Air Qatar Hero

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to another episode of clog, the blog that brings a thick black sludge to your intertubes. So off to Japan again, this time to work in a ski-resort in the mountains of Nagano. Organised via the Internet with an Australian company (called Boobooski) who liaise with the ski resort, with little idea of what the job actually entails and even less of how to ski things were already off to a dubious start. Although I suppose it’s not quite as dubious as if a Tunisian man had tried to groom me in a Qatari souk…

Of course actually getting on the plane in the first place is always a good start to any trip and although most of England was frozen over and Heathrow had practically turned into massive hostel, Gatwick airport was still running at almost full capacity meaning my flight was still scheduled to run on time. No problems there then, unless you should happen to leave your passport in a photocopy machine in central London. No prizes for guessing who it was that managed to do that. As I’m standing in the check-in queue for my bags I go to look for my passport. Which isn’t in my pocket or my bags, or anywhere else about me. And at exactly the same moment that my mind races back through the morning, to the photocopy machine in the news agent, my phone rings. “Hi dad, I’ve left my passport in a news agent haven’t I?” Oops. A quick phone call to my friend Martin who I’d stayed with in London for the night “Hi Martin, so uh…see if you can guess where my passport is?” And so Martin went into mission mode, making it back across London to the newsagent, where he jabbered madly at the lady there about a passport, who had no idea what he was talking about. Luckily her husband (who had served me) heard him and came out and challenged him to answer one simple question. “What is your name?!” Pausing momentarily to consider his options he decided to use his own name. “Martin”. “You have chosen…wisely” said the news agent as he handed over the treasure.

Martin, treasure in hand began the next leg of his epic quest and sped at speed probably approaching 30 mph on the underground and then over ground again on the express to Gatwick. I had been stood at the check-in desk for over an hour staring towards the lifts just waiting, when suddenly Martin burst fourth in a cloud of smoke, or possibly a dirty spot on my glasses, and sprinted towards me. He passed the baton over, mission complete and I ran up to the desk waving at to the man there, I was in time, just. I chatted idly with Martin while they checked my bags in, then suddenly I was off again, queuing through security and then sprinting to the boarding gate, which was naturally at the end of that wing of the airport. But I got there, boarded the plane, then sat in Gatwick airport for another hour as my plane was delayed because of the snow reasons.

Unfortunately this meant I missed my connection in Doha, Qatar and while my baggage apparently made a trip to Melbourne and back in the meantime (I don’t know why either but that’s where it went apparently) I got to spend a day in Doha in a rather nice four star hotel.

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: