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.