After Yokohama and onsens i was trying to think of some kind of travelling to do in Tokyo itself and that’s when i remembered the Meguro Parasitological Museum. A few years ago i was travelling in Japan and managed to visit it and as a result i started an ill thought-out mission to visit other random little museums in Seoul and Beijing, without much luck, as i travelled through Asia. With the help of some friendly hints and a bit of research it turns out that the parasite museum isn’t alone in Tokyo in housing a small corner of quirky and different.
The Tokyo Kite Museum isn’t really a museum. It’s a cramped room on the upper floors of an old office block in central Tokyo dripping with kites and dust and colour. I stepped straight out of the old lift into a dark, dank room and was welcomed by a nice old lady reading a newspaper behind a reception desk who was trying not to fall asleep while a sign overhead on the wall asked me, “Have you tugged today?” My Japanese language skills were, thankfully, not sufficient for me to inform the lady of an answer. The large room was empty of people (although i did visit on a windy day so maybe the kite enthusiasts of Japan were already preoccupied) but it was utterly and completely crammed with kites. The only space that wasn’t used up to display some kind of flying contraption was the floor and two windows. All other space was kite-filled and bursting with colour in the dim light. There were kites from other countries, pictures of people flying kites, kites the size of stamps and kites the size of sofas, kites shaped like animals and people and dragons and i never even new or cared that such creations existed. It was amazing and crap all at once.
The Tobacco and Salt Museum was a bit different. For a start it was popular and was quite busy with old people and school kids on afternoon trips. It had also been cleaned recently and there were no signs questioning if i’d done anything that morning. There were maps and diagrams showing the history of tobacco and smoking but as all the signs and explanations were in Japanese i was spared the boredom of reading about it and instead just looked at old packets of cigarettes and pipes of various shapes and sizes before buying a postcard of a safety match advertisement and making haste for the Button Museum.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Button Museum (other than its contents, that’s quite self explanatory). Would it be covered in dust like the Kite Museum or old people like the Tobacco place? I figured it would be both. I’ll never know. I found the museum in a small building in the east of Tokyo but was informed that you need to call ahead to make a reservation for a guided tour and so i scrapped that one off the list. I’m all for finding stupid museums but i figured i should draw a line with guided tours of buttons. In a foreign language. On my day off.
However, that didn’t stop me visiting the Metro Museum, dedicated to the Tokyo Metro, which was a bit like a crèche with trains. In fact, i think there were more pushchairs than rolling stock but it did have some fancy looking models that showed you how they make the tunnels so it might not have been a total waste of 210 yen.
Next on the list was the Criminology Museum which was at Meigi University and had its home in a dark basement. It had some pretty grim looking contraptions that were once used for torturing people or slowly killing them and paintings of people being murdered in a variety of different and imaginative ways.
I also managed to find a Laundry Museum. All i had was a piece of paper with an address on it and a vague idea of which metro station i needed. After walking from the station the address turned out to be the headquarters for Hakuyosha Dry Cleaners but there was no hint of where the museum was – just a car park and few buildings. A woman in a lab jacket and a small group of grandmothers walked out of the building i was stood in front of and the women in the lab jacket approached me and asked if i needed help. I was stood in the car park of laundry company headquarters looking for a museum about washing machines after i’d spent a couple days seeing kites, pipes, salt, torture devices and trains in small crap museums in suburban Tokyo. I assured the kind women that i did indeed need help. She told me that the museum was on the third floor. On display in the brightly lit room was an old shirt press, a glass cabinet filled with old irons, some wooden tumble dryers, a couple of washboards and some paintings of women slapping clothes on a rock next to a river. I’m glad it was free.
Apparently, Tokyo is also home to a beer museum, a noodle museum, an electrical energy museum and a museum designed by famous animation director Hayao Miyazaki. I guess they can wait a few months as i’ve had my little fix of random crap for now.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Myoden and Yokohama
In the last couple of weeks i’ve done two important things. I shut up and just travelled.
