Sushi, sumos and.....erm.....err..... Superted

2004-08-14T12:03:00.000+09:00

After the fireworks on Saturday night we went on to a bar called Vis a Vis, in Ichikawa, to watch the Asian Cup final between Japan and China. The name of the joint is a little misleading, as it is actually a reggae/football themed bar. Bit confusing, I have to admit. The place is the size of a dairy lea slice, and every inch of wall space is covered either with Bob Marley posters or football shirts. The owner is an Arsenal fan, and his wife (inexplicably) supports West Ham. Paul (a fervent gunner) pointed out with glee that they use a Tottenham scarf to wipe down the bar.
The lead up to the final had been tense. Japan are regarded as Asia's top team by quite a way, but for this tournament they were missing several key figures. The captain, Nakata, who holds the same place on the pedestal of Japanese hero-worship as Beckham does in..... well, in Japan, was the most significant loss. Fulham's tenacious midfielder, Inamoto, was also a key absence, after he broke his ankle in a friendly with England in June. Japan had endured a tough battle to get to the final. In the quarter final they had gone through one of the most enthralling penalty shoot-outs I have ever witnessed, against the mighty Jordan (oi, stop sniggering). Honest, it was a stonker. Japan missed the first two penalties, while Jordan hammered their first one home. Then there was some sort of hiatus, as the Japanese complained about the state of the goal mouth, and got the duration of the penalties switched to the other end of the field. This break seemed to do something to strengthen the resolve of the Japanese, and dampen the enthusiasm of the battling Jordanians (if you don't wipe that smirk off your face, I shall be forced to come over there). The goalkeeper Kawaguchi, second choice to another key casualty, stepped up with the meanest, most piercing death stare I've seen since my Dad caught me trying to give the hamster a frontal lobotomy. The poor bastard taking the penalty was put totally off balance and fired it over the bar. From then on it was a battle of the highest drama. Kawaguchi was a fucking god amongst men. The Japanese penalty kickers took their strength from him and levelled the scores. At the eighth shoot-out Japan struck it home, and it was all down to the man in the gloves. He stepped up, gave the poor sod with the ball in his hand a proper mean motherfucker of a stare, and then assumed the position. Jordan's player, clearly retaining the knowledge that he was gonna lose limbs if he couldn't pull this off, gave it all he'd got. But that saucy bitch, Kawaguchi, blasted it away to take Japan through to the semis. I tell thee, there wasn't a dry eye in the curry house.
The semis were another clenched buttocks affair, as Japan sorted out Bahrain (now stop that, I'm warning you). It took an injury time nail gnawer, to see Japan go through 4-3. Sorted.
Now Japan were facing China, in Beijing. If this looks tough on paper, it must be brown trousers time in the real world. To say that China don't really like Japan would be akin to saying that Hitler wasn't exactly a patron saint to the Jewish population. The Chinese fans booed through every single second that Japan held the ball. They did everything they could, bar actually taking potshots at the players, to put Japan off. It made a Blues/Villa derby look like a meeting of the W.I.
I have to come clean about this: despite the fact that I was genuinely interested in the outcome of the match, I paid very little attention to what was happening on the screen above the bar. As with the majority of my experiences of live football, the crowd was just far too much fucking fun.
When we arrived the match had already kicked off and a collection of concerned spectators were sat at the bar, glued to the TV. We consulted the over-priced menu but, finding it increasingly difficult to focus, just ordered a bucket of everything behind the bar and five straws. The fans were getting into the game; cheering at every surge forward, groaning at every loss of possession, and presumably casting aspersions about the leisure activities of the match official. The only thing they were missing were some songs.
Can't have a football match without songs, can you.
We decided to start off with summat simple:

BAM-BAM...... BAM-BAM-BAM.......BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM ....... NIHON
BAM-BAM.....BAM-BAM-BAM...... BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM ........ NIHON

That's gone down well. Let's try a couple more.

SHE FELL OVER, SHE FELL OVER.

Nah, they're not going for that one. Let's try a little crowd participation number.

WHAT D'YOU FINK O' CHINA?
SHIT!!!
WHAT D'YOU FINK O' SHIT?
CHINA!!!!
FANK YOU
'AT'S AWIGHT.

Wicked. They even got the cockney pronunciation bit right.
Let's try something that the ladies can sing along to.

ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL
ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
NIHON WON THE ASIAN CUP
AND CHINA WON FUCK ALL

Hmmmm, maybe they're not into their hymns. Here's something a bit more mainstream.

(Think Winter Wonderland)
BEIJING!!! ARE YOU LISTENING???
TO THE SONG WE ARE SINGING??
WE'RE WALKING ALONG,
SINGING A SONG
SHITTING ON TIANANMEN AS WE GO ALONG

Ah, what an education these people are getting. Maybe we should all shave our heads.

You'll be glad to know that to a chorus of "You're not singing anymore", the Chinese did in fact "go home in a Beijing ambulance", as they were thrashed 3-1 by the Japanese. If we'd all been there I reckon it could have been in double figures.
Yes, I know it's all very stereotypical and cringe inducing, but just imagine this: In four years time Japan and China meet once more in the Asian cup. A random group of English teachers, new to Japan, wander into Vis a Vis to catch the tail end of the match. A group of concerned looking Japanese fans sit staring at the television. Suddenly one of the fans stands up and
bellows:

WHAT YOU FINK OF CHINA

To which the entire bar, completely deadpan, replies:

SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!

The initial fan ponders this, then asks:

WHAT YOU FINK OF SHIT?

The crowd have clearly anticipated this:

CHINA!!!!!!!!!

This seems to satisfy the man.

FANK YOU

The crowd also, are sated.

THAT'S AWIGHT

The English teachers cancel their beers, and order up some shots, quick as you can.

What is they say about being able to take the boy out of England?

2004-08-14T11:53:00.000+09:00

It's firework time in Tokyo. I have to say that, in the past, this prospect would have been less than tantalising in my eyes. My past experience of fireworks runs to a collection of drizzly evenings, standing about in fields and forcing myself to emit the occasional "ooh" or an unconvincing "aaah". It's generally all right for about five minutes, when the bangs still pack a bit of whoomph and the visual spectacle lights up the eyes. Sooner or later, usually sooner, I am transported to paint-drying spectator mode. It becomes just like Formula One, I'm only in it for the crashes. I continue to watch the carnival in the sky only on the slight possibility of there being some sort of amusing injury. Of course, I don't want anyone to get seriously hurt. I'm not a damn communist, you know. No, a minor incident would suit me fine. A premature rocket singing a bit of hand, or maybe a small smoldering of cloth. If someone's head were to, ever so briefly, catch a bit on fire, well that'd be me for the night. That'd probably last me all month actually. Unfortunately though, I have yet to witness anything more yarn-worthy than a Rottweieler swallowing a recently discarded rocket, and then having a bit of an eppy. To be honest, I was too busy trying to scramble up the nearest tree to really enjoy the frantic display of violence this incident spurned.
Sorry, but British fireworks are about as exciting as Wolverhampton. We just don't have it. Remember the millennium celebrations in London, when they were gonna send a river of flame down the Thames? Pure crap. More like a puddle of flickers. I once went to a bonfire night display at Worcester City's footy ground. They'd chosen to liven the whole thing up by giving the show a bit of a story arc to go with the bangs. This took the form of some Vincent Price -a -like reading out the plotline of Star Wars, while we got the occasional burst of Geoff Love and his orchestra doing the soundtrack highlights. The fireworks just simpered along like normal, while the crowd got increasingly restless and eventually started murdering all the dark children for a laugh. I tell you, we just don't have it.
Now the Japanese have it. All of them. Except Ken. He doesn't have it. He left it with his sister-in-law, but her Brontosaurus ate it. It's a lesson to us all.
Japanese fireworks absolutely shit on our little pifflers. Every year, from the end of July to mid-August, each district lights up the skies with it's own pant pissing light display. The pyrotechnics last for about 90 minutes, and I can honestly say there was hardly a moment where my mind wandered off onto trampolining midgets or breast bongos. I didn't even care that no-one scalped themselves.
The general consensus among our group of onlookers was that the difference in the performances stems from the aesthetic base of Japanese culture. The Japanese like things to look good. Admittedly, they also like everything to smell slightly of guff, but you can't knock the visual side. British culture is based more logical frameworks, substances, ideas. Japanese culture is based on emotion captured in beautiful images. There's also a strong badger theme, but that's probably irrelevant.
The fireworks were amazing. It wasn't just a bang, a flash and then nothing, much like my Thursday nights. Fireworks exploded simultaneously, flooding colour, form and style into perfect symbiance. All the colours of the acid trip were present, and in a dazzling variety of guises. They formed stars, planets, heart shapes, even the faces of Disney characters. At the end I half expected them to spell out the words "That's all folks". It was an awe demanding, pupil popping, tub thumper of a spectacle. A complete fucking waste of tax payer's money, maybe, but a good laugh.
For any Brits who are reading this, don't feel too bad about it. The Japanese may have great firework displays but they have no fucking idea how to use a sparkler. They just stand there watching it burn. "Write yer name with it!!!", I scream, "Or at least trying and hurt someone".
Some people!

2004-07-06T21:56:00.000+09:00

I turned 24 yesterday. Why do we say turned anyway? Silly way of putting it. Turning is a conscious effort, and no-one beyond the age of 21 has any intention of growing older. We should say stumbled instead. I stumbled, reluctantly into 24 yesterday. Yes, much better.
24 actually seems like a nice age. It looks good on paper and there`s a TV show named after it. It`s much better than 25, which is just fucking frightening. 26 and 27 look fairly respectable though, but don`t get me started on 28. What a hideous fucking age to be. It`s worse than 33, which is the most common age for suicide in East Timor. Maybe.
When I was a teenager I was an ambitious little bitch. I still I am, but I`ve managed to hide it fairly well under an outer shell of sloth-like living and an impressively irrelevent existence. At my most ambitious age I decided that I would devote the early part of my life to fucking around in a dizzying array of fashions. I would soak up an eclectic parade of bizarre and wonderful experiences and then at a certain point I would puke up all these adventures into a a splatter of best-selling novels, thought provoking plays, life affirming films and a tasteful but cheeky series of playing cards.
That age was 24.
I`m not sure why I chose that particular age, but I think it was because that was how old Lister was when he was put into stasis on Red Dwarf. Well, it seemed like a good enough reason at the time. Just fuck off, right.
Hmm, so now I`ve reached my own deadline. I`m am adult in my own mind. I have to make something of my life. Have to achieve something. Have to stop wasting time. have to fulfill my dreams. Have to achieve my destiny. Really, really, really have to stop wanking.

2004-07-03T00:40:00.000+09:00

I`ve never really bothered much with regret. It`s one of the things I regret most in my life. I tend to be generally oblivious of my past fuck ups and wasted oppurtunities. I live much in the same way that I drive; badly, and with lot`s of dead cats and traffic cones in my wake. Still, I do feel a slight twinge of remorse that I haven`t learnt more Japanese during my time here.
I think it`s the swearing that did it. Any language learner worth their pepper starts with the dirty words, and then learns all the boring shit you have to add in to make a sentence. Sadly Japanese has a severe dirth of dirt. There are naughty words, but very few are really taboo in conversation. An example is the word manko, which refers to a lady`s welcome mat. As far as I can tell, in my extensive research, the same word is used in medical textbooks as in the school playground. There`s just one word for it. ONE! Compare that to English. Even without the c-word (surely the most expressive swear word in the English language) I can think of at least 11 synonyms off the top of my bonce. Even the real gutter language just doesn`t have the punch that a true shocker requires. The rudest word in Japanese, as far as I can tell, is kuso. This fills in for quite a number of swear words, but I just can`t get any satisfaction from saying it. It`s too soft, too soothing. A good swear word should make you need a shower.
The word used in most Japanese subtitles is baca. This is another all purpose insult and curse word. Basically every other symbol in the subtitles for 8 mile was this word.
Another curious word is chin-chin. This is the slightly naughty word for a man`s third leg. When Koko told me this in England, I thought it was gonna be extremely amusing to raise a toast in Japan by shouting out "Chin-chin everyone!!!". Unfortunately when I actually did this, everyone just followed suit without a giggle in sight. Seems like the word doubles as a toast and a synonym for schlong. Bizarre.
That same night, I stumbled over a true thumper of a mis-translation when I asked the waitress for a napkin. Apparently it means sanitary towel in Japanese. To make it worse, I`d asked her for the napkin because I`d spilt ketchup down my leg. Luckily Koko was there to clear up the mis-understanding by explaining to the waitress that I was a cross-dressing freak, and that she should phone the Police immediately. She`s always doing that.
A language without swearing is just pure silly. If Japan wants to be a true world player, then it`s gonna have to get some curses going on.
I wonder what happens to a tourettes sufferer in Japan. Must be very frustrating.

2004-07-02T23:59:00.000+09:00

Guess who`s back, mofos.
No, go on guess.
Really.

Who?
Don`t be so fucking stupid. Rod Hull`s been dead for years. If you`re not going to take this seriously, then you shan`t be allowed to play.

It`s me. I`m back. Are you happy?
Fuck you.

I suppose you were worrying how I am. I`m fine, apart from having conjunctivitus, and an ear infection, and a cold. Plus I was shot and killed last Tuesday as part of an elaborate and, quite frankly, ill-conceived practical joke.
I got better.

It`s the fucking air conditioning see. It doth fuck up your innards, as Samuel Johnson once wrote. We simply don`t have it in England. Well, not on the humungufurous scale that it exists in Japan. Air conditioning gets everywhere over here, so that in summer there are only two temperatures; it`s either fry an egg on your head hot, or it`s fucking arctic. Either of the two in isolation would be uncomfortable but bearable. Put the two together and it`s about as comfortable as being violated by a stout. Allegedly. My body simply can`t deal from stepping out of a street that feels like a sauna, into a convenience store where the staff are sneezing ice cubes and chasing away polar bears.
Sorry, I don`t want to moan about the weather. I want to moan about third world poverty but it doesn`t provide enough opportunity for knob gags. Where would we be without knob gags, eh? Sweden, that`s where.
I tend to talk a lot about the weather recently, as the majority of my students don`t have much else to talk about. Admittedly I know some of them well enough for them to bitch to me about their husbands, and one student comes with the sole purpose of learning chat up lines to use on western slags in Roppongi. However, it`s a stereotypical yet irrefutable fact that most Japanese people don`t have much to say. Partly this is to do with the fact that most of them work 27 hours a day and only get a three minute holiday in August. It`s also due to the fact that a Tokyo cold renders the sufferer incapable of doing anything interesting for it`s duration. My students always have cold, and their responses to it always seem to amount to do absolutely nothing until it goes away. Until I came to Japan I always considered a cold to be a minor affliction. Now I place it in it`s rightful position, slightly worse than leprosy, but a jot below chin cancer.

I`m going to steal a bicycle now.

2004-05-30T20:18:00.000+09:00

It`s taken a fuck of a while, but I`m finally gonna do justice to the title of this piffle by stretching a few vowels about sumo.
At some disgustingly early hour last Sunday, I dragged my shuffling, puffy eyed bone sack down to Ryogoku, the home of three out of the six major Sumo festivals which are held each year in Japan. Outside the vast Kokugikan arena, huddles of Japanese star spotters, and bewildered tourists crowded the entrance awaiting the arrival of the big name Makushita wrestlers. The Makushita are the premier league of fighters, although only the frenzy of lens clicking and polite applause points them out from their Vauxhall conference counterparts. An uncouth philistine might say they all just looked like fat blokes swaggering around in their dressing gowns. I wouldn`t say that though, cos I`m a broad minded globe trotter. Besides, they might sit on me.
Although Sumo is a deeply unfashionable sport it still makes enough of an impact with the older generation, and travellers in search of an "insight" into Japan, to make stars out of a few of the wrestlers. Even I could spot a handful of the Beckhams and Owens.

"When`s that little Mongolian chappy coming on. He`s the top bloke isn`t he. Apparently he has to come on and do some sort of dance, with a pinny round his waist and a rope round his neck. I can feel an insight coming on."

"Look, there`s the Russian bloke. Dun he look funny next to all them other great monsters. Look at him, great streak of piss. Can`t see him getting very far. He hasn`t got the bosoms for it. Mark my words, he`ll be flattened in five seconds. How can he put his poor Mum through all this worry. Oh, he`s won.......... Well, it`s like I say, it`s a game of skill. Like Boggle. Can`t just go on size alone. More nuts anyone?"

