the chance to spend quite a long time in my local Tsuruha Drug store. This is one of several chains of 'chemist superstores' that are very popular in Japan. The existence of these stores just reinforces my view that Japan is a nation of hypochondriacs.

Wako spent ages doing something to do with makeup and so I was left to kill time by wandering around the store taking pictures with my phone. It really is quite a surreal place.

First, to give you a sense of how huge this place is. This is one aisle...

And here is just one pile of washing powder...

OK, now let's move on to the insecure and gullible women department...

Next, the mysterious or improbable products department...

Interlude: Wako standing under a giant kokeshi doll...

Next, the sexiest man in Japan. This is what all young Japanese men strive to become. I'm deadly serious.

And finally, the silliest item in the whole store. An official willy-measuring device...

The red label says, "A self-check you can do at home." The writing down the side says, "To check(confirm?) the phenomenon of night-time erections."

Usually I like to finish with a witty one-liner but I'm still reeling from that last picture so I'll just leave it there.

Whistle while you whisky

2007-05-12T23:30:00.000+09:00

Today I visited the Nikka whisky distillery near Sendai. I came away with two exciting, possibly life-changing revelations:

There is such a thing as delicious Japanese whisky. This is something that I have strongly disbelieved until today. Unfortunately the delicious whisky in question costs £50 a bottle.
There is such a thing as delicious blended whisky. This £50 whisky is a 17-year old blend of about five whiskies from two of Nikka's distilleries, one in Sendai and one up north in Hokkaido.

The founder of the Nikka company learned his trade in Scotland, so Nikka whisky tastes a lot like Scotch. The ones I tasted today were very smoky and peaty, but on the other hand incredibly fruity - a mix that sounds unappealing but actually works very well.

Golden Week

2007-05-07T20:18:00.000+09:00

It was truly a fun-packed Golden Week. Josh has finished his job in Thailand, so he came to visit me before embarking on his mini-tour of Asia and then returning to Blighty. And Fred also came to Japan to visit both Rieko and me. I went down to Tokyo to meet Josh at the airport. Before picking him up, I went for lunch with my friend Satoshi, whom I first met whilst traveling around Shikoku. In the evening I met Josh and we went with Fred, Rieko and chums to an Okinawan bar in Shinjuku. Here we sampled such delights as pig's ear and an Okinawan beer called Orion. It was two hours of all-you-can-drink, but unfortunately I'd booked Josh and myself into some kind of fascist hostel who locked the doors at 11 sharp, so we had to leave early. This resulted in quite a stressful evening involving drinking as much as we possibly could within an hour and then sprinting to the hostel before it closed.

The next day Josh and I got up bright and early for some hungover parasitology at the world-famous Parasite Museum in Meguro. We then checked out the observation deck in Roppongi Hills (a must-see in my book), ate monjayaki (a Tokyo delicacy) in Harajuku and crossed the world's busiest zebra crossing in Shibuya. We also had a quick look around Akihabara, where we met a sorcerer. In the evening we met up with Satoshi, who took us to a nice little nomiya that he knew near our hostel. It was nestled away in a back alley in a district known as 'the Kyoto of Tokyo' and had a lovely, relaxed atmosphere.

The next morning Josh, Fred and I took the bullet train to Kyoto. Upon arrival, we spent an alarmingly long time hanging around in the station, considering we would only be in Kyoto for about 30 hours. We finally got going and headed to Kinkaku-ji temple, famous for its golden pavilion. We then wandered through Kyoto for a while, stopping at various shrines and temples, before checking into our hostel.

Ah, the hostel. We thought the Tokyo hostel had been bad with its 11pm curfew, but this one was pretty much hell on earth. Terrifyingly camp owner, horrible rooms and decor, 10.30pm curfew, complete ban on alcohol on the premises, 10 to a room, lights out and a ban on socialising after 11pm, enforced 6.30am wakeup call, checkout by 8.30. And all for about £4 less than a business hotel would have cost. If you're ever thinking of staying at Higashiyama Youth Hostel - DON'T!

After checking into our hellhole we went to meet Kurumi for drinks in Gion. I'd met her a few times in London and she was good friends with Fred. We had some brief fun with her and her friend before heading back to the hostel in time for curfew. The crazy camp guy was locking the door as we got back and he considered for a good few seconds about whether to let us in or not. Unfortunately, he did.

The next day we saw some more temples, including Kiyomizu-dera, and in the evening we caught the shinkansen all the way up to Shiroishi. Fred and Rieko caught the night bus and joined us in Shiroishi horribly early the next morning. That was the day of Shiroishi's spring festival, where we saw all kinds of exciting Japanesey stuff. We watched Chantelle and Karen's taiko drumming group perform. In the evening we went to Ogawara, about 15 mins away, for bowling and then yakiniku at my favourite restaurant, Blusta. We ordered millions of plates of meat, rice, salads, chips, sushi, a few beers, etc. and it all came to under £10 a head! I love Blusta!

The next day we went to Matsushima, where we had a boat ride around the many islands for which the town is famous. Hundreds of seagulls followed the boat and brave Japanese people let them eat special seagull food right out of their hands. Could easily have lost a finger! We also saw some mysterious caves and a waxwork museum about Masamune Date. He's the local hero, but I'm not quite sure why. He seemed to be a mediocre fighter and bureaucratic apologist, but you can't fault his irrigation policies.

That night we stayed at Suzuki-ya, a hotel in Kamasaki onsen. We stayed in an amazing room, ate the best Japanese meal I've ever had, and of course the baths were great. It was Fred and Josh's first ever onsen experience, but once the initial embarrassment passed I think they had fun!