Yokohama is less than an hour west of Tokyo by train and as a result there isn’t an obvious boundary between the two. The buildings just get smaller and then bigger again as you leave one megacity and enter a smaller one. Tokyo does that. It merges and blurs all the boundaries around it so you can never really tell just how big it is. Yokohama is probably most famous for its China Town which should be more accurately named Chinese Restaurant Town. Most of the China Towns that i’ve been to in major cities just seems to a be a load of Chinese restaurants and a couple of oriental supermarkets crammed into a few small streets with an old gnarly gateway hemming in busloads of tourists and Yokohama fits that idea very well. Still, it was a great place to get lost in, it smelt and sounded exactly like China and the food was oily and tasty.
Yokohama has a history of foreigners coming and going and the China Town plays its part in that along with a huge foreigner’s cemetery shrouded in green and trees which overlooks the city centre. Just next to the cemetery is a suburb called Motomachi that wouldn’t look out of place somewhere in Europe with chic storefronts and bakeries serving expats and Japanese with equal measure on small pedestrian streets. There’s an obvious mix of past and present, Japanese and foreign in Yokohama. Some of the grand old buildings look like they’ve been lifted out of Europe in the 1920s and dropped into Japan in the functional 1980s and then been made to sit all day next to glass fronted modern equivalents.
I also went to an onsen (hot spring) two hours north of Tokyo last weekend in a place called Kinugawa. It was a small town hemmed in by mountains and cut in two by a river. The town is famous for the volcanic water that flows up and into the onsens that have grown into hotels that now line the river and give the town its well known name. My friend booked a night in one of the hotels which was an interesting place. It was like being in a Japan in 1975. Everything seemed faded with time and creaked with age. Things looked well worn but also look as if they hadn’t been used in years and it echoed of time that was much busier. But it was still pulling in small crowds of people – most of them, like the building itself, seemed faded with time and creaked with age. Actually, it was like being in an old people’s home in Japan in 1975. The Japanese onsen is a communal experience so i shared a few relaxing hours immersed in piping hot mineral rich water with a load of naked elderly Japanese men which was much more relaxing than i’ve just made it sound. The price of the hotel also included a huge traditional dinner, a fridge full of beer and other assorted alcoholic drinks and a breakfast. So, it was like a large all you can eat and drink restaurant in a Japanese old people’s home in 1975. With a volcanic bath. Breakfast was a bit disconcerting as i looked across what was once a ball room at the buffet breakfast and saw an elderly man try to fit some more cooked fish in a bowl and thought to myself, “I’ve seen him naked.” Which is not thought I often want at breakfast. Or at any other meal time really. Onsens are funny places.
Life rolls on in Myoden but hopefully i’ll see some more random crap soon. Thanks for reading.
Yokohama is less than an hour west of Tokyo by train and as a result there isn’t an obvious boundary between the two. The buildings just get smaller and then bigger again as you leave one megacity and enter a smaller one. Tokyo does that. It merges and blurs all the boundaries around it so you can never really tell just how big it is. Yokohama is probably most famous for its China Town which should be more accurately named Chinese Restaurant Town. Most of the China Towns that i’ve been to in major cities just seems to a be a load of Chinese restaurants and a couple of oriental supermarkets crammed into a few small streets with an old gnarly gateway hemming in busloads of tourists and Yokohama fits that idea very well. Still, it was a great place to get lost in, it smelt and sounded exactly like China and the food was oily and tasty.
Yokohama has a history of foreigners coming and going and the China Town plays its part in that along with a huge foreigner’s cemetery shrouded in green and trees which overlooks the city centre. Just next to the cemetery is a suburb called Motomachi that wouldn’t look out of place somewhere in Europe with chic storefronts and bakeries serving expats and Japanese with equal measure on small pedestrian streets. There’s an obvious mix of past and present, Japanese and foreign in Yokohama. Some of the grand old buildings look like they’ve been lifted out of Europe in the 1920s and dropped into Japan in the functional 1980s and then been made to sit all day next to glass fronted modern equivalents.
