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.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
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.
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.
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