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.

Sakasai and Tokyo

Japan is expensive. It shouldn’t be but as the UK pound is currently worth about the same as a tramp’s second hand shoes i’ve found myself in a position where i’m essentially living like a student until my first pay day. I eat instant noodles, baulk at the price of beer and ask newly found friends for some cash to tie me over for two weeks. Fun, no?

The company i’m working for seems to be actively helping me in my student lifestyle. They’ve provided me with an dinky flat that feels like a halls of residence and a mobile phone that won’t allow me to make outbound calls which makes it a bit redundant as a mobile phone – it kind of takes the “phone” aspect out of the equation altogether. However it does send me an automated warning whenever there’s an earthquake which was a bit strange last week. Especially when the warning wasn’t followed by an earthquake. Which pretty much takes the “warning” aspect out of the earthquake warning equation. This is a long winded way of saying that i’ve got a really shit phone.

The flat is in a place called Sakasai just on the edge of a city called Kashiwa outside Tokyo. Sakasai hasn’t got much apart from a train station, a supermarket and a little bar where you can get drunk with an eclectic mix of business men talking shit and feeling better for it, English teachers trying to understand what’s going on and friendly couples hell bent on force feeding you sake and soju until you can’t see properly.

Sakasai also has a swimming pool and so i thought i’d attempt to keep active and bought a month’s membership. I went for the first time on Monday night and was greeted by an aqua aerobics class which is something that seems to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries. They’re the same everywhere – slightly large middle-aged women flop around looking like they’d rather be anywhere else and being encouraged and led by a maniac who shouts and claps in time to music that’s played far too loud. Don’t worry, i didn’t join in but did some lengths instead with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones blasting through the speakers.

Last Saturday was interesting. I went out on my mountain bike (did i mention that i’d brought it with me?) and cycled all day along a river that cuts into Tokyo amongst the buildings, bridges and bustle and ended up that evening being really quite sunburnt and red. I looked constantly embarrassed and drunk. Which was unfortunate because that night i went on a blind date with a Thai girl in Tokyo in an area of town called Roppongi which is famous for its night life and African pimps. No, really. And that’s how i came to find myself in a bar eating and drinking with a cute crazy girl trying not to look embarrassed or drunk and attempting to draw attention away from my face. And then two of her friends showed up and told me that we would be drinking until 5am. I should go to Tokyo more often.

It was only a few weeks ago that i was living with my parents in British suburbia and working in soul-melting arse-numbing office job. Somehow i’m now living in a flat in Japan and spend my time teaching English, getting drunk, swimming with middle aged women and going on blind dates in Tokyo whilst sunburnt from cycling. Life changes quickly doesn’t it?