I was going to write about job interviews and Milan and vending machines and poker faces but i tried to get on a plane to Amsterdam on last Saturday so i’ve got something completely different to write about.
I’m in England by the way. I came home for Christmas after finishing my contract and my stint at the university which ended with a lot of alcohol being consumed and friends being made. I left Sakasai at about nine thirty last Saturday morning and headed to the airport for the flight back to England via Amsterdam. Jake, one of the other teachers that i’d been working with, was on the same flight as me so we stood in the queue at the airport ready to check in. Except we didn’t. Amsterdam was swimming in snow and the flight had been cancelled. We stood in the queue for five hours being entertained an elderly South African man who plans to sail around the world and didn’t have a good thing to say about his home country. Jake paid for a wireless internet connection and we stood and watched the Ashes and gave complete strangers weather updates. That night we got put up in a busy hotel that had no spare tables in the restaurant so we ate instant noodles and soggy sandwiches from a gift shop and watched the BBC world news lead with a story all about weather chaos in Europe causing huge travel delays at airports which just kind of rubbed it in really.
The next morning Jake got on an earlier flight and i stood in line for an hour or so again. It’s strange how people strike up conversations with each other when things go wrong. If your plane or bus or ferry is on time you don’t say a word to anyone - you spend the whole time with your head in a book or music in your ears. As soon as shit happens it becomes perfectly acceptable to put the book down, switch the music off and have a chat with person next to you. So i met Dianne, an artist from Ireland who gave me a book and told me that i had the right idea with “all that teaching English stuff” and her advice that “you should just travel your arse off for the next ten years, you’re only young” was warmly received. Unfortunately the plane wasn’t as comforting as it had some technical problems that meant we were late setting off from Tokyo and I’d miss my connection to Leeds from Amsterdam on the Sunday night. Eleven hours, one book and two movies later I arrived in Europe.
Amsterdam airport looked like a futuristic refugee camp. The snow outside gave the whole place a lunar landscape and at about midnight i was directed to a business class lounge where KLM had set up a load of camp beds and sleeping bags and pillows for stranded passengers. I hunkered down and started snoozing and, amazingly, didn’t wake up until 8:10. Shit. This meant that i might be late for my connection to Leeds. I quickly got my stuff together, threw everything in my bag and with my coat inside out and hanging off my back and dashed to the toilet on the way out. As i was washing my hands i glanced at my watch again. Hang on. 8:10? I looked closer. It was 1:40. I’d been asleep for about an hour. Back to bed. In the morning we all got free sandwiches for breakfast and the connection to Leeds left late but at least it left. Some people have been in Heathrow for a week.
So now i’m back in Leeds again amongst the snow and old friends and family and Christmas. It's been freakishly cold here with snow and ice lingering longer than usual and all i seem to have done since i've been back is get drunk, get a cold and eat half my own body weight in food. But then it's Christmas in England. That's pretty much what everybody here does.
I start a new job in Tokyo in the first week of January and i leave England on Wednesday and fly via Milan back to Japan. Well, hopefully, if the weather allows. I'll try and write more about Japan in the New Year. Happy Christmas, have fun and best of luck with 2011.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Sakasai and Kamakura
This time last year i was getting drunk and sleeping on buses travelling across Europe. Now a whole twelve months later it’s all totally changed. I’ve been getting drunk and sleeping on trains in Japan. My parents must be so proud.
I’ve been a bit lazy recently. I haven’t been out on my mountain bike and the only new place i’ve ventured is Kamakura which is a small city south west of Tokyo on the coast that was, for a short period of time, the capital of Japan which means it’s littered with dozens of temples and shrines. There are some glorious old buildings and a huge bronze Buddha statue that has survived a tsunami, several typhoons and a few earthquakes in its time but still sits serenely among the trees and the tourists. Kamakura is also home to windsurfers, cheeky kites (the bird not the toy) and cute streets containing a multitude of shops hawking tat and traditional crafts in equal measure. Nice place.
There were also a massive amount of old people although there seems to be a large amount of old people everywhere in Japan. A lot has been written about Japan’s aging population and i confess to having read almost none of it. When you’re here though it does add to that mix and clash of expectations and reality. The expectation being that it’s an ultra hi-tech country full of lights and swishing trains and high speed everything. Which is largely true. It’s just also home to a shit load of grandparents all happily using all that hi-tech full of lights swishing stuff. Whilst falling asleep on a train.
There’s also loads of earthquakes as well. So many that i’ve got used to them. One woke me up last night and instead of being slightly freaked out or scared by it, as i was when i first got here, it just felt like an inconvenience as it was in the middle of the night. I never thought i’d think of an earthquake at 2 on the Richter scale in the similar way that i’d think of car alarm at 3am. But there are so many of them here that it just becomes part of life. It’s very rare that one rips up the ground and causes major damage and death so you become almost immune to them. It must be very strange though growing up in an environment where the possibility of earthquake, tsunami, volcano or typhoon could end it all quite quickly. Maybe it might explain a few other things as well.
It’s said that language reflects culture. Apparently, Intuits have several words for “snow”. The British have a variety of words for “drunk”. The Japanese have lots of words for “pervert”. Prostitutes, massages and love hotels are a part of every city every evening. They’re a horny bunch. And drugs may be highly illegal but alcohol and cigarettes are imbibed as if, well, almost as if a natural disaster could take you out at anytime.
In two weeks i’ll be back in England. In one month i’ll be back in Japan. I’m going home for Christmas but will return for more teaching in 2011. Have fun. See you soon.
I’ve been a bit lazy recently. I haven’t been out on my mountain bike and the only new place i’ve ventured is Kamakura which is a small city south west of Tokyo on the coast that was, for a short period of time, the capital of Japan which means it’s littered with dozens of temples and shrines. There are some glorious old buildings and a huge bronze Buddha statue that has survived a tsunami, several typhoons and a few earthquakes in its time but still sits serenely among the trees and the tourists. Kamakura is also home to windsurfers, cheeky kites (the bird not the toy) and cute streets containing a multitude of shops hawking tat and traditional crafts in equal measure. Nice place.
There were also a massive amount of old people although there seems to be a large amount of old people everywhere in Japan. A lot has been written about Japan’s aging population and i confess to having read almost none of it. When you’re here though it does add to that mix and clash of expectations and reality. The expectation being that it’s an ultra hi-tech country full of lights and swishing trains and high speed everything. Which is largely true. It’s just also home to a shit load of grandparents all happily using all that hi-tech full of lights swishing stuff. Whilst falling asleep on a train.
There’s also loads of earthquakes as well. So many that i’ve got used to them. One woke me up last night and instead of being slightly freaked out or scared by it, as i was when i first got here, it just felt like an inconvenience as it was in the middle of the night. I never thought i’d think of an earthquake at 2 on the Richter scale in the similar way that i’d think of car alarm at 3am. But there are so many of them here that it just becomes part of life. It’s very rare that one rips up the ground and causes major damage and death so you become almost immune to them. It must be very strange though growing up in an environment where the possibility of earthquake, tsunami, volcano or typhoon could end it all quite quickly. Maybe it might explain a few other things as well.
It’s said that language reflects culture. Apparently, Intuits have several words for “snow”. The British have a variety of words for “drunk”. The Japanese have lots of words for “pervert”. Prostitutes, massages and love hotels are a part of every city every evening. They’re a horny bunch. And drugs may be highly illegal but alcohol and cigarettes are imbibed as if, well, almost as if a natural disaster could take you out at anytime.
In two weeks i’ll be back in England. In one month i’ll be back in Japan. I’m going home for Christmas but will return for more teaching in 2011. Have fun. See you soon.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Sakasai and Bingo
Life in Japan roles on. In the last few weeks i’ve played bingo in the rain, got falling down drunk in a nightclub, eaten food cooked by students, seen heavy metal moshpits in the afternoon and fallen asleep on a train. I think i’m fitting in quite well.
The place i work is a university filled with people far cleverer than i ever could be (tri-lingual biotechnologists make dreaming bums like me seem a bit daft) and they know how to have a good time as well. Most universities in Japan have a festival every autumn where the campus closes down for a weekend and is taken over by the students who set up stalls making different foods, play little gigs and share whatever hobbies and interests they’ve got with everybody else. To celebrate the start of the festival last week there was a game of bingo played amongst a crowd of people in front of a small stage at the entrance of the university. Unfortunately it was shitting it down with rain on a cold November evening at the time and the pre-game entertainment of a faux boyband singing ballads was slightly tempered by the fact that the amp didn’t work properly and so they had to share one microphone. In the rain. Before a game of bingo. They were followed onto stage by a group of dancers who jigged and bobbed and clapped in time to a remixed version of Desree’s You Gotta Be. In the rain. And then we played bingo. The winner, whoever it was, won a Playstation 3. Everybody else got mild hyperthermia and seemed pleasantly happy with that. But then a lot of Japanese people seem to have “pleasantly happy” as their default setting.