I also went to an onsen (hot spring) two hours north of Tokyo last weekend in a place called Kinugawa. It was a small town hemmed in by mountains and cut in two by a river. The town is famous for the volcanic water that flows up and into the onsens that have grown into hotels that now line the river and give the town its well known name. My friend booked a night in one of the hotels which was an interesting place. It was like being in a Japan in 1975. Everything seemed faded with time and creaked with age. Things looked well worn but also look as if they hadn’t been used in years and it echoed of time that was much busier. But it was still pulling in small crowds of people – most of them, like the building itself, seemed faded with time and creaked with age. Actually, it was like being in an old people’s home in Japan in 1975. The Japanese onsen is a communal experience so i shared a few relaxing hours immersed in piping hot mineral rich water with a load of naked elderly Japanese men which was much more relaxing than i’ve just made it sound. The price of the hotel also included a huge traditional dinner, a fridge full of beer and other assorted alcoholic drinks and a breakfast. So, it was like a large all you can eat and drink restaurant in a Japanese old people’s home in 1975. With a volcanic bath. Breakfast was a bit disconcerting as i looked across what was once a ball room at the buffet breakfast and saw an elderly man try to fit some more cooked fish in a bowl and thought to myself, “I’ve seen him naked.” Which is not thought I often want at breakfast. Or at any other meal time really. Onsens are funny places.
Life rolls on in Myoden but hopefully i’ll see some more random crap soon. Thanks for reading.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Myoden and Shibuya
I promised myself that i’d do something interesting and then i’d have something better to write about than trains and washing machines. Unfortunately that’s not happened yet.
I haven’t really ventured any further than work and a little bar just around the corner from my dinky flat. The owner of the bar is a friendly little bald man who loves The Beatles. Every time i’ve been in there and sat at the small bar cobbling utterances together in Japanese while other assorted drunks try and cobble together a sentence in English, The Beatles always play along in background. It’s a nice place to have a quiet beer and too much sake before falling into my shoebox sized flat.
It’s also more convenient than getting drunk in central Tokyo, missing the last train home and having to walk for about two hours in the cold and eventually sleep in a 24 hour internet cafe until about 5am when the metro starts running again. Only a complete fool would do such a thing. Or you could get drunk in central Tokyo after eating Korean-style pork bbq followed by watching Japan beat Australia in the final of the Asian Football Championships and then celebrate at the famous Shibuya crossing in the early hours of the morning by joining hundreds of Japanese fans by repeatedly running into the middle of the crossing when the traffic stops and cheering and jumping up and down like a lunatic surrounded by skyscrapers, neon and pedestrian-traffic marshals and then scampering back to the pavement when the lights turn back to green. After which, you could get the first train home. That night out was less convenient but definitely a lot more fun.
A few of my lessons are also quite fun. One of my students was trying to describe having hay fever and struggled to think of the word for “snot”. Instead she said “nosewater”. I love this word. I’m now always going to refer to “snot” as “nosewater”. Please join me in getting this fantastical new word into general usage and everyday language where it rightly belongs. One day it will be in the Oxford English Dictionary and we will laugh at times past when we called nosewater “snot”. Do it.
A small but significant portion of my other students are crazy children who bounce of the walls (and that’s not a figure of speech, it’s just a genuine observation) or educated adults who want to travel, learn a new language and have fun. It’s a bit of a mix but then that’s what life seems to have become recently. All or nothing. I teach toddlers or grandparents. I drink in a little bar in suburbia playing The Beatles or in packed bars in Tokyo watching football. I eat grilled meat or raw fish. I get the last train home at eleven o’clock or the first train at 5am. I drink beer or sake, teach English or study Japanese. And worse of all? I write a blog called shutupjusttravel but don’t actually go anywhere.