On Saturday we went to see Wako play a gig at Heartland, a dairy farm near Mount Zao. The day was unbelievably wholesome, with children everywhere, petting of goats and playing of catch. But we made up for it in the evening with the debauchery of Wako's birthday party!

The next day Fred and Rieko headed back to Tokyo and Josh flew back to Thailand, leaving me all alone and absolutely exhausted!

Right, time to start planning Amy's visit...

Shikoku

2007-04-01T14:30:00.000+09:00

Wow, has it really been three months since my last post? Umm, sorry. I was internet-less for 6 weeks, but that's not much of an excuse, is it? Anyway, last week I went on holiday with my friend Rosalee. We travelled around Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It was quite fun-packed and we managed to do so much stuff that I can't be bothered to write about it all. But... in a moment of boredom whilst waiting for a train, one of us suggested writing a 'holiday song'. We started brainstorming by writing down anything noteworthy that happened to us during the holiday, but the brainstorm soon spiralled out of control and swelled to epic proportions. Here it is in full:

Combini run
Synchroswim
Banjo
Monkey
Jaw action
Epic hotel (search)
Myth of the toucan
Toucan play at that game
Please take the orange elevator
Smokey bastard:
- Fire extinguisher in the ashtray
- Ashtray in the toilet
Welcome back to the smoking toucan
Rejection!
- hotel
- tourist info
- ticket booth
- restaurant
Premature bus disembarkation
Pyjamas & heels
Gorge
Vine bridge
Yoshida-sempai
Mindscratching
Eric Clapton
Interrogations
Sign-reading syndrome
Japanese giggles
Money haemorrhage
No time! No time!
White Knight, Ph.D
QR codes
Cricket
Whirlpools
Bridges
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Had to kill a chicken
Laid a hard-boiled egg
I saw the sign
I saw the jaw action
The eagle has landed
Angry cyclist of loneliness
"I feel like my life is in peril"
The spectacular time piece
Attitude gran
A step too far on the road to enlightenment
Nature trails
Ruining a couple's marriage
Crackheads
Ramen couple in the jungle
Fornicating frogs
Elephantine penal pendulum [This one is just too disturbing, so it needs some explanation. In the Richard Dawkins book I was reading, there was a passage about elephant penises acting as non-Newtonian pendula]
Shochu drunk proper
Trip to the airport
More bridges - symmetry
Rain
Got wet and smelly
Turntable
Deri
Urban onsen hipsters
Dovetail delights
dokodemo Bill
Siren spectators
Minty mouth
Emperor's tatamied toilet
Ultimate bath
Marshmallow tranny teaches terrible English
Tower of vegetabable
Ace of Base
"Very good jarou!"
Temples before breakfast
Bone shock
Esoteric rave on an empty stomach
Sent speechless by the god of war
Tunnel of Terror
Velvet stoner paradise
Buddha was a stoner
Mangy mutts
Combini cage
Corned tea
The unfortunate son
A run-in with rum
O.J. Simpson
Race relations
Normalcy regained (momentarily)
Big Ben
Buddhas in peril
Temples and tunnels
Word power
Crazy about wine
Morning of culture at a student rate
Cat in the sky
"It's all hazy"
Hobo holiday
Takamatsuyama
Japanese dinner - close call
Drinking in the park - hanaminai
The ultimate Lawson
"I don't want to drink it, but I have to" - giri drinking
Trash inspector
R's revisited
Optical fibre
Filthy nuggets

So, there you have it. My holiday in a nutshell. I'll stick some pictures on Picasa, so you can try and match the pictures with the brainstorm!

Thailand

2007-01-03T19:23:00.000+09:00

Sorry it's been a while. Been busy! Anyway, I went to visit Josh in Thailand for Christmas and stayed with him for about 10 days. There are lots of pictures in my Picasa web album (link on the right hand side of this page). Throughout the holiday, I kept a brief log, which I shall now transcribe for your delectation. I'll add explanatory comments in italics.

22nd: Arrived. Slept.

23rd:

am - Chatuchak w/end market [This place was absolutely massive, and densely packed with hundreds of stalls selling all kinds of crazy stuff.]

pm - Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaeo [the most famous temple in the country. Spectacular] and Wat Pho [famous for its absolutely massive, golden, reclining buddha statue. I forget how big it was, so let's say 500m]

eve - Night bazaar, towers of Chang w/ Phil, Rob and Ben [friends of Josh. Chang is a drink to be feared. All Thai beer is very strong, but this is the strongest (7%) and, worryingly, the cheapest. Drink just one and you'll feel strangely suicidal the next day. Not a hangover, something different that I've never experienced before. A Thai person told me it was because Chang contains formaldehyde. During the holiday the phrases 'Chang fiend', 'Chang frenzy' and 'Chang attack' were coined.]

24th - Went to Ko Samet [a tiny tropical island where we spent a couple of days on the beach]. Pimms + Chang! First ever backpacker [Backpacker was a fiendishly complicated travel-based card game that Josh got for Christmas. I never won a single game. It was the Ashes of card games]. Met Reilly [In our villa we found an amazing book called 'Area 7' by Matthew Reilly, an author who describes his own work as 'airport fiction'. Possibly the worst book I've ever read, but rip-roaring stuff indeed. On my last day I managed to find the prequel, 'Ice Station', and am looking forward to reading it.]

25th - Beach, explore, kayak. Chang!

26th - Came home. Met Thai people. Went to Snop [some bar]. Listened to awful pop-rock, destroyed myself on 100 Pipers whisky.

