Nonstop to Tokyo [.co.uk]

One of my housemates is going on a date tomorrow, with a guy who she served in her shop and who then said "I'm really crap at this," handed her a piece of paper and ran off. It turned out to be his name and phone number, she sent him a text message, and they're meeting up for a drink tomorrow. She's never even spoken to him before! She was getting cold feet this evening, understandably, but I think she's going to be OK tomorrow. I just hope she has a good time, even if nothing comes of it.

This is actually only the second proper 'first date' that has occured in our house in the two years we've been here, which is pretty poor considering there's 3 of us and two of us have been single the whole time. There have been a few illicit liasons though, so we haven't been completely crap. In related news, I haven't yet checked my messages against the personal profile that I posted. I think there's 3 messages waiting; I really must get round to that some time .....

I spent most of this weekend surrounded by children. I went to stay with my friend C, whose son I'm going to be godfather to, as it was her daughter M's 6th birthday party. As well as helping out with all the stuff like pass-the-parcel and food etc, I also did a lot of face painting, which was pretty funny as I was awful, and all these kids that wanted to look like fairy princesses ended up looking like Cruella DeVille ..... poor sods. However, towards the end I did get fairly good at doing lions and tigers, so that kind of became my stock-in-trade.

At the end of it all, I let a friend of mine (with a little lot of help from the 6-year-old birthday girl!) paint a beach scene on my face, and I looked absolutely hilarious, especially as my hair was being kept out of my face by a cheap kids-sized silvery-glittery crown. I really hope the pictures come out - I'll definitely post them here if they do!!

I'd forgotten how unintentionally cruel children can be though; there was another woman at the party doing face painting as well, and she was a teacher and had done face painting loads of times before (and she'd also nicked the only good brush, the cheeky minx), and so she was really really good, especially compared to my early efforts. As you can imagine, because of this she had a really long line of kids queueing up behind her, whereas I only had about two, and one little girl in the long queue said to her friend "why don't you go over there, there's less people?", and her friend replied matter-of-factly "no, that man's not very good." I was devastated, as you can imagine.

In other news, I threw away a pair of boxer shorts today because I discovered this morning that they had 3 large holes in which I'd managed to miss when washing them for the last, ooh, 8 years or so.

And finally, I decided to add Nirvana's Nevermind album to my iTunes library over the weekend, as we were talking about it at work and it occured to me that I haven't listended to it for ages and that I still haven't added any of my Nirvana CDs to my MP3/AAC collection. It still sounds so fresh and exciting, I can see how there's a whole new generation of Nirvana fans out there. Listening to it now, it's like I'm 17 again - singing along, air guitar, headbanging, jumping around etc. Can't beat it.

I got paid yesterday, and got an extra couple of hundred quid because of a backdated pay rise, which was pretty nice. However, I've just ordered some extra memory for my little iBook, plus the complete Neon Genesis: Evangelion series on DVD, and I'm also going to be getting Angel series 3 and Buffy season 6 DVDs soon because I'm watching the whole of Buffy and Angel with my housemate (she's a newbie and it's so fun!) and we're going to run out of episodes to watch soon if I don't buy them. Also, I'm still paying off my credit card bill that I ran up in Japan. D'oh! But I don't mind too much, because I've recently paid off my overdraft that's been hanging round my neck since University, as well as an old Council Tax Bill that should really have been paid, um, about 4 years ago. Ho hum. Maybe I'm finally heading towards an era of financial stability? God I'm getting old .....

OK, I was kind of forced to have a new template by virtue of Blogger wiping my old one and me not having a save of it, but I actually quite like this one, even though it's one of the standard Blogger templates. It'll take me a little time to properly customise it, so bare with me, but I'm a bit excited about it and it's been a while since I've been excited about my blog. So a big whoo-hoo there then!! (And yes, I know that my Comments template now doesn't match my main page, and that my About/Links page doesn't match either. Darn it.)

Well, after years of deliberation, I posted a personal ad online last week. I'm not sure exactly what pushed me to do it last week, when I've thought about doing it so many times before and decided against it; but, after a few hesitant pauses and finger-hovering-over-the-delete-button moments, I finally saved my profile. I'm not entirely sure what I'm expecting to get from it, and to tell the truth I've been too scared to log back in and read my responses! What a twat.