"See this un, he`s the one who does all the dancing, then slaps the shit out of himself before he fights. Well, it`s a psyche out thing, isn`t it. The other bloke sees him doing his dancing and it puts him off balance, mentally. Imagine if you saw some great fat fucker doing the macarena before he charged at you. It`d put the willies up you, I tell you."

"Just have a look at the hair on this feller. There`s a good two and a bit David Hasselhofs on there. Maybe even a Tom Selleck and half a Robin Williams thrown in. He probably uses it to snare his opponents. I`d imagine he envelopes them in his chest rug, then uses the counter balancing force of his leg fluff to upend them. Masterly."

"Christ on a scooter, is that his wife?! How the fuck did he manage that? He could probably use her as a toothpick. She could fit under a single one of his folds. Hey, how do you reckon they....... well...... you know.................... go on a caravanning holidays together? What an insight."

My seat was in the cheapest part of the hall, at the back of the second level. Fortunately, the more expensive, lower level was completely open, and nobody seemed to mind us wandering, despite our distinctly second-class appearance. Me and Stuart (lanky Scotch bloke, about 8 foot tall, loves himself, can`t understand a word he says) were on the lookout for an unoccupied tatami booth (available for the best part of 200 quid) to infiltrate until the real owners turfed us out. Unfortunately we hadn`t reckoned on the Sumo Gestapo, a sour faced hag who charged towards at ground shaking speed as soon as our second class behinds connected with first class seatage. We relented, in fear for our lives.
The sumo ring is an elevated circle made of ..... erm..... pigeons and playdoh, called a dohyo. The dohyo is a deeply sacred place, and is blessed by a Shinto priest before the bout. It is a sacred rule that no woman is allowed to stand on the dohyo. If this happens it has to be carted away and replaced with an untainted replica. This has caused a slight glitch in that the mayor of the city is required to present the winner with a prize at the end of the tournament. One of the host cities, Osaka, has recently elected a female mayor. There is talk of building some sort of bridge structure across the ring, or maybe suspending her a few inches from the ground via genetically enhanced bee warriors, possibly even holding her aloft with a tractor beam from a Klingon bird of prey. Maybe.
It is also considered bad form to take a picture of the dohyo from up close. Bad form and fucking expensive, as we discovered when we tried to take a snap from, what we considered to be, a fairly respectful distance. No sooner had we whipped out our Kodaks than the Godzilla-like earth tremors began again, and the Gestapo was on us, demanding immediate lens lowering, or cross her palm with silver. We retreated once more, throwing lumps of raw meat in the opposite direction in an effort to distract her. Eventually she saw some American women hovering disastrously close to the dohyo and with a swish of her tail we were saved.

Up in the cheap seats I found to my dismay that I was stuck next to Colin. Colin is by far the most boring man I`ve ever met. I`ve seen people in conversation with him deliberately rupture their spleens in an effort to amuse themselves. His only questions on any topic concern either the price or the length of time taken to get there. He refers to everyone as Ben, and pestered me incessantly on whether "this is the Mongolian guy". I was forced to pretend to be a Slovakian fisherwoman who spoke no English, and possibly had something terminal, in a bid to ward off his attempts at conversation. I really hate having to do that.
As you have probably gathered by now, I know fuck all about sumo. However, with the help of the statistics in my programme and my natural sporting instincts I was able to fumble my way around to an understanding of the game.

ME: Right, I reckon the bloke in the purple pants is gonna win.
PETE: You`re a mad man. He`s only won five matches, to his nine losses.
STUART: Tha dissnae mek a fok av a duffarance mayn. See tha sayze a tha fokker hes up agains. Pure peesh a pish mayn.
ME: The fuck did he say? Anyway, that doesn`t make a fuck of a difference. There`s more important things to consider.
COLIN: Is this the Mongolian guy?
PETE: Such as?
STUART: Shat yer noise mayn, thars fokking yownks ta go fowr tha fokker gis op.
ME: For a start, my bloke`s got a clearly superior line of slapping himself. The other sap just gave himself a few fanny blows. My lad was making some pretty impressive echoes with his beating.
COLIN: Did you have to travel far today, Ben?
PETE: That`s not much to go on.
STUART: Nah, ats no bag deal mayn. Goh a coupla tannies like and goh pratty pished op own the owd train. Fok owl idea wha taym eh was. Steewa`s tha nem by tha weh.
ME: Well, there`s more of course. Just look at the flannels. The other bloke`s rubbing himself down with a pink flannel. How the fuck are you supposed to take a sumo seriously when he`s using a pink flannel.
COLIN: I took the train, myself. 47 minutes, including the time it took to buy the ticket, but I`m hoping to cut down to 40 on the way back by taking the rapid to Funabashi. Plus I already bought my ticket, which should save time in the inevitable crush at the ticket machines on the way back. Did you buy those shoes in Japan, Ben?
PETE: Your bloke`s got a purple flannel. That`s not much better.
STUART: Whas op wi ya, ya specky gadge? I awready tol ye ma nem`s Steewa. I cannae remember wha a goh these fram, beh ah prolly nacked em fro ma bra.
ME: Ah, but you see he`s co-ordinbated. Purple pants, purple flannel. That`s the sign of a true champion.
COLIN: So, when`s the Mongolian guy coming on.

Unfortunately my flannel rule ended up costing me a fair wedge. We decided to bet only with planets from Star Wars, so I only ended up owing a couple of moons of Endo, a Tatooine and Lando Calrissian`s Cloud City.
The sumo matches can appear quite unimpressive at first glance. However, it doesn`t take long to see it as a surprisingly graceful art. The rules of Sumo are simple. The loser is the wrestler whose foot leaves the circle of the dohyo. The Yokozuna (top sumo), Asashoryu is quite small for a sumo, but manages to twist, turn and off-balance his opponents with great skill. His main rival in this tournament, Hokutoriki, was felled in his first match, when his wiley opponent simply stepped out of the way of his charge, and let him go sprawling out of the ring. Other wrestlers found themselves locked in a grapple, and then edged out of the dohyo with painful slowness. Another favourite method seemed to be to wedgie a fighter out of the circle. This was an approach which seemed to bring more tears to the eyes of the male spectators than to the suffering sumo.
In the end, it was how it was supposed to be. The superstar "little Mongolian guy", Asashoryu, slamdunked Hokutoriki to take his third major championship in a row.
Was it coincidence that his black pants were in perfect synch with the all important flannel?
Yeah, probably.

2004-05-16T23:10:00.000+09:00

I`m bored fartless with talking about my holiday in Okinawa. It`s my own fault of course, but I`m not comfortable with that so I`m going to blame it all on a bloke called Francis. Francis, the greasy, slap headed, see-saw sniffer made me spend all of my lessons this week doling out my holiday snaps to cooing students. This was part smugness on my part that I`d visited a part of Japan that a lot of my students hadn`t, but mostly sheer aversion to work.
The trouble with this `Groundhog Day` style slide show is that it implants a plotline of the holiday in the mind which is then hard to shake. In order to make this narrative riveting enough to sustain your audience`s consciousness through till the last snap, it is of course necessary to make a lot of shit up. Nothing of Munchausen standards you understand, but a few anecdotes embellished, a coupla facts invented and one or two other people`s crazy antics conveniently re-assigned to the narrator. Eventually truth and twaddle are irrevocably welded in a haze of reminiscence.
So, for the final time, here is my slide show to Okinawa. Just divide everything by three and you`re pretty close to how it actually was. I`m afraid my technical proficiency doesn`t extend to posting the photos on the web. But, just so you know, they`re fucking beautiful.
Hang on. Slap me sideways with a roasted todger, I`ve gone and forgotten to give you a potted history of Okinawa. What sort of Bill Bryson would I be to neglect to set the historical scene before relaying my epic.
Let`s not fuck about though. Here`s Okinawa in one sentence.
Bunch of islands, south of Japan, started off as Ryukyu kingdom, reluctantly made an annex of Japan in 16hum-hum-hum, scene of the worst land battles of WWII when Japan sacrificed it to the invading Americans, 260,000 Okinawans killed in the resulting battle, Americans take over, still 70,000 troops to this day, returned to Japanese rule in 1972, simmering hostility to American troops, especially after the rape of a 12 year old girl by three G.Is in 1995, now most famous as Mr Miyagi`s home town. Aaaaaand breathe.

So, this is Naha, the capital of Okinawa...... Nah, I was taking the photo. That`s Michelle, she`s gone back to England now.... Dunno really. Think she missed Salt and Vinegar crisps too much. That`s Yuki, she works at Shane as well..... Receptionist. Married to a hairdresser. Normally a bit of a mentalist, but she was quite quiet on holiday. That`s Yumiko. She`s awful. Blinks all the time, and keeps telling me not to drink too much. Maybe I`m gonna kill her and put her in a wheel barrow. Haven`t decided yet. That`s Koko, my girlfriend.... Yeah, isn`t she......... Oi, don`t be filthy. That`s Fousty. Doesn`t he look like Shrek?........ Yes, I suppose it was rather witty. Thank you.
This next one`s a Mausoleum......... What`s that? You want to know what a Mausoleum is. Well, it`s a... you know, it`s a thing for, erm...... well, it`s sort of a........... you see, it`s got these walls..... What`s that?....... Tomb, yes. It`s a tomb, see. Fucking ignoramus.
This is a funky tree outside the mausoleum. Japanese trees are wicked. Michelle reckons trees are more interesting than people. I told her she should go to Bradford. That shut her up. Japanese trees have mad roots splicing all over the place, and whopping great creepers flailing out all over the shop. Just like them beardy tree fellas in Lord of the Rings.
This is Shuri-jo, the castle..... What did I think?....... Well, it`s just like every other Japanese castle. It`s very colourful and it`s about ten years old. It must be a cultural thing. In England, if something falls down we just leave it there and write lots of books about it. In Japan, you build it again with wheelchair access and a Burger King.
This is the campsite. It was about an hour away from Naha. Groovy little place, but I didn`t think much to the toilets. We were the only gaijin staying there, but there were plenty of squaddies coming down for a drink every night..... Aw, I fucking loved. There was a hammock!......... Well, it impressed me. It was just so laid back. Everyone was really friendly and they had better beer than Tokyo........... Yeah, Orion beer`s the bollocks.......... Yes, I tried Owamori a coupla times. It`s nice with water and ice, but otherwise it`s vomit-ville. The best way to get drunk on that stuff is to take a big bastard sniff from a barrel full of it. I did that in an off-licence in Naha. Nearly blew the back of my head off. But in a good way.
This is sunrise. From the hammock.......... No, really, twas just a snap.......... You`re too kind......... No, let`s look at it a bit longer. HE hasn`t said anything nice yet.
That`s a picture of a rock.
That`s Brandon......... Yes, he is American. How did you know?......... Ah, the shirt.... No, he was an absolute diamond. Totally revised my opinion of the military. Well, for a bit anyway. He`s from Tennessee, and he bloody sounds it too. He actually says vee-hickul. Kept telling us to hop in his vee-hikul and he`d take us to some sight seeing spot. Great bloke. One day he took us all around this little island close by. Showed us a completely isolated beach which you can only get to by hacking your way through a mini-jungle. Showed us wicked places to take get good views of the island. Like in this shot..... Yeah, I thought you just got water like that in postcards.
He also took us to this bridge.......... Yeah, he`s the one leaping into the water......... Dunno, must have been about 40 feet down.
This is him trying to swim to the bank......... Fuckin A, it`s a bit choppy......... We thought we were gonna have to attend a military funeral.......... He was fine. Strong swimmer. Said it cleared up his hangover as well.......... No, I didn`t.......... Well, I didn`t have my trunks on........... Just fuck off, right.
This is Simon and Seiko. They came out a coupla days after us............ Yeah, she is isn`t she........... Oi, that`s an obscene thing to say. And physically impossible, surely.
This was taken on the ferry to Tokashiki island. It was Koko`s birthday....... Eh?..... A diamond ring........ No, I`m fucking well not........ well, not yet anyway........ I mean no........... well, maybe........ well, no......... let`s talk about something else.
This is Aharen beach, on Tokashiki. Just look at that water, eh. Honest to fuck, you keep expecting Ursula Andres to slink out of the water.......... No, I didn`t get round to scuba diving........ Course I wasn`t fucking scared. They, erm, just didn`t have enough flippers.
This is me snorkeling........ No, those are snorkeling flippers. Couldn`t use them for diving. Not shark proof you see.......... You`re starting to annoy me.
These are my underwater pictures. Here`s a fish. This is some coral. Here`s another fish........... There........ Just there, in the corner of the frame........ You can see the fins. What more do you want.............. Here`s a nice fish........... All right, a nice fish`s tail.......... Look, you stick David fucking Bailey`s head underwater and whack a great flapping pair of goggles on his face and see what HE comes out with.
This is from the viewing tower overlooking the beach..... No, no, no. You have to put the three together you see. It`s panoramic innit...... Oh for fuck`s sake, look at the ROCKS, woman! You`ve got to match them up! There you go. Blows your flip-flops off that, don`t it.
These are all of Koko`s surprise party............. This is us setting up the surprise barbecue......... This is me pretending to take her to a noodle restaurant........This is everyone surprising her with a song.......... This is her telling me that Kento, the barman had already told her about the surprise party......... This is me talking to Kento, the barman......... No, I think he`s fine now........... Yeah, they stitched it back on........ This is the surprise cake.......... This is Koko talking to me, again.............. This is... well, the picture says it all........... No, I think the window slowed his fall down quite a lot....... Yes, you wouldn`t think it could bend that far backwards would you........ Quite a night.

So, that`s the photos. That was the holiday.

Turn to p.34 please. Or do you want to play Hangman?

2004-05-11T20:39:00.000+09:00

I`m gonna write about me holidays soon. Soon as I`ve finished boiling these cats. Promise.

2004-05-11T20:10:00.000+09:00

I was thinking this morning. I try to do most of my thinking in the morning, so it`s out of the way and I can get on with me asbestos impressions. This particular morning I was thinking that I`ve been in Japan for an entire football season. Quite scared me that did. I`ve spent a full term pregnancy in Tokyo. Tommy Chong (of `Cheech and..` fame) spent the same period of time in the nick for selling pot pipes. Dean Saunders was once out of the Villa squad for the same time when he suddenly forgot how to be Welsh. Very nasty. Puss everywhere. Peter Jackson`s crew could have re-built the set for Edoras, the fortress of the Rohan people in the time of been teaching people to say "I go shopping" instead of "I go to shopping". Which is the greater achievement? Eh? Dickens completed "Barnaby Rudge", "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "Big, Buff Men in Hats" (a lesser known work) in the same period I`ve been compiling this web-bollocks. Who has changed more lives? Eh? I think we know.
And I still can`t do fucking origami!