27th - Failed to go to Ayutthaya. Boat trip. Yummy lunch. Chinatown. Walked until half-dead. Japanese food for dinner. Backpacker.

28th - Almost failed again to get to Ayutthaya. Spent 2 hours looking for bus station. AA map misleading. Got to Ayutthaya in time for lunch. Visited millions of temples. When we got back to Bangkok, literally tens of thousands of crazed Thais were swarming toward bus terminal. No idea why. [Still don't know why. No, it wasn't anything to do with those bombs, as it was 3 days before that happened.] Huge burger for dinner.

29th - Went to Kanchanaburi [where the bridge on the River Kwai is]. JEATH museum - harrowing. Lunch - less harrowing. Chinese cemetery, then the British one. Museum. Soul-destroying forced march to, and across, the bridge. From there, 10 mile trek to bus station. Pizza Hut for dinner.

30th - Nice lie-in, then gift-shopping at Chupachup (Chatuchak) Market. A stroll around Lumphini park, then a tour of Jim Thompson's house [he was some guy who made stuff out of silk]. Bought Ice Station! Depressing pint at the Robin Hood [an English pub full of middle-aged western men taking their hookers for a pint for some reason], then a fancy meal at Lemongrass. Finished with Tower of Chang! Oh, and ferris wheel.

I love this country!

2006-12-18T14:04:00.000+09:00

http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/17/japanese-train-company-to-debut-dual-use-bus-and-rail-vehicle/

Escape from a fiery doom

2006-12-07T08:41:00.000+09:00

The other day I had a fire drill at school. But it was not like any fire drill I've had before. First of all, they use real smoke! Masses of it! The whole school was full of it and the kids were coughing their guts up for the rest of the day. It still smells of it a few days later. Also, nobody warned me about the drill beforehand. The first I knew of it was when a teacher ran into the staffroom, blew a whistle and shouted "Run!!". We all ran to the playing field, with me running faster than anyone else because I think I was the only person in the school who thought it was a real fire. The headmaster had a stopwatch and after about 2 mins had elapsed, he started to point and laugh at each child that emerged from the school, and say, "You're dead!"

Once we were all lined up on the playing field, we stood around in the cold while the kids 'reflected' on the fire drill. Whenever anything happens in Japanese school, we have to have a moment of reflection afterwards. For example, every day after the kids have cleaned their classroom, they stand in a circle and say things like, "I think the sweeping went quite well today, but we can do better tomorrow."

I think this post was reasonable. Concise, witty and informative. An appropriate level of whinging about the foibles of Japanese school culture. I'll try just as hard with my next post.

Fine Japanese cuisine

2006-11-29T17:28:00.000+09:00

This evening I wasn't very hungry so I decided to just whip something up using whatever I could find in the fridge. This turned out to be: sweet potatoes (a present from some primary school first years I taught the other day), a spring onion, some milk and some out-of-date mustard. I slapped them all together, and the result was this disturbing soupy gruel. It doesn't taste too bad actually, as long as you don't look at it!

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know I'm looking after myself and eating well.

Apple + milk = strawberry

2006-11-10T17:51:00.000+09:00

This morning in school a first year student came up to me in the corridor and said, slowly and deliberately, in English,

"Apple plus milk equals strawberry."

As it's not exactly rare to hear that kind of gibberish coming out of junior high school students' mouths, I thought nothing of it. But then during school lunch I noticed that today's dessert was a piece of apple. And we always get milk with our lunch. So I tried a little experiment. The result...

It's true!! If you just take a bit of apple and a sip of milk at the same time, I guarantee you a full-on strawberry experience. Try it!

Public baths

2006-11-09T19:33:00.000+09:00

About once a week I go to an onsen with my 'sugar daddy'. He comes and picks me up in his Porsche, we go to the onsen, and afterwards he takes me out to dinner somewhere. All he wants in return is for me to discuss London and the Beatles endlessly with him, which I'm quite happy to do!

Last night, we didn't go to a proper onsen (i.e. one fed by a hot spring), but instead went to a public bath. And it was incredible! If Willy Wonka had designed a public bath, it probably would have ended up a bit like this one. It was a real water wonderland!

There were about 5 different kinds of jacuzzi, all with different-sized bubbles. One of them had special bubbles shipped in from Hawaii, although I'm not sure quite how that works. There were hot baths, cold baths, medium baths, outdoor baths, you name it. There was even a lemon bath that was bright yellow and smelled like washing up liquid. But the king of baths has to be....

the Electric Bath.

Imagine the thrill of sitting on an electric fence for extended periods, whilst also being in the bath! If you ever get the chance to have an electric bath, I highly recommend it.

Rant of the week: Japanese TV news

2006-10-17T21:10:00.000+09:00

In general, I love the quirky rubbishness of Japanese TV, but the news is absolutely atrocious. Apart from NHK (the BBC equivalent), every channel presents the news in a manner similar to The Sun. If a bad guy (e.g. a representative of North Korea, or somebody accused of a serious crime) is shown on screen, it's invariably in slow-motion grayscale, with scary music and their name superimposed in an evil, flaming font. We're regularly shown scenes of victims' families weeping uncontrollablly and at length. Sometimes this weeping is due to the fact that the TV crew has tracked down the relatives of a murdered child, shoved a camera in their faces and started asking them horrifically insensitive questions until they start crying.

The other day I saw a story about a junior high school teacher who'd bullied one of his students and driven the kid to suicide. A pretty harrowing story, but then it really took a turn for the twisted. The parents of the child tricked the teacher into coming to their house, where the TV crew was lying in wait. The parents then forced him to assume the 'super-duper-apology' bowing position (knees and head on floor, arms outstretched) in front of a photo of their dead son, while they circled around him, mocking and humiliating him. "Why did you bully our child? Did it make you feel like a big man? Why did you kill him?".... ad nauseam.