But i’m going to Yokohama on Sunday and hopefully to an onsen in the mountains next weekend so i promise (really promise) that next time i will write about something new, somewhere different and something vaguely more interesting than me disappearing up my own arse. Thanks for reading.
I haven’t really ventured any further than work and a little bar just around the corner from my dinky flat. The owner of the bar is a friendly little bald man who loves The Beatles. Every time i’ve been in there and sat at the small bar cobbling utterances together in Japanese while other assorted drunks try and cobble together a sentence in English, The Beatles always play along in background. It’s a nice place to have a quiet beer and too much sake before falling into my shoebox sized flat.
It’s also more convenient than getting drunk in central Tokyo, missing the last train home and having to walk for about two hours in the cold and eventually sleep in a 24 hour internet cafe until about 5am when the metro starts running again. Only a complete fool would do such a thing. Or you could get drunk in central Tokyo after eating Korean-style pork bbq followed by watching Japan beat Australia in the final of the Asian Football Championships and then celebrate at the famous Shibuya crossing in the early hours of the morning by joining hundreds of Japanese fans by repeatedly running into the middle of the crossing when the traffic stops and cheering and jumping up and down like a lunatic surrounded by skyscrapers, neon and pedestrian-traffic marshals and then scampering back to the pavement when the lights turn back to green. After which, you could get the first train home. That night out was less convenient but definitely a lot more fun.
A few of my lessons are also quite fun. One of my students was trying to describe having hay fever and struggled to think of the word for “snot”. Instead she said “nosewater”. I love this word. I’m now always going to refer to “snot” as “nosewater”. Please join me in getting this fantastical new word into general usage and everyday language where it rightly belongs. One day it will be in the Oxford English Dictionary and we will laugh at times past when we called nosewater “snot”. Do it.
A small but significant portion of my other students are crazy children who bounce of the walls (and that’s not a figure of speech, it’s just a genuine observation) or educated adults who want to travel, learn a new language and have fun. It’s a bit of a mix but then that’s what life seems to have become recently. All or nothing. I teach toddlers or grandparents. I drink in a little bar in suburbia playing The Beatles or in packed bars in Tokyo watching football. I eat grilled meat or raw fish. I get the last train home at eleven o’clock or the first train at 5am. I drink beer or sake, teach English or study Japanese. And worse of all? I write a blog called shutupjusttravel but don’t actually go anywhere.
But i’m going to Yokohama on Sunday and hopefully to an onsen in the mountains next weekend so i promise (really promise) that next time i will write about something new, somewhere different and something vaguely more interesting than me disappearing up my own arse. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Tokyo and Myoden
After sleeping in airports and aeroplanes i arrived in Tokyo and had to sleep in a hostel. Actually, i had to live in a hostel for a week as my new company was organising an apartment for me. I wasted a couple of days watching cricket on the internet and ambling around cold, sunny, central Tokyo and past rows of shops and restaurants that had shut for the New Year holiday.
My new job is busy. I’m teaching at three different places around Tokyo all for a company which provides English lessons all over the greater Tokyo area at little language schools. It involves quite a lot of commuting and i’ve got all sorts of different classes. My youngest student is three and my oldest is seventy but as long as i don’t get the lessons plans mixed up things should go well. Although, if i get bored i guess i could always break into a rendition of The Wheels On The Bus with one of the business men.
I’m not complaining that the new people i’m working for organised an apartment for me (it would have been a hell of a language barrier to climb over for me to do it myself) but i think i might have been better off in the hostel. I would use the word “apartment” very loosely here as well. “Apartment” makes me think of a spacious open plan living space in Manhattan. I’m living in a flimsy shoebox on the outskirts of Tokyo in a bland commuter suburb called Myoden. Also, when i moved in the other week i discovered that the stove didn’t work properly so i couldn’t cook any food, some of the furniture was falling apart, there was no internet connection so i couldn’t email anybody and my washing machine is a twin-tub cold water contraption that’s older than me so i have to go to the laundrette around the corner. And the carpet smells. And the bathroom is the size of a phone box. And when i wake up every morning i open the curtains to be greeted by rivers of condensation dripping down the windows. The last place i had felt like the halls of residence at a university. Now i feel like i’m squatting. Still, on the plus side i’ve got a phone that works properly this time.