The festival itself was a colourful mix and mash in the middle of the campus bursting with people, food and music. I stood amongst the buildings and trees and bodies trying to figure out how and why there was a heavy metal band playing to an audience of about a dozen men, some who had dyed their hair green for the occasion, who were throwing themselves at each other in a sober mid afternoon moshpit. About ten metres or so away was the cycling club who were all, for reasons that are still unknown, dressed in drag and doing line dancing all day. Next to them was an old woman stuffing her face with fried noodles next to a cute girl wearing a t-shirt advertising, “Noddy the Pig Hunters” as she ate a chocolate covered banana. I looked around and wondered how it was that even amongst a combination like that i still kind of self-consciously stood out as being foreign.
A night out in Tokyo is, as you’d expect, extremely good fun. The main problem though is that as i live about an hour by train from the centre of things you can’t get a taxi back home (they’re way too expensive) and you have to either get the last train around midnight or stay out until the morning. I thoroughly recommend staying out until the morning. Especially if it includes a nightclub that has several DJs and a live James Brown-esqe blues/soul band with a lead singer who only sings about temperatures and directions, “Hot now. Get down. Yeah, bring it up. Mmm right. Cool that.” By about five o'clock i couldn’t even pronounce my own name and made several nice women wish they were sitting or standing somewhere else. Which they then politely did. I got the train home at about six. Or at least i tried. I definitely remember getting on the train heading back to Kashiwa but I woke up at 9am on the train in Tokyo so i was probably slept all the way to Kashiwa and all the way back to Tokyo again without knowing it. Still, great night. Great city.
Thanks for reading. I’ll write some more rubbish soon.
The place i work is a university filled with people far cleverer than i ever could be (tri-lingual biotechnologists make dreaming bums like me seem a bit daft) and they know how to have a good time as well. Most universities in Japan have a festival every autumn where the campus closes down for a weekend and is taken over by the students who set up stalls making different foods, play little gigs and share whatever hobbies and interests they’ve got with everybody else. To celebrate the start of the festival last week there was a game of bingo played amongst a crowd of people in front of a small stage at the entrance of the university. Unfortunately it was shitting it down with rain on a cold November evening at the time and the pre-game entertainment of a faux boyband singing ballads was slightly tempered by the fact that the amp didn’t work properly and so they had to share one microphone. In the rain. Before a game of bingo. They were followed onto stage by a group of dancers who jigged and bobbed and clapped in time to a remixed version of Desree’s You Gotta Be. In the rain. And then we played bingo. The winner, whoever it was, won a Playstation 3. Everybody else got mild hyperthermia and seemed pleasantly happy with that. But then a lot of Japanese people seem to have “pleasantly happy” as their default setting.
The festival itself was a colourful mix and mash in the middle of the campus bursting with people, food and music. I stood amongst the buildings and trees and bodies trying to figure out how and why there was a heavy metal band playing to an audience of about a dozen men, some who had dyed their hair green for the occasion, who were throwing themselves at each other in a sober mid afternoon moshpit. About ten metres or so away was the cycling club who were all, for reasons that are still unknown, dressed in drag and doing line dancing all day. Next to them was an old woman stuffing her face with fried noodles next to a cute girl wearing a t-shirt advertising, “Noddy the Pig Hunters” as she ate a chocolate covered banana. I looked around and wondered how it was that even amongst a combination like that i still kind of self-consciously stood out as being foreign.
A night out in Tokyo is, as you’d expect, extremely good fun. The main problem though is that as i live about an hour by train from the centre of things you can’t get a taxi back home (they’re way too expensive) and you have to either get the last train around midnight or stay out until the morning. I thoroughly recommend staying out until the morning. Especially if it includes a nightclub that has several DJs and a live James Brown-esqe blues/soul band with a lead singer who only sings about temperatures and directions, “Hot now. Get down. Yeah, bring it up. Mmm right. Cool that.” By about five o'clock i couldn’t even pronounce my own name and made several nice women wish they were sitting or standing somewhere else. Which they then politely did. I got the train home at about six. Or at least i tried. I definitely remember getting on the train heading back to Kashiwa but I woke up at 9am on the train in Tokyo so i was probably slept all the way to Kashiwa and all the way back to Tokyo again without knowing it. Still, great night. Great city.
Thanks for reading. I’ll write some more rubbish soon.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sakasai and Stereotypes
I’m half-way through my contract already. It ends in December so i’m on yet another job hunt. But this one is a little bit more fun – it’s in Japan.
This country seems to be a place that confirms and denies your pre-conceived ideas of it with equal measure. Before i came here i had an idea that Japan was way ahead of the rest of world, somewhere in the future, in terms of technology. The truth appears to be slightly different. Japan is home to an array of electronic gadgets from robotic vacuum cleaners to toilet seats that wash your arse to mobile phones that do almost everything. However, there’s also the nagging fact that i have to use a blackboard and chalk at work and that a lot of buildings don’t seem to have central heating and most cash machines close at night. I think some of the technology needs sharing around a bit more. I’d rather push a vacuum cleaner around than teach by scrawling a white rock onto a board of black.
Then there’s the whole safety aspect. Japan is known for being one of the safest countries in the world with ridiculously low crime rates and politeness everywhere. This is undoubtedly true until you realise that the trains have women only carriages during the packed rush hours so dirty old men can’t grope girls on the sly. And while the rest of the population is friendly and polite the country itself has an earthquake of varying magnitude every single day, sees typhoons every autumn, floods every summer, smog every spring, snow drifts every winter and is home to approximately 10% of the world’s active volcanoes. So, yeah, safe-ish, in a way.
I realised that Japan has this give and take of its stereotypes last week when i visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It’s a bit of a controversial place as it’s a memorial to Japan’s war dead which doesn’t go down too well in Korea and China. I went to see the flea market which is held there every Sunday and i was a bit surprised to see a small group of right-wing idiots at the shrine’s main entrance dressed in blue fatigues with baseball caps standing next to cars and vans which were decorated in imperial flags and pro-Japanese slogans whilst blaring out music that, although i couldn’t fully understand, probably wasn’t a Japanese remake of What A Wonderful World. All of this was outside a shrine that other countries, especially Asian ones, see as extremely provocative as a result of the wars of the past. I walked one block from there to a part of Tokyo called Jimbocho which is home to dozens of bookshops. There was a second hand book festival in full swing with shops and shelves spilling out onto the packed pavements. There were lots of food stalls outside local restaurants in the back streets (including Thai, Indian and Chinese) and you could listen to live music courtesy of a Latin jazz band. All very international and civilised. And all just down the road from the Japanese ultra-nationalists. It was a bit like the BNP in England having small get-together a block away from Soho in London.
Tokyo continues to amaze. Today i went to Shinjuku which is Tokyo in a nutshell. A nutshell that contains a red light district, street food, bars, chic designer shops, huge department stores, skyscrapers, cheap market stalls, upscale restaurants and a train station that, apparently, sees more than 3.5M people pass through it every single day. Quite a nutshell.
Over on the eastern side of the city there’s Ueno which is famous for a huge park with temples, lakes, lots of homeless men and handful of museums and art galleries all right next to a market that crams itself under train lines and between buildings selling everything from dried squid to fake designer handbags. I found a great little restaurant that serves delicious bowls of steamed rice with grilled fish that almost melts off the chopsticks for a few quid. If i lived near Ueno i’d eat there every day.
But i live near Kashiwa which is a practical functional place with enough to keep you occupied for a few hours on a Friday night (especially if it involves something called atsukan which is essentially hot sake) and enough shops to waste a few hours in on a Saturday. It also has a British themed bar which doesn’t look anything like a pub in Britain (it’s friendly and clean for a start, the portions of food aren’t supersized and there’s a severe lack of fat ugly people) but it does contain beer, big screen sports and lots of drunks. And so that’s where i was last night watching the Japan baseball finals with one of my co-workers as fans of one of the teams shouted and cheered whenever anything went half-way towards decent and an old Japanese man joined us amongst the din of chants and whoops seemingly oblivious to the live sport and alcohol around him and pursued a mainly one way conversation that lasted about thirty minutes and managed to include such topics as Britain’s nuclear deterrent, cricket, China, ice hockey, Scarborough, “a famous Canadian lake”, political corruption, hot springs and an amazing story about his son who was working in the World Trade Centre in New York on that day and lived to tell the tale. He was eccentric and friendly, loud yet quiet, in a British themed-pub in the middle of Japan talking to an English man watching baseball. Everything here is familiar yet different, new but old, obvious but subtle and confirming yet disproving. I love it. Fingers crossed for the job hunt.