2004-04-21T00:19:00.000+09:00

There`s a famous tale in Japan called the "The Silly Duck and the Pond of Naughtiness" (my own translation). I would like to share it with you as I believe it gives valuable insight into the slightly bewildering behaviour of the Japanese government recently. It may also help in understanding newspaper reports which could otherwise seem a tad,..... well, how can I put it?....................... insensitive.
The story tells of a silly duck who was waddling around one day, looking for bread and composing filthy lyrics, when he saw a group of ducks on the other side of the pond. The silly duck`s side of the pond was filled with lush greenery, pretty flowers, streaming sunshine, and of course a WallMart. The other side, as the silly duck could now see, was composed entirely of brambles and poo. "Dear oh dear" thought the silly duck (in Japanese, of course) "I wonder if I can do anything for those poor ducks. Maybe I could take some flowers over there, to take their minds off the poo and the brambles."
Word soon spread around the duck community (ducks have a lot of time to surf the net and shout at each other) of the silly duck`s plans, and as he prepared for his trip he was visited by a number of concerned citizens. "What you wanna go over there for?" they all asked, "you`ll get covered in poo and brambles".
"I want to help my fellow duck" said the silly duck.
"But, but, but.... the brambles!" a wise duck warned.
"But, but, but...... the poo!" a learned duck cautioned.
"But, but, but...... the radioactive pommegranites!" said a duck who hadn`t been listening but wanted to join in.
The silly duck thanked them all for their advice, and their carpet cuttings, but his was not a mind for changing.
He set off for the dark side of the pond on a Thursday, later to be known as "last Thursday". He arrived on a Friday, later to be known as "Friday before last". The poor ducks on the dark side of the lake were very pleased to see him, and delighted to receive his flowers. He was invited to stay as their guest of honour, and a place was cleared for him in an area where there were no brambles and only a bit of poo. Here he stayed for three days, enlightening the ducks with stories of life on the light side of the pond.
On the fourth day, tragedy struck. The silly duck was taken hostage by a small band of angry ducks, who were enraged at plans to build a Wallmart Cosmetic Village on top of their favourite patch of brambles. The silly duck was seized and taken to a special underground bucket where he was told that he would be tickled to distraction unless the light side of the pond agreed to halt the construction of the Cosmetic Village. The silly duck replied that his ducks had nothing to do with Wallmart, and had only contributed to the webbed toe-nail polish department. The angry ducks were too angry to listen and went off to do some huffing. After they`d finished they forced the silly duck to shout across the pond that he would be tickled if the Wallmart plan was not stopped at once.
The silly duck did what he was told, and shouted across to his duck colleagues to withdraw their bill buffing products from the proposed project. The ducks on the light side of the pond heard his cries and greeted him with a heart warming "Ha, we told you so! Now they`ll tickle you, and then you`ll be sorry. Shouldn`t have gone there in the first place. Silly duck."
The silly duck heard the words of his fellow ducks and reflected on them. Though he was but a silly duck he could still see the error of his ways. "What a fool I was," he sobbed "giving up my lovely life of waddling and quacking and taking part in international trampolining championships, just to come over here and help out these ungrateful ducks. They should have just been left to wallow in their filthiness and get squashed by the colonic irrigation section. If only I could be allowed to go back to my nice patch of warmth and forever feel smug in my charmed position in duckdom. Please, oh please, mr and mrs angry ducks, don`t tickle me to distraction. Let me go back home and I promise I`ll never try to help you ever again."
Unfortunately for the silly duck, his speech was completely wasted, as the angry ducks had just spotted some twigs that they could get irate about, and had buggered off to organise a coup.
So it was, on a Tuesday that was later to be known as "the 24th, I think it was", that the silly duck waddled back to the light side of the lake where, after he had apologised for several hours, he was allowed to continue his everyday duck duties, never to involve himself in the affairs of other ducks ever again.
THE END

So, that`s all right then.

2004-04-01T00:45:00.000+09:00

I was able to knick another few notches onto my bedpost of Japanesey experiences this weekend, by traveling on a Shinkansen, whizzing past Mount Fuji, and then going to a kimono fashion show. Aren`t I cultured? Aren`t I smug?
The are three types of Shinkansen; the first and most enticing being the ear poppingly speedy Nozomi, which has a top speed of over 300kmph. Trouble is that you have to pawn a lung to pay the ticket, so most people go for either a Hikari or a Kodoma. Kodomas are just your regular train, only a bit pointier. The Hikari stops at only the major stations and manages to crank up a fair crop of km for yer h.
My Hikari took me to Nagoya (370 km away) in just under 2 hours. It was a pretty comfortable ride, apart from the ridiculous man across the aisle, who infuriated me by sucking loudly on a plastic straw for the ENTIRE journey and muttering dark incantations about mice, or something.
Fuji comes into view just outside somewhere (maybe Shizouka), as a white dot peeping cheekily out from behind a cloud fugged mountain range. It rears it`s head again as we pass somewhere else (maybe also Shizouka), as a half revealed monster looming over a green drenched hillside village. But the full frontal momma comes halfway between a quite nice place and a place that would be quite nice but pales a bit in comparison to the other quite nice place you saw before (both could very well have been Shizouka).
The Fuji vista has been described a million times by people a million times more talented than me. Suffice it to say that if it was a brand of washing powder it`d be Persil. If it was an ex WWF wrestler it`d be Randy Savage. If it was a Monster Munch flavour it`d be Tangy Tomato. If it was a time it`d be a quarter to five. I think you know what I mean. The scale of the thing is immense. The fierce, volcanic power of the bitch screams out at you like the glint in the eye of an uncaged lion. It demands your respect, then uses it as a toothpick, just to show you how insignificant you are. Fuji dwarfs everything that dares to impinge upon it`s landscape, and squats in a mass of sturdy complacency in it`s status as THE symbol of Japan. Karaoke can fuck right off as far as this beast is concerned.

The point of my trip was to go to Koko`s fashion show. She`s been in training for months, along with over a hundred other girls/women in the art of walking, turning round, and trying not to let the rib crushing closeness of the kimono squeeze her into unconsciousness. Sunday was her big night.
The show kicked off with a slick headed nonce getting up to give a speech. I didn`t even try to follow it but I would imagine he was warning everyone to be careful of leopard attacks during the show. After he finished his waffle, the stage was flooded with a myriad of lighting effects, and the models were trooped out to arc across the stage, displaying their plumage, and then exit stage right. The intricate patterns and deep hues of the kimonos were not done any favours by the tie dye lightening effect or the bizarre choice of Basement Jaxx as a backing track. Still the models looked impressive in the brief flit across the stage, coming in all shapes, sizes and ages. Some demure, some haughty. Some pretty, some slab faced. Some quietly confident, some evidently about to chunder. I spotted Koko in a flash of pink as she glided across the stage, but by the time I`d finished tripping over some sound equipment and scrabbling to get my camera, she`d vanished. Fuck.
After the mass glide across the stage, the models were sectioned into groups, seemingly based on age and experience, and given their twirl in the spotlight. I hadn`t been able to talk to Koko all day, as she was being hoisted into her kimono and plastered with geisha slap all day, so I had no idea when she was up. Having arrived predictably late I was relegated to a seat at the back, but could see proud fathers and smug husbands scurrying with their cameras to the aisle at the front as their loved ones popped up on stage. The third group brought with it my chance. I did a commando roll to the front of the auditorium as a forgettable J-pop song escorted Koko and her group on to the stage.
It is rare that I`m completely speechless (I can usually think of a four letter word, at least), and even more rare that I find a subject I can`t take the piss out of. There is, however, no way I can make a joke out of how heart throttlingly beautiful Koko looked as she walked on to the stage. Her kimono was a light pink which descended into a swirl of blues at the bottom. Her hair was tied up into a complex, flower adorned arrangement at the back. Maybe that`s not much of a description, but I swear that there isn`t a landscape on this world or any other that could send a comparable shiver through my body. I was almost close to visible emotion when her eyes, which had been searching the darkened theatre, rested on the front of the crowd where I was perched. The Cheshire grin that spread across her face (we hadn`t each other for nearly three months) should be bottled and put on prescription by the NHS. I almost forgot to take a picture as she whirled in the spotlight, I was so busy falling in love with her all over again.
That`s the soppy bit. Don`t getting expecting them regularly.
The rest of the models were a mixture of the good, the competent and the ugly/stupid/glamourless. One diminutive, purple clad personification of a housewife had to be physically repositioned by one of the production staff, and was so nervous that she muttered like a mad woman throughout the whole show. Another woman, with a bride of Frankenstein hair-do, floated around the stage with an expression which permanently stated "I can smell dog shit". Yet another crusty older maiden had visibly drawn a diagram of her trajectory across stage, and was so busy consulting it that she nearly fell off the edge.
The event was wrapped up by a mass gathering of the models on stage, each clutching a pink or yellow flower. They then descended on the crowd to present the flower to a "special" person in the crowd. I watched as my beautiful, kimono clad girlfriend shimmied up the aisle towards me, flower in hand. Our eyes locked and she broke into another brain melting smile. Then promptly veered off and gave the flower to some other fucker. I was bastard furious. Apparently it was her best friend. I couldn`t give a fuck if they`d been in `nam together, that was MY flower dammit. But then some randomn bird appeared out of nowhere and thrust a yellow thing in my face. Felt a bit better then.
The event ended with the flash of cameras, the hum of congratulations, and scattered applause. Koko went off to get changed. Her Mum continued to stare at the floor and go worryingly red every time I spoke to her. The bloke next to me told me I was a "dandy boy". The old man in the row opposite continued to glare at me like I`d just eaten his favourite gnome.
Then I went to Starbucks.
Well, there`s only so much culture you can take.

2004-03-17T02:46:00.001+09:00

INTERVIEW WITH YOSHIHIRO HASHIMOTO
Yoshihiro Hashimoto`s first words to me are a heartfelt apology that he has not been able to attend this interview, owing to his unfortunate and sudden death. I commiserate Mr Hashimoto on his untimely demise, and order two coffees.
It is not an easy task to interview someone who refers to themself as a professional liar. Mr Hashimoto claims to have been lying for some 47 years, during which time he has amassed a personal fortune to the tune of \500 million, and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bill Clinton, Margret Thatcher, Vladimir Putin and Boris Becker. This is what he claims. In fact, Mr Hashimoto is still only 38 and has to supplement his lying with a part time job as a car park attendant in his home city, Nagoya. As I explained, this isn`t easy.
Many of the journalists, campaigners and psychiatrists who have spent time with Mr Hashimoto have dismissed him as a harmless attention seeker, and gerbil fetishist. However, there seems to be an intriguing method to his manic approach to life. I ask him to explain his life philosophy.
“I am a cucumber”, he states, after careful deliberation.
I try again.
“It all began in the early 1980s,” he begins, in perfect English (he claims to have been taught by Elvis). “I had just returned from my infamous expedition to Mars, where I had been examining the possibility that the planet once sustained refrigerators. Upon entering orbit, I was grappling with the problem of how Japan is viewed by the rest of the world. I decided to investigate foreign stereotypes of the Japanese, so I visited some acquaintances around the globe.”
Hashimoto explains that he spent the rest of 1983 traveling (via express tadpole) to take tea with Queen Elizabeth, share a bottle of Grappa with Fidel Castro, and engage in heated twister contests with the Dalai Lama. These luminaries were all agreed on two points. Firstly, that Mr Hashimoto could eat an astonishing amount of biscuits in one sitting, and secondly, that the Japanese were a race of ultra polite, conscientious and honest citizens.
I am curious as to whether this view was upsetting to Mr Hashimoto. He refuses to tell me, unless I agree to buy some mountains off him. I relent and buy three for \700. He says I now own three mountains, but isn`t going to tell me which ones. He says that it is a life lesson, and that he will now continue with his story.
“It`s true that I was upset by this wide spread opinion. I knew there was much more to Japanese culture, but that it was hidden from view by layer upon layer of politeness, respect and obedience. Worse, I could see that young Japanese were becoming increasingly homogenized by American culture. I knew I had to do my part to help Japan develop a national characteristic untainted by foreign influence. Firstly I tried to build a new culture out of human hair and lollipop sticks, but that proved to be a silly idea. Instead I decided to strip Japan of its stereotype of honesty and reliability by creating a nation of liers. I made it my mission to spread lies, untruths and, as you British say, beefie pies.
I attempt to correct Hashimoto`s colloquial error, but he threatens to turn me into an onion, so I simply ask him what he did to achieve his goal.
“Firstly, I created an international church of lie-entology, and recruited stars of stage and screen.”
(History records that in 1984 Mr Hashimoto set up a society for model Shinkansen enthusiasts. There have only ever been three members, one of whom was dead when he signed up.)
“Secondly, I preached up and down the land, spreading my philosophy of non-violent, direct lying to the masses.”
(Mr Hashimoto did in fact take a two month trip around Japan in the spring of 1985, but found himself hampered by his own vow against truthfulness. Although he met a number of interested parties, he was honor bound to lie about his purpose, telling most people he was a vacuuming travel salesman.)
“Unfortunately the third part of my plan was thwarted by meddling government agents. Although I managed to convert more than forty thousand people, I was assassinated in 1987 by a government sponsored hit squad.”
(Records show that Hashimoto has managed to convert only one person in 21 years. This was a 97 year old widow, Tamae Fujisawa, who agreed to be converted on the understanding that she would get to meet John Travolta. His only brush with authority came in 1992 when a postman told him to go away.)
I ask Hashimoto what the future holds for him. He has caused minor controversy recently by publicly disputing the existence of left, stating that everything previously considered to be on the left should be relabeled as very far right. This weekend he will attempt to garner more publicity by shouting at Tokyo bay, in defense of his theory that water can frightened easily.
Tickets are available from all good cake shops and from feeling around under sofas.

2004-03-17T02:46:00.000+09:00

A GAIJIIN SPEAKS……….
… so, it`s like….. I mean, anything I say here, you`re not gonna like, write it all down and stuff, are you?…….. ok, that`s cool, cos I got a wife and kid, you know…….. so, what was I saying?……. aw, JD and coke, man, thanks a lot…….. so, yeah, it`s like, I speak to these guys who just got out here, and they`re like……….. say, how long you been out here?….. aw, well you`ll learn…. wassat?……aw, thanks man, arigato……hey, you wanna put a little less ice in here next time, man… I think I can see part of the Titanic under here, know what I mean……… so, I speak to these guys and I`m like, what`re you here for?…………. really?………and they`re all like, the food, the culture, the cherry fucking blossom………… I`m like GET the fuck outta here, it`s the chicks, man……….. that`s why I came…… well, it`s not why I came, but it`s why I stayed……….. it`s like, I remember when I first got here, like four years or whatever the fuck ago…………. how long you been out here?……… aw, well, you`ll learn………… when I first got here I was living next to this British guy and this Japanese chick, and she`d be like working all day and shit, then she`d come home and cook for him and clean up all his crap………. it was like FUCK man, this is the promised land…….. Japanese chicks are just like god`s little gift on mankind day, or whatever………… that`s why it`s so cool here…………. wassat?………… aw, the food sucks, man……… it does…. it`s like, I love Mexican food, but the Mexican restaurants out here are just pitiful………. I`m like, get Taco Bell over here quick………… and the culture`s just stupid, man………. It`s like a thousand years old, you`re never gonna understand it…………. all those stupid plays, ….dumb dances and no chicks….. and all of them are the same, I think, like about some guy all upset cos his duck died or some shit……. whatever…….. it`s all about the pussy, man…………. anyone who says otherwise is just fucking lying……… hate those guys…………. always bragging about their “special” Japanese friends, but they never get up the guts to bone `em………….. I love Japanese chicks….. it`s like, when I went back to Toronto for Christmas I saw this chick, and she was like 300 pounds plus…….. fucking michellin man`s wet dream, dude…… and she`s like “wanna see my belly ring?”….. and I`m like “not really”………but she just lifts her shirt right up and goes, “look at my belly ring”……… and I`m like “where?”, you know what I mean?……. I`m like “which fold is it under?”…………… after that, I was just thinking “I wanna go HOME, man…. back to japan……. back to that east asian pussy
………. but, that`s really the only reason to be here………. the society`s totally screwy here……….. I mean, how long you been out here?………. aw, well, you`ll learn………. it`s like, the way they treat women over here is just, well, it`s like fucking Flinstones` era………. they`re just totally, like, what`s the word?………. emaciated, right…….. and the pornos are something else, man…….. you ever see that stuff……….. aw, I got some back in the car…….. it`s like totally degrading, and I tell `em all the time, like, they should be burning their bras or some shit………. get with the rest of the world, you know……….. wassat?………. that`s kinda true, man……… yeah, they`re shy, but you gotta be careful……….. certain situations are different…………. like, I remember being on this train with some buddies………it was like 6 am, you know………. we`d had some beers, so we were just talking and singing and shit……… just minding our own business, right……… and this guy……… I thought he was sleeping……….. all of a sudden he`s just like “SHUT UP”……… I was stunned, you know……… it`s just not how it happens here…….. but, then I was like really angry, cos that`s just fucking rude……… so, I just go over and sit by this guy, with my newspaper and shit, and I just start reading out the baseball results, like really loud……… into his ear………. aw, it was a hoot………. he was twitching, man, but he didn`t do nothing……….. rude, though, right…………but I didn`t hit him………. you can`t do that shit in Japan…………. how long you been out here?……….. aw, well, you`ll learn………………………

2004-03-08T23:40:00.000+09:00

Oh quadrangles of felch, where HAVE these legs gone? Honestly, I left them just there, below my pelvis. I always keep them there, just like I always keep my mobile in the left front side pocket of my combats. Or the right pocket if it`s my work trousers. Or if I`m wearing tracky bottoms, then it`s the top left pocket. Not in the grey ones though. But I don`t wear them anymore anyway, so it`s all academic.
erm............ what was it I was talking about?
Legs, that`s the chap. Where could they have got to? These can`t be mine, these are all stripey. These look like Crazy Ben`s legs.
Perhaps I left them at Fousty`s house. I once left my Fine Young Cannibals single, which I got free with a six pack of Sapporo. He`s had that for months. I hope he`s not planning to keep my legs for that long. I`ll almost certainly need them when the hotter weather comes.
I definitely had them at the pub, because I saw them when I went to the bathroom. They were certainly there at work as well, cos one of my playgroup kids was trying to hump the left one for a good half hour (although not a good half hour). I`m adamant that they were in bed with me when I got up. So where did they go?
Unless............. hold on. I had to borrow Crazy Ben`s trousers last night, didn`t I, after all that business with the fire extinguisher and the yappy dog.
That`s right. So, maybe......................
Ah, there they are. There were in Crazy Ben`s trousers the whole time. That`s a relief. I didn`t fancy explaining that one to me Mum. She`s never had much time for me, but she`s never had a bad word to say about these legs.