In terms of my reasons for placing the ad, I guess it was part of the typical post-holiday "I'm going to make some changes when I get back" senario. I remember I felt the same when I got back from Australia a couple of years ago, and if I'm not mistaken it was then that I contacted a fling from college (who I hadn't spoken to in 2/3) years via text message (I had no idea if it was still the right phone number) because I was that desperate for some action. (FYI, it was the right number, and we did meet up. We're still in contact, so it was worth it I guess.)

Anyhoo, I'm not sure exactly what made me place the ad, but I did, and I know I've got some responses because I checked, but I haven't actually read any of them yet. Ho hum. I just keep finding myself too busy to sit down and concentrate on anything right now, but especially that; I'm the kind of person who avoids any kind of awkwardness at all costs, I really dislike starting conversations with people, and in this kind of context I just wuss out totally and avoid it like he plague. I always used to think that online, where it's not face-to-face and you can hide behind a screen-name etc would be easier then meeting people in real life, but it so isn't. I still feel just as nervous speaking to somebody for the first time online as I do in real life, and I certainly don't find it easier to make first contact via email etc, because it takes me hours of deliberation over what to say and my choices of words etc, in some ways face-to-face is easier because you just say it and it's out there and it's too late to worry about it.

So, where does this leave me? Who knows. I'm out tomorrow evening, and not around all weekend, so that leave Friday night for reading the responses, and I really don't fancy the chances of me staying in as I really fancy a night out. So it will probbaly be next week before I pluck up the courage to read them, potentially a full two weeks after any messages were sent, which is a bit rude. Oh well.

Anyway, I really don't seem to have a point here, and I'm just talking myself round in circles, so I'll finish off with a thought: every birthday, I say to myself "Hey, maybe this will be the year that I get a boyfriend", and it never is. I think that's my reason for placing the ad; I suppose I had a lot of time to think in Japan, and I guess I realised that I need to be a bit more proactive in my life, I do tend to sit back and coast a lot. Let's just see if me taking control actually makes a difference or not.

After a long wait it's finally upon us, and yes, it's true - G5 has finally arrived! OK, so it's not going to be around until August, and that's if Apple actually deliver on time, but still .... sweet! When I finally decide to buy a desktop (maybe when I actually have a desk to put it on ....) then I know what I'll be buying. If I have enough money, that is.

Oops ..... I thought I might have had more time to spend online once I got back from Japan, but as it turns out I've been ever so slightly busy. Sorry! I promise I will get round to reading everyone's blogs asap, and I think I've got a few outstanding emails to send as well, so apologies to anybody that I haven't replied to yet. I'll be having a blitz tomorrow I think.

I got my Japan photos back today, and although there's a fair few crap ones (thumbs, out of focus, dull, blurry, etc) there's some that I'm really pleased with; if I get a chance, next time I see the 'rents I'll borrow the scanner and scan a few of the best ones and post them here. I should be going home in a couple of weeks time hopefully, so maybe sometime in July I'll be able to post a few pics.

OK, I still haven't caught up on all the sleep I needed after Japan, so I'd better get to bed as I'm going to be out late tomorrow night I expect (ah, the curse of a social life ..... lol). G'night all.

So, I guess I should say a bit about my experiences in Japan, and offer a few observations or something. Well, I have to write about something here don't I, and as Japan has pretty much been my life for the last month it makes sense really .... well, here goes then.

Firstly, I was amazed by just how concrete everything is, even in places that you're led to believe are ancient and mysterious, a lot of the temples and shrines are post-WWII ferro-concrete buildings, and all the towns and cities initially have the same concrete look and feel to them, which I guess I wasn't expecting .... saying that though, it only takes a little bit of digging to find the unique charms and character of each place, and at the end of the day if you stepped off a train and into any large urban area in Europe or America they'd all look pretty similar at a first glance.

One thing that was certainly odd was how much the English language seems to have permeated everyday Japanese life ..... the majority of brand names we saw advertised were in romaji (western/roman script, ie: English) rather than Kanji, and a lot of advertising slogans were in English. Product packaging invariably includes an English product description and information on the front, often to the exclusion of Japanese information, and certain words have just transfered lock stock and barrel from English to Japanese (for example: beer, cheeseburger .... all the really high-brow cultural stuff then!!).

The Engligh language is very widely spoken, which is great for English language travellers, but if you want to brush up on your Japanese then it can be very difficult, as generally a Japanese English-speaker will talk to you in English even if you speak to them in Japanese, sometimes because they want to practice their English, and sometimes because they think they're doing you a favour. This suited me fine, but E found it frustrating that she didn't really get to use much of the vocab that she spent 6 months learning specifically for this trip ..... The Australian girl that we met in Kumamoto found the same thing as well, and said that she often has whole conversations like that which made it difficult for her to practice her conversational Japanese skills!

