Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower is currently the world’s tallest self supporting steel structure, beating out the Eiffel Tower by 9 metres, and is still used for broadcasting terrestrial radio and television (a new tower is to be completed in 2011 to broadcast digital signals). Like most other large structures in Japan it covers all the essentials such as having a Family Mart newsagent/supermarket, a 400 person capacity restaurant, McDonald’s and wax museum (yes really, it’s next to the optical illusion gallery). This isn’t actually that strange for Japan as even train stations have upper class supermarkets and clothing shops where people will quite happily queue for ages just to get inside. There are plenty of pictures of the actual tower on Wikipedia et al. but they don’t show you the amazing lift they have in the tower, and more specifically the ceiling. I only got these two photos as I was too busy staring at the ceiling itself which changes through five or six colours , but yes it is basically a disco ceiling in a lift.

Equally as useful as the disco ceiling was the Braille plaque indicating what a lovely view you can’t see. I don’t think the Braille corresponds to this picture since they are a little mixed up. Also I can’t read Braille in Japanese.

Also just in case the tower wasn’t a big enough attraction there was a guy just outside with a performing monkey!

 

It’s currently a cool 27 degrees here in my room at the moment and still humid although I don’t think this year’s rainy season has been particularly severe, it only seems to be torrential rain every few days which is kind of disappointing. It’s also the start of the exam period, although I get off quite light it seems with only three days of exams, one of which was last Friday. It was basically a speech competition between two of the classes. My chosen topic was tanuki or Japanese raccoon dog, an animal which features heavily in Japanese folklore for its shape-shifting abilities. I’m pleased to announce that I managed to win third prize for what was essentially a speech (including a song!) about testicles. I think you guess which part of the tanuki’s anatomy it uses for shape-shifting? Anyway more exams next week, kanji and listening so I’m spending my time diligently updating my blog.

Bug

As I’ve already said, the bugs in Japan are bigger than elsewhere, here is just one that flew into class one day. Its pretty small compared to some others I’ve seen, but you can see the scale against the lined paper and I actually managed to get a photo of it.

On another bug related note, how are the mosquitoes here even able to extract blood from my kneecaps? It’s just bone. On the other hand they did leak some strange but interesting yellow liquid when I scratched the bites.

Baseball

For some strange reason baseball is a huge sport in Japan. Whereas in Britain the boys will play football or rugby at school, in local clubs and eventually professional leagues the same is true of baseball in Japan. This is slightly strange given that it doesn’t seem to be much of a team sport in a country in which almost all social situations focus on the group rather than the individual. So, a little while ago I went to my very first live sporting event! A baseball match between the Tokyo Giants and the Eagles at the Tokyo Dome. As to why I went to see baseball it was basically a chance to see the Dome, an indoor baseball field in the middle of Tokyo, and watch one of the biggest sports in Japan rather than any particular desire to see baseball which, even after having watched a whole 3 hour live game still seems to me as inexplicably dull as before. Apart from the fact that the batter holds the bat with two hands in stead of one I honestly cannot see any difference between how baseball and rounders are played. Even the distance between bases seems to be about the same for the two despite one being played by professional sports players and the other by 7-10 year olds in the school playground.

Still at least the match I got to watch was a big one with the Giants being equivalent to a team such as Manchester United and the Eagles, Aston Villa. At least according to the American exchange student who came with us and actually knew something about baseball, aside from the fact that is is basically commercialised rounders. I was also very excited to receive my very first baseball card of the star of the Giants, Alex Ramirez. Very Japanese sounding I know. To his credit he did manage to hit the ball more than once, which is a lot more than some of the other players could do. As you may be able to tell this wasn’t the most exciting spectacle in the world and so when I was in danger of becoming particularly soporific I went and got the obligatory hot dog. Here it is in all its freshly made glory.  

I did take some pictures of the game and strangely enough the pictures actually make it look like something exciting is happening, even the ones when nothing was happening and the players were just switching over.

This was the basic theme for the evening, most of the people on the pitch not even looking at the same thing.

 

 

Now I know why Americans invented cheerleaders. To actually get the crowd to look at the pitch and make it look like they are interested.

 

 

A rare moment of excitement as a player (Alex Ramirez) actually hits the ball.

 

 

 

Rare excitement indeed. The final scoreboard being filled with mostly zeros.

 

 

Next time I think I might just give the baseball a miss, apparently there was an ice cream bar downstairs.

