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?