Meanwhile, in another part of reality:
So it was, that I was hop scotching home one bright March day, in the disgustingly early hours, when I was stopped a rozzer.
Scum, scum, scum, bastard scum bastardy bastard faces, racial discrimination, praying on innocent gaijiin, blah, blabberty blah, vent spleen for five minutes or until cheese has melted.
Actually, no.
As with any country there are the inevitable horror stories about being pulled over for no other reason than your skin colour. Particularly during the last election it seems that gaijiin were routinely stopped and questioned, but of course the stories are immediately bigged up beyond credulity by the victims ("they gave me a full cavity search", "got me to bark like a dog","ate my Gran`s picture"etc). Plus, the offended parties are almost always ten sheets to the wind when they are pulled over.
Personally, I`d never had a problem until the other night. Neither had any of my friends. Either of them.
I was walking along California Road (there`s that bias against foreigners again) idly solving algebra equations and thinking about tits, when a plump little man in blue chugged past on his chicken chaser motor bike.
He had emerged from a crossing just in front of me and as he traversed the road his gaze rested on me, the only living, babbling thing in sight. He eye balled me the whole way across the road, then disappeared from sight. Bollocks, I thought, as I quickly discarded the three traffic cones, two For Sale signs and the community centre I`d pinched on my journey home.
Walking as soberly as I could in a not-too-diagonal direction, I crossed the road. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wee fatty man wheeling his bike round for a return trip.
Rusty knackers.
I continued walking, not looking back.
Behind me the chug-chuggery became increasingly audible, until it was quite obviously at my heels.
I carried on walking.
Slowly, this diminutive blue blimp motored into view.
"Konban wa",he said, in a fairly cheery greeting.
"Konban wa", I slurred back. "Genki des ka?" (Are you well?)
He returned the platitude and we continued to creep along.
"Shigoto wa nan deska?", (What`s your job?) he asked, after a while.
"Shane no Englishu Schoolu"
"Uh?"
"Kyoshi desu"
His cabbage patch face lit up with what really shouldn`t have been surprise.
"Sensai desu, ne. Teacher?"
"So desu."
More silence.
"Namae wa?"
"James desu."
"So desuka? James-san."
Silence again.
Fascinating innit.
"Anato-no uchii wa doko des ka?"
Blinking, in effort to return myself to something resembling single vision, I pointed at my apartment block, about five hundred yards up the road.
"Aruite, desu ka?" (Are you walking?)
"Hai, so desu. Chikai desu." (It`s close)
Now I started to worry. Was he trying to chat me up? This discrimination thing was less fun than I thought.
Having established that I didn`t want a lift, and that I was too pissed to hassle, he now launched into a public service blah. I caught a couple of words, of which the only useful one was "hana-bi"(firework). I told him I didn`t understand, to which he helpfully repeated his speel. I still didn`t understand. This he retorted with "fire, fire, koko (here) fire, fire, you".
I told him, no, I didn`t have any fire. Not even in my flat.
He proceeded with another belch of machine gun fire Japanese.
I nodded my head vigorously.
"Be careful" he bellows.
I continued to waggle my bonce in a decidedly comprehending manner.
He fucked off.

I think I understand better what Nelson Mandela went through now.

2004-03-03T01:49:00.000+09:00

Sunday night was my first stage diving experience.
I`ve been to concerts before, of course. Oh yes, I`ve moshed, my good man. Dear me, I`ve moshed. I`ve felt the splatter of yellow stuff as those tossers at the front chuck their plastic bottles back over the crowd. I`ve stood in a purple haze at a wannabe hip-hop concert, and got stoned for free. I`ve waved my lighter in the air...... then got bored and tried to set fire to the well lacquered hair of the screechy girl in front of me. All that bollocks. But, I`d never stage dived until Sunday. Do you want to know how? Utterly irrelevant whether you do or don`t actually, as I`m gonna tell you anyway.
It`s one of life`s annoying ways of reminding me that everything I do is normal , that I travel halfway across the world and the bloke upstairs is from Redditch, about ten minutes down the road from where I grew up. His name`s Simon. Nice bloke, Simon. Bit too fucking relaxed though. You have to watch yourself when you`re with him, cos he`s just so fucking relaxed. He`ll be walking along, talking to you like normal, then all of a sudden he`ll just melt. Way fucking relaxed, you see. You have to be quick or he`ll disappear down the drain. He`s always dropping things as well, or simply slipping into a coma in the middle of a conversation. Fucking relaxed, I tell you. You wouldn`t want to invade Poland with him. He`d be no fucking use at all.
Got to stop saying fuck. It takes ages to do the spell check.
Where was I? Japan. Ah, right.
Simon`s a drummer. He`s played in all sorts of bands. Started out in a　heavy metal group, back Birmingham way. Sepultura, Pantara, bit of Sabbath to keep the locals happy, that sort of stuff. Heavy drumming. Arms like tree trunks. Then he went to Uni in Cardiff, and got all funky. He moved in and out of different swathes of music - funk, jazz, rock. He pretty much covered the pantheon of cymbal smashing styles. The man`s a demon with a drumstick. And I ain`t talking about no chicken, fool.
Then he moved to Japan, and in that ultra serendipitous manner which seems to propel the lives of most of the really fucking relaxed people I know, he met some musicians. This was his first week in Japan.
The three musicians were looking for a drummer. Simon said he was a drummer. After several hours, and the occasional spontaneous levitation from my ridiculously relaxed neighbour, an idea formed. They needed a drummer. Simon was a drummer................... Maybe Simon could introduce them to some drummers. Yeah. A few more drinks were consumed. Simon was suddenly struck with the meaning of life, but was so fucking relaxed that he promptly forgot it. The musicians got a better idea. They needed a drummer. Simon was a drummer. Simon could be their drummer. He nodded his agreement, and promptly shat himself. He made a mental note to maybe tense up a bit more.
"The Quints" were born.
I know what you`re thinking. And it`s filthy. What you should be thinking is "The Quints is a bit of a rubbish name, isn`t it?". Well, you`ve got a point there. It`s not the greatest name in the world. Although I did find it quite amusing to find out that there are only four of them. The name aside, they`re a pretty good band. They play mainly Chilli Pepper style rock tunes, with lashings of angst and poetic ragings against lost love, fuffled feelings and troubled thoughts.
The other three members are, firstly, a slightly pretentious American called Joe. He is the main lyricist in the group, and must derive much of his inspiration from the cruel twist of fate which led to him being born with a Craig David style head warmer, instead of normal hair. The poor boy had been forced to live his life incased in this woolen monstrosity, never to feel the wind running through his hair, or the secret joy of a school visit from the local nurse to check for nits. One song hauntingly recreates his boyhood trauma of being put through the spin dryer every morning while his taunting siblings
were blessed with a shower. Simon tells me that he has sought advise from the cream of the international medical profession. They are all, sadly, united in the opinion that any attempt to remove the hat by surgery would simply result in the potentially fatal situation of Joe`s brain being rained in, thus destroying his song writing ability, and making him slosh every time he does sums.
The second member of the group is Robin. I don`t know much about Robin, apart from the fact that he is Canadian, plays the bass guitar, drives a small car and that he assassinated JFK. He has some interesting stories to tell about his small car.
The third member is Paul. He looks like Shaun Ryder. He`s from somewhere posh in England, and he plays guitar. Paul sings my favourite song of The Quints` repertoire. I think it`s the only song which I have ever been able to remember from only one hearing. Most songs (even "You do Ron-Ron") take a couple of plays, at least, for them to lodge in my consciousness. This one, however, leapt in first time and parked it`s camper van of melody right in my memory banks. I could feel it`s awning every time I tried to recall U2 lyrics. So I stopped. The song`s chorus goes "I can feel your body circulating my head". I think we can all relate to that. Except the gays and mentals, of course.
So, that`s The Quints. Before Sunday I`d seen them once before, playing in a poky bar in Chiba. They played their set twice, with wooly headed Joe twisting and stretching every vowel and consonant-please-carol into, what he probably hoped, was a symphony of emotion and heart plucking. Paul plodded away, methodically and competently, at lead guitar. Robin provided the band`s backbone on bass, as he expertly scanned the crowd for his next victim. Simon, easily the most talented musician there, lifted the composite parts into a more funkable whole. The night was good. Even more so, thanks to the owner, Ichikawa, who was later to reluctantly step up to the stage and treat us to his free style blues guitar riffs. Up till then his main job had been to gree all customers with an A3 piece of paper on which he had scribbled.

Beer - 500 yen
Wine - 700 yen

TODAY`S SPECIALS:
Sandwich - 400 yen
Curry - 600 yen

A menu fit for a King. Or, at least, a couple of Queens.

Sunday was graduation time. The Quints had been upgraded from Ichikawa`s claustrophobic watering hole, to his brother`s more spacious and more sought after bar/club; Revolutions.
The gig was good. Many of the songs were the same, and the wooly hatted one`s rent-a-quip of "welcome to our poetry recital" still wasn`t garnering many responses, but the music was rocking and the night was good. There were a few funkier numbers, to take the emphasis away from the Radiohead styled rockiness that Joe was evidently striving for. I enjoyed these, as it gave rise to the true musicianship which is evident amongst the band members. These more surprising numbers I found preferable to the heart wringing solos which Joe heaped upon us. "This one`s for my gardener, who sat on a piece of fruit" etc.
Here`s where we get to the stage diving.
Are you excited?
Things were going spiffingly. The band were well in to their stride, the crowd were jumping. Everyone was in, and full of, good spirits. As usually happens when everything is going well, I got bored.
"Let`s stage dive", I said to Fousty.
"Fuck off" he replied.
"Let`s stage dive", I said to Michelle.
"Fuck off" she retorted.
"Let`s stage dive", I said to John.
"Cool idea. let`s do it", he answered.
"Fuck you too, you cowardy cunty bollocks", I spat back.

So I set off to stage dive on my own. Quite easy, really. Once I`d battled my way through the imaginary heaving crowd, and bribed the imaginary security, I scaled the heights of the three inch stage and launched myself into the throng of three people on the dance floor.
After I`d picked myself up off the floor and reset my jaw, I tried again. This time they were ready. I leapt on to Fousty`s shoulder, who threw me violently into the other dancers. I was held aloft, dangled at dangerously close to vertical angles, jostled, shunted and finally tossed aside like a freshly stripped carcass.
Aaaah, nothing like it.
The exhilaration.
The adrenalin.
The bruises.
That`s my stage diving story.

Sorry.

p.s: By way of amends for this outrageous review, I`ve linked to The Quints website. Please visit. Or else.

2004-03-02T20:20:00.000+09:00

I don`t read English newspapers much anymore.
I just did.
Sorry, but what the fuck?
Peter Andre?
What the.......?
Where the......................?
Didn`t he...........................?
But, it`s the same.............................?
What?
Somebody please explain.
I`m frightened.

2004-03-02T20:07:00.000+09:00

Two things concern me greatly, as I scribble this. Firstly, where`s your liver? Is it here? Is it bad if it hurts? Secondly, where did this pig come from, and why is it stealing all my blankets?
These questions, you`ll be glad to know, are not the only questions on my mind. For the moment I want to concentrate on two others:
a) have I ever sung my national anthem, or saluted a British flag, without a hint of irony or plain piss rippery?
b) how would I react if my employers tried to force me to do this?
I can imagine the reaction of most of my British friends to this question. No, no. no. Emphatically, vein poppingly, purple facedly, fist scrunchingly NO. Nah, nah, nah. Salute the Union Jack?! What the fuck am I? Some sort of ale bellied, pie munching, Milwall supporter? Don`t even know the words to "God save that frankfurter-gobbling-daughter-in-law-murdering uber bitch".
All right, all right, calm down. Big breaths now. Did you cum? Filthy little thing you!! Clean yourself up and listen to me.
I was brought up in a country where patriotism is now a dirty word. Filthy. Worser than "fanny", even. "Patriot" carries with it connotations of ill-education, narrowmindedness, racism and intolerance. A patriot is a thug, a bigot. Maybe even an American. Eeuurgh. The only patriotism that is tolerated is the Johnny Wilkinson worshipping, Beckham adulating, Henmania that grips the country every time we get past the third round in any of the sports we invented. But this is English patriotism, not British. And it`s sport. So it doesn`t count. Anyway, no-one will notice my St George`s t-shirt in amongst all these beer bashers. Will they?
This isn`t the case in other places I`ve visited. Argentines, for instance, are fiercely proud of their flag, as they are of their culture, their heritage, their history. Africans, too, seem joyously keen to wear their nationality on their chest. The difference, I think, is that they are able to separate the evils that have been inflicted by their governments from the goodness, the spirit of the people. Maybe it`s the underdog culture that inspires this, seemingly very healthy view, of their culture. The British are all too aware of their (our) history of empire building and conquesting. We are force fed the successes and the atrocities of the past, and we make them our own. We`ve won too many battles, lauded it over too many continents to be able to settle comfortably into a state of jingoistic self-congratulation. Even as we berate the global domination of America, isn`t it tempered by the suspicion that deep down we`re quite jealous that it`s someone else`s turn?
I`m boring you with all this for a reason.
It amuses me.
Okay, two reasons.
The Tokyo metropolitan board of education have recently been stoking the embers of controversy by introducing pretty stern guidelines on the use of the national flag and anthem at school functions.
One of my students, Takeru, is an English teacher at a high school in Toyocho, on the periphery of central Tokyo. He works long, long hours, as do all teachers in Japan. They are saddled, not just with every day teaching responsibilities, but also extra duties, which he has to perform if he wants to keep his position. He does not have much opportunity to refuse or complain in his job. Unfortunately he may soon have no choice but to pipe up.
The education board`s instructions concerning high school graduations state that all teachers should rise to sing the national anthem, as well as saluting the Japanese flag. The intention, presumably, is to inspire in the students a sense of national pride and a respect for their national identity. The potential side effect is to compound the wide spread ignorance among the younger generation of Japan`s dubious past, and to present a worrying picture to a western world which may have condescended to forgive, but is very far from forgetting.
Takeru is left with a conundrum. He shames me in his dedication to his profession, and his genuine desire to help his students. He fears the message that his obedience would give to the pupils who, I would imagine, respect him a great deal. There is also the danger that non-resistance in this thorniest of matters would lead to increased power for the education board, and decreased respect or need for the opinions and principals of teachers.
He has been told that if his arse does not leave that chair, and his voice is not heard loud and booming then his pay will be docked. Yes, I can imagine the spleen venting expression of at least one person reading this. "Fuck them, and their money". Fair point, but this is Japan, not Britain. If Takeru refuses to stand then this act of rebellion will stay on his record for the rest of his life. Schools in Japan do not go for the "Dead Poet`s Society" style of loose cannon teaching. A piss stained, kiddie fiddling pill popper would be infinitely preferable to anyone with the faintest whiff of a "troublemaker" about them.
He is still considering, but reckons that he will have no choice but to stay sitting. When he told me this I tried to stay as impartial and diplomatic as I could, despite every bone in my body screaming "guuu on saaaaaaaaan". He told me that the whole school is similarly divided. Those teachers close to retirement have already stated their intentions to stay firmly rooted seatside. Others, with one eye on the future, have resigned themselves to their duty. The result may well paint a picture of absurdity. Some teachers on their feet, bellowing their national song, others shamefacedly vertical but silent, others seated and smug. What sort of message is this ragged line of dutiful staff, probably looking like bowling pins after a mis-judged strike, going to present to the impressionable minds in front of them?
Just another brick in the wall, deshoo.