This country seems to be a place that confirms and denies your pre-conceived ideas of it with equal measure. Before i came here i had an idea that Japan was way ahead of the rest of world, somewhere in the future, in terms of technology. The truth appears to be slightly different. Japan is home to an array of electronic gadgets from robotic vacuum cleaners to toilet seats that wash your arse to mobile phones that do almost everything. However, there’s also the nagging fact that i have to use a blackboard and chalk at work and that a lot of buildings don’t seem to have central heating and most cash machines close at night. I think some of the technology needs sharing around a bit more. I’d rather push a vacuum cleaner around than teach by scrawling a white rock onto a board of black.
Then there’s the whole safety aspect. Japan is known for being one of the safest countries in the world with ridiculously low crime rates and politeness everywhere. This is undoubtedly true until you realise that the trains have women only carriages during the packed rush hours so dirty old men can’t grope girls on the sly. And while the rest of the population is friendly and polite the country itself has an earthquake of varying magnitude every single day, sees typhoons every autumn, floods every summer, smog every spring, snow drifts every winter and is home to approximately 10% of the world’s active volcanoes. So, yeah, safe-ish, in a way.
I realised that Japan has this give and take of its stereotypes last week when i visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It’s a bit of a controversial place as it’s a memorial to Japan’s war dead which doesn’t go down too well in Korea and China. I went to see the flea market which is held there every Sunday and i was a bit surprised to see a small group of right-wing idiots at the shrine’s main entrance dressed in blue fatigues with baseball caps standing next to cars and vans which were decorated in imperial flags and pro-Japanese slogans whilst blaring out music that, although i couldn’t fully understand, probably wasn’t a Japanese remake of What A Wonderful World. All of this was outside a shrine that other countries, especially Asian ones, see as extremely provocative as a result of the wars of the past. I walked one block from there to a part of Tokyo called Jimbocho which is home to dozens of bookshops. There was a second hand book festival in full swing with shops and shelves spilling out onto the packed pavements. There were lots of food stalls outside local restaurants in the back streets (including Thai, Indian and Chinese) and you could listen to live music courtesy of a Latin jazz band. All very international and civilised. And all just down the road from the Japanese ultra-nationalists. It was a bit like the BNP in England having small get-together a block away from Soho in London.
Tokyo continues to amaze. Today i went to Shinjuku which is Tokyo in a nutshell. A nutshell that contains a red light district, street food, bars, chic designer shops, huge department stores, skyscrapers, cheap market stalls, upscale restaurants and a train station that, apparently, sees more than 3.5M people pass through it every single day. Quite a nutshell.
Over on the eastern side of the city there’s Ueno which is famous for a huge park with temples, lakes, lots of homeless men and handful of museums and art galleries all right next to a market that crams itself under train lines and between buildings selling everything from dried squid to fake designer handbags. I found a great little restaurant that serves delicious bowls of steamed rice with grilled fish that almost melts off the chopsticks for a few quid. If i lived near Ueno i’d eat there every day.
But i live near Kashiwa which is a practical functional place with enough to keep you occupied for a few hours on a Friday night (especially if it involves something called atsukan which is essentially hot sake) and enough shops to waste a few hours in on a Saturday. It also has a British themed bar which doesn’t look anything like a pub in Britain (it’s friendly and clean for a start, the portions of food aren’t supersized and there’s a severe lack of fat ugly people) but it does contain beer, big screen sports and lots of drunks. And so that’s where i was last night watching the Japan baseball finals with one of my co-workers as fans of one of the teams shouted and cheered whenever anything went half-way towards decent and an old Japanese man joined us amongst the din of chants and whoops seemingly oblivious to the live sport and alcohol around him and pursued a mainly one way conversation that lasted about thirty minutes and managed to include such topics as Britain’s nuclear deterrent, cricket, China, ice hockey, Scarborough, “a famous Canadian lake”, political corruption, hot springs and an amazing story about his son who was working in the World Trade Centre in New York on that day and lived to tell the tale. He was eccentric and friendly, loud yet quiet, in a British themed-pub in the middle of Japan talking to an English man watching baseball. Everything here is familiar yet different, new but old, obvious but subtle and confirming yet disproving. I love it. Fingers crossed for the job hunt.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Sakasai and Lions
I’ve been in Japan for almost a month now and things are coasting along nicely. Everything seems friendly and strange all at the same time.
A couple of weeks ago i watched Japan beat Argentina in a football match (a friendly, of course) in a bar in the nearest city, Kashiwa. The Japanese watch football in a slightly peculiar way. Normally when people watch sport they might cheer or sound frustrated or sing or curse or make a variety of different noises to reflect the game itself. The Japanese don’t do this. All they do is scream. Anytime the ball goes anywhere near the goal (even when it’s quite obviously not going to be a goal) they scream like scared school girls on a ghost train. I still have no idea why they do this.
There are a few other things that i haven’t quite got my head round yet and probably never will. I love the way that everybody falls asleep on the trains. People get on the train in the morning, sit down and snooze away. As simple as that. You never see anybody oversnooze and miss their stop either. It’s as if all Japanese people have an inbuilt hardwired sixth sense for sleeping in moving trains on the way to work. There’s also the overly polite service industry which means that whenever you walk into a shop or restaurant or bar or pretty much any building that isn’t either residential or religious you’ll be greeted by a chorus of welcomes and hellos from the staff. At first i felt compelled to reply with a hello or a little bow straight back but then I realised that all the Japanese people don’t say a word or do anything when they walk into a place. The over politeness has just become part of the background noise for them like drunk swearing and car alarms in England.
My job is going fine. I teach speaking classes to university students so essentially i get paid to have conversations with people which is a bit different from my last teaching job in Korea where i was a glorified babysitter and crowd controller. Still, Asian students are Asian students and a few choice gems that have come out in class so far are the questions, “How often do you live in a house made of asbestos?” and “Would you like to buy a gorgeous lion?” And who hasn’t asked those questions before?
Tokyo is also going fine. I think. It’s difficult to tell such is the size and speed of the place. It’s a monster. I’ve had a wander around and done the inevitable and got lost and found my way back to somewhere familiar but it fully lives up to the hype and everything you’d expect. It’s a living breathing moving maze. There are the vein-like train lines over and underground, hundreds of restaurants and bars line its stomach, suit-clad business men stressfully fill its wallet, old temples mark the past while glitzy shops and sleek new buildings escort everybody to the future. It’s a wonderful organised mess that seems to have no beginning, middle or end. It just is. It’s Tokyo.
I need to see more of the capital as well as the museums, flea markets, parks, temples, mountains, bike tracks, shops, rivers, harbours and galleries. Too many places, not enough weekends.
A couple of weeks ago i watched Japan beat Argentina in a football match (a friendly, of course) in a bar in the nearest city, Kashiwa. The Japanese watch football in a slightly peculiar way. Normally when people watch sport they might cheer or sound frustrated or sing or curse or make a variety of different noises to reflect the game itself. The Japanese don’t do this. All they do is scream. Anytime the ball goes anywhere near the goal (even when it’s quite obviously not going to be a goal) they scream like scared school girls on a ghost train. I still have no idea why they do this.
There are a few other things that i haven’t quite got my head round yet and probably never will. I love the way that everybody falls asleep on the trains. People get on the train in the morning, sit down and snooze away. As simple as that. You never see anybody oversnooze and miss their stop either. It’s as if all Japanese people have an inbuilt hardwired sixth sense for sleeping in moving trains on the way to work. There’s also the overly polite service industry which means that whenever you walk into a shop or restaurant or bar or pretty much any building that isn’t either residential or religious you’ll be greeted by a chorus of welcomes and hellos from the staff. At first i felt compelled to reply with a hello or a little bow straight back but then I realised that all the Japanese people don’t say a word or do anything when they walk into a place. The over politeness has just become part of the background noise for them like drunk swearing and car alarms in England.
My job is going fine. I teach speaking classes to university students so essentially i get paid to have conversations with people which is a bit different from my last teaching job in Korea where i was a glorified babysitter and crowd controller. Still, Asian students are Asian students and a few choice gems that have come out in class so far are the questions, “How often do you live in a house made of asbestos?” and “Would you like to buy a gorgeous lion?” And who hasn’t asked those questions before?
Tokyo is also going fine. I think. It’s difficult to tell such is the size and speed of the place. It’s a monster. I’ve had a wander around and done the inevitable and got lost and found my way back to somewhere familiar but it fully lives up to the hype and everything you’d expect. It’s a living breathing moving maze. There are the vein-like train lines over and underground, hundreds of restaurants and bars line its stomach, suit-clad business men stressfully fill its wallet, old temples mark the past while glitzy shops and sleek new buildings escort everybody to the future. It’s a wonderful organised mess that seems to have no beginning, middle or end. It just is. It’s Tokyo.