Vending Machines

One strange thing in Japan is the number of vending machines you find. They are literally on every street corner around Tokyo. Even if you travel outside the main city centre to what is really the country side, there are rice paddies everywhere, you will still find them everywhere. Most of them seem to be sponsored by Coca-Cola although not all of them actually sell any Coke but instead a variety of cold green teas; coffee in a can which heats up when you open it (very strange to drink), which comes in a variety of flavours including cherry; some vitamin water and fizzy lemon drink which contains 70 lemon’s worth of vitamin C in every bottle or as you can see in the picture 300% of your daily  allowance! While there are drinks machines on every corner I have yet to see a snack machine selling chocolate bars or crisps. Maybe I could start a legend of the fabled vending machine that sold normal flavours of coffee in a cup and at least a packet of Hula Hoops. The other odd thing is that despite there being so many vending machines there is almost no rubbish strewn around the streets. This is even more amazing since there are NO BINS in Japan. I’ve had to carry rubbish with me all day through central Tokyo because of this and it’s very annoying especially when you forget to take a plastic back or something to put all the rubbish in. Either everyone carries it with them or there is some secret method for disposing of rubbish that is only known to Japanese people.

The Happy Bee is Alive!

Mt Takao

About half an hour to the East of me is where one of Japan’s many mountain ranges begins and since it is one of the few things in Tokyo that is close to me, it’s quicker to get to the mountains than the city centre, it seemed a good day out. Actually I think I passed the evil lair of the Hood from Thunderbirds on the way as i could find no other logical explanation for this:

Mt Takao is only 599m high but it rises rather steeply with no gentle hills to ease the walk. The theory is that those who go up the mountain and pray at the temple will have good luck and there were a lot of people going up although I think it was more for a nice walk and the scenery than anything else. The path is full of Shinto shrines and there are several Buddhist temples at the halfway point. The strange thing is that although if you study religion in Japan you will always learn that they are Shinto and Buddhist but really they don’t seem to have any religion at all and even here on the pilgrimage trail any motions that they perform, such as washing their hands (purity is important in Shinto) or burning incense seems more from tradition than any actual belief. Of course it is completely arguable whether Shinto, which has no religious texts or dogma is actually a religion in the first place which may be why there is so little of it in Japan.

Also the bugs in Japan are enormous. If you ever watch any old Japanese monster films and wonder where they got the idea for the monster from then it’s bugs. The flying ones are easily the size of a small bird, a robin for example, and also really fast so I haven’t been able to get a picture of them yet. But just to prove that the insects are one thing that are actually bigger in Japan than elsewhere, here is an ant:

The Happy Bee!

Tama Zoo and 1 love Bob.

Sorry for the slight lapse in blogging but the Japanese school system enjoys inflicting frequent exams upon the students. Anyway, last weekend had a free trip to the zoo! I was asked to help out with a school trip for some Japanese kids learning English, from about 3 to 7 years old. In return I got a free trip to the zoo, and since my brief was basically 1. make sure the kids don’t eaten by lions (although they did try and climb over the fence into the tiger enclosure, which if it had been bothered could have probably jumped out of the enclosure anyway), 2. make sure the kids don’t eat the lions, 3. take pictures of the kids, it was definitely worth it. Also the Japanese kids are so cute and surprisingly well behaved, although perhaps that was because there were some big scary foreigners talking to them in English.

And those hats ARE cool.

After an action packed Saturday at the zoo it was of course time to relax a bit on Sunday by going, of course, to the Jamaican festival that was taking place in Yoyogi park near Shibuya in central Tokyo. The sun was once again shining and the weather was sweet and it was a really fun festival to go to even. It was of course Japanified somewhat and whilst there wasn’t any marijuana in sight (drugs are a big no no in Japan and they even kicked the Beatles out during their tour for possession) there were of course plenty of drunk Japanese staggering around. There is also something rather strange about seeing Japanese Rastafarians wandering around with dreadlocks half way down their back. There was basically a large market area selling different food and genuine Jamaican memorabilia and a main stage. The stage was more a shrine to Bob Marley though and at least half the music played was his, although I do have to say he never came up with anything quite like ‘Ziggy Wiggy Love’ (I’m pretty sure that’s what it was called) and ‘Girigiri, gorogoro, guragura, gorogoro’ or at least something very much like that. If you try and sing that to the tune Big Ben makes when it sounds the hour you will get the idea and the song was in fact about classes at school where they use this tune as the school bell to signal the start and end of class. Don’t ask me why. Ya man…

Not so Golden Week

Just a quick message to let you know where I’ve been for the last week. It was golden week here in Japan which is basically a week of national holidays celebrating various things such as the Emperor and children. Of course my university is anti imperialist and so we had a day less holiday than everyone else. Not that I really managed to get out anyway, it’s been raining non stop for the whole week and I’ve been writing a book review for one of my assignments. I really don’t know if I wrote what was required since I’m pretty certain my last book review went something along the lines of ‘I liked the book. The dog is happy and liked his stik. I want to read the book again’. Or something like that anyway. Zoo tomorrow!