2004-02-24T19:51:00.000+09:00

According to Donnie Darko, the most beautiful phrase in the English language is "cellar door". Not sure I agree. I`m too fond of plosives to find anything tingly about this wafting sluice of a phrase. I`m quite fond of "Helicopter pad", and "vibraslap", although I do find that a good "puce" can always improve my mood. Whatever the champion, it cannot be argued that "ex-pat" is one of the most snivellingly offensive syllable collisions that ever disgraced my mother tongue. It`s the name of a bar in Gyotoku, and of the type of rock dweller that infests it nightly. Actually the bar has it`s good points. Once a month they set up a ring in the claustrophobic bar area and invite karate bods (sorry, don`t know the terminology - experts??? specialists??? players??? purveyors??? whatever) to come and kick the shit out of each other for the pleasure of the baying crowd. One time they even set up a kick boxers vs karate "insert own phrase here" contest. Unfortunately (for the crowd, not for them) the karate choppers rang up to say they were pulling out of the battle. Those kick boxers are fucking animals. Although, if one of them is reading, then....... actually........ ha, ha, ha, ha, fuck you fatty, cos my name`s not on this site.
Actually there is something even more brutal than kick boxing; K-1 boxing. Personally I`ve never heard of it in England or America, but I have no doubt that it would go down a storm. Basically, it consists of ex-wrestlers, sumos, karate yada-yadas, kick boxers, and other assortments of meat popsicles. They wear boxing gloves, but this is seemingly the only concession to injury aversion or sporting chivalry. The contestants enter the ring, and are not allowed to leave until only one is left standing. Those are pretty much the rules. Punching, kicking, wrestling, biting, decapitation, cussing your opponent`s Nan, it`s all fair game. The losing fighter is generally left blood speckled and horizontal, before being fed slowly through a mincer by the victor, and cooked into a novelty taco sauce for the spectators to take home and feed to unwanted relatives.
K-1 fighters are international, basically culled from athletic scrapheaps across the globe. The star of the show is the formidably stacked Boba Sapp, rescued some years ago from the knacker`s yard of American Football. This towering mound of bad motherfucka spends his evenings dismembering more diminutive challengers, and his days advertising everything from cat food to car insurance. He is a superstar in Japan. But then again, so are "Toto".
I`m digressing. Actually, I`m pissed off. I`ve just had a message telling me that my Japanese friend (well, colleague. actually, nuisance) has cancelled the dirt cheap 27,000 yen flight package which she was supposed to be booking for us to go to Okinawa. Now we`re on a 36,000 yen "tour". Fucking obsessed with tours in this country. Seems like most Japanese tourists can`t travel anywhere without a full day itinerary (usually starting about 6.30am) provided for them by some faceless boreganization. This agenda usually consists of spending the entire day stuck in a queue of tour buses visiting exactly the same sights at exactly the same time. It`s enough to make you pour hot custard over your testicles! Well, you`ve gotta cheer yourself up somehow.
Rusty flange, I think I`m losing the ability to write in English (not that I have any particular ability to write in Japanese). The "pour" in the paragraph above was originally written as "poor", then corrected to "pore", then rather inexplicably re-written as "Thursday".
Where was I? I was in desperate fucking need of an editor, quite honestly. This started out as a piece on a night out in Roppongi and it`s turned into a monologue by Ronnie cunting Corbett.
Talking of indulgent writing, I watched "Adaptation" this morning. What a load of meandering, pointless, pontificating bum crust. Like sitting inside a duck with a big bag of Sherbert dib-dabs and no licorice. Sort of.
Ok, I`m definitely going to talk about Roppongi now. To make absolute sure that I don`t veer off on any stray tangents, I`m going to empty my brain tray of all the loose thoughts that have collected there. Here we go:

The chuckle brothers..................... the warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air....................... I`m sure Milky Ways didn`t always used to be white and fluffy. They used to be a bit more like Mars. In America, they are Mars, or at least as close to Mars as you`ll get................................. Fat people on trampolines................................... Is there a name for those pens that aren`t really pens, but pencils in a sort of pen casing? In Japan they`re called Sha-pen....................... Whatever happened to white dog poo? You just don`t see it anymore.............................................. "Relax" said the nightman. "We are here to receive. You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave."............................. midgets on trampolines............................... There`s a stall in Asakasa that sells doggie sunglasses. I think they even have Puppy GAP in this country..................... Old, fat midgets on trampolines.............................................. I get electric shocks very easily in Japan. Especially after my playgroup class on a Wednesday, when I have to fold up the Winnie the Pooh mat that they`ve been skidding around on for an hour, then I brush past the door handle. Sparks, singed nerve endings, the lot. Thought I was having a fucking cardiac arrest last week.................hmmmm......... think that`s it..................... hang on.............................. fanny........................... that`s it, done........

I started off, several months ago, talking about ex-pat. A disgusting sound, a disgusting species. There is a home for these filth, these vermin, these estate agents. In Japan, it is called Roppongi. The very name inspires impressions of offensive odours, and it couldn`t be more apt. Roppongi is grim. Fucking grim.
It took me six months to do my first all nighter in Roppongi. It was a Tuesday night, on the eve of a national holiday. The intended target was a widely big-upped latin hangout, called Bar Rumba. I went with Fousty and Michelle. He has a chin-strap, and she has a filthy laugh but they`re the dictionary definition of soundness. After that night we all felt closer, like veterans of `nam or The Waltons.
Bar Rumba was dead as someone whose definitely dead and died very publicly and undeniably and has got a death certificate and has had a funeral and is buried and everything. So, we decided to do a fleeting whip around the most likely looking watering holes, then head back for some booze driven, limb flingingly unco-ordinated samba. Spiffing.
Roppongi`s main entertainment district lies in pissing distance in any direction of the infamous Roppongi crossing. As soon as you stagger over this threshold you are bombarded by flyers for a cornucopia of dank drinking dives, flashy strip joints, massage parlours, clay pigeon shooting ranges and, of course, water bingo.
Ignoring the jostling protestations of the street side touts, we decided to plump for a classier looking joint called "Motown". Nothing like a spot of soul to start of the evening, we thought, and descended the faux marble steps.
I learned a valuable lesson straight away. Never figure out that you`ve made the wrong decision after you`ve bought your first drink. Scope the place, sample a wide variety of abandoned beverages, smell the customers, inspect the bogs. Once you`ve bought a drink, you`re in. You`re one of them. You`ve said Candyman fives times (or was it three?) and now there`s no getting away from it. And I wanted to. Oh fucking yes, I wanted to get so far away.
The sight dripped with disgusting images. It was awash with stomach turning spectacles. Creepy, seedy, balding, affluent scumbags being draped by Gucci hungry cock teasers. Here`s a twit, twit, rugger playing Eton motherfucker, being serenaded by this scraggy slag, as Kylie purrs her way through some gyrating heap of chart shite. Then we have an inanely grinning babble of Americans, hooping and hollering like prick pumping hyeenas over some ludicrous dice game. Here, some flabby, sweating mound of insincerity is dribbling into the ear of a girl a quarter of his age and an eighth the size of his latest meal. Get me out, out, out, ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut.
Back in the fresh, polluted air, I felt the desperate need to wash my hands, burn my clothes and see a priest. But I had a job to do. There was drinking to be done. Besides, there wouldn`t be another train until 5am. So we pushed on.
For the rest of the night we explored a variety of wine bars, theme pubs and downright meat markets. Here and there, there were funny characters, outlandish cocktails, half-remembered songs, well forgotten conversations.
There was a sort of hip-hop place, where we took great delight in requesting every song we had ever heard, ever. The DJ, who seemed to be basing his playlist entirely on one DefJam best of... collection, would either tell us outright that he didn`t have it or plead with us that he was "trying to keep it mainstream". Cockrag.
There was a crazily coiffeured, middle aged lesbian in one place, who spent half her time slumped unconscious in the corner, but would suddenly leap up, grope every woman in the place then return to her slumber.
There was a Spanish barman called Miguel, who insisted on giving us his mobile number, his e-mail address, even his number in Spain, despite the fact that we had only talked to him to take the piss out off his hair.
There was a pissed up salary man, and a besuited boy who looked about 12, who helped me and Fousty prove our claim that men were the best dancers by head banging to House of Pain. Actually, maybe we didn`t quite prove that one.
There were certainly nuggets of gold amongst the cliff face of shit that faced us in Roppongi. It was an experience, maybe more than any other night out in Tokyo. But quite honestly, I`d rather shove red hot knitting needles up close family, than go again. Well, you need the occasional night in, don`t you.

2004-02-24T17:49:00.000+09:00

A moment of silence please. Put the chainsaw down Mother, we`ll deal with her later. It`s not in my nature, but I just thought I should say something nice to the people who read this squelching piffle. erm................ hold on, I saw a documentary about people being nice once. err..................... I like your trainers, did you get those from AllSports? Is that good?
What`s that, Mother?
"Thank you"?
Aaaah, yes, I remember it. Uncle Freddy used to say it when we untied him. I thought he was being cheeky. Perhaps he didn`t deserve the hot poker after all. I thought he seemed put out.
So, thank you. Thank you Vicki. Thank you Oli. Thank you Nick, for goading me into it in the first place, and then introducing the site to your mighty army of lizard warriors. And thank you to all Nick`s friends from the stoat burning party, who have linked me and said nice things about me. It`s too late for you now. Oh, and thank you Rie, for pretending to understand my jokes.
There we go. It`s done. Feel sort of violated, and not in the way I like.
Thank you.
Dear me, no. It`s just not me.
Thank you. You big, poofy bunch of monkey bar sniffers.
Ah, much better.

2004-02-03T21:38:00.000+09:00

As I was setting my tea towel on fire yesterday night, Mike Skinner blurted out something from my CD player about "the hazy fog over the bullring, the lazy ways the birds sing". Quite right Michael, I thought, as I struggled to winch me chips out of the pan whilst simultaneously stamping my charred tea towel into a submissive smolder.
"Hazy fog over the bullring" is not a particularly wonderful line, but it does always stick out, for me, from the general oi-oi-ery of the rest of the album. It sort of sums up my feelings about England, and the recently bubbling question of whether I`m capable of being homesick.
Whenever I hear that particualr line, an image plops into my mind. I can see central Birmingham in early morning. That horrible urban greyness that sticks to the city, mixed with the hardly audible hum of life that settles everywhere between chucking out time and the milkman revving up. It reminds me of kebab shop punch ups, tottering slappers and their swaggering leash holders, playing hopscotch around the dried vomit, and 5am conversations full of unrealistic ambitions, unreliable memories and resolutions that will last as long as the beer buzz. Rubbish really. But when I think about it, I smile. I feel some sort of emotional tug, even if it`s not the wrenching that many of my friends seem to experience.
The point is that I do miss it a bit. There is some deep rooted drive to see it all again, to be back in an overly familiar place. To smell the memories, I suppose. Yes, there`s a slice of me that wants to see the hazy fog over the bullring.
Now here`s the point.

No, not here. Down a bit.

If I were to go back, if I were to try and relive those Midland mash ups, there`s no way I`d be able to see that familiar sight. The bastards done gone pulled it down, didn`t they?
If I went back now, the hazy fog would be settling around the even more depressing sight of the neeeeeeeeeeew bull ring. This monstrous mound of plastic and glass is topped off by further visual sodomy in the form of the Selfridges building; a garrish, pin cushion styled wreck, just as soul stripping as the architectural ashtray which lay there before.
It`s all gone.
It`s still the bullring. Still the nasty, shitty old bull ring. But it`ll never be the nasty, shitty old bull ring of my first 21 years.
It`s all gone.
So how can I be homesick?
If it`s all fucked off, and there`s no way to go back, then surely I can`t be homesick. That`s nostalgia, innit? Maybe that`s all homesickness is; just wanting to claw back the happy memories but sift out the bad times, the heartache, the boredom, the frustration, the liver failure. Perhaps one more reason to travel is so that you can give these fruitless meanderings a more positive spin.

"Don`t be a fool, Gerald. I`m not wallowing in nostalgia. God forbid. I`m just homesick, that`s all. Perfectly natural. All my fears and worries will be set aside when I get back to Blighty. Now let`s have another verse of `Jerusalum` while we finish off　The Times` quick one. "
It`s all bollocks really, as I think I once heard Stephen Hawkings comment.

Who thinks I should go back home then?
Hands up.
Are you voting, or do you need the toilet?....... Off you fuck then.
I have to admit that i`m getting slightly bored with Japan. I think it`s natural after six months. It`s not my home, but it is familiar. The cultural sledgehammer has shrunk to a small toffee hammer being wielded by an arthritic six year old. There`s plenty more to learn, but in a way I can`t be fucked to learn it. I want to recapture that buzz of landing in an alien city, without a fuck what anyone`s saying, what I`m going to see down the next street, or whether it`s okay to wear sandals in the butcher`s.
Then again, how much longer do I want to commit to this continent hopping? It plays havoc with your dental care, and you can never be sure what the bog paper`s going to be like.
Suggestions on a postcard please, to:
Betty and Eric String
31 Otter`s Crotch Lane
East Wiffly
Hants

or, Magicjnr@yahoo.com

Used underwear and dirty books also welcome.

2004-01-27T21:04:00.000+09:00

I think my teeth are coming loose. It`s Japanese food`s fault. Lovely as it is, it`s just so maddeningly soft. As soon as I eat anything which recquires the slightest bit of chomping I feel like I`m wading through a slab of concrete.
Of course it could be the beer. The stuff gives me the most obscene hangovers, especially if it comes in tapped rather than bottled form. It`s the chemicals, according to Steve Mott. But how can you trust a man with a beard as silly as that. Looks like some sort of fucking forest imp, only with more pinstripes. Mind you, he might have a point about the beer. A mate of mine reckons his hair`s not growing as long. He puts that down to the beer. Another chump says he`s a had a sty in his eye for two months now. That`ll be the grog as well. And I`m sure there used to be much less room in my underpants before I started drinking this gash. Why, I barely have to unfurl anymore. It`s all the beer, you see.

2004-01-27T20:39:00.000+09:00

I must seek help.
I keep getting hurted by lifts.
It`s come to something when you get hurted by a lift. It`s never happened to me anywhere else in the world, and believe me, I`ve been in some lifts. Just ask Trev, he usually comes with. We`ve travelled the length and girth of the world, sampling the delights of a metal box being propelled up and down. Why, I`m something of a celebrity among the ranks of respected lift connaisseurs. They call me Columbus. I really wish they wouldn`t.
Yes, I`ve used lifts in England, Ireland, France, Spain, Canada, America (no, hang on, that was an elevator), Argentina, Brazil, South Africa. Not a scratch. I would never have believed there were injuries to be had in the cosy, and ever popular world of lift-useary. If you said to me, this time last year, that you`d been hurted by a lift, well I`d probably have eaten your Grandparents.
That all changed when I got to Japan. That`s when I encountered these bitches.
Of course, as in any country, there are different types of lifts. Being aware of the kind of controversy this topic can cause (witness the 1974 riot at the annual Liftlovers association in East Finchley, when seventeen people died as a result of a quarrel over the respective merits of a Barnstraddle 784/9 and Guffspinster 85), I will restrict my thoughts to two main styles of lift. Posh lifts and rubbish lifts.
Posh lifts are exemplified by the great whooshing cunt in the middle of Yokohama`s Landmark Tower. This johnny claims to be the fastest lift in the world. Notching up a rate of 70 floors in 40 seconds, this can`t really be argued with (except possibly by the Post-Flutterclunk 39 faction, but they`ll say anything for a bit of attention). Other fine examples include the Tokyo Tower Hotel, with it`s spunkcious views, and the Nagoya TV Tower, with it`s excellent standard of muzac.
Now, even the casual lift user would have to work pretty fucking hard to get themselves hurted in a posh lift. Quite frankly they`d have to hurl themselves forcefully at a closed set of doors to be truly hurted, and that would be silly. You see the secret of safety in a posh lift is the lift attendent. These glove wearing types are guardians of the up/down/floor46 button, and have clearly been rigourously trained. Not only do their lightening quick digits save even the nifftiest of flailing body parts from squashage, but they are all equipped with encyclopeidac knowledge of the building`s contents, which they share with the elevating punter between floors. At first this can seem a little disconcerting, considering that the lift pilot never turns his/her/it`s steely gaze from the control panel. The posh lift virgin may find this experience confusing, perhaps even tear inducing, as it really does seem like this behatted fucker is babbling away to themselves. Now, I`m sure everyone (even a Spazzmaster 12 enthusiast!) would agree that there is nothing quite as terrifying as being in a lift controlled by a uniformed lunatic. But do not be alarmed. The fear will soon subside when it becomes apparent that this monotonous drone is merely the kindly passage of information from a higly qualified lift controller.
So, we can comfort ourselves that the danger from posh lifts rarely exceeds mild mental buggery. This brings us to the real culprit - the rubbish lifts.
I have rarely met such vindictive, blood ravished, skin pinching thuggery as can be witnessed in the shit bowl that is a rubbish lift. These bitches`ll go for children, pregnant mothers, nuns with diabetes, the lot. There is pure evil dripping down them cables, and it never rests.
Most countries whip their rubbish lifts into shape by installing sensors which stop the doors from closing, should they feel the slightest hint of a bumbling old fool, restless child, or (God forbid) a misplaced todger in a crowded lift. In Japan, this sensor seems to have been installed arse side up. No sooner has the client sniffed the merest hint of lift air, then theese bastards are on him. If they like the look of you they might just fire a warning shot by mashing up your briefcase (inevitably containg both your lunch, and some rare 12th century pottery). However, should you show the slightest hint of arrogance or cock sureity in your lift using prowess, it will unleash it`s full arsenal. Doors will open with creaking slowness, then slam shut with the force of ten baboons as your unexpecting legs cross the threshold. Clothes will be ripped, skin pinched, hernias aggravated, ulcers popped. These devils are as merciless as they are inventive.
Take my advice. If you come to Japan, use the stairs. Or better still, stay downstairs. One never knows how far their influence can reach.