Apparently there’s a recession going on. We’re in a period of sluggish growth or a downturn or a stagnating economic situation or some other combination of words that are getting overused. I think it means that it’s now difficult to get and keep a job and banks aren’t lending money to people who can’t pay it back so less people are buying shit they don’t need. Japan is in the same boat as everybody else but you wouldn’t know it if you went to Akihabara. Akihabara is a part of Tokyo that’s home to a bizarre mix of electronics, manga porn and maid cafes. Everything electronic is sold in department store sized gadget stockpiles while dozens of shops selling cartoon porn DVDs and comics nestle in between along with discreet upstairs cafes where, apparently, cute girls dressed up in a variety of different outfits will serve you drinks and flirt with you, if that kind of things floats your boat and flicks your switch. Last month, when i went to buy a mobile phone that actually works as a phone should, the place was stacked full of people hurriedly buying something electronic, something pornographic or some drinks from a Japanese girl dressed as a French maid. I guess you’ve got to have some fun, even in a recession.
There’s another thing in Japan that’s recession proof. The trains. I’m not sure i’ve been to a country that uses, needs and breathes trains as much as this one. Everybody uses them. All the time. Everyday. There’s 27,190km of train track in Japan. That’s enough to go around the equator. There are 20,000 daily train services. The annual ridership is 400 billion. No wonder Honda and the rest of them export so much. They have no choice. In Japan the train is king.
I'll be here for twelve months so i’m planning on seeing yet more of Tokyo and snatches of the rest of the country as well in the coming months so hopefully i’ll have something more interesting to write about than washing machines and trains. Hopefully.
My new job is busy. I’m teaching at three different places around Tokyo all for a company which provides English lessons all over the greater Tokyo area at little language schools. It involves quite a lot of commuting and i’ve got all sorts of different classes. My youngest student is three and my oldest is seventy but as long as i don’t get the lessons plans mixed up things should go well. Although, if i get bored i guess i could always break into a rendition of The Wheels On The Bus with one of the business men.
I’m not complaining that the new people i’m working for organised an apartment for me (it would have been a hell of a language barrier to climb over for me to do it myself) but i think i might have been better off in the hostel. I would use the word “apartment” very loosely here as well. “Apartment” makes me think of a spacious open plan living space in Manhattan. I’m living in a flimsy shoebox on the outskirts of Tokyo in a bland commuter suburb called Myoden. Also, when i moved in the other week i discovered that the stove didn’t work properly so i couldn’t cook any food, some of the furniture was falling apart, there was no internet connection so i couldn’t email anybody and my washing machine is a twin-tub cold water contraption that’s older than me so i have to go to the laundrette around the corner. And the carpet smells. And the bathroom is the size of a phone box. And when i wake up every morning i open the curtains to be greeted by rivers of condensation dripping down the windows. The last place i had felt like the halls of residence at a university. Now i feel like i’m squatting. Still, on the plus side i’ve got a phone that works properly this time.
Apparently there’s a recession going on. We’re in a period of sluggish growth or a downturn or a stagnating economic situation or some other combination of words that are getting overused. I think it means that it’s now difficult to get and keep a job and banks aren’t lending money to people who can’t pay it back so less people are buying shit they don’t need. Japan is in the same boat as everybody else but you wouldn’t know it if you went to Akihabara. Akihabara is a part of Tokyo that’s home to a bizarre mix of electronics, manga porn and maid cafes. Everything electronic is sold in department store sized gadget stockpiles while dozens of shops selling cartoon porn DVDs and comics nestle in between along with discreet upstairs cafes where, apparently, cute girls dressed up in a variety of different outfits will serve you drinks and flirt with you, if that kind of things floats your boat and flicks your switch. Last month, when i went to buy a mobile phone that actually works as a phone should, the place was stacked full of people hurriedly buying something electronic, something pornographic or some drinks from a Japanese girl dressed as a French maid. I guess you’ve got to have some fun, even in a recession.