God bless Huw Edwards and proper news.

Day out with Uncle Takizawa

2006-10-17T20:47:00.000+09:00

I had quite a strange day out on Sunday. You may remember that a few weeks ago I went to Fubou school, a primary school with 4 kids and 3 teachers. The head of that school, Takizawa-sensei invited Karen, Mai and me to the local Autumn festival. So off we went to frolic with lambs, make butter, watch people fishing, eat yakisoba, and generally enjoy the fresh air and goodness of nature. Takizawa-sensei is a hilarious little man. He's small and bald, never stops talking, smokes like a chimney, chuckles endlessly and is generally a bit of a legend. Karen spotted him in the supermarket with his wife and apparently they're very cute together.

All morning Takizawa-sensei had been telling us about his new favourite film, hura gaaru. Apparently it was so good that he'd been to the cinema to see it 3 times, and was thinking about going for a fourth. When I expressed polite agreement that it probably was a rather good film, he pounced on the opportunity and invited us to go and see it straight after the Autumn festival. With nothing else to do, and not wishing to offend, we agreed. (In fact, poor Karen agreed because she can't speak Japanese and thought he was taking us home.)

So we hopped in the car and drove for over an hour, into a whole other county (cinemas are a bit scarce 'round these parts). It turned out that hura gaaru was a transliteration of 'Hula Girls' and the film was a massive rip-off of The Full Monty. Synopsis: 40 years ago, mine about to close down, all the miners and their families need new jobs. They randomly decide to set up a Hawaiian centre as a tourist attraction, and hire some hot-shot dance teacher from Tokyo to teach them how to hula dance. Whole film is about them learning how to dance, with hilarious consequences. Verdict: all-round splendid family fun. And now I know that I can pretty much understand films in Japanese, a whole new world of cinema-going has opened up for me.

Sonarsound Tokyo

2006-10-09T12:33:00.000+09:00

This weekend I went down to Tokyo to catch up with some friends and to go to Sonarsound festival. I spent the whole of Saturday in Yokohama with Natsuko, her friend Yosshi, my Miyagi friend Ewan (who happened to be going to Yokohama the same day as me) and his friend Naoko. We went for lunch and wandered around the town all afternoon. It's a beautiful place, and the weather was amazing. I'm pretty sure it never rains in Yokohama. We stumbled across the 'Yokohama Oktoberfest' and had a beer there, and also found an international food festival, where loads of different countries had stalls selling their national dishes. I had a Nepalese curry and a Peruvian burito. Then I headed into Tokyo to meet my friend Sakiko and find the festival.

So, the artists. First up was Softpad. Oh my jesus bloody god hell buggeration, Japanese VJs are incredible!! I had to remember to close my mouth because it kept hanging open while I was watching. They made music as well, which wasn't bad and sounded quite like Autechre, but it was really just a backdrop to their epic visuals. If you ever get a chance to see these guys live, do it!

Optrum. This guy was playing a freakin' light bulb. Enough said. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_v9RqLCmqI

DJ Baku. The most hectic thing I saw all night. Played mostly ridiculous drum n bass, jungle and breakcore. Made sure that even if there was a slight pause or breakdown on one of his decks, the other one would be going at full pelt to make up for it. If it still wasn't hectic enough, he also had a KaossPad and all kinds of other gadgetry going on, to ensure an absolutely relentless set.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5YH4uElJddE

Tucker. DJ/pianist/guitarist/bassist/drummer/hardcore punk screamer extraordinaire. 'Energetic' doesn't begin to describe this guy. He was constantly running around the stage, trying to play all his instruments at once, doing handstands on his piano (while still playing a pretty decent tune), stage diving, etc. Musical mayhem.

Afra & Incredible Beatbox Band. 3 guys, who were really, really good at beatboxing. Not much else to say about them, but they were amazing.

De La Soul. Lived up to all expectations. Legends.

DJ Kentaro. Maybe the best act all night. Was scratching the visuals as well as DJing like a motherbitch. His set was so complex that he had to have another guy on stage with a whole bunch of laptops and stuff, who I assume was feeding samples to Kentaro's various exciting gadgets. Just watch him in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgD9dPeVXG8

After that, there were a couple more DJs, but they paled in comparison to Kentaro. Also, I was incredibly tired by that point. I'd come to Tokyo by night bus, so I'd snatched about 3 hours of sleep, and I had got off the bus at 6am. By the time I got to bed, it was nearly 7am.

Good times.

Insensitive gaijin

2006-10-09T12:25:00.000+09:00

Oh, the perils of sending text messages in Japanese.

Yesterday I was supposed to meet someone in Tokyo, but they didn't show up. I txted (txt'd?) her to ask what happened, and she sent a huge long reply. I couldn't be bothered translating the whole thing at the time, but the gist was that she was very sorry she hadn't turned up or contacted me. I replied with a simple "Never mind, let's meet up next time I'm in Tokyo."

Later, I got round to translating the message, and it turned out that the reason she hadn't come was because her best friend had had an accident, and she had had to take care of her. I felt really bad, and sent a message saying "I'm sorry, I just read your message properly. I hope your friend gets well soon."

Her reply: "Sorry, maybe I didn't explain properly. My friend died yesterday. I don't think she'll get well soon."

Hmm.

Opening ceremony

2006-10-05T17:53:00.000+09:00

Today I went to my school's autumn term opening ceremony. It was a fascinating microcosm of all the aspects of the Japanese education system, and the nation as a whole, that seem most twisted and alien to a western observer.