2004-01-20T23:50:00.000+09:00

Even on my pissiest day, when I have five kid`s classes in a row (including the one who bangs his head on the floor, and tries to trip me up with the lego) and have to face the train all the way across Tokyo, I can still be cheered up by amusing manglments of the English language.
My latest favourite was found in Doutour Coffee Shop, on one of those place number cards which they give you while your food is being prepared. Clearly they wanted to say something along the lines of "Thank you for waiting, your food will be ready promptly". This comes out as:
"Please, a while sir, in your seat"
Another one at a bus station in Nagoya, which probably should have said "No eating or drinking" became:
"Please to not feeding or drinking the passengers".

Well, it helps.

2004-01-20T23:37:00.000+09:00

I suppose you`d like to know all about my new Japanese lessons, what I started yesterday. All right then, I`ll tell you. Put the knife down. I said I`d tell you. And pop your trousers back on, you`re not making any friends with that thing.
The fantabulous, near epic, saga of James` Japanese lessons, can be drawn into three seperate chapters. Much as we have The Old Testament, The New Testament, and Weekend at Bernie`s 3, we also have the classic three pronged forking of this story. We shall begin with the first chapter. If it was good enough for God, who am I to fuck with the form.
My loving employers, Shane English School (Money Sucking Cock Chaffers since 1987), kindly set up ten free Japanese lessons with a "qualified Japanese teacher". In non-Shane speak this translates as "one of our receptionists who has a textbook somewhere". Actually, I can`t knock these lessons. I learned how to use present, past and future tenses, how to express like and dislike, how to write Hirigana (one of the three Japanese alphabets) and how to call someone "a stunted monkey lover" without causing offence.
I also can`t find a bad word to say about my sensai, Miwako, other than the occasionally off-putting fact that she`s a Thunderbird. Please don`t mis-understand me, I`m not a prejudiced man, and I would never dream of discriminating against any popular Gerry Anderson puppet. However, it is a little off-putting when they`re teaching you a foreign language. Mid-lesson I would often be transfixed by the shine of her wooden "skin", or be side-tracked by her jerky, string guided movements. Still, she was a good teacher and never showed her wires in public. Not even after a few drinks.
Having used up all my love from the corporate section, I now went in search of my own classes. This led me to the local library/community centre in Gyotoku, where a bunch of well-meaning types had set up informal nihongo classes. A couple of the volunteers have trained or worked as teachers, others just come along every week to give it their best. It`s a good crack and I`ve learnt a lot from going there. Not least, I have to waspishly state, how not to teach. The fact that there are so many volunteers means that the student is exposed to a variety of teachers, with different accents, personalities and approaches. This is all well and fruity, but it doesn`t take long to work out which methods work best. My first few lessons were with a trainee teacher called Hirokoshi. Despite my being an almost complete beginner, Hirokoshi conducted the 90 minute classes entirely in Japanese. At first I found this piss pinchingly scary, but her coolness and constant repition of the key themes calmed me down, and I was amazed by how much I could get out of one lesson. Hmmm, nice, I thought. Then I asked Hirokoshi what that meant in nihongo, and from then on I thought "soh des, scoy".
Unfortunately Hirokoshi isn`t always available. As a result I have been forced into a group with a loud mouthed yank wank called Josh, who insists on calling me Jimmy and has a stupid face. This group is taught by Mariko, who is burningly cute and speaks very good English. This is no good. Not only is the class conducted English, but most of the time her legs fill up too much of my brain for any Japanese words to get in. Hmmm, problematic. The other choice is some mad housewife bitch who just fires Japanese at me, tommy gun style. I spend most of the lesson trying to dodge her flem, and nod in all the apparently appropriate phrases. Hmmm, unproductive, not to mention unhygenic.
So now we come to the thrilling third installment in this linguistic yearning yarn. Yesterday I had my first lesson at the Sendagaya Japanese Institute. You can call it SJY for short, but nobody`ll know what you`re talking about so you probably shouldn`t. These lessons were recommended by my favoured sensai, who sorted me out a place on a six week course (three 90 minute lessons per week). The basic deal is that we are the guniea pigs for a bunch of trainee teachers, who work in a kind of tag team style, all pumping us linguistically for about 15 minutes before slapping their fresh faced colleague into play.
The leaflet for the course had stated that there would be other trainees observing the lesson. Curse my blithering ignorance, I was under the dunce headed mis-apprehension that this would mean a couple of teachers watching quietly from the back. Imagine my surprise when I and the other nine guniea pigs trooped into the classroom to be greeted by the bemusing applause of 27 trainees, plus about seven tutors. I`m ashamed to say that a little bit of wee almost escaped.
Thankfully most of the trainees sat at the back being quiet. I elicited a few nervous titters by introducing myself (this was the first activity) as a housewife, who enjoyed badminton but didn`t like post offices. Not the crowd pleaser I was hoping for, but at least i didn`t do my elephant impression (I pull my pockets out for the ears......).
The teachers were pretty good, and didn`t seem too nervous at the vast audience they faced. The only real problem they each encounterd came in the rather lumbering form of a Mongolian wrestling trainer, sitting next to me. Mugi, from somewhere unmemorable in the north of Mongolia, later told me, in broken but decipherable English, that he once went 31 fights without defeat. Somewhere along the way I think some lug must have clothes-lined the language learning marble clean out of his bonce. Despite constant prompting Mugi was unable to repeat the simplest of sentences without making a complete arse baste out of it. As he further mangled the given sentence with every repeated attempt, the sweat could clearly be seen trickling down the foreheads of each of the trainees. Still, it made me feel better about my sub-pigeon conversational abilities.
So, that`s where we leave my tale of language, learning, incest, murder, and pungent biscuity things. Don`t fret, the saga will continue, just in time to cash in on the DVD release of the original. Wait for it with baited spleens.

2004-01-13T05:50:00.000+09:00

I went to a lot of places this Christmas and New Year.
That`s not boasting.
I can do it five times a night.
That`s boasting.
I went to a lot of places. That`s fact.
I started off in Nagoya. Do you know it? No, it`s not where the bomb dropped. That was Nagasaki. No, it`s not where the Flinstones lived. That was Bedrock. Don`t know why you said that.
Nagoya is Japan`s fourth largest city. It has a nice castle. Somebody invented an annoying game called Pachinko here. They have a food called Kishimen, which is a type of floury noodles. There`s a nice port. Some drunken people danced for me and blew whistles. I waited six hours for my girlfriend to meet me. I almost fell asleep on an escalator. There`s really not much more to say.
Like I said, I went to a lot of places, and I don`t have time to write about all of them. Not today. It`s very late, or very early. I should sleep. But I want to tell you about the love rock. I`ll tell you about that, then I`ll go and pass out somewhere. Please pay attention.
Kiyomizu-dera (that`s a temple in Kyoto) is a defining sight. There`s two ways to tell a defining sight. Firstly, is if you read in the guidebook that it`s a defining sight. They`ll use the words "this is a defining sight". Look out for them. Secondly, is if it creeps up on you. Kiyomizu-dera creeps up on you. Approaching along the knee-knackeringly steep Kiyomizu-zaka (that`s a road), you`ll probably become intrigued by the stream of colourful stalls and shops along the walk. You`ll forget you`re heading for a temple. Then comes the glimpse. Firstly you see a glimpse of dark, brooding wooden temple, then suddenly the striking red pagoda lurches into view and the whole thing comes into focus. Every step further reveals another layer of beauty, another corner of intrigue. It`s an air sucking sight. But that`s not one I want to talk about.
Inside the temple complex a jumble of haphazard shrines fight for the attention of the culture hungry visitor. The most popular and most cooky is Jishu-jinja, the love shrine. This shrine is dedicated principally to Okuninushi-no-mikoto (imagine his poor Mum, having to sew all that into his PE kit.). He`s an ancient deity in charge of love and marriages, horses and carriages. His messenger is a rabbit. Gullible couples (including me and Koko) can take an Omikuji (fortune card) from the rabbit, which will tell us how our relationship will pad out over the next year. Don`t worry fans, the rabbit thinks we`re gonna be fine. We can also buy a wooden palette, on which we write our wishes and hopes in the love bracket, for the next year. These are then hung up in the shrine until an abbot comes along and sets fire to `em. Lucky apparently.
The coolest thing, however, is the love rock. Actually there are two rocks, set 18 metres apart. To test your relationship, each partner should walk with their eyes closed, between the stones. Along the way you must add to your embarrassment by chanting your beloved`s name. If you manage to walk in a straight line between the rocks, then you`re sorted. Love you long time. Might as well buy the ring. Sorted.
Having watched a few couples fuck it up, we felt confident enough to try it ourselves. I was disgusted to note that most of the women were being guided by their blokies between the two rocks. That`s cheating, I thought. Not for my Koko. We`ll show `em. Hmmmm. I think it was at the point where she collided with a group of head bowed worshippers on the other side of the shrine path, that i decided to help her out a bit. With a bit of guidance, and a lot of shoving, she finally made it.
I didn`t fare much better, despite my protestations that the Force would see me safely to the otherside. But I was at least in the same temple when I opened my eyes.
There was something else I was going to say, but my eye lids have clocked off, so I better go home.
Goodnight.
Thanks for the eels.

2004-01-13T05:12:00.000+09:00

Remember that old wives` tale about your eyes popping clean out of your head if you sneezed with your eyes open? Well, it might not be quite the load of scrot sacks that we all thought. Witness this story from a friend of mine who spent Christmas in Thailand.
Heading towards the airport to get her flight back to Tokyo, Suzanne (who is excrutiatingly squeamish) seems to have been trapped in a David Cronenburg movie. First off she has to take a boat to the mainland. Half an hour before the boat is due to sail, her sailor (is that right? driver? pilot? skipper? nah, stick with sailor) asks her if she`s ready to rock n roll. Spying another two blokes in the boat and no other passengers Suzanne is understandably in two minds. But she has to get to the mainland, so thinks "fuck it". Off they slosh. Halfway across they stop the boat and turn to her. Oooopph, feel that tension. "We thought you might like to sit and get stoned a little" the skipper says. This translates in Suzanne`s mind as "We thought you`d like to be raped and murdered, then dumped into the sea. Biscuit?" But, seeing as how the middle of the ocean doesn`t offer too many escape routes, she decides to humour them. She`ll smoke, but just like our favourite sax-playing, intern popping ex-president , she won`t inhale. So, the next half an hour is spent smoking, chatting and trying not to look at the two toes missing from one of the old sea dogs` right foot. Remember, she`s squeamish. Eventually they decide not to kill her or fiddle with her, and dutifully take her across to the mainland.
Next up is the taxi ride to the airport. This one`s pretty uneventful, apart from the fact that someone has evidently barfed in the cab within the past few hours. Remember it`s hot here. Remember she`s squeamish. Oh, and through some freakish bending of the laws of nature, the driver`s one thumb is split into two, making it appear that he has two thumbs instead of one. Two for the price of one you might say. She`s not saying that though, cos she`s squeamish. Don`t make me tell you again.
Now we`re on the plane. We skipped the airport cos there was no freakery going on. So the plane`s flying, as they do. Then the seat belt sign blinks on, and they hit one motherfucker of a turbulence pocket. The plane`s shaking and bumping, then without warning, drops like a stone. It recovers in a second, but people are gasping, kids are starting to cry. Air pressure`s dropped. Ears are bunged, and tempers are flaring. Across the aisle from Suzanne are two British lads. Both about 30, having a laugh with each other. Both been drinking, so not as concerned as they could be about what`s happening. Now, everybody`s holding their noses and blowing hard, trying to pop their ears. Depressurise, if you want to be wanky. The lad across from Suzanne goes to do the same. Holds his nose, and blows.
Before I go on, did I mention that Suzanne`s very.......................... oh, I did. Ok.
He holds his nose, he blows.
Christ, this bit`s disgusting.
He holds his nose, he blows.
His eye comes out.
I know.
His eye pops right out of the socket.
He`s screaming. His mate`s fucking hysterical. The plane`s still lurching., Suzanne`s trying not to puke everywhere. It`s hard to know what to do in this situation. Personally I`m very fond of fainting.
This poor fucker, now a freshly laundered shade of white, scoops his eye back up and presses it against the socket. Squirt, squirt. "Excuse me" he whimpers. An Englishman to the last.
His mate finally stops convulsing and yells for the stewardess to come over. She strides over, calm in a crisis. According to Suzanne, a little too fucking calm. After all, the bloke`s eye just popped out. Not an every day occurrence. Especially for him. However, this ice queen acts like they`ve got a pile of discarded eyeballs out the back, and simply hands the man a compress which he`s supposed to keep his eye in with.
For the next 50 minutes he sits there, whimpering. For the next 50 minutes his mate is almost crying. For the next 50 minutes Suzanne tries to talk to him, and tell him it`ll be all right. For the next 50 minutes the pissed up Cornish family in the seats behind tell him he shouldn`t go diving. Makes yer eye pop out apparently. The pressure, that`s what does it. Said so in the guide. For the next 50 minutes Suzanne tries not to throw up.
When they finally arrive, Frosty the Stewardess glides up to the man`s seat to tell him that help is waiting in the airport. Unfortunately he`s going to have to wait just a wee bit. She then escorts him down to the front and sits him there clutching his wandering eye ball, while every other fucker gets off the plane and stares at him.
It`s weird to ponder what goes through your mind when something this surreal happens. Apparently his only request was if anyone on the flight crew had a pair of dark glasses.
So there you go. Beware of old wives` tales after all. Quite worrying really. Maybe it will drop off if I play with it too much.

2003-12-03T03:52:00.000+09:00

The problem with having a job that doesn`t start until the afternoon is that it is extremely hard to find the motivation to get out of bed before noon. Not a bad way to live, you might think, but it leads to a kind of white rabbit style of living. My daylight hours seem to consist of various mad dashes, muttering "dear oh dear oh dear oh dear" or stronger versions, as I propel myself across Tokyo, trying not to be outrageously late. Lateness is something that is taken for granted these dyas. So much so that if I simply arrive late then I am now on time. These days it takes quite a sweat to turn up somewhere within the lunar cycle in which I`m supposed to be teaching.
There seems to be a Mr Hyde style creature who lurks within me and bursts into full control of my thoughts and bowel movements at the exact moment that my springy clock alram thing goes off. "9 am!!" he scoffs with debauched contempt, "You don`t need to be getting up at 9 am! What on earth could you possibly need to be doing at 9 am!!??"
"Well" mutters my sleep drunk Dr Jekyll side, "there`s shopping to be done and I suppose I should do some washing this month, and really I should get the electricity turned back on."
"Don`t be a damned fool!" cries my Hyde side, with an ungodly passion for this hour of the morning. "You`ll be much better equipped to tackle these problems if you`ve had a good night`s sleep. Back to beddy-byes till eleven, and no more arguments."
"Hmmmmm," whines the shrinking resistence of my sensible self, "but I have already had nine hours."
"Tch poo and nonesense!!! Nine hours is a girl`s sleep!! A real man needs a good twelve hours shut eye."
"But, but, but.........."
"WHAT?!!"
"Well, I should at least take the beer cans to the dump. I mean I can`t actually see the carpet anymore and the smells beginning to affect my vision. And I`m sure I had a cat in here somewhere."
"You`ll have plenty of time if you get up at 11. The dump won`t even be open yet."
"Actually, I think......."
"Are you calling me a liar?"
"Well, no but.................."
"But nothing. Get them eyes shut and don`t open `em till I say. Otherwise I shall kick you fuckless."
"Well, just till eleven then."
"You have my word as a Scotsman."
"But you`re...................."
"GO TO CUNTING SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Cut to three and a half hours later:

"Don`t be such a fanny, you`ve got hooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurs yet."