Dining High

To celebrate his birthday my course mate from Cardiff decided he wanted to go for a meal in the Park Hyatt hotel.  I wanted to go here because it was one of the stars of the film Lost in Translation which is probably where you will have heard of it if anywhere. Of course if it’s nice enough to star in a film about a rich actor suffering from culture shock in Tokyo then it’s bound to b e a little pricey, which is okay if it’s just to go for one drink to say you’ve been there and taken in the view. Which is exactly what did happen after my course mate was flatly told that yes, £60 for a meal is just a tad bit too much for a student budget. A single drink though was still rather a lot with the cheapest starting at a cheapskates price of ¥2000 and continuing…and continuing up to ¥67,000. I’ll let you do the painful currency conversion but for perspective my monthly rent is a mere ¥40,000. Can you  guess which drink I went for?

We had our drink (s for those with grants) in the American style bar which is the one that features heavily in the film and you know what, it looks smaller in real life, and not quite as glamorous when a bunch of foreign students turn up causing a ruckus. The view was just as high as the price of the drinks though and did make it worth going.

This night didn’t end with quite so much class as we missed the last train home and had to spend the night in a karaoke box (one of the cheaper way to stay off the streets in central Tokyo at night) until the first train the next day.

This night out was followed three days later by a meal at a tabehoudai & nomihoudai restaurant or all you can eat and drink within the time limit, which is of course to be seen as a challenge rather than just the length of time the meal will last. Needless to say I didn’t have to eat the next day. Although this was technically a pastoral visit from our university professor we once again ended up in a karaoke box (there is definitely a pattern emerging here) where he sang/grunted the part of Ken from Aqua’s Barbie Girl surprisingly well…

Of course this was too much of a distraction for us to actually leave and catch the last train home so once again it was an all night karaoke session with cheap drinks purchased from the local 7/11, although really they are 24/7, and smuggled in via bags and under various umbrellas that we had.  Although on the way home on the train we were pretty much exhausted we were lucky and were able to see Mt Fuji the clearest it’s been so far. Snow capped peak and all. It seems that early morning is the best time to see it from Tokyo. I think I’d like to see it from the right side of dawn next time. 

Hanami, Yasukuni and a Tall Building

Wow, so it’s been an amazingly busy couple of weeks these have been so far here in Tokyo doing various different things, mostly involving eating and involving mostly eating somewhere along the line, so I’ll try my best to get you all up to speed.

I arrived here at the perfect moment to catch hanami or cherry blossom viewing here in Tokyo. For the Japanese it’s kind of a festival that they have each year as the sakura (cherry tree) blossoms and it really marks the end of cold weather for the year as the tree only blossoms with the warm weather that moves up from the south of Japan during spring. The whole festival lasts for about three weeks, the time it takes for the trees in both the south and north of the country to blossom but for us here in Tokyo and I assume elsewhere too the actual blossoming of the tree lasts for a total of…three days. This is Japan’s national tree and one of their biggest festivals in which everybody from kids to office workers will go to the park and picnic under the trees. It’s just a shame they only bloom for three days out of the whole year.

sakura on the university campus with students working hard/picnicking underneath.

 

 

I have Wednesday’s free and during hanami I managed a trip into central Tokyo, about an hour by train from the area I live in even though you never leave the city. We went to see Yasukuni shrine and one of the large government buildings, it probably has some important name which I’ve now forgotten.

The shrine looks beautiful with sakura all around it, about 600 according to the guide; these trees really are everywhere, which is strange since as they only bloom for three days it means you have a load of ugly looking trees around for the rest of the year. The main shrine was originally built in 1872 to honour all of Japan’s war dead who fell defending the country and today the museum that accompanies the shrine has military artefacts from over a thousand years of history from ancient suits of armour right up to scale models of the kamikaze aeroplane and kamikaze submarine used in the Second World War. The shrine does however have memorials for several convicted war criminals of the Second World War which is still a major point of contention between the Japanese government and the Chinese and Korean governments who still want apologies from Japan over the crimes committed during the war, although this will probably be and is already being forgotten about as time passes.