One very noticable thing that struck us on our first day in Japan and never left us is that Japanese schoolchildren just seem to be everywhere, literally. It's like they're never in school, as everywhere we went there was always a schoolkid to be found, every train, bus, street, shop, and at any time of the day or night ..... you can walk around in the evening on a Saturday or Sunday and still bump into whole packs of them. And then there's the official day trips ..... it's really quite amazing just how many school children can be in the same place at the same time without shifting the earth's gravity and tipping us out of orbit; some of the more famous temples we went to had literally thousands of schoolchildren in the grounds taking group photos on the handily placed benches, with teachers directing whole schools with megaphones, competeing to be heard over all the other teachers with megaphones. Then add to that mix all the tour groups and general sightseers that go to these places, and it really does get quite mad sometimes. The more famous temples must make absolutely shit-loads of money from it all.

Anyway, that's enough for now as it's gone midnight and I have to be up bright and early tomorrow for my first day at work. I'll probably add to (and edit) this post tomorrow.

Update: Well, it's now tomorrow, but I'm still really really tired and need some sleep ..... will I ever stop being tired? Damnit!
Update 2: Hmm, it's now Friday and I still haven't got round to updating. What do you reckon the chances are of me ever finishing this? Remote methinks.

*Sigh* All good things have to come to an end don't they, and mine has well and truly ended. It was an amazing time though, and I've certainly got loads of things to show for it; it's going to take me weeks to watch all the DVDs and listen to all the CDs that I bought out there!

I went out to a local indie dive type place last night, The Dorchester, with my housemates, and had a great time. Dancing to the White Stripes 'Seven Nation Army' was possibly the highlight for me. Which reminds me, you are requested to listen to the following public service announcement:

If you were the goth boy at the Dorchester last night, then please email me as I thought you were really cute. I was the guy with Hello Kitty wristband on one arm and tonnes of bracelets on the other. Thank you.

In other news, while sending my Dad a Fathers' Day Yahoo Greeting this afternoon, I noticed that there's a range of P. Diddy Yahoo Greetings which really are cheesy to the max.

By the way, apologies for not responding to any of the comments left here while I was away, but all the internet places we went to had pop-up blocking software, and because the operating systems were all Japanese I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. Hmm, it occurs to me that I could have just logged on to rateyourmusic.com and read them, but that didn't occur to me at the time so that's no good. Oh well.

Well, we made it back home in one piece, after a 6am start with over 25 kilos of luggage each to carry around on the subway, to catch a train to the airport. We finally got home after a very very long day, more than a little tired to say the least.

Our last day in Tokyo was spent at Puroland, home of Hello Kitty and all the other cute Sario characters. It was certainly an experience ..... although it's obviously aimed at very young kids, it's also a surprising amount of fun for adults too, and we managed to shoot 3 rolls of film at the various shows that were on there, including the 'Illuminate' show, which was a light show with processions and dancers and acrobats as well life-sized Hello Kitty, Dear Daniel, and the other characters. We also had our picture taken with Hello Kitty, which was rather amusing .... the person playing her was really hyperactive and a bit demented; possibly it was shock at seeing some gaijin (foreigners), as we were pretty much the only non-Japanese people there all day.

Well, I've got a bit of a mental block about what we did for the rest of the day, so I guess that's the end of this post then .... it's back to work on Monday for me, and E started back on Saturday (bummer!).

The end!

Poo. We went to see Mt Fuji today, only ..... we didn't see it, as the notoriously 'shy' mountain wasn't anywhere to be seen, as it was shrouded in cloud. Still, we had a good trip up another mountain via cable car where we saw some volcanic hot springs, and had some eggs that were cooked in the spring ... the shells were black, but the egg inside was actually very tasty!

We also had a fun trip on a mock pirate galleon across a lake near Fuji, which was bizarre. Took tonnes of pictures of the area as it was very nice despite the clouds, probably all quite boring, but I've got 4 films I need to use up!! Still, there's always Hello Kitty World tomorrow ..... who knows what we might see there?!

Well, it's all nearly over, we only have one whole day left before flying back. Boo! However, I have a feeling that it won't be the last time either us sees Japan .....