And on it goes.

I should really stop sniffing my board markers.

2003-11-25T23:49:00.000+09:00

Hullo.
To anyone who still actually reads this site, sorry. To anyone from three hundred years in the future who is reading this site as part of a school project on great writers of the twentieth century, how`s the weather? To anyone who`s having this entire site tattooed onto their body as a tribute to my general spiffingness, stop it you silly person.
I apologise from the bottom of my dirty mackintosh for the outrageous infrequency of my posts here. Unfortunately my duties as assistant treasurer of the East Asia Boggle society have been keeping me busy.
Hopefully I`ll have time to publish more posts here in the near future, especially considering I had a properly wicked day off yesterday, which I want to write about. For the moment though I would like to complain about this internet cafe.
This stuffy, smoke saturated and cramped little wank hole is called Mangaland. It`s a 24 hour internet "cafe" and comic library. It suits my purposes because it`s close to my house and it`s open all night. Unfortunately it`s main clientele are seedy insomniacs and travelling paedophiles. I have never seen a single example of the female species in the place, apart from those in back breaking positions atop livestock, who adorn most of the computer screens here.
I don`t really know who these people are, but they`re always here. Perhaps they missed their last bus home, possibly they were sacked from their night shift and haven`t got the balls to tell their wives, maybe they were cursed by a menoupausal witch, to remain confined in this god-awful room forever. Dunno. Dun care. All I know is that they sprawl on the uncomfortable chairs reading selections from the ingeniously drawn, riotously violent and spectacularly misogyonistic manga collection that fills the walls around the room. Either this or theysqueeze themselves into the chicken pen size computer boothes and take advantage of the fine collection of naughty vids embedded in the hard drive, or sample the many fine child porn sites that litter the net. The boothes are all separated by a very thin curtain, and I now have to make a concerted effort not to glimpse into other boothes. Some of the screenfuls I have seen are enough to make me nostalgic for the fervered hate campaign against paedophilic images that has swept through the western world in the past few years. Unfortunately Japan still remains very much unsplashed by this particular tsunami of public outrage.
This place makes me feel sick, and the free coffee doesn`t help.
Wish you were here.

2003-10-22T04:04:00.000+09:00

TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE YOU GO "OH REALLY, HOW VERY INTERESTING" VOL 1

a) Apparently a building has been erected near Tokyo station which has a layer of pretty nifty tiles covering it`s exterior. As well as doing all the niceness that tiles are supposed to do, these buggers have been designed to filter the air around the building, in much the same way that a tree would do naturally. Don`t ya just love it when millions of pounds (or yen, in this case) are spent on a job which nature has been doing perfectly well since time began.

b) The Shinkansen train is now so smooth that if you rest a cigarette vertically on the table it won`t budge for the entire trip.

c) Almost all toilets in railway stations are of the Asian, sqaut style. In order to drown any atmos-shattering ploppage sounds many of them now have sensors which kick in with a relaxing waterfall soundtrack as soon as you enter the cubicle,.

2003-10-22T03:54:00.000+09:00

Rapid or local? Rapiiiiiiiiiiid or local? Hmmm, like a choice between a well strung wedgie or a professional nipple pinch.
Local`s here. Fuck it then.
10.30 p.m and of course the train is here, exactly on time. Even the regular limb jangling earthquakes barely make an impact on the watch setting reliability of the rail network. Try explaining the British "system" a scheduled time and an expected time to a Japanese person if you want to witness a face of pure incomprehension.
The underground staff are another of the frighteningly accurate picture postcard stereotypes of 100%, nowt taken out, Japanese efficiency. Decked out in immaculate green uniforms with spotless white gloved hands, their every movement is a choreography of conscientiousness.
As the train approaches, the platformed officer relays a series of semophored greetings to the approaching vehicle. Painted lines on the platform announce to the dullwitted commuter exactly where they should stand. The train, obligingly, hisses to a stop at pinpoint accuracy, with the doors directly in front of their markers.
Now the junior attendant, formerly ensconced at the arse end of the train, comes into his own. This specky gadge is obviously barely out of baggy trousers. You can tell by the way he attacks his duties with such puppyish zeal, at odds with the emotionless, routine stained expertise of his older colleagues. Performing his own round of mason-like hand signals he marches over to the "funny noise" button and stands to attention while the commuting throngs seethe in and out of the carriages. When the coast is clear and his seniors have finished flashing their torches and pointing at things, he flicks the "funny noise" switch. This fills the station with a brief snatch of Mr Whippy muzac as a cheery reminder that the train doors will soon be slamming shut. This is followed by the more BR reminiscent high pitched disclaimer before the doors slide to.
The young buck now hops back on to his guard rail and adopts the danger prevention position, watching hawk eyed for any swaying platform dweller who may inadvertently collide with the surging locomotion. Having reassured his professional self that no such calamity will arise he swivels round to bid farewell to his colleagues with another round of orchestrated arm flailing. Then he settles back to his straight backed state of hibernation, to think of big breasted submissive types, until such time as his talents are required once more.

Shit-o. Here I am, ensconced on the local from Nakano to Nishi-Funabashi once again. We`re only just leaving Iidabashi so there`s another 35 minutes to endure until we reach my stop, Myoden. Time to kick back.
I got a seat tonight, which is pretty good going, even as far out as Iidabashi. By the time we get to Nihombashi, you won`t be able to get a shoe horn between the upright passengers. Rush hour in Tokyo is a pretty fucking long hour. It sets in at around 6 p.m and starts to thin out at around 11.30. Between these hours the over worked, underpaid commuting masses, who amount to around 12 million people, sway their way steadily through this veal pen of a city. Back they trot, red eyed and weary, back to their miniscule apartments and their brief snatches of a free life.
As always, the carriage carries the cloth clinging reek of stale cigarettes and beer breath. All around me the semi-sozzled city folk sway like sloppily operated puppets from their roof dangling hand grips. It`s Japanese custom (for men principally, but not exclusively) to finish off a long day by making it even longer with a trip to the izakaya (Japanese style pub/restaurant) for a few sloshes of refreshing sake or ludicrously over priced lager.
There`s rarely any aggression here. A nice contrast to the "chu lookin at?" beered up glint that infests many a British eye. Here, they`re my entertainment for the ride home, and even if they do puke on my shoes they`re quick to spit out a quick "gomen nasai" (I`m sorry) before the next heave overcomes them.
Just up the carriage is a fine example of the debris of a Tokyo "session". A bunch of trendy types are laughing and joking, doing their best to keep the lurching gallop of the train from relieving them of their perpendicular state. Next to them, slumped in a state of near-comatose, their burbling drinking buddy is taking up most of the doorway. As the train shudders to a halt at Kudanshita this slumbering mound suddenly becomes animated, making a lolloping bid for freedom. Halfway out of the door he is restrained by his friends who grope him unsteadily back into the train, all the time sniggering "gomen" s to various miffed onlookers. The puppyish attendant also looks on in disdain, his hand hovering unsteadily over the "funny noise" button.
The dozing bottle hitter proceeds to make another escape attempt at each station before he is finally poured out of the train at Urayasu.

Jesus, now it really is getting busy. I`ve yet to see the that Tokyo myth of commuters being physically squeezed onto the train by the attendants, but I can certainly believe it happens. Passengers stand, pinned tightly together, carefully avoiding each other`s gazes by perusing the colourfully advert strewn ceiling promoting foot spas, holiday breaks from packed trains, new adventures in Manga and the ever present sex lines.

The Japanese are world renowned for their super-polite nature and it is justly deserved, but any self-respecting English gentleman would find the behaviour of this crowd "just not at all cricket old chap". Among the sea of people squeezed into the train at this stop is an elderly lady, evidently not so steady on her feet. In front of her sit a line of snoozing salarymen and headphoned young men. They see her. Their eyes follow her as she is shunted precariously along the carriage by the swell of passengers. No-one moves. Fuckers. Don`t make me have to draw more attention to my foreign-ness. Come on. Get up.
Cunts.
"Sumimasen....... sumimasen" (Excuse me)
You can get the fuck away from my space as well mate. Don`t you make me give you a vulcan neck pinch. Unbelievable.
"Sumimasen. Hai, hai. Dozo." (Excuse me. That's`s right. Please)
Jeez, you`d think I`d asked her to come meet the Pumpkin people.
"Dozo"
That`s it love. Nah, nah, you`re welcome. You`re welcome. Doitashimaste. Hai, hai. Really don`t worry about it. Honestly. it`s fine. Shut up, yeah. It`s only a seat.
Now everyone`s looking at me like I ate all the pies. I can`t help being so James Bond. Find another drunk to look at would ya.

Hummph. So we`re nearly there.
I like this bit.
The train has left it`s underground rabbit warren and we`re surging past the Edogawa river. A filthy, polluted waterway with concrete banks and a fringe of industrial grey, it`s hardly the stuff of srapbooks. But it`s the best scenery I`ve got, which makes it the most beautiful vista in the world.
I live near this river and sometimes I walk out to look at it. It`s no great shake but it`s peaceful there and the twinkling lights of central Tokyo are there in the distance. I like to watch the trains hurtle across the bridge straddling the river. Disturbing the serenity of the riverside the trains chunder into view, spilling out light onto the rippling water as they cross, illuminating all that surrounds them. As they rattle into the distance the light washes across the water before vanishing all together.
Another sea of people.
Another bundle of lives.
It`s almost enough to make me feel insignificant.
If I wasn`t so fucking great that is.

2003-10-14T20:10:00.000+09:00

Is it racist to call someone a Jap? I`ve found myself hovering over this term a few times since I`ve been in Japan and I`ve not yet been able to bring myself to use it. Why? I don`t mind being called a Brit. An aussie wouldn`t find offence in this sentence. A Scot wouldn`t give two fucks if you called him that to his face. So why the stumbling block with Jap? Same thing with Nip. This is a simple derivation of Nippon, the Japanese term for Japan (literal meaning: sun origin. Oh yes. Stroke beard, put on cardy), so why does it conjure up nasty images of Pearl Harbour and Flied Lice?
Answers on a postcard please. Send a Mars bar with it. I`d sell my Mother for one right now. Throw my girlfriend in if it follows a proper fried breakfast (from Yum Yums in Bromley North preferably).

2003-10-14T20:01:00.000+09:00

The changing of the seasons is a curious time to be in Japan. I say it`s curious mainly because I`ve actually noticed that the seasons have changed. In England summer is long gone by the time the calendar actually catches on to the fact. In Japan, almost to the day that summer officially seeps into Autumn,the shirt clinging, cheer sappingly humid hotpot dissipates into an altogether crisper climate which has the hand contemplatively hovering over the jacket hook.
As a little aside to this acidic bollocks, my first proper Japanese lesson focused almost entirely on expressions to do with the weather. The fact that this new language has been inordinately useful says a lot about the surprising similarities between the island race I`ve left behind and the one I`m currently struggling to get to know.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I remember, I remember, no need to be a smart arse. And where do you think you`re going at the back? Yes you. Sit the fuck down and shush, I`m talking about seasons goddammit! Some people have no respect.
The seasons are changing, and in Japan that`s headline news. Even Beckham`s handbag flailing antics get pushed into second billing for this momentous yearly occurrence. The uniformity of seasons in Japan (each distinct weather period takes up almost exactly a quarter of the year) means that a different landscape is clearly discernible as the calendar flips. Anyone who has ever seen pictures of the cherry blossom that erupts cross-country in Spring will understand the eagerness with which the Japanese wait for the turning of the cycle. Out here the beginning of Autumn is a subject for national celebration. In England it just means leaves on your mud flap.
One of the myriad things I didn`t know about Japan is that people here have a very clear and strict divide between summer and autumn clothing. All week my students have talked to me about putting away their summer wear and bringing out their autumn togs. Women lock away their cleavage hinting, bright coloured tops and search out their librarian-like brown polo necks. Men slavishly hand their wives their thin summer suits and receive their thick stitched autumn wear. This is despite the fact that there`s still some way to go before we`re approaching chilly-ville.
My students are all aghast at the fact that in Britain we have no such ritual (or at least I`ve never noticed that we have). Of course, I explain, we wear warmer clothes in winter but we simply pile on layer after layer as the temperature drops. Huuuuuuuuaaaah, gasps my student Yoke, who has just finished explaining her week long embarrassment of not having had time to dig out her autumn wear. She`s *GASP* had to *GASP* go to work in *DRUM ROLL PLEASE*********** summer clothes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "What about you Keiiji?" I ask one of my less vocal students, currently examining some lint he`s found on the floor. "Would people think you were strange if you went to work in a summer suit this week?" Yoke and Emi nod violently in affirmation.
"Actually" mutters Keiiji, putting his lint aside for later,"this is still my summer suit". The ladies almost cum with astonishment. They hadn`t even noticed the difference between Keiiji`s single breasted navy blue summer suit and his single breasted navy blue (bit thicker) autumn suit. But I`m not smug.
Apparently Keiiji`s wife is having a baby so she`s not had time to unpack his autumn clothes. I can`t help wondering if Keiiji`s wife and new born baby will come home to find the house in pitch blackness and utter uproar, as Keijji`s wife forget turn the lights on for him before she left. Still, he`s not worried, he`s got his lint.
In Japanese translation both the words "fall"and "autumn" are used around this time. The term "fall" sums up everything I hate about American culture. Such a literal, small minded word to replace anything with a hint of mystique or lyricism. "Fall" - such a flat, unimaginative summarisation of a beautiful trick of nature. It also robs the English language of one of its most sumptuous sounds: "autumnal". Aaaah, autumnal. Makes ya feel all "Wind in the Willows" dunnit.

2003-10-10T00:59:00.000+09:00

He he he.
I`ve only just noticed the spunky blogspot link thing at the top of this site. Clever bastards have worked out what the funk I`m blithering on about and have stuck up useful links above it. Two zen enlightenments for the price of one and a black belt in origami, all that shit.
What happens if I start up a blog about badger fisting then? Someone should find out.

2003-10-08T00:19:00.000+09:00

Tarantino is the fucking Don. He`s releasing a special Japanese cut of "Kill Bill" with extra scenes of graphic violence. Wickedness. Apparently we Japanese (they think of me as their own now) can handle violence much better than you Western pussies.
The "Kill Bill" trailer is an audacious piece of work in itself. It even outstrips the king of trailers "Desperado" in it`s pant pissing anticipation building. The film itself better not be another "Jackie Brown".