I need to see more of the capital as well as the museums, flea markets, parks, temples, mountains, bike tracks, shops, rivers, harbours and galleries. Too many places, not enough weekends.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Sakasai and Tokyo
Japan is expensive. It shouldn’t be but as the UK pound is currently worth about the same as a tramp’s second hand shoes i’ve found myself in a position where i’m essentially living like a student until my first pay day. I eat instant noodles, baulk at the price of beer and ask newly found friends for some cash to tie me over for two weeks. Fun, no?
The company i’m working for seems to be actively helping me in my student lifestyle. They’ve provided me with an dinky flat that feels like a halls of residence and a mobile phone that won’t allow me to make outbound calls which makes it a bit redundant as a mobile phone – it kind of takes the “phone” aspect out of the equation altogether. However it does send me an automated warning whenever there’s an earthquake which was a bit strange last week. Especially when the warning wasn’t followed by an earthquake. Which pretty much takes the “warning” aspect out of the earthquake warning equation. This is a long winded way of saying that i’ve got a really shit phone.
The flat is in a place called Sakasai just on the edge of a city called Kashiwa outside Tokyo. Sakasai hasn’t got much apart from a train station, a supermarket and a little bar where you can get drunk with an eclectic mix of business men talking shit and feeling better for it, English teachers trying to understand what’s going on and friendly couples hell bent on force feeding you sake and soju until you can’t see properly.
Sakasai also has a swimming pool and so i thought i’d attempt to keep active and bought a month’s membership. I went for the first time on Monday night and was greeted by an aqua aerobics class which is something that seems to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries. They’re the same everywhere – slightly large middle-aged women flop around looking like they’d rather be anywhere else and being encouraged and led by a maniac who shouts and claps in time to music that’s played far too loud. Don’t worry, i didn’t join in but did some lengths instead with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones blasting through the speakers.
Last Saturday was interesting. I went out on my mountain bike (did i mention that i’d brought it with me?) and cycled all day along a river that cuts into Tokyo amongst the buildings, bridges and bustle and ended up that evening being really quite sunburnt and red. I looked constantly embarrassed and drunk. Which was unfortunate because that night i went on a blind date with a Thai girl in Tokyo in an area of town called Roppongi which is famous for its night life and African pimps. No, really. And that’s how i came to find myself in a bar eating and drinking with a cute crazy girl trying not to look embarrassed or drunk and attempting to draw attention away from my face. And then two of her friends showed up and told me that we would be drinking until 5am. I should go to Tokyo more often.
It was only a few weeks ago that i was living with my parents in British suburbia and working in soul-melting arse-numbing office job. Somehow i’m now living in a flat in Japan and spend my time teaching English, getting drunk, swimming with middle aged women and going on blind dates in Tokyo whilst sunburnt from cycling. Life changes quickly doesn’t it?
The company i’m working for seems to be actively helping me in my student lifestyle. They’ve provided me with an dinky flat that feels like a halls of residence and a mobile phone that won’t allow me to make outbound calls which makes it a bit redundant as a mobile phone – it kind of takes the “phone” aspect out of the equation altogether. However it does send me an automated warning whenever there’s an earthquake which was a bit strange last week. Especially when the warning wasn’t followed by an earthquake. Which pretty much takes the “warning” aspect out of the earthquake warning equation. This is a long winded way of saying that i’ve got a really shit phone.
The flat is in a place called Sakasai just on the edge of a city called Kashiwa outside Tokyo. Sakasai hasn’t got much apart from a train station, a supermarket and a little bar where you can get drunk with an eclectic mix of business men talking shit and feeling better for it, English teachers trying to understand what’s going on and friendly couples hell bent on force feeding you sake and soju until you can’t see properly.
Sakasai also has a swimming pool and so i thought i’d attempt to keep active and bought a month’s membership. I went for the first time on Monday night and was greeted by an aqua aerobics class which is something that seems to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries. They’re the same everywhere – slightly large middle-aged women flop around looking like they’d rather be anywhere else and being encouraged and led by a maniac who shouts and claps in time to music that’s played far too loud. Don’t worry, i didn’t join in but did some lengths instead with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones blasting through the speakers.
Last Saturday was interesting. I went out on my mountain bike (did i mention that i’d brought it with me?) and cycled all day along a river that cuts into Tokyo amongst the buildings, bridges and bustle and ended up that evening being really quite sunburnt and red. I looked constantly embarrassed and drunk. Which was unfortunate because that night i went on a blind date with a Thai girl in Tokyo in an area of town called Roppongi which is famous for its night life and African pimps. No, really. And that’s how i came to find myself in a bar eating and drinking with a cute crazy girl trying not to look embarrassed or drunk and attempting to draw attention away from my face. And then two of her friends showed up and told me that we would be drinking until 5am. I should go to Tokyo more often.
It was only a few weeks ago that i was living with my parents in British suburbia and working in soul-melting arse-numbing office job. Somehow i’m now living in a flat in Japan and spend my time teaching English, getting drunk, swimming with middle aged women and going on blind dates in Tokyo whilst sunburnt from cycling. Life changes quickly doesn’t it?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
London and Sakasai
This silly blog thing started over a year ago when I went travelling around Japan. I'm back.
The last couple of weeks in England zipped past. I finished my job as on office monkey and spent two days travelling backwards and forwards to London to apply for a working visa at the Japanese Embassy. I've never lived in London and i've never really had the chance to spend much time there so i wandered around and took it all in. There are three things that struck me about central London. Coffee, joggers and tourists. If you're in London you will either be jogging in a park, drinking coffee or taking pictures of shit. Some people were doing two at once. For a country famous for drinking tea there are rivers of coffee in central London. London actually smells of coffee. Until you get on the Underground that is and then there's a definite aroma of piss and sweat. Anyway, i was a tourist so i got lost and took pictures of the old iconic buildings dripping with history and strutting around on the monopoly board.
After a weekend of goodbye beers in Leeds i left Leeds Bradford Airport last week which is less an airport and more an inadequately sized over-priced shopping centre with a runway next to it. The flight was delayed so i wasted time trying not to laugh at a man who was showing off his iPad to his equally annoying friends by playing them a youtube video of Phil Collins. Goodbye England.
I flew to Amsterdam and then onto Tokyo. There's nothing quite like the feeling of leaving one life to start a new one. You put everything in bag and set off someplace new with no idea of what's going to happen next. You feel happy and sad, eager and hesitant, excited and nervous. When i took my seat on the plane i didn't know if i was batting, bowling or fielding.
And i'm now sat in a little flat about an hour by train from central Tokyo. It's a very quiet and peaceful little neighbourhood which just seems to amplify the sense that just on the horizon is one the biggest silliest cities in the world. You can almost hear it teasing and calling you to go and spend too much money and get drunk. Which is obviously exactly what seems to have happened so far.
I'll write more soon. Thanks for reading.
The last couple of weeks in England zipped past. I finished my job as on office monkey and spent two days travelling backwards and forwards to London to apply for a working visa at the Japanese Embassy. I've never lived in London and i've never really had the chance to spend much time there so i wandered around and took it all in. There are three things that struck me about central London. Coffee, joggers and tourists. If you're in London you will either be jogging in a park, drinking coffee or taking pictures of shit. Some people were doing two at once. For a country famous for drinking tea there are rivers of coffee in central London. London actually smells of coffee. Until you get on the Underground that is and then there's a definite aroma of piss and sweat. Anyway, i was a tourist so i got lost and took pictures of the old iconic buildings dripping with history and strutting around on the monopoly board.
After a weekend of goodbye beers in Leeds i left Leeds Bradford Airport last week which is less an airport and more an inadequately sized over-priced shopping centre with a runway next to it. The flight was delayed so i wasted time trying not to laugh at a man who was showing off his iPad to his equally annoying friends by playing them a youtube video of Phil Collins. Goodbye England.
I flew to Amsterdam and then onto Tokyo. There's nothing quite like the feeling of leaving one life to start a new one. You put everything in bag and set off someplace new with no idea of what's going to happen next. You feel happy and sad, eager and hesitant, excited and nervous. When i took my seat on the plane i didn't know if i was batting, bowling or fielding.
And i'm now sat in a little flat about an hour by train from central Tokyo. It's a very quiet and peaceful little neighbourhood which just seems to amplify the sense that just on the horizon is one the biggest silliest cities in the world. You can almost hear it teasing and calling you to go and spend too much money and get drunk. Which is obviously exactly what seems to have happened so far.
I'll write more soon. Thanks for reading.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Leeds and Sausages
Perhaps it’s not until you’ve lived somewhere familiar for a while that it starts to feel less normal and you see things in different light. If you’re hitchhiking across Mongolia or roughing it in a yurt with some nomads in Kyrgyzstan then the wonkiness hits you between the eyes. You have to look a bit closer and pay more attention when you’re living in suburbs and working a desk job doing monkey work. But perhaps the normality is that everywhere is abnormal.