There’s another thing in Japan that’s recession proof. The trains. I’m not sure i’ve been to a country that uses, needs and breathes trains as much as this one. Everybody uses them. All the time. Everyday. There’s 27,190km of train track in Japan. That’s enough to go around the equator. There are 20,000 daily train services. The annual ridership is 400 billion. No wonder Honda and the rest of them export so much. They have no choice. In Japan the train is king.
I'll be here for twelve months so i’m planning on seeing yet more of Tokyo and snatches of the rest of the country as well in the coming months so hopefully i’ll have something more interesting to write about than washing machines and trains. Hopefully.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Heathrow, Milan and Tokyo
After a week in Leeds for Christmas catching up and catching colds it was time to leave again. I think both me and my close friends and family are now starting to get used to me leaving. The first time i left for an indefinite period of time we had a big party in my parents back garden that lasted almost a day. Now we all seem fairly happy if we get a pint and good luck hug.
As you’re probably aware i’ve done a little bit of travelling here and there over the past few years so you’d think that it was within the realms of possibility for me to able to buy a plane a ticket without a hitch. Think again. I bought a cheap one way ticket from London to Tokyo via Milan. No problems. Until i checked the itinerary and realised that i’d paid for a ticket that, although going via Milan, would actually arrive and leave from different airports. On different days.
I had to get to London first. The bus journey took six hours and the vehicle seemed to contain everything modern England has to offer. For a start it was stuck in traffic, going nowhere and being driven by an Eastern European. The passengers were an eclectic mix of bored teenagers with headphones glued into their ears, old women constantly looking as if somebody had just pissed in their handbags, the ever-friendly jovial chirpy types (you know the ones, only from the UK, always happy, would have sung Row Row Row Your Boat if they’d have been on the Titanic as it hit the iceberg) and a few families of happy immigrants who couldn’t speak a sentence of English. All of this was wrapped up in green fields, thick damp fog and old towns and cities trying to throw off 1960s architecture with 1990s memories and 2010s debt. And then I arrived at Heathrow.
Airports are shit. Most of them should come with some kind of health warning and they all seem to be the same. They’re too hot, there are never enough seats, the food is bland, soggy and expensive, you always see people sleeping no matter what time you arrive or leave, elderly people look utterly lost, small children have only two states - hyperactive or crying, there are lots of designer shops selling expensive jewellery and handbags to absolutely nobody (how do those shops make any money?) and the cleaners are always immigrants. As you can probably tell, i’ve only ever flown economy class.
My ticket landed me in Milan Linate Airport on Wednesday night and flew me out of Milan Melpansa Airport on Thursday afternoon. The plan was to find a cheap hotel somewhere in Milan but my flight from Heathrow left late and so the airport was completely shut when i arrived. There were no buses, no shops open, no hotels and the taxi drivers were asking 80 Euros for a trip to the city centre. I found a bench for the night and copied the homeless people and other stranded travellers and tried unsuccessfully to get some sleep before getting a bus the next morning across the city to the other airport where i flew from that afternoon.
I only spent a very short time in Italy and Milan but here’s what i noticed:
1. The orange juice is red.
2. The chocolate bars are rubbish.
3. It seems that it may be compulsory for all the women to wear tight fitting jeans and knee high leather boots.
4. It seems that it may be compulsory for the men to look completely disinterested with everything but do so with perfect hair.