2003-10-08T00:10:00.000+09:00

Today I`m getting my hair cut.
Oh fuck off, so it`s not Vietnam, well it scares the shit out of me. My hair needs to be handled with extreme care and a steady clipper hand. My Japanese isn`t advanced enough to say "easy on the temples mate, I`m going a bit Jean Luc Picard", and a dodgy haircut generally has the effect of making me look all Forrest Gump.
Tokyo is dotted with hair salons sporting the dubious legend "Orange Pop", where stylish city folk mince about, flicking their hair and reading magazines consisting entirely of adverts for other magazines. The name of the chain presumably stems from one of the more recent Japanese trends of girls rubbing on fake tan until their skins take on a distinctive baked bean glow. A curious thing to want to look like an animated pumpkin, but maybe I`m missing the point. I certainly hope so.
Orange Pop is a little expensive for me, and besides I`ve read all those magazines, so I think I`ll go for this place. One thousand yen sounds worryingly cheap and they boast that you`ll be out in ten minutes. Hmm, doesn`t say if you`ll have any hair left though does it. Ah, fuck it, let`s give it a whack.
Is it a good sign that this hairdressers is incorporated into a 7-11? Just step past the pie stand and the photocopier and here you are. Three barber`s chairs, two barbers and one knee crushingly narrow waiting area.
To save manpower and such primitive methods of communication as talking, most areas of Japanese consumerism come complete with a ticket machine. Hairdressers, restaurants, bars, maternity wards, they`ve all been revolutionised to make things easier for lazy foreigners and escaped mass murderers. Well, works for me. Pay my money, take a ticket and hand it to the geezer in the face mask and the clippers. Hmm, I`m paying for the privilege of putting myself in the care of a man with a mask and clippers. Surely there was a rule about that in "Scream"?
Anyways, I`m nearly up. Bollocks to their ten minutes though, I`ve been here since at least last June. This sleepy sod to my left isn`t making the experience any more pleasant either. Symptomatic of the commuter culture, this bloke can`t sit down for more than two minutes without his head lolling around his shoulders as he lurches in and out of a mid-day doze. If he dribbles on me there`ll be trouble.
Blinding. We is up. Come on, wake up Suzie, you can fuck off to the man in the mask. I don`t like the way he`s revving his clippers like that. I bagsy this wee fuck over here. He`s wearing sandals but he still manages to inspire confidence.
Right where`s me mad language skills? Ah fuck, I don`t have any.
"erm....... torimu o onegai shimas"
(ENGLISH TRANSLATION: A trim please, my good man. And be quick about it will you, I`ve left the Bentley on a double yellow don`t you know)
something, something, something and something else in Japanese.
"erm..... hai, hai. err.............. yoko (CLIPPER NOISE) erm.... san .... (HOLD UP THREE FINGERS FOR CLARIFICATION)
something, something, something, something, san, something , something in Japanese.
"Erm......................."
"Three millimetres. Bery bery shorto?"
"Oh, right..... erm................. iie.................erm."
"Kyu millimetre?"
He proceeds to show me an array of different settings on the clippers. At some point I mutter "hai" and then nod vigorously when he points at the chosen setting. I think we`ve reached an agreement.
My last phrase:
"Kiri no suiginai o kudasasi"
(ENGLISH TRANSLATION: "And be sure not to cut it too short, what, what. Else I shall have you thrashed and put in irons, what, what")
No somethings in Japanese so I think he understood.

The result? Well, I don`t look too much like Forrest Gump, but it`s not quite the knicker slicking Sex God look I was aiming for. Maybe Orange Pop would`ve been better.

2003-10-07T02:12:00.000+09:00

"Audrey!
Fetch my toffee hammer!
This time that blasted budgerigar has gone too far!"

2003-10-07T02:10:00.000+09:00

The only places in Tokyo that feel uncontaminatedly Japanese are the temples. Let met tell you about the temples.
Japan has a curious mix of religions which reflects it`s harmonious and super polite way of life. The basis of worship in Japan is that big fat momma of Asian religion, Buddhism. This being the zen-ful, all compromising ethos that it is, it allows the Japanese free reign to believe in any other religion that they choose. Thus, you get the peculiarly Japanese religion of Shintoism. Shintoists believe that their ancestors watch over them in the form of flowers, trees, rocks and all those other table mat motifs. It`s an interesting comparison between this tree stroking religion and a society which regularly bulldozes it`s way through green belt beauty spots and chokes age old vistas with tangled masses of telephone wires and electric pylons. But that`s another rant.
Visiting a temple in Japan is a truly jaw flopping experience. My first encounter was when I accidently stumbled across a Shinto shrine during an insomnia inspired midnight stroll in a little town called Shimosa Nakayama. Wandering aimlessly with my headphones shaking loose my few remaining brain cells, I was drawn towards an enticing set of torii (whopping great gates), which led onto a tree lined pathway. This atmospheric avenue eventually plonked me right in the centre of a series of Buddhist statues, towering pagodas and widescreen temples encircling a leafy courtyard. Suddenly having been transported from 24 hour convenience stores and karaoke bars into this sanctum of worship was a true slap in the chops. Here I was, half asleep with De La Soul pounding in my ears, and thousands of years of tradition are suddenly staring me in the blurry eyes. In front of me a couple of monk types sat on the rocks, cross legged in contemplation. Although, they could have been playing Ludo, I`m not exactly sure.
I have visited the same temple a number of times now, as well as several others, and the effect is never less than lip pursing. Nowhere do I feel more alien, less cultured or as ignorant as I do in front of these beautiful, awe insisting symbols of true tradition.
Of course with this new found awe comes the awkwardness of being a foreigner in a truly Japanese environment. Do I do as the locals do or will this highlight my ignorance of the tradition behind these actions? Do I stand and watch or will this make me look rude and unconcerned with their rituals? I dunno.
In the courtyard facing the temple is an ornate trough of water trickling over rocks and spilling out onto the ground. Here people scoop up ladles of the stuff and purify themselves by rinsing their hands and mouth. I do this as well, while Koko takes a picture of me for posterity and possible blackmail. Following this, if I do as the locals do, I should walk up the steps to the temple entrance, throw a coin into the wide wooden box, shake the bell-rope to big-up any listening deities and put my hands together in prayer. This presents a problem. As a deeply unreligious person surely it is hypocritical to pretend to pray to a God I don`t believe in. But maybe to hang back while Koko does the expected thing is bad form old chap. In the end I ascend the steps, dispense with my \10 and bow my head in respect if not in worship. Still feel a bit of a prick, but I think Buddha would be pleased.

2003-10-07T01:26:00.000+09:00

Gaijin, the Japanese term for foreigner, is literally translated as outer person. This fact has caused some controversy among people with beards and "thought provoking" t-shirts. I`ve never really taken offence at it, as I do feel like a visitor from a different world for the majority of the time. Japan cannot really be termed foreign. The word just doesn`t fit. There`s something all together stranger and more lid flipping at work here.
This can all be glimpsed on the briefest trip on the Tozai line. The woman in front of me, for instance, is kitted out in full Kimono garb. She has stepped straight from the pages of a pop-up Japanese stereotype and exudes the perect aura of traditional tea ceremony Japan. Her movements are formal in their extreme and graceful to the max. It`s only when she moves that I notice the mobile phone fitted discreetly into her belt. It`s like seeing a Beefeater tapping away at his game boy on the London underground.
Similarly, one of my schools is located pretty close to the Sumo training camp at Ryogoku. The younger trainee Sumos are often to be seen taking up a considerable amount of precious space in the rush hour meat wagons carting us across central Tokyo. With their slicked back barnets, their colourful yukata and their obvious girth they make a quite startling contrast to the besuited and dimnuitive commuters. They stand, rocking back and forth to the sound of the MP3 and surveying the advert strewn ceiling of the train. To me they are as alien as a train full of tinkerbells but here they be, and no-one even glances. They seem more intrigued by me. Dunno why, I`m not even in me dressing gown.
Tradition runs through Japan like BOURNEMOUTH on a stick o`rock. Sometimes you`ve gotta chomp pretty hard to get to it though. The Tokyo teenagers sport hip hop swaggers and trousers so baggy that they`re a danger to shipping on a windy day but they still take off their reeboks before stepping on their tatami mats. They`re all wannabe gangstas but the integral see-saw like predeliction to bow at the slightest opportunity just won`t lay down and die. The manner of old and the rituals of the past are still very much alive and in use. The only difference is that they now come with a GAP logo slapped right between they eyes.

2003-10-07T00:53:00.000+09:00

Sorry about the delay in ranting, but last week I was attacked and killed by a band of wandering Mouse thugs. I have spent the past few days plotting my revenge and being buried. Normal service will resume when I`m good and fucking ready.

2003-09-23T22:25:00.000+09:00

Get an e-mail from a boney friend of mine. "So what have you been doing apart from working and pissing it all up the wall?"
Fucking hate it when people capture the real beef of my life in one ill thought out sentence.
The irony is that I spent the last year in a drunken stupor while people tutted tutted and looked down their noses at me. Now I`m feeling all turned leaf and pumped for bettering myself, and I`m surrounded by a bunch of raging alcoholics.
Why can`t life be more like `Birds of a Feather`? Is it so much to ask?

2003-09-23T22:13:00.000+09:00

Just as in every walk of life, the Japanese have really put their backs into the homelessness thing. Hobos and the like have a much more refined air to them in Japan then anywhere else I`ve ever seen. According to one of my students, who has travelled extensively, homelessness in Japan is rarely connected to drug addiction or the result of a bad home. These people have simply given up on the rat race and decided to take it easy. These viaduct dwelling eccentrics are the curb side philosophers, the street poets of Tokyo. They see the commuting masses, with their briefcase full of stress and a sweaty frown daily aging their features and they laugh. From their cardboard mansions they see the pointlessness of the hustle, the wastefulness of the bustle and they see it for what it is. They sit back on their three piece polystirene suite and take life at their own pace. They eat the half finished bento boxes thrown away by businessmean too busy to take their lunch break. They wake up late to the sound of the Tozai line carting the worker drones to their meaningless jobs in their pointless companies. They spend their days reading the curling paperbacks tossed away by people without the time to be entertained. They sleep when they want, drink what they want, think what they want, speak how they feel.
These would be the perfect eyes through which to view Japan. I love this idea of the street sage coughing up truth and wisdom along with the tar from his last sixty woodbines. Maybe I should write it. maybe it`s been written already. When I`ve learnt to read Kanji I`ll let
you know.

2003-09-16T15:20:00.000+09:00

So, this is my new apartment. Shit sticks, got to remember to take the shoes off before stepping into the flat. I suppose I should get myself some wee slippers but I`m never sure which ones are for wearing around your apartment, which ones are for standing on your balcony, which ones are for in your bathroom and which ones are for wearing when you`re trying to find your other ones.
Well, first impressions are that I was being properly ripped off in my last place. Still don`t really have room to swing a cat in the main sleeping and living area, but he`s been vomiting a lot lately so maybe I should stop swinging him anyway. I should at least stop fucking him.
Wow, bitch tits! I`ve got a telly! Wickedness. I have to say that I`m quite dissapointed in just how much I`ve missed TV. I don`t seem to remember having too many emotional farewells with my nearest and dearests but I did remember to give the telly a quick peck goodbye before I left England. Maybe it`s a generation x thing but there`s nothing more relaxing than flicking back and forth between a few hundred channels of shite.
I won`t bother with detailed descriptions, suffice it to say that this a typical gaijiin flat. Basicaly a studio apartment with a kichen just about big enough for Stuart Little to knock up something saucy, and a bathroom that would hapily fit at the abck of a 747. In short, you could trip up walking in and land with your head out on the balcony.
Space being at such a premium in Japan, very few people have what westerners would consider a bed. Some people have little motorised jobbies which ascend not-very-majectically into the ceiling after use, but most of use are lumbered with a futon and mattress which have to be folded up and stored in a cupboard if you want any chance of doing any feline flinging during the day.
Probably the most interesting thing about my new pad is this notice. I`ll read it to you.

Heh hum

for tenants in bay avanue 102 and copo fuji dai 1, your rooms are very neer mr takeuchi house. mr takeuchi keep complaining that so many noises came from both buildings. for example between july 1 - 9 2000 he complained more than three cases. because of his job he has to wake up, very early in the morning so 10.00pm is already sleeping time for him and family. exspecially betwen june and september he open his windows when he go to bed so every tv sound, light from neighbors, people talking and on so make him uncomfort.
unitl now arai housing received so many complained. recently when he came to complain he kicked mr arai. mr arai afraids that next time will become worst. if somebody making noises, we think these cases are personal but mr takeuchi not go directly to this person, he will come to shout maybe kick again mr arai.
for your coperation arai housing will reduce your rent 5000 start from june until september. however if we received complain from outside again and conform that somebody making really terrible sound will ask you to move out arai housing immediate.
Please exspecially be careful when drink alcohol when somebody did not realize with their loud voice. mr takeuchi is very sensitive with even small voice and room light.
we are thanking for your attend.

2003-09-16T14:46:00.000+09:00

Today is apparently a national newspaper holiday. This is an interesting idea for a country so obsessed with newspapers as Japan. The newsagent stands in Tokyo are a mouth watering kaeidoscope of different designs, colours and fonts, as the hundreds of daily news rags jostle for attention with the bulky wads of imagination that Manga vendors spew out every week.
This seems quite an unfortunate day for a newspaper drought, as the radio has been bleating all day about the dramatic victory of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, who beat the Hiroshima Carps (seriously) 3-2 to become the official 2003 Central league champions. Baseball is an almost frightening obsession for many Japanese and there have been reports of about five thousand people jumping into the major river in Osaka ( i forget it`s name just now). This may not seem like a particularly outrageous act of jubilation unless you realise that this particualr river has been one of the main toxic waste dump sites for quite a while now and, over the years, has developed one metre of radioactive gunk at it`s base.

2003-09-15T22:19:00.000+09:00

Tsudanuma ain`t exactly the kinda place that`s gonna roll your r`s, but it`s definitely got a certain kick in the tail when the sun goes down and that neon buzz flick flick flickers into life.
Take this eye jazz for instance. This beanpole with haphazard hair and a battered guitar, belting out a veeeeery screechy version of "Hey Jude" complete with way wayward pronunciation and real feeling in all the wrong places. Then just a few metres over here we got these wannabe ghetto boys with their baggy trousers, flaunting their rebellion in their ear lobe, break dancing to a beefed up James Brown track. A yard or so apart but a whirlwind of genre between them.
So it continues round the corner. Watch out for the bandy legged, weaving and a wobbling cyclists or they`ll have you over. In a city where space is like gold dust why can nobody learn to ride straight?
Anyways here`s another moment in music that sums up just about everything I`m feeling about Japan. So‘oh of course` yet so `what the fuck`.
Here we have two buskers, if you can call them that. One guitarist, one tambourine tapper, both singing with gusto. People are milling past, some give a glance, some stride right through. The only one really paying them any attention is a sharp dresser with a fag and a gokuri bottle who rhythmically taps his ash into the bottle in perfect time with music. I suppose this scene wouldn`t be out of place anywhere in the world, but this is all about the subtle differences. These two don`t have a plate or an upturned hat. They don`t carry the air of resorting to street performance just for the sake of a bit of folding stuff. They`re here to jam, and they just want us to listen. So we do, me and the natty dresser. The slightly guilty shuffle that anyone in England slips into when they see a busker is missing here. No need to suddenly acquire an interest in the posters on the opposite wall or walk along with our gaze glued to　our feet. This is all good. Watch them if you want, if not then carry on with your business and gambatte (good luck).
Maybe because of this complete absence of finiancial ambition here, these two properly rock! The snappy dresser seems to know all the songs and takes great relish in counting them in (ich, nee, san, yon) then tapping away as the guitar man does his thing and his partner sings like a proper wings and all angel.
Two men, one guitar, one tambourine and not a care in the world. That`s the way to do my friend.

2003-09-15T21:53:00.000+09:00

A proud neon sign outside an Ichikawa cafe type reads "Curry and Cake".
Well, who wouldn`t be tempted?

2003-09-15T21:22:00.000+09:00

Hullo.
Welcome to my "brain splat", I don`t like the term blog. I don`t know how you got here, and quite frankly I don`t care much for the look of you. Seeing as you`re here though, I`ll give you a wee taster of what my brain spat will be like. Sort of a tentative dip of the finger before plunging the taco of your attention into my ...... erm.... I dunno, brain salsa or something. Never mind the metaphors, here`s the bollocks:
This is not a family and friends brain splat for the simple reason that I want to write down what falls out of my head with as little editing as possible. For reasons of respect, mild heart conditions and a low threshold for knob jokes, it would be impossible to allow my friends or families access to my unexpurgatd mind slop.　I`d like people to stumble across this, much like a drunken Eskimo might slip on a carelessly discarded onion bargee. I think you know what I`m trying to say.
It`s also not one of these pub philosopher sites, where I feel the need to discuss the meaning of existence or write haiku about what it`s like to be an otter. I might occasionally get deep on ya, but you must always be aware that whatever I`m writing, I`m writing it with silly slippers on.
I suppose you could call this a travelogue, but that wouldn`t really be accurate either. Yes, I`m living in Japan and yes, that will be the washing line on which I will hang my creative tea towels but it won`t exactly be Bruce Chatwin kinda material. I`m interested in the minutae of life. I know in years to come I`ll remember the temples and the twinkling skylines, but I won`t remember the constant collisions with Japanese life, or the frequent double takes I perform every day out here.
So that`s the deal, Melvin. You don`t mind if I call you Melvin do you?
I`m sure we`ll get on fine. Just don`t make any sudden movements and don`t mention any g- words or people who like toboganning.