First, 3 students (a 1st year, a 2nd year and a 3rd year student) gave short speeches. They were all pretty much identical, and the gist was as follows:

"I have failed at pretty much everything I tried in the last school term. In maths, I tried hard but I just couldn't understand it. In English I didn't try at all, and am consequently rubbish. When I played baseball I let down the whole team with my poor skills and work ethic. I won the running competition but I could have run faster. In Japanese class, I .............. In conclusion, I should try harder next term but I probably won't. If I don't try harder, please punish me."

Then the headmaster got on stage and said, "Thank you for those speeches. I didn't think much of the 1st or 2nd year students' speeches, but the 3rd year's was good. All 1st and 2nd years take note: in the future you should write speeches like her."

Then they had the prize-giving ceremony.

Note: this is all based on my rather shaky translation, and of course I was exaggerating. Also I hope it doesn't sound too bitter - I just thought it was interesting.

Cows and mountains

2006-10-04T22:02:00.000+09:00

Just to say that I had such a fun-packed day that it warranted 2 new albums on Picasa Web. The link's on the right hand side of this page.

Big rain

2006-09-27T23:35:00.000+09:00

Here in Japan, they have a lot of words for different types of rain. Normal rain is called ame, but since yesterday I've been having my first taste of oo-ame (literally, big rain!). It's incredible. We just don't get rain like this back home. And it doesn't seem like it's ever going to stop.

I was on the tube in Sendai today, and saw the coolest advert ever. The train was going through a tunnel, and there was a huge long string of TV screens attached to the tunnel wall. Each screen showed one frame of the advert, and it was all perfectly timed to the speed of the train, so as we whizzed past the screens, we could see the advert in its proper animated form. Very snazzy, but it must have taken a couple of hundred of those fancy flatscreen TVs. Was it really worth it?

I just stumbled across this piece of news, and then wished I hadn't:

http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=20266

Eeeeeewwwwww!

Onsen buddy

2006-09-24T21:57:00.000+09:00

Today I went to an onsen. My Japanese friend picked me up from my flat and drove me there. More specifically, he picked me up from my flat and drove me there in his spanking new Porsche Carrera! He's 62 (yes, really), loves jazz, speaks really good English, has been to England loads of times, and is generally fascinating.

We got there and did the usual onsen stuff - sat around in hot water, went in the sauna, etc. This place had an outdoor bath, which is my favourite kind, especially in the early evening. Best of all is in winter when it's snowing - your top half is absolutely freezing and your bottom half is all warm and lovely.

After that, we went to his friend's little tiny restaurant, where we met a couple of his old man friends, feasted on such delicacies as octopus tentacles and fried pig tripe, drank lots of ume sour (potato wine with sour plum cordial) and generally set the world to rights. Even though he can speak excellent English, I refused to speak a word of English today, so got lots of Japanese practice.

We're now onsen buddies, and we're gonna do this every week. Can't wait till next Sunday!

Picasa

2006-09-07T19:06:00.000+09:00

Just a quick note. Because uploading pictures to Blogger is an absolutely soul-destroying experience, and I seem to be putting up more pictures than text recently, I've started putting my pictures on a Picasa Web Albums account:

http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.birchall

You can add comments to the pics, just like on the blog. And for those of you who know what it means, there's an RSS feed available as well.

Edit: it seems you can only add comments if you are a Picasa Web Albums member. You can sign up in just one step, as long as you have a Gmail account.

Keitai

2006-09-02T12:29:00.000+09:00

I thought you might like to see some pics of my fancy Japanese mobile.

And of course a picture of the obligatory keitai strap. This one was a present from Ninkle, Toshio and Sarah. I don't understand the Japanese but it says something like "Simply reverse the digestive process!"

For you phone geeks out there, here's the vital stats. It's got a very nice 2Mpixel camera, an always-on 2.4MBps data connection (the data costs are capped at about £25/month), and in the back it's got an RFID chip, so I can use it as an oyster card, credit card, fast airport check-in, all kinds of crazy stuff. The 3G protocol is called CDMA 1x WIN and is based on CDMA2000.

Because it does that cool screen-swizzly thing, it's really useful as a camera which I can whip out at opportune moments. The other day it came in handy when I spotted this. It seems they have a whole aisle for it! [NOTE: I was only the adult diaper aisle long enough to take the picture!]

Oh, and as I haven't said a word about teaching yet, here's a picture of some students. Aren't they cute? A whole bunch of them painted Japanese flags on each other's cheeks and then ran around like mad eejits, shouting "Japanese sponsor! Japanese sponsor!"

Birthday onsen

2006-08-27T22:22:00.000+09:00

I had a very relaxing birthday today. In the morning I went with Kim (American next door neighbour), Karen (Aussie neighbour), Amy and April (random Aussies) to a really nice onsen in the mountains near my town. For those of you have escaped my raving about onsen in the past: an onsen is a big bath fed by a hot spring. Usually there are 2 baths, one for men and one for women. You wash before you go in and then sit in the incredibly hot bath with a little towel on your head until you feel a heart attack approaching. Then get out, lie on the cool stone floor, maybe have a cold shower, and get back in the bath. Repeat until soothed.

This one was particularly hot (53 degrees C) and quite sulphurous, and felt damn good. To get there, we took a little trek along a beautiful bit of river. Here's some pics for you. I didn't have my camera, so these are all taken on my phone, hence a bit rubbish.