5. Most people greet each other as if they haven’t seen each other in decades. Even if they’re strangers.
The flight to Tokyo was almost empty which meant that i curled up on three seats and stole fragments of sleep from various different time zones during the night and woke up over a wintery sugar-coated Korea on Friday morning and then landed in Japan. I got on the metro train at Narita Airport to take me into Tokyo. When it pulled into the station, there was a man slumped, fast asleep on one of the seats. Nobody moved him or troubled him. The train doors closed and off we sped into Tokyo where he’d just come from. He’d probably been on the train for a few hours going backwards and forwards from Tokyo to Narita sleeping off the beginnings of a hangover. I looked up and down the train, quietly giggled to myself and almost left like i’d come home.
I’ll be in Japan for a year as i start a new teaching job in the next few days. I’ll try to write more inane observations and useless stories as and when i can. Thanks for reading. Happy New Year and best of luck with 2011.
As you’re probably aware i’ve done a little bit of travelling here and there over the past few years so you’d think that it was within the realms of possibility for me to able to buy a plane a ticket without a hitch. Think again. I bought a cheap one way ticket from London to Tokyo via Milan. No problems. Until i checked the itinerary and realised that i’d paid for a ticket that, although going via Milan, would actually arrive and leave from different airports. On different days.
I had to get to London first. The bus journey took six hours and the vehicle seemed to contain everything modern England has to offer. For a start it was stuck in traffic, going nowhere and being driven by an Eastern European. The passengers were an eclectic mix of bored teenagers with headphones glued into their ears, old women constantly looking as if somebody had just pissed in their handbags, the ever-friendly jovial chirpy types (you know the ones, only from the UK, always happy, would have sung Row Row Row Your Boat if they’d have been on the Titanic as it hit the iceberg) and a few families of happy immigrants who couldn’t speak a sentence of English. All of this was wrapped up in green fields, thick damp fog and old towns and cities trying to throw off 1960s architecture with 1990s memories and 2010s debt. And then I arrived at Heathrow.
Airports are shit. Most of them should come with some kind of health warning and they all seem to be the same. They’re too hot, there are never enough seats, the food is bland, soggy and expensive, you always see people sleeping no matter what time you arrive or leave, elderly people look utterly lost, small children have only two states - hyperactive or crying, there are lots of designer shops selling expensive jewellery and handbags to absolutely nobody (how do those shops make any money?) and the cleaners are always immigrants. As you can probably tell, i’ve only ever flown economy class.
My ticket landed me in Milan Linate Airport on Wednesday night and flew me out of Milan Melpansa Airport on Thursday afternoon. The plan was to find a cheap hotel somewhere in Milan but my flight from Heathrow left late and so the airport was completely shut when i arrived. There were no buses, no shops open, no hotels and the taxi drivers were asking 80 Euros for a trip to the city centre. I found a bench for the night and copied the homeless people and other stranded travellers and tried unsuccessfully to get some sleep before getting a bus the next morning across the city to the other airport where i flew from that afternoon.
I only spent a very short time in Italy and Milan but here’s what i noticed:
1. The orange juice is red.
2. The chocolate bars are rubbish.
3. It seems that it may be compulsory for all the women to wear tight fitting jeans and knee high leather boots.
4. It seems that it may be compulsory for the men to look completely disinterested with everything but do so with perfect hair.
5. Most people greet each other as if they haven’t seen each other in decades. Even if they’re strangers.
The flight to Tokyo was almost empty which meant that i curled up on three seats and stole fragments of sleep from various different time zones during the night and woke up over a wintery sugar-coated Korea on Friday morning and then landed in Japan. I got on the metro train at Narita Airport to take me into Tokyo. When it pulled into the station, there was a man slumped, fast asleep on one of the seats. Nobody moved him or troubled him. The train doors closed and off we sped into Tokyo where he’d just come from. He’d probably been on the train for a few hours going backwards and forwards from Tokyo to Narita sleeping off the beginnings of a hangover. I looked up and down the train, quietly giggled to myself and almost left like i’d come home.
I’ll be in Japan for a year as i start a new teaching job in the next few days. I’ll try to write more inane observations and useless stories as and when i can. Thanks for reading. Happy New Year and best of luck with 2011.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Sakasai, Amsterdam and Leeds
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.
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 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.
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