My Mum and Dad’s street is a dinky cul-de-sac in suburban Leeds. Walk down it and you’ll see nice detached houses or semis or little bungalows, neat hedges and lots of leafyness. All average and normal. Nothing to see here, move along please. Apart from the bungalow at number 8 that had a huge family of eastern Europeans living there for months who had a garden party during the summer that lasted two weeks. I think they invited Estonia. I don’t know what they were celebrating but it looked like a lot of fun. They all moved out about a month ago and last week while it was empty there was a fire that completely ravaged the placed and since then the blackened, half-melted furniture has sat on the front garden and the driveway waiting for somebody to do something about it while everybody does the opposite.
Next to the former eastern European immigrant party fire house there’s a big old red bricked house occupied by a man who does his gardening in a shirt and tie. I’ve always wondered if he wears his gardening clothes to business meetings. Anyway, it’s a bit disconcerting seeing a man in smart attire cutting a hedge on a Saturday afternoon. Next door to him at number four is a family that have semi-feral children and the Dad drives his Porsche like Michael Schumacher drives home when he’s desperate for a shit.
Over the road from the burned out house is a home that looks like it was designed by three year old. Give a child a red pen and a piece of paper and they’d draw this house. They seem like a nice enough family but they run a printing business out of the garage and the office above it so technically it’s not a residential property. Which means any one of us could put a call in to the correct planning office and either get the business shut down or increase their council tax by about 400%. Might be fun.
Next door to the illegal business lives a thoroughly disagreeable kid who swaggers about as if he’s a thirteen year old Eminem and they live two doors up from a Sri Lankan anaesthetist who lives over the road from a Scottish couple who are retired born-again Christians (retired from work, that is, not Christianity) and they live next door to a house that was, for a short time a few months back, at the centre of a rape allegation against the nobhead youngest son who lived there and the house spent 24 hours covered in police tape and forensics. No charges were brought. The family threw him out. My Mum and Dad live across the road with me, their youngest son, who once fell out of a house in a jungle in Laos and dreams of going to places he’s never even heard of.
And the thing that makes this even stranger is that I barely even speak to these people and don’t really talk to the nice people either – such as the friendly plumber at number seven or the nice old couple two doors down who train guide dogs. But that’s suburban British life. We bemoan the fact that immigrants can’t speak English and don’t join the community but never make conversation with the man at number six who mows his lawn wearing a waistcoat. And that is abnormal.
I’ve also come to appreciate the little idiosyncrasies of Leeds. The fact that it’s littered with Sikh Gurudwaras, Islamic Mosques, Jewish Synagogues, Hindu Temples and stockpiles of churches. A quick search revealed that we have a Roman Catholic Cathedral, the Episcopal seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds and places of worship belonging to the Assembly of God, Baptists, Christian Scientists, Mormons, the Community of Christ, Greek Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus Army, Lutherans, Methodists, Nazarene, Newfrontiers network, the Salvation Army, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Society of Friends, Unitarians, United Reformists, the Wesleyan Church and an ecumenical Chinese church.
And of course let’s not forget the 21st century religions. There are hundreds and hundreds of places devoted solely to a burgeoning population of people who follow the glorious religion of Undiluted Alcoholism. And then there's omnipresent Latter Day Faith of Capitalism and Frivolous Expenditure which has 210,340 square metres of floor space in the city. That’s 30 square cm of retail for every man, woman and child who live here.
Then there’s the world’s biggest fish and chip shop and Europe’s oldest West Indian Carnival and in 1880 Louis Le Prince recorded the world’s very first moving images with a Leeds back garden as his subject. It’s also a city that houses a higher class of crazy. Every UK city has its fair share of drunks, tramps and layabouts but Leeds’ drunks, tramps and layabouts seem to be a little bit further leftfield from the others. They slump next to the entrance of banks singing and making animal noises. Or they are the smelly bearded men who come up to you at bus stops and start conversations half-way through by saying something like, “But it’s not always like that is it? Sometimes he eats sausages.” And then stare at you expecting a response before sneering and walking off.
So there you go. It turned out that home was just as interesting and weird as everywhere else. Which means I should be happy to stay here now, right? Ah, well, there’s the silly thing - I can’t wait to leave (i might get that on my tombstone) as i’m going to Japan in a few weeks. I’ve managed to get a job there teaching English for few months so we’ll see where i end up and what happens next. It probably won’t be normal. It never is.
My Mum and Dad’s street is a dinky cul-de-sac in suburban Leeds. Walk down it and you’ll see nice detached houses or semis or little bungalows, neat hedges and lots of leafyness. All average and normal. Nothing to see here, move along please. Apart from the bungalow at number 8 that had a huge family of eastern Europeans living there for months who had a garden party during the summer that lasted two weeks. I think they invited Estonia. I don’t know what they were celebrating but it looked like a lot of fun. They all moved out about a month ago and last week while it was empty there was a fire that completely ravaged the placed and since then the blackened, half-melted furniture has sat on the front garden and the driveway waiting for somebody to do something about it while everybody does the opposite.
Next to the former eastern European immigrant party fire house there’s a big old red bricked house occupied by a man who does his gardening in a shirt and tie. I’ve always wondered if he wears his gardening clothes to business meetings. Anyway, it’s a bit disconcerting seeing a man in smart attire cutting a hedge on a Saturday afternoon. Next door to him at number four is a family that have semi-feral children and the Dad drives his Porsche like Michael Schumacher drives home when he’s desperate for a shit.
Over the road from the burned out house is a home that looks like it was designed by three year old. Give a child a red pen and a piece of paper and they’d draw this house. They seem like a nice enough family but they run a printing business out of the garage and the office above it so technically it’s not a residential property. Which means any one of us could put a call in to the correct planning office and either get the business shut down or increase their council tax by about 400%. Might be fun.
Next door to the illegal business lives a thoroughly disagreeable kid who swaggers about as if he’s a thirteen year old Eminem and they live two doors up from a Sri Lankan anaesthetist who lives over the road from a Scottish couple who are retired born-again Christians (retired from work, that is, not Christianity) and they live next door to a house that was, for a short time a few months back, at the centre of a rape allegation against the nobhead youngest son who lived there and the house spent 24 hours covered in police tape and forensics. No charges were brought. The family threw him out. My Mum and Dad live across the road with me, their youngest son, who once fell out of a house in a jungle in Laos and dreams of going to places he’s never even heard of.
And the thing that makes this even stranger is that I barely even speak to these people and don’t really talk to the nice people either – such as the friendly plumber at number seven or the nice old couple two doors down who train guide dogs. But that’s suburban British life. We bemoan the fact that immigrants can’t speak English and don’t join the community but never make conversation with the man at number six who mows his lawn wearing a waistcoat. And that is abnormal.
I’ve also come to appreciate the little idiosyncrasies of Leeds. The fact that it’s littered with Sikh Gurudwaras, Islamic Mosques, Jewish Synagogues, Hindu Temples and stockpiles of churches. A quick search revealed that we have a Roman Catholic Cathedral, the Episcopal seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds and places of worship belonging to the Assembly of God, Baptists, Christian Scientists, Mormons, the Community of Christ, Greek Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus Army, Lutherans, Methodists, Nazarene, Newfrontiers network, the Salvation Army, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Society of Friends, Unitarians, United Reformists, the Wesleyan Church and an ecumenical Chinese church.
And of course let’s not forget the 21st century religions. There are hundreds and hundreds of places devoted solely to a burgeoning population of people who follow the glorious religion of Undiluted Alcoholism. And then there's omnipresent Latter Day Faith of Capitalism and Frivolous Expenditure which has 210,340 square metres of floor space in the city. That’s 30 square cm of retail for every man, woman and child who live here.
Then there’s the world’s biggest fish and chip shop and Europe’s oldest West Indian Carnival and in 1880 Louis Le Prince recorded the world’s very first moving images with a Leeds back garden as his subject. It’s also a city that houses a higher class of crazy. Every UK city has its fair share of drunks, tramps and layabouts but Leeds’ drunks, tramps and layabouts seem to be a little bit further leftfield from the others. They slump next to the entrance of banks singing and making animal noises. Or they are the smelly bearded men who come up to you at bus stops and start conversations half-way through by saying something like, “But it’s not always like that is it? Sometimes he eats sausages.” And then stare at you expecting a response before sneering and walking off.