Hmm, maybe all thast shopping wasn't such a good idea .... we're moving from one part of Tokyo to another today, and we've got so many bags to carry as well as our backpacks and day bags that it's really quite painful! But it's worth it. We're just very sweaty though. I'm sat in my little booth in this internet place with a small curtain behind me and I've just changed my t-shirt as the one I was wearing was just wet with sweat. Nice! And we've still got a hefty stint on the subway to come yet. Whoo-hoo!!

We attempted to look around the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo yesterday, but because of a visit by some poxy president of Korea (South Korea I assume, but I don't actually know) the Palace grounds were completely off-limits and all the gardens and other stuff around it were closed, which was a pain in the ass. We got there 5 minutes before they kicked everyone out though, so we managed to sneak a picture of a palace building and some famous bridge or something but that was about it. Went to the the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art instead, which was very cool, although quite embarrassing as my trainers have developed a really loud squeak which just echoed around the gallieries every time I walked even a step.

We spent a good deal of time in Asakusa yesterday, which is part of Tokyo that has retained some of the traditional Japanese style as well the normal concrete and high-rise buildings. There's loads of shops selling traditional stuff, plus a temple with a famous huge lantern - possibly the biggest lantern in the world or something stupid like that; every place we go to proudly advertises that it has the biggest/tallest/oldest something-or-other, or the number one something else, etc etc.

We also went back to Akihabara, where we spent a lot of time looking round huge department stores devoted to manga and computer games etc; one store we went to had 3 floors solely devoted to manga porn, which was pretty strange and a little disturbing, as the Japanese idea of what is considered acceptable material tends to be quite different to the Western one. At least it's all artifically created though, and they're not actually using pre-pubescent girls ..... although saying that, some of the actual porn mags here depict pretty much the same stuff, I guess they have laws about the age of the models and stuff, but at the end of the day if they're made up to look like a 14-year old schoolgirl or whatever then that doesn't really count for much ......

Well, there's still much more to come in Tokyo before we fly out on Wednesday morning, including Mount Fuji and Puroland (aka Hello Kitty World!!); hopefully we'll be able to email (and blog) again before we come home. I've managed to do a bit of reading while I've been away, which is cool; I read The Hobbit, which I'be had on my bookshelf for years and not got round to reading, and I'm currently half-way through Big Sur by Jack Kerouac, which is had to read sometimes (for me anyway; the long sentaces and huge paragraphs and stream of consciousness dialogue means that I actually have to concentrate on the words ..... it's not easy honest!!). OK, so that's not much, but it's more than I normally read.

Finally, right now I'm listening to a band called Calexico on Epitonic.com, and I highly recommend you do the same, they're very very cool. Oh, and Ooberman are also very cool, and one track of their's, Running Girl, is pretty much the anthem of the holiday for us, we've played it so much. Get your hands on it if you can - it's on their new-ish album Hey Petrunko or 2001's mini-album Running Girl. Buy buy buy!!

Hmm, we certainly did shop today that's for sure. We started off in Ginza, where there's a fair few department stores and classy outlets (although there was still a good range of Hello Kitty on offer!), then headed on to Shibuya, the youth capital of the world; the shopping there is fantastic, and we spent loads of money between us. I lost count of how many CDs I bought, but they're all really cool so that's ok!!! The place is overrun with schoolgirls looking through all the cute stuff and you hear 'kawaii' (cute) everywhere you turn. Speaking of which, Japanese schoolchildren are literally every where you turn, they're like ants they just get everywhere, and they never seem to be in school as they're out at all times of the day and night, although always in their meticulous uniforms.

Anyway, after Shibuya we went on to Akihabara, the 'electronics city', where we sampled a few electronics stores before heading over to a huge manga/games emporium type affair on 8 floors, which took us a while to get through. We got to the last floor just in time, as they started playing Auld Lang Syne soon after we arrived (shops and tourist attractions everywhere play Auld Lang Syne when they are about to close, it really freaked us out at first but you get used to it after a while).

We're now very tired, as we must have walked miles and miles today, even though Japan is full of escalators and moving walkways. Well, will have to go soon, as my hour here is pretty much up. It's wierd to think that this time next week I'll be back in Blighty!!

Hello again. Just a quick one today as we had a bit of time to spare this evening after a day trip to a place north of Tokyo called Nikko, where there's tonnes of temples and stuff out in a National Park - huge tall trees and moss and rock zen gardens etc - all very peaceful.