Fun-packed weekend

2006-08-21T09:47:00.000+09:00

This weekend was completely different from how I planned it, but turned out to be really good fun. The original plan was to go to a little island called Sado, off the coast of Niigata, for a huge taiko drumming festival/Japanese hippie haven. So we (myself and four Australian girls) got up really early on Saturday and drove for 3 hours from Shiroishi (near the east coast of Japan) to Niigata (on the west coast). When we got to the ferry terminal, we found out that it would cost over £200 to get the ferry to Sado Island. This was more money than we even had with us! To make matters worse, two of the girls told us that they had to be back in Shiroishi by 6pm the next day, so they would only get a few hours at the festival before they had to start travelling back by public transport.

So...we drove all the way across the country again, back to the east coast! This time to Iwaki beach in Fukushima prefecture, where there was a huge, free dance music festival/beach party. There were 2 stages, 30+ DJs, a few live bands, a huge motocross ramp, some skateboarding, volleyball, and of course the beach. Music covered reggae, dub, drum 'n' bass, house, psy-trance, hiphop, electronica, and even some very strange Japanese dancehall.

We arrived at about 3pm, while it was still warming up, and chilled on the beach for a bit. As it got dark it really started to get going, and I would guess there were about 2000 people there. As usual, the Japanese were a bit reticent to dance and were stuck in shuffling-swaying mode, so we had to take matters into our own hands. We started pulling out the silliest dance moves we possibly could, and soon we (especially I, I have to say) had an army of Japanese people dancing with us and following our every move! Suddenly some really good trancey house came on, and the whole crowd just went freakin' crazy! Inspired by me, their new spiritual leader, the crowd was in a frenzy. The coolest part was that the whole beach was covered in this really thick fog, so all you could see was thousands of Japanese people spacking out in the mist. It was positively euphoric. Pretty soon some rubbish psy-trance came on and I retired gracefully, a big sweaty mess.

About midnight, we decided "our work here is done" and drove home, although I think the festival was carrying on until sunrise. We got home about 3am, having driven 9 hours in one day. Despite my late night, I had to get up early on Sunday and go to Matsushima. I say "had to" because I was visiting a temple that's only open for one weekend every 33 years! Matsushima is apparently one of the top 3 tourist destinations in Japanese. It's a little seaside town with lots of temples and an impressive view of thousands of tiny islands. We queued for about 90 mins and then shuffled through the tiny little temple. There was the usual dilemma of "Should I pray? I'm not a buddhist." I decided not to in the end. Afterwards we saw a cool taiko drumming display, and then had a look round the most beautiful Zen garden I've ever seen in Japan. I'll have to go back there on a random weekday so I can have a look when it's not packed with people.

On the way home I stopped off in Sendai and went up to an observation deck on the top floor of the tallest building in the city. Some cool views from up there. When I got back to my town, Shiroishi, in the evening I was surprised to see loads of little pieces of fire floating down the river! It turned out to be some kind of mini festival. There were loads of lanterns strung across the river and little kids were sending these floating fire thingies downstream. Shame I didn't have my camera.

natsu matsuri

2006-08-13T12:22:00.000+09:00

This weekend Nicola, Sarah and Toshio came to visit. On Friday night it was the Shiroishi summer festival, and I volunteered them all to dance in the parade with me. We were dancing in a group with a bunch of people from the city hall, where I work.

We had a very yummy meal beforehand at somebody's house/restaurant, with plenty of beer to get us in the mood for dancing (and unfortunately get some of the weaker of the Japanese girls in the mood for stumbling and staggering).
Here's Ninkle, Sarah and DC Tosh with their special fans and clacky-things.

I work with these girls, so I really should know their names! Oh well, aren't they cute anyway?

This is my supervisor, Murakata-san. What a guy!

To reward us for all our hard work, we got amazing amounts of free beer afterwards. I even got an extra one as an "international bonus".

Finally, on the way home, we had a long drunken chat with the chief of police. Sorry the picture's a bit rubbish.

All in all, a grand night out. Bring on the next festival!

What you're missing

2006-08-08T22:12:00.000+09:00

Just to show you what you're missing on Japanese TV, here's how to undress in seven seconds.

For more japes, check out www.thejapanesearecrazy.com.

My flat

2006-08-08T17:44:00.000+09:00

Kitchen:

Bedroom:

Living room:

Outside:

The local castle (doesn't everybody have one of these?)

And best of all, the local rice cleaning machine. Just pop in 100yen and 10kg of filthy starchy rice, and it's returned to you all shiny and starchless.

Tanabata

2006-08-06T20:29:00.000+09:00

Hello all,

Yesterday and today I went to Tanabata festival in Sendai. This is an absolutely huge festival, with fireworks and a big parade and stuff. The fireworks were fun for a while, but then went on for well over and hour, which is just silly. Today was the huge parade but somehow it completely passed me by. I couldn't find any trace of it.

The whole of Clis Road, the main street of Sendai, was filled with these very cool decorations.

Some of you know about my love for all things Hard Gay. It looks like he got his own decoration:

By far the most impressive were these ones. Today (6th July) is the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. To mark this, some people (I'm not sure who, I couldn't translate that part) built these decorations, which are made up of 1,000,000 tiny origami cranes! They're so miniscule you can't make out the individual cranes in the photo.

Farewell BBQ

2006-07-10T03:04:00.000+09:00

As I'm leaving London next weekend, I had a farewell barbeque last night at my flat. There was a great turnout, and I had a really good time. Thanks for coming, everyone!

Let's get the nice posed shots out of the way first, then we can move on to the drunk 'n' silly pictures.

Early arrivers

Girton scooby gang

Woodbridge scooby gang

Tom, Andy, Rose and Steph.