So there you go. It turned out that home was just as interesting and weird as everywhere else. Which means I should be happy to stay here now, right? Ah, well, there’s the silly thing - I can’t wait to leave (i might get that on my tombstone) as i’m going to Japan in a few weeks. I’ve managed to get a job there teaching English for few months so we’ll see where i end up and what happens next. It probably won’t be normal. It never is.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Still Leeds
I’m still working in Leeds, i’m still dreaming of teaching English somewhere and i’m still a drunk idiot. Not much has changed since last updated this thing but i thought i’d try and write something anyway.
Actually, i’m not just dreaming of teaching English again. I did an English teaching course called a CELTA which was like swimming through the sea of syrup that is the English language for four solid weeks whilst conducting classes to immigrants and asylum seekers and having your teaching constantly assessed, evaluated and commented on. I’ve been applying for some teaching gigs on the back of that and in the mean time i’m still being an office monkey and living with my parents.
It’s not all practicality though. The added bonus of living in your home city is that there’s always somebody you’ve not seen in a while who wants a beer. Although as it’s Leeds this comes with its own unique drawbacks as well. I was walking home from a friend’s house one Saturday night a few weeks ago when a car pulled up next to me with the passenger window down. It was a Mini (one of the new girly ones) but filled with lads. The fella in the front passenger seat called out to me, “Scuse me mate, do you know where Napa is.” Napa is a bar just down the street from where i was so i pointed down the street said, “Yeah, if you just keep going on down here it’s on your-” which is as far as i got. The fella in the front passenger seat squirted water all over me from a sqeezy bottle and somebody else in the car threw an egg that whistled past my face and hit the hedge behind me. Then they drove off.
I stood there laughing to myself (actually i was laughing with them) as i just realised that i’d been victim to the world’s most white, English, middle-class version of a drive-by shooting that there will ever be. No need for semi-automatic, pump action, high velocity firearms in this part of the world. Oh no, just some common baking products and a girl’s car – not even a pimpmobile or a Hummer. And just what is the standard white, English middle -class reaction to this event? Lob back some spoonfuls of mango chutney and glass of gin? I also enjoyed the way they were polite about the whole thing by saying, “Excuse me”, before initiating the one sided drive-by food fight and then fleeing the scene at a pacy yet legally acceptable speed limit. I wasn’t watching close enough but i bet the driver even mirror-signal-maneuvered his way back into traffic without a firearm in sight.
I, on the other hand, have very recently used a gun. A paintballing gun. One of my mates is getting married this summer so the traditional stag weekend was duly rolled out all the way to Edinburgh which was a wonderful mess that included some oversized levels of alcohol, quad-biking and, yes, paintballing which is an activity that provides right and wrong in equal measure all at once. If you’ve been paintballing before you’ll probably understand that it turns placid, nice, affable people into mad, anger-filled commandos before you can even say, “Capture the flag”. Give a nice man a jump suit, a face helmet and gun and all of a sudden it’s you against the world and everybody else can eat paint. It’s also seems impossible to be good at and generally just involves being in pain and sweating and trying to find out where the hell you are or who you’re meant to be shooting or who just shot you or, more to the point, why the hell you and a large group of young men are celebrating the fact that one your best friends is going to be spending the rest of his life with the woman he loves by scurrying around a forest trying to impale each other with paintballs in the blistering summer sunshine of Scotland whilst nursing a hangover from the previous day. And that’s a lot of stuff to be thinking about when somebody’s just shot you in the arse. Which they did.
In other news i’ve now got a hearing aid. I know. I’m already short sighted with an acute drink issue. Give me a walking stick and tweed jacket and i’d be fucking pensioner. Anyway it got fitted yesterday morning so i now have perfect hearing through my right ear for the first time in years as my hearing has been slowly deteriorating for a while. It’s now a bit weird. I feel like i’ve got bionic hearing. I can hear a mouse fart in the room next door. Things shouldn’t be this loud. It’s ridiculous. It also sounds as if everything is being played through a Dictaphone including my own voice. Twenty-eight years gone and two out of five senses already malfunctioning. Which one’s next do you think? I’ll let you know when i do. As long as i can hear it or see it.
Actually, i’m not just dreaming of teaching English again. I did an English teaching course called a CELTA which was like swimming through the sea of syrup that is the English language for four solid weeks whilst conducting classes to immigrants and asylum seekers and having your teaching constantly assessed, evaluated and commented on. I’ve been applying for some teaching gigs on the back of that and in the mean time i’m still being an office monkey and living with my parents.
It’s not all practicality though. The added bonus of living in your home city is that there’s always somebody you’ve not seen in a while who wants a beer. Although as it’s Leeds this comes with its own unique drawbacks as well. I was walking home from a friend’s house one Saturday night a few weeks ago when a car pulled up next to me with the passenger window down. It was a Mini (one of the new girly ones) but filled with lads. The fella in the front passenger seat called out to me, “Scuse me mate, do you know where Napa is.” Napa is a bar just down the street from where i was so i pointed down the street said, “Yeah, if you just keep going on down here it’s on your-” which is as far as i got. The fella in the front passenger seat squirted water all over me from a sqeezy bottle and somebody else in the car threw an egg that whistled past my face and hit the hedge behind me. Then they drove off.
I stood there laughing to myself (actually i was laughing with them) as i just realised that i’d been victim to the world’s most white, English, middle-class version of a drive-by shooting that there will ever be. No need for semi-automatic, pump action, high velocity firearms in this part of the world. Oh no, just some common baking products and a girl’s car – not even a pimpmobile or a Hummer. And just what is the standard white, English middle -class reaction to this event? Lob back some spoonfuls of mango chutney and glass of gin? I also enjoyed the way they were polite about the whole thing by saying, “Excuse me”, before initiating the one sided drive-by food fight and then fleeing the scene at a pacy yet legally acceptable speed limit. I wasn’t watching close enough but i bet the driver even mirror-signal-maneuvered his way back into traffic without a firearm in sight.
I, on the other hand, have very recently used a gun. A paintballing gun. One of my mates is getting married this summer so the traditional stag weekend was duly rolled out all the way to Edinburgh which was a wonderful mess that included some oversized levels of alcohol, quad-biking and, yes, paintballing which is an activity that provides right and wrong in equal measure all at once. If you’ve been paintballing before you’ll probably understand that it turns placid, nice, affable people into mad, anger-filled commandos before you can even say, “Capture the flag”. Give a nice man a jump suit, a face helmet and gun and all of a sudden it’s you against the world and everybody else can eat paint. It’s also seems impossible to be good at and generally just involves being in pain and sweating and trying to find out where the hell you are or who you’re meant to be shooting or who just shot you or, more to the point, why the hell you and a large group of young men are celebrating the fact that one your best friends is going to be spending the rest of his life with the woman he loves by scurrying around a forest trying to impale each other with paintballs in the blistering summer sunshine of Scotland whilst nursing a hangover from the previous day. And that’s a lot of stuff to be thinking about when somebody’s just shot you in the arse. Which they did.
In other news i’ve now got a hearing aid. I know. I’m already short sighted with an acute drink issue. Give me a walking stick and tweed jacket and i’d be fucking pensioner. Anyway it got fitted yesterday morning so i now have perfect hearing through my right ear for the first time in years as my hearing has been slowly deteriorating for a while. It’s now a bit weird. I feel like i’ve got bionic hearing. I can hear a mouse fart in the room next door. Things shouldn’t be this loud. It’s ridiculous. It also sounds as if everything is being played through a Dictaphone including my own voice. Twenty-eight years gone and two out of five senses already malfunctioning. Which one’s next do you think? I’ll let you know when i do. As long as i can hear it or see it.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Leeds once more
I’m still here. I’ve been in the same city for almost five months which is quite an achievement for me. Here’s what i’ve been doing, seeing and thinking since i last wrote a load of guff in February.
I bought a mountain bike which put a sizable hole in my savings account and a large smile on my face. I cycle out through the small village lanes and farmers tracks just north of Leeds every weekend where i stamp on some peddles, eat some dirt and generally annoy motorists which i recommend to anybody. The sun in your eyes, the wind in your face and farm animal shit in your tyre tread makes working all week almost worth it.
Work is a strange place. It’s mainly strange because it’s just an office – nothing more, nothing less – but some people there treat the place as if it were the command centre for the Apollo 13 mission. Failure is not an option. People react to mistakes as if you’ve just thrown a grenade into a crèche or pushed a disabled woman into a canal. It’s really not that important. It’s just monkey work in an office. Have a cup of tea, nibble on a biscuit, dream of somewhere else and shut the fuck up.
In a similar vein some of the people of Leeds seem to overplay the importance of the city. As if it was a place to be seen and a place to on up. To me, Leeds is a bog standard relatively small English city and it always will be. Nothing wrong with that. There’s some nice shops, some great architecture, plenty of local tasty beer and more live music than you could ever wish to listen to but if a city didn’t have a least a few of those things then it wouldn’t really be a city. For some reason though half the population of the place seem to disagree and prance around clutching an iphone in one hand and sizable amount of bullshit in the other as if life’s one big catwalk and everybody’s watching. But it’s just Leeds. It’s not NewSanFranShangRioKongTown. I don’t get it.