We got up early this morning as the train journey there is a good two hours and so we wanted to make the most of our time there; because of this, we got to experience the spectacle that is the Tokyo subway rush hour. I dread to think how many people were squished into the carriages, but basically as soon as you think there's no more room to fit anyone in, the commuters on the platform all line up outside the carriage doorways, turn around with their backs to the doorway, and shove their way into the carriage, and then the attendants on the platform go around making sure that nobody's sticking out of the train before the doors close, it's pretty mad really. I'll certainly never complain about the London underground being crowded ever again!!!

Well, we're off for some food and a drink now before we head home on a hopefully less-crowded subway! Tomorow is possibly going to be a shopping day, so I expect I'll have a much lighter wallet by the time I next email; not only can you get loads of cool stuff here that you can't get back home, but some things are actually cheaper here than in England, which considering the reputation Japan has as being expensive reminds you how much we have to pay for some stuff back home ....

Well take care everyone, bye for now.

Despite having an earthquake and a typhoon thrown in our general direction (although the earthquake wasn't actually that close to where we were), we're still very much alive.

I'm a bit pissed off right now as I've just spent the last half hour writing a long post about everything that we've done, with hilarious anecdotes etc, and Microsoft Internet Explorer just crashed and I've lost it. Damn you Microsoft! Oh well, it reminds me why I bought a Mac I guess. OK, a summary of what we've been up to the last few days:

From Nagasaki we spent two nights in Kumamoto, a small city/castle town which we were going to use as a base to visit Mt Aso, an active volcano range. The volcano trip didn't really work out, as we kind of got caught in the typhoon and so all we saw was fog and wind and rain. Kumamoto was a nice place though, and we stayed in a really cool Minshuku (family-run B&B type affair), run by a slighty mad but lovely old lady who kept buying us food and stuff, including more tako-yaki (octopus balls). On the first night, I asked for some hot water to make some instant noodles with (they're actually really nice here, way better than Pot Noodles!) and she gave me some rice to go with it, and some salad from her own dinner on a little plate, including the biggest tomato I've ever seen! After our two nights were up, as we were leaving, she told us that she'd be lonely once we'd gone! Bless.

There was an Aussie girl staying there as well, so we had a good chat with her as she's in Japan for 11 months studying Japanese for a degree. She'd lived for a month with a host family as well, so it was interesting seeing how her experiences compared with ours. We also played gin rummy with her, but she picked it up a bit too quickly and kept winning, which was annoying.

After Kumamoto we went to Beppu for one night. Beppu is famous for its hot springs, of which there are two kinds: 'onsen', for bathing in, and 'jigoku', meaning Hells, as they resemble various depictions of hell including a Buddist one and Dantes's Inferno in the way that they're, um .... hot I suppose ..... and there's lots of smoke (which is actually steam, obviously). (You can't bathe in the Hells by the way, as they're way too hot even by Japanese standards.) They're quite cool though, and there's lots of different ones - some are coloured from the minerals in the water, some are just really hot and steamy, some gush like a geyser, etc etc. We got burnt a bit looking round them - from the sun though, not from the Hells (cue the burning in Hell jokes .....).

We then went to Fukuoka/Hakata for a night, where we window-shopped and ate in a very very nice all-garlic restaurant. We then got up early the next day to spend 6 solid hours on the shinkansen (bullet train) speeding to Tokyo. 6 hours may sound a lot, but have a look on a map and you'll see that going from Fukuoka/Hakata to Tokyo covers pretty much the entire width of Japan, so that's not bad going.

We arrived in Tokyo yesterday afternoon a bit tired (despite that fact that we'd been sat on a train all day and had several naps!) and arrived at our accommodation (in Ueno), which is slightly prison-like in that the rooms are tiny the toilets smell and every small noise echoes down the corridors all night long, but that being said, it's the cheapest place we've stayed in, which isn't bad considering that Tokyo is officially the most expensive place in the world.

We went for a wander around the Ueno market area yesterday evening and ended up having a 9 course Mexican meal, which was ever-so slightly filling. So far today we've been to Ueno park and the huge National Museum there, which was cool.

We've got 8 more nights left here now before we head back home (boo!), but loads to do in that time. We've got one more move ahead of us as well, as we're moving base after 5 nights here to a different part of Tokyo (near Shibuya, the hip young part of Tokyo - so we'll fit right in!).

Oh well, sorry that's all a bit boring, but as I said all the best bits were in the post that got deleted and I can't remember them now! (Bearing in mind that this is the summarised version of what I was originally going to post, maybe it's in everyone's best interest that I did lose that first post!!)