 

 

 

 

The main shrine and a memorial to dogs and horses that served during wars.

After a quick pit stop in Ueno park to much some doughnuts it was off to a small restaurant for lunch where I had a rather delicious curry noodle thing with compulsory large bowl of rice and a drink for about ¥500 (I will have to start taking pictures of all the meals because you really do get an awful lot for what you pay).

Finally we went to the large skyscraper which gives free rides up to the top where you can look out at Tokyo, dine in a rather expensive French restaurant or buy the most random souvenirs imaginable  including various Hello Kitty items, jigsaw puzzles, some strange clacky beads that you spin round on a piece of string and I think even lunch boxes. Just what you need at the top of a skyscraper. For those of you architecturally inclined the building itself is supposed to look like a giant computer chip from the outside although I think this is one aspect of modern art I just don’t get. It’s interesting maybe but it doesn’t make it that pretty and just looks rather drab and gray. The view from the top however is rather good.

 

 

 

 

 

Some more sky-scrapers which look much nicer in my opinion even though they are not quite as high. Tokyo is definitely a huge sprawl and even though it was a hazy day you really can’t see the end of the city, my house is somewhere in the background haze!

And so it was back home, navigating the labyrinth that is Shinjuku station and where being tall is definitely and advantage on the train home during rush hour as you can keep your head above the armpit threshold and get to the little fresh air there is.

Accommodation

Fortunately my accommodation is not a garage as Google would have me believe but is a flat in student accommodation and definitely much nicer than my cupboard in France.

The flat is a bit narrow in places so it’s hard to stand back far enough but I do get my very own shower and bath which is a first and they aren’t in the kitchen either, although you can’t really call a sink and one gas hob a kitchen. Unfortunately the inside doorways seem to be 5’9” just an inch too short for me. Out side the front of the apartment building is the monorail and it’s really very quiet although quite expensive, as is all transport in Japan. From the window at the back of my flat which looks onto the car park I can almost see mount Fuji but unfortunately the house on the left block my view although all I have to do is just walk down the road on a clear day to see it in the distance.  

Link to photos:

 http://cid-22d9546d2de9bb41.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Tokyo%20Flat

Technorati Tags: flat,japan,tokyo

Long Haul

Why does anyone ever complain about long haul flights? They’re great. After arriving at Heathrow we get told that our flight has been overbooked and that unfortunately they will have to pay £50 to change airlines and fly with Qantas, the main Australian airline, and go on an earlier flight which means we have more time in Hong Kong for our connection. Unfortunately because we changed airlines it meant that Qantas had no more seats for three in the standard economy so they put us in the first row of economy which meant we only had as much leg room as first class. Then of course there was the tiring business of sitting on my ass for eleven and a half hours whilst I watched brand new films on the personal television set and had cooked food and ice creams brought to me by the airhostesses. The jetlag too is a problem except that because I cunningly planned and went to bed so late anyway, staying up for about thirty hours straight and changing time-zones effectively meant that I reset my body clock to get tired in the evening and wake up in the morning. What isn’t there to like about long haul flights?

Arrival Information

I’m sitting in the train carriage on the first leg of my journey to Japan. So far only one hour spent travelling but at least another fifteen to look forward to. Here’s hoping that my accommodation will be warm and welcoming; perhaps with soft music playing in the background to increase the atmosphere and comfort me thousands of miles from home. I hope to be proved wrong. First of all there is my slightly ominous date of arrival in Japan, the 1st April. April fools. I still half expect the airline to spring some massive practical joke and take me to Siberia where I will be forced to copy out kanji all day long, hard labour indeed. The sad thing is that after the debacle of getting to France, having only five days between receiving results and the start of term and my French professor sending  me to the wrong university this wouldn’t actually surprise me.

Although this time things are more organised and at least I have an address to go to in Tokyo. Unfortunately typing the postcode in on the excellent Google Street View reveals that my accommodation is in fact a garage (Tokyo 192-0351). Still this will almost definitely be an improvement over my previous  accommodation/closet in France which had a shower in the kitchen, which regularly flooded the floor. And the Kitchen merely consisted of a fridge and a camping stove with a bit of cardboard above it to stop any steam from the pots and pans soaking into the ceiling. It didn’t work. Things might not be so bad in the garage after all, roomier at the least.

Will you ride with me?