I do get teaching and travelling though so that’s the plan as it stands right now. I applied to do a CELTA course (a certificate for English teaching) which starts at the end of May and lasts for a month. Part of the application process was to go for a group interview so there was me and two other applicants as the people who run the course like to see how candidates interact and communicate as part of the selection process. One requirement of the interview was to do a five minute lesson to the other people present. We were told we could teach anything. I racked by brain to try and think of something. There were two other applicants who did the same. One of them did some origami and tried to teach us all how to make a bird from a sheet of A4 paper. The one i made looked liked a dragon with leprosy. The other guy told us how make the spaghetti he had the previous night for dinner. It didn’t sound that appetising. I gave a short five minute lesson entitled 10 Easy Steps on How to Change a Flat Tire On a Motorbike in a Mongolian Rainstorm. I quite enjoyed myself. And i got selected for the course so fingers crossed with that and then hopefully i’ll find a job in the summer teaching somewhere in Asia.
Unfortunately though i’ll still be here when it’s General Election time. It’s unfortunate because for a month you have try and avoid watching TV or listening to radio or reading websites because you know you’re going to have your intelligence insulted by a prick in a suit. Here’s my plan. I’m going to vote for None Of The Above. Join me on May 6th if you've still got the will to live. At the ballot box don’t vote for any of the dithering, sanctimonious, condescending fuckwits that feature on the ballot paper but instead just write None Of The Above at the bottom and then make a little box of your own and tick that. It’s not a political opinion that will feature heavily on any news items in the coming weeks but it’s the only thing i can think of that makes sense. So there.
Thanks for reading. Hope you're doing well. Have fun.
I bought a mountain bike which put a sizable hole in my savings account and a large smile on my face. I cycle out through the small village lanes and farmers tracks just north of Leeds every weekend where i stamp on some peddles, eat some dirt and generally annoy motorists which i recommend to anybody. The sun in your eyes, the wind in your face and farm animal shit in your tyre tread makes working all week almost worth it.
Work is a strange place. It’s mainly strange because it’s just an office – nothing more, nothing less – but some people there treat the place as if it were the command centre for the Apollo 13 mission. Failure is not an option. People react to mistakes as if you’ve just thrown a grenade into a crèche or pushed a disabled woman into a canal. It’s really not that important. It’s just monkey work in an office. Have a cup of tea, nibble on a biscuit, dream of somewhere else and shut the fuck up.
In a similar vein some of the people of Leeds seem to overplay the importance of the city. As if it was a place to be seen and a place to on up. To me, Leeds is a bog standard relatively small English city and it always will be. Nothing wrong with that. There’s some nice shops, some great architecture, plenty of local tasty beer and more live music than you could ever wish to listen to but if a city didn’t have a least a few of those things then it wouldn’t really be a city. For some reason though half the population of the place seem to disagree and prance around clutching an iphone in one hand and sizable amount of bullshit in the other as if life’s one big catwalk and everybody’s watching. But it’s just Leeds. It’s not NewSanFranShangRioKongTown. I don’t get it.
I do get teaching and travelling though so that’s the plan as it stands right now. I applied to do a CELTA course (a certificate for English teaching) which starts at the end of May and lasts for a month. Part of the application process was to go for a group interview so there was me and two other applicants as the people who run the course like to see how candidates interact and communicate as part of the selection process. One requirement of the interview was to do a five minute lesson to the other people present. We were told we could teach anything. I racked by brain to try and think of something. There were two other applicants who did the same. One of them did some origami and tried to teach us all how to make a bird from a sheet of A4 paper. The one i made looked liked a dragon with leprosy. The other guy told us how make the spaghetti he had the previous night for dinner. It didn’t sound that appetising. I gave a short five minute lesson entitled 10 Easy Steps on How to Change a Flat Tire On a Motorbike in a Mongolian Rainstorm. I quite enjoyed myself. And i got selected for the course so fingers crossed with that and then hopefully i’ll find a job in the summer teaching somewhere in Asia.
Unfortunately though i’ll still be here when it’s General Election time. It’s unfortunate because for a month you have try and avoid watching TV or listening to radio or reading websites because you know you’re going to have your intelligence insulted by a prick in a suit. Here’s my plan. I’m going to vote for None Of The Above. Join me on May 6th if you've still got the will to live. At the ballot box don’t vote for any of the dithering, sanctimonious, condescending fuckwits that feature on the ballot paper but instead just write None Of The Above at the bottom and then make a little box of your own and tick that. It’s not a political opinion that will feature heavily on any news items in the coming weeks but it’s the only thing i can think of that makes sense. So there.
Thanks for reading. Hope you're doing well. Have fun.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Leeds vs. Seoul
Things have changed. I now spend more time everyday staring at a computer screen and making phone calls than i do sleeping. I live with my parents. I own a pair of shoes. I can overhear conversations and i know what people are saying. I drink infrequently, normally only on weekends. I live in a small city in northern Europe not a massive city in East Asia. It all feels slightly unnatural. It’s almost as if i don’t really belong here which is weird because it’s where i’m from. This is home. Home is obviously very different from Seoul which was the last city i lived and worked in. So obvious that i’ve made a list:
In Seoul the drunk people on public transport are old men. In Leeds they’re teenagers.
In Seoul different ethnicities stand out. In Leeds we all blend in.
In Seoul you can use public transport to travel large distances with a small amount of money in a short period of time. In Leeds you can use public transport to travel short distances for a large amount of money over a long period of time.
In Seoul you can buy a huge pitcher of crap beer for £3.00. In Leeds you can buy one pint of great tasty beer for £3.00.
In Seoul the teachers assault the students. In Leeds the students assault the teachers.
In Seoul everybody loves Manchester United. In Leeds everybody hates Manchester United.
In Seoul everybody hates summer. In Leeds everybody loves summer.
In Seoul when it snows everybody goes skiing and snowboarding. In Leeds when it snows everybody avoids going to work and throws a snowball in a friends face.
In Seoul people riot and protest over anything. In Leeds people write a strongly worded letter to their local politician.
In Seoul the parks are tiny, few and crap. In Leeds the parks are massive, plentiful and great.
In Seoul fat people are a minority. In Leeds thin people are a minority.
In Seoul old people are seen as a part of the family, community and society. In Leeds they are seen as a hindrance, a tax burden and an inconvenience.
In Seoul the Han River is home to windsurfers, kite surfers, pleasure boats and water taxis. In Leeds the River Aire is home to disused shopping trolleys, dead animals and police divers.
In the centre of Seoul the buildings are drab blocks of dull functional concrete. In the centre of Leeds the buildings are Victorianesque classic gothic old gnarly things full of character.
In Seoul the gargantuan shopping centres and enormous multi-level supermarkets are shiny cathedrals of commerce and capitalism where people make a weekend pilgrimage to spend as much money as humanly possible on things they don’t really need for no reason what so ever. In Leeds the supermarkets are only on one floor.
The truth is i don't really care how different (or similar) the two places are. I miss Asia. I miss the buzz and the rush for the future whereas England (and probably most of western Europe) is continually lurching to the past ungratefully dragging itself forward. I'm working a job in Leeds saving cash, going through the motions waiting. Waiting for another Asian high, some more English teaching and traveling tales.
Between now and next month i'll try and do something worth writing about. Until then thanks for reading. Have fun.
In Seoul the drunk people on public transport are old men. In Leeds they’re teenagers.
In Seoul different ethnicities stand out. In Leeds we all blend in.
In Seoul you can use public transport to travel large distances with a small amount of money in a short period of time. In Leeds you can use public transport to travel short distances for a large amount of money over a long period of time.
In Seoul you can buy a huge pitcher of crap beer for £3.00. In Leeds you can buy one pint of great tasty beer for £3.00.
In Seoul the teachers assault the students. In Leeds the students assault the teachers.
In Seoul everybody loves Manchester United. In Leeds everybody hates Manchester United.
In Seoul everybody hates summer. In Leeds everybody loves summer.
In Seoul when it snows everybody goes skiing and snowboarding. In Leeds when it snows everybody avoids going to work and throws a snowball in a friends face.
In Seoul people riot and protest over anything. In Leeds people write a strongly worded letter to their local politician.
In Seoul the parks are tiny, few and crap. In Leeds the parks are massive, plentiful and great.
In Seoul fat people are a minority. In Leeds thin people are a minority.
In Seoul old people are seen as a part of the family, community and society. In Leeds they are seen as a hindrance, a tax burden and an inconvenience.
In Seoul the Han River is home to windsurfers, kite surfers, pleasure boats and water taxis. In Leeds the River Aire is home to disused shopping trolleys, dead animals and police divers.