Rose, Paul and Jack.

Fred and Rieko. Aren't they sweet?

Terry-Thomas.

Later on the party developed into charades...

....scrabble....

... and hair styling.

Finally, thank you Rose for coming all the way from Italy just to see me (well, sort of)!

Roskilde

2006-07-10T02:45:00.000+09:00

Arrival.

Mai and I painted this all by ourselves!

Mai ha hen.

Some African dudes.

Mai's fetching new hat.

When we got a last minute invitation to a 'hat party,' Paul decided to turn our beer chain into a beer hat.

Post-festival beardiness.

Punt-b-que

2006-06-08T19:52:00.000+09:00

Yesterday was Tim's birthday, so I went to Cambridge to join everyone for a punt and barbeque. Here are lots of nice pictures for you.

Birthday boy.

Crisps.

Peaceful.

Knitting.

Am I advertising a phone or a watch here?

Jungle.

Lord of the Flies.

Moored.

BBQ!

Happy Mai.

Back to nature.

Kawaiiiiiiii!

Time to go home.

Dublin in pictures

2006-05-30T21:15:00.000+09:00

Notice a pattern?

Get Balsamic Vinegar...Quick You Fool

2006-04-18T16:15:00.000+09:00

Right, I just woke up decided to share my dream with you. Here goes...

I'm a small, black boy from Trinidad (I'm not sure which Trinidad). I'm wandering around Heathrow airport looking for all my belongings. I know that a Japanese guy called Junjun has them, so I need to find him. He works at Heathrow and has his own special section of the airport, so I need to go there. My (real, non-dream) friend Josh is helping me but the map is too complicated. At one point we think we've found Junjun's domain but instead we wander into some kind of colonial mansion in Louisiana where the state governor is having a party. He's not best pleased that we've turned up.

Eventually we find Junjun and he happily gives me all my stuff. He doesn't look very Japanese to me - he looks more like the Italian guy in Sainsburys on Waterloo Road, who's always saying "Anybody payin' by kaad?" Anyway, he gives me my belongings. Then, for no particular reason, I meet my father for the first and only time. He just walks round the corner, we have a quick chat and he disappears. Once he's gone, I can check out all my stuff that Junjun's been looking after. One of the items is a book. I open it at a random page, see the word "hippopotamus," and it's so sad that I burst into tears.

The end.

Girton ball '06

2006-03-13T19:28:00.000+09:00

	Mai and me
	Hello Rose! Haven't seen you for a while.
	Vodka lugin'!
	Angry angry Oleg and lipstick-wearing, wavy side parting-sporting, coconut-wielding Torran.

Back in Blighty

2006-03-13T19:24:00.000+09:00

London is too dull,
Compared with the mindbender
That is Tokyo.

But seriously, I guess I could stick a few pics up here once in a while, whenever I do anything blogworthy.

I'm opposed to blogs in general, except as: a) an easy way to share pictures with friends, or b) a way to make your friends jealous when you're in an exotic country. If I turn into a 'blogger' and start posting 3000-word pseudo-philosophical rants about why nobody likes me and how it's all the fault of the Bush administration, somebody please stop me.

I'm still alive!

2005-12-22T17:45:00.000+09:00

Hello,

Just a quick one, as I'm in a net cafe. I'm now up north in Iwate, where it's cold. Very very cold. Holy crap, it's cold. Like, er, -12 degrees cold.

I'm now in holiday mode, so I've been visiting temples, and all that jazz, and I had a very relaxing stay in an onsen hotel. Can't wait for Christmas!

See you all soon,

C.

Even the Japanese don't understand the yen

2005-12-09T23:13:00.000+09:00

Check out this little gem of Jap-news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4512962.stm

From the article:
"the error has so far caused it a loss of 27bn yen. It almost matches the group's net profit of 28.1bn yen for the financial year"

So let's all spare a thought for the poor incompetent stock trader who cost Mizuho bank £128 million with one mouse click.

----

多いお金
を無くしました。
馬鹿ですね！

Japanese speakers: is this a haiku? I don't understand how to count the syllables.

Weekend round-up

2005-12-07T19:20:00.000+09:00

Friday night was good fun, if a little silly. I went to the same cheap izakaya that I always go to with the Franco-Swedes. But this time we ended up being a 10-strong Anglo-Franco-Swedo-Columbio-Americo-Japanese super-squad. About 11pm, we yearned for a change of location and somebody suggested karaoke. So we headed to the main drag, where we began the usual pre-karaoke bartering. Every karaoke place (and by God, there are a lot of them!) employs a guy to stand in the street and entice punters with cheap drink deals. The trick is to play these dudes off each other until one of them is offering to give you his first-born son if you'll just come and sing for a bit. I almost feel guilty about how good the deals get. It's a bit like going for a curry in Brick Lane, for those of who've ever done that. In the end, we convinced them to give us karaoke and nomihoudai (all-u-can-drink) until 6am (yes that's right, 7 hours!) for only £15 each.

Japes, frolics and antics ensued (in that order).

Unfortunately I didn't quite make it to my origami class at 9am the next day.

Now, given a day whose most strenuous activities include lying in bed, drinking my own body weight in tea and eating fried food, I have been known to relish a good hangover. Unfortunately, Saturday was far more taxing. I had to: have a shower; cook and eat bad miso ramen (I don't know why I thought that was a good idea); take not one but three trains; buy a long-distance bus ticket; explain in Japanese that I didn't care that the ticket was 50 pence more than had previously been advertised; get to Shinjuku station by 5; explain in Japanese to some Christians that I would rather not visit their church, even if took only half an hour; and finally endure a nauseous 6-hour bus journey to Sendai. Pretty stressful, I'm sure you'll agree.