In the centre of Seoul the buildings are drab blocks of dull functional concrete. In the centre of Leeds the buildings are Victorianesque classic gothic old gnarly things full of character.
In Seoul the gargantuan shopping centres and enormous multi-level supermarkets are shiny cathedrals of commerce and capitalism where people make a weekend pilgrimage to spend as much money as humanly possible on things they don’t really need for no reason what so ever. In Leeds the supermarkets are only on one floor.
The truth is i don't really care how different (or similar) the two places are. I miss Asia. I miss the buzz and the rush for the future whereas England (and probably most of western Europe) is continually lurching to the past ungratefully dragging itself forward. I'm working a job in Leeds saving cash, going through the motions waiting. Waiting for another Asian high, some more English teaching and traveling tales.
Between now and next month i'll try and do something worth writing about. Until then thanks for reading. Have fun.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Leeds again
I haven’t written anything on this blog for about a month and there are a variety of reasons for that which include, in no particular order, rats, job centres, snow, snooker, beer and Where’s Wally.
Being back in the UK and Leeds is slightly strange. Everything is familiar and yet at the same time different. In my home city there are now more strip clubs than bookshops (apparently). Local buses are brand new and yet still have a faint whiff of sick. Leeds United beat Manchester United but we’re in different leagues. And it’s a multicultural city full of nightlife and interest and yet, to me, it feels painfully ordinary. If it were a colour it would be beige.
Quite predictably i spent the first few weeks back in Leeds getting repeatedly drunk. I went to a bar called Sub-urban (it was, literally) where i went to the toilet, stood at the urinal having a piss and was greeted by a man who said hello, blatantly stared at my cock and then asked everybody in the toilets if they had any cocaine. That’s one thing about Leeds that perhaps isn’t ordinary; the people.
Another thing i’ve noticed about people since i’ve been back is their size. Now, i’m not a large person. If you’re being polite you’d probably call me “svelte”. If you weren’t being polite you’d probably call me “a skinny little tosser”. But there have been times here where i’ve looked positively anorexic. In one pub last month i felt like a chopstick in a room full of space-hoppers. Brits are big.
The weather also occupies people’s minds way too much as well. For some unknown reason we British people expect this country to have a climate similar to that of Miami. We are genuinely surprised when it throws it down with rain and cannot comprehend a weather phenomenon called “snow”. Snow in Britain is like Kryptonite to Superman. It just makes us go weak and little bit mental. If we wake up in the morning, open the curtains and see a carpet of white we think world is going to end. And this behaviour isn’t limited to winter. Just wait six months. Everybody will be equally amazed and goggle eyed when the sun comes out for a few weeks and, surprise surprise, it gets a bit hot. It’s like this every year. You would have thought we’d have got used to it by now but for some reason it’s headline news. Snow In Winter! Heat Wave In Summer! We are actually factually stupid.
Like a lot of people here i avoided the winter weather by staying in pubs. I drank so much and so frequently over Christmas that i decided to give my body a rest by keeping clear of beer for a while. Since then my Dad keeps reliably informing me that proving you can stay off the drink for a few weeks is a classic sign of the first stage of alcoholism. First stage? I’ve been drinking solidly for ten years. How many stages are there? One memorable night was my brother’s 30th birthday where, through circumstances that are still quite hazy, i got so drunk that i found myself in the centre of Leeds in a gay bar searching for my lost coat whereupon a transsexual DJ insulted me by telling me i look like the 1980’s cartoon character Where’s Wally. I told you we’re not ordinary.
I’ve been hunting for a job which is probably the easiest way of lowering your self esteem that i know of. Write your life down on one piece of paper, send it to potential employers for jobs that trained chimps could do and then watch them ignore you. Or walk forty five minutes to the job centre in the snow to save money on bus fares. It’s great to be back.
I’ve done a few other slightly interesting things such as find and dispose of a dead rat that had been partially eaten by a fox in my Mum and Dad’s front garden, i’ve read two and a half books and i’ve laughed at snooker. You might think that watching snooker is boring and you’re probably correct but the saving grace is the commentary. It’s as if the TV channels just grabbed two old men, sat them in front of a microphone and told them to chat vaguely about the sport they’re watching whilst inadvertently inserting more double-entendres into a few frames of snooker than you thought was possible. They say things such as, “Well, he’s on 69 and he’d just love to get the pink into the corner pocket,” or, “Well, he wasn’t expecting a double kiss on the brown,” (sorry) and one genuine quote last night from British Eurosport’s coverage of the UK Masters Championship was, “Ohhh this boy is quick. Down. In. Hit. Score.” Accidental genius.
So, that’s my life as it stands right now. I’m trudging through snow and slush to a job centre, clearing vermin from gardens and giggling at snooker commentary. Rock and roll. Was i really stood on rusting ships on the Aral Sea? Did i really hike around Shikoku? What happened to that guy? And when the hell is thinking of making a return?
Being back in the UK and Leeds is slightly strange. Everything is familiar and yet at the same time different. In my home city there are now more strip clubs than bookshops (apparently). Local buses are brand new and yet still have a faint whiff of sick. Leeds United beat Manchester United but we’re in different leagues. And it’s a multicultural city full of nightlife and interest and yet, to me, it feels painfully ordinary. If it were a colour it would be beige.
Quite predictably i spent the first few weeks back in Leeds getting repeatedly drunk. I went to a bar called Sub-urban (it was, literally) where i went to the toilet, stood at the urinal having a piss and was greeted by a man who said hello, blatantly stared at my cock and then asked everybody in the toilets if they had any cocaine. That’s one thing about Leeds that perhaps isn’t ordinary; the people.
Another thing i’ve noticed about people since i’ve been back is their size. Now, i’m not a large person. If you’re being polite you’d probably call me “svelte”. If you weren’t being polite you’d probably call me “a skinny little tosser”. But there have been times here where i’ve looked positively anorexic. In one pub last month i felt like a chopstick in a room full of space-hoppers. Brits are big.
The weather also occupies people’s minds way too much as well. For some unknown reason we British people expect this country to have a climate similar to that of Miami. We are genuinely surprised when it throws it down with rain and cannot comprehend a weather phenomenon called “snow”. Snow in Britain is like Kryptonite to Superman. It just makes us go weak and little bit mental. If we wake up in the morning, open the curtains and see a carpet of white we think world is going to end. And this behaviour isn’t limited to winter. Just wait six months. Everybody will be equally amazed and goggle eyed when the sun comes out for a few weeks and, surprise surprise, it gets a bit hot. It’s like this every year. You would have thought we’d have got used to it by now but for some reason it’s headline news. Snow In Winter! Heat Wave In Summer! We are actually factually stupid.
Like a lot of people here i avoided the winter weather by staying in pubs. I drank so much and so frequently over Christmas that i decided to give my body a rest by keeping clear of beer for a while. Since then my Dad keeps reliably informing me that proving you can stay off the drink for a few weeks is a classic sign of the first stage of alcoholism. First stage? I’ve been drinking solidly for ten years. How many stages are there? One memorable night was my brother’s 30th birthday where, through circumstances that are still quite hazy, i got so drunk that i found myself in the centre of Leeds in a gay bar searching for my lost coat whereupon a transsexual DJ insulted me by telling me i look like the 1980’s cartoon character Where’s Wally. I told you we’re not ordinary.
I’ve been hunting for a job which is probably the easiest way of lowering your self esteem that i know of. Write your life down on one piece of paper, send it to potential employers for jobs that trained chimps could do and then watch them ignore you. Or walk forty five minutes to the job centre in the snow to save money on bus fares. It’s great to be back.
I’ve done a few other slightly interesting things such as find and dispose of a dead rat that had been partially eaten by a fox in my Mum and Dad’s front garden, i’ve read two and a half books and i’ve laughed at snooker. You might think that watching snooker is boring and you’re probably correct but the saving grace is the commentary. It’s as if the TV channels just grabbed two old men, sat them in front of a microphone and told them to chat vaguely about the sport they’re watching whilst inadvertently inserting more double-entendres into a few frames of snooker than you thought was possible. They say things such as, “Well, he’s on 69 and he’d just love to get the pink into the corner pocket,” or, “Well, he wasn’t expecting a double kiss on the brown,” (sorry) and one genuine quote last night from British Eurosport’s coverage of the UK Masters Championship was, “Ohhh this boy is quick. Down. In. Hit. Score.” Accidental genius.
So, that’s my life as it stands right now. I’m trudging through snow and slush to a job centre, clearing vermin from gardens and giggling at snooker commentary. Rock and roll. Was i really stood on rusting ships on the Aral Sea? Did i really hike around Shikoku? What happened to that guy? And when the hell is thinking of making a return?
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