So, I got to Sendai at about 11pm on Saturday and met Mai for another lazy weekend. Literally nothing to report, I'm afraid! We arrived with the vague notion of "maybe we should go see some jazz," but we didn't even do that. Just sat around in coffee shops and wandered the very Christmassy streets for two days, then I took a bus home on Monday evening. Most enjoyable! Oh, we did meet up for coffee with my sister and her friend Mike. They had just endured the most difficult Japanese test in the world ever, but they did their best to converse with us nonetheless, and performed admirably.

As Sendai is pretty far north, I was hoping it would be a winter wonderland. Sadly, it wasn't the case. But it was really really cold at least, and there was a little bit of snow. I was so excited I took a picture:
I then jumped up and down on it, shouting "yuki yuki yuki" with glee.

I took one other picture this weekend. Here are some taxis for you.

On Sunday morning, I had the always-confusing experience of being woken up by an earthquake. But this time I didn't wake up properly, and I actually dreamed about an earthquake. In my dream, I was in my living room in Felixstowe with my whole family, including my late grandfather. I had brought a present back from Japan for them - an earthquake in a box! As soon as my dad opened the box, the earthquake started. He kept trying to take a picture of it but his tripod kept falling over!

---

When photographing
A natural disaster,
Use a good tripod.

Grr.

2005-12-06T20:53:00.000+09:00

I was half way through a long and exciting post about my weekend when Firefox crashed. I'm too angry to start rewriting it now. Sorry, it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

That's twice Firefox 1.5 has crashed in one day. Good old 1.0 never used to do this. Grumble.

Unexpected Thursday

2005-12-06T19:18:00.000+09:00

Well, it wasn't entirely unexpected. I did expect it to be a Thursday, since the day before was Wednesday. I didn't, however, expect it to be so interesting. In the morning I went to the British embassy to get some visa info for Mai, but found that it didn't open until 2pm, so I had a few hours to kill. I turned round to discover the Imperial Palace just across the road! It has a big moat around it. This is the only picture I managed to take before my camera's battery ran out.

The palace is only open 2 days a year, but you can always stroll through the grounds. Having done so, I was in the mood for walking, so I kept on wandering. I went to Hibiya park for a bit, where I played with stray cats and amiable tramps. I then started following any roadsign that pointed to an interesting-sounding place. Before I knew it, I'd nearly walked to Shinjuku. As I had started in Iidabashi, that means that I'd crossed the whole of central Tokyo! I had no idea that Tokyo was so small. Ever since then, I've given up on tube trains and I walk pretty much everywhere. It's much more interesting. It's also pretty easy, as there are a few absolutely massive skyscrapers that serve as good landmarks.

Later on, I went to school and a classmate gave me an invitation to some kind of launch party that evening in some nightclub in Roppongi. I had no idea what it was all about until I arrived, but it was a good excuse to exercise my new-found walking skills. I walked from school to the event (again, crossing the whole of Tokyo), accompanied all the way by some German guy (I've no idea who he was, and he took a train home as soon as I approached my destination). The event turned out to be a joint launch party for two different music/art/fashion/design/anything-cool magazines and a web design/hosting company. So the club was packed with a pleasing mixture of 2/3rds super-trendy arty people and 1/3rd geeks. And I got a free drink and some good Japanese practice out of it. Good stuff!

---

I'm on a roll now.
I'll write another blog post
Immediately.

I keep seeing midgets!

2005-11-30T19:30:00.000+09:00

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?

----

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

Lazy weekend

2005-11-28T18:38:00.000+09:00

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

2005-11-20T20:01:00.000+09:00

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:

Give your whole heart
Find out its nature
Cherish a sense of the season
Treasure the life
Have great breadth of mind
Be flexible
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

2005-11-14T21:21:00.000+09:00

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

2005-11-14T19:50:00.000+09:00

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

2005-11-05T20:15:00.000+09:00

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.

---

Funabashi is
A truly labarinthine
Mess of alleyways.

Weekend with Mai

2005-10-31T23:17:00.000+09:00

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?

---

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

A stroll in the park

2005-10-31T20:51:00.000+09:00

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....

---

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

Mr Chris's Grand Day Out

2005-10-24T09:31:00.000+09:00

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!

---

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

Boredom

2005-10-22T17:11:00.000+09:00

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.

---

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

Cult beef

2005-10-18T10:30:00.000+09:00

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!

2005-10-15T10:56:00.000+09:00

Spam sushi anyone?

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

Rush hour

2005-10-12T09:22:00.000+09:00

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.

----

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

Hong Kong

2005-10-11T05:48:00.000+09:00

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.

Ooh, I'm a blogger!

2005-09-27T08:54:00.000+09:00

Hello, friends and comment spammers alike, and welcome to my exciting new blog about my adventures in Japan (and, briefly, Hong Kong). Now there's a lot of rubbish blogs out there, so I've been thinking about how to make mine not-rubbish. I've decided that, in the spirit of:

a) being all Japanesey
b) Cantabridgian pretentiousness
c) trying to make my foreign travel blog more excitng than Anna's or Rob+Laura's,

I'm going to summarise every post with a nifty little haiku at the bottom. So all those of you who were unimpressed by the verbosity of last summer's missives can just skip to the end and check out the haiku (and maybe glance at some pictures on the way down).

And of course, the more haiku-format comments the better. Don't be shy, let those creative juices flow.

--

He has a new blog,
To which he will post haikus,
For your enjoyment