Is this a normal weekend around these parts? pt.4 （引越し）

Sunday (01/06/03)

I woke up a little…jaded. I was moving into my flat today which was a bit exciting but I was shattered. And before check out I had to get all my crap together and fit it into my suitcases. Surely not too difficult as, apart from the camcorder, it all came in them. You'd think so anyway.
My nearest station is "Koshigaya", Elin is coming to the same station and Steve is one stop earlier at "Shin Koshigaya". I had always thought "shin" meant evil^[A] but I guess that's wrong. Anyway, we have to change lines at Shin Koshigaya so Elin and I go to a café whilst our housing person from Shane (Junko) shows Steve to his flat. I have a nice iced coffee because it is a bit hot but I need the caffeine. Badly. The thing is, when I say change trains, I mean it. It isn't just the train and line we change, it's a different company so we need a totally separate ticket for one stop! It's actually really annoying and we have to walk across the road to get into ANOTHER station^[B] too. I guess this is privatisation in action. Fight it!

After Elin is shown her flat (and we decide to meet at the station at 4) and Junko has sorted her out briefly (she gave me the thumbs up from her balcony so she must be OK with it) I am taken to mine. Its not too far, and I am welcomed by the old tenant - Iain and his girlfriend Yoriko. They give me the lowdown on the place and some of the little things that are particular to it. Once Junko has gone, Iain fills me in on a few other things about Japan and stuff whilst Yoriko looks a bit bored. He has left Shane after 8 months and is off to Sapporo (might remember from the world cup - indoor stadium where we beat Argentina) on the north island to open a pub with a few mates. Sounds pretty long term to me!
Once they have gone, at about 1, I really regret organising that meeting with Elin at 4 because I just
 want to sleep and I have no alarm clock to wake me up.
I go off to meet Elin and actually see her in the McDonalds so I pop in (though don't buy anything). She has had a brief look around already and wants to go to the next station (Shin/Minami Koshigaya) to get a hairdryer. I wasn't going to do that so I walked around Koshigaya for a bit and then went home.

---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---

<sup>A. Shin usually means new and it seems it was used to differentiate the two main Osaka stations when the bullet train, or “shin”kansen started operating to Osaka. It seems to be used in a few places in a similar way.↩

B. We had come through on the "JR" line which was the state railway company until 1987 and needed to use the TOBU lines. Being able to buy one ticket for a journey is called through ticketing and had not been introduced at this point. Ticketing did get smarter in the time I was there with pre-paid cards and then electronic tickets like oyster becoming more prevalent. It was not long until you could pay using your phone (which is part of the reason why I am confused at the innovation of NFC when it has been around for a while) but I never did this as I preferred keeping things separate. I think you could through ticket in terms of having a single ticket on the private lines but the fare was still two separate ones.↩</sup>

Is this a normal weekend around these parts? pt.3 (Shibuya)

[cont..]

So I walked until I could see no more neon and it was pretty dark, it took a while but I still couldn't see any stations. I continued walking for a while and just looking around. I guess I was in some business district or something but there was not much to do. So I walked. Eventually I decided to head towards Shinjuku as that was really busy so I thought that there would be something to do there. I knew it was a bit near Shibuya so I headed in the general direction according to the train map^[A] I had. About 2 o' clock, and I came across some road signs and headed towards Shibuya after grabbing some nifty convenience store food and chocolate. Genuinely convenient. I continued walking and saw the road was R246. This was actually pretty damn fantastic, because I recognised it! It was a track on Gran Turismo 3^[B] and I could actually see where I was! I was basically on the start /finish straight (I think) so I carried on walking (past the little kink in the road). Walking it takes a lot longer than it does in a souped up Nismo Skyline, that's for sure. I continued walking straight (past the GT3 right-hander that leads into a chicane) until I got into Shibuya. Now Shibuya I had heard a bit about from Steve so I knew it'd still be awake at 2. As I walked through, I was constantly reminded of another of my favourite games - Jet Set Radio^[C]! In that game (a pseudo-futuristic, cartoony, rollerblading/graffiti 'em up set in an alternative Tokyo), there is a level called Shibuya-to. There are loads of footbridges to grind off and the real place had loads of footbridges that looked just like the ones in the game. It might sound a bit sad but it was pretty exciting actually to put the place to the name. While I walked around Shibuya^[D], I could see a fair few kids just "hanging" on the steps and chatting. It seemed like a really decent place and I really wish I could have just sat down and had a chat - it looked like that kind of place. But my Japanese skills are not really up to it. It was about 250 - still another 2-3 hours before the first train so I continued walking until I saw some guy in a smart suit with a megaphone and people walking into a building. It was a cinema and there was a showing of Matrix Reloaded at 330. I'm not the biggest fan of the Matrix but I had expressed some interest in going to see the sequel at the cinema with the intention of totally switching my brain off. It was expensive JPY1800 but a better way of spending three hours (in an air-conditioned room and seated) than anything else I could think of.

It was a 330 showing but I walked inside at about 255 to see what the place was like and the entrance to the theatre was rammed. Everyone was waiting there and there was a real buzz in the air. This was at 330 in the morning, remember, so I was a little weary but I actually perked up a bit. We were let in at 310 and I walked in to see a pretty full auditorium and any empty seats seemed to be reserved. I found some seats near the front but a lot of seats appeared to be empty until you got close and saw bags on them. Unattended bags. People were so secure that they left their bags there and got their food and drink without telling someone to wait. It was really refreshing but I don't think I'd do it!
I watched the film (though I think I fell asleep for about ten minutes in the middle) and thought it was OK. Not horrifically bad, just not great. I thought the action was a lot better than the first one and the fighting a lot more plausible. The acting was still crap though. And the plot a bit arse. But hey ho. I did kill three hours so I was not too displeased.

I walked out into the sun at 6am and made my way to Shibuya station which was still pretty busy with people that had been out for the night and those that were starting the day. What I was a little confused about at 6am on a Sunday morning was seeing smiling, joking schoolchildren (in uniform) on the trains. They work them hard here. Very hard.
I got back to the hotel at about 7 and caught about an hour's worth of sleep.

[tbc]



---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---

^{A. Getting lost before instant access to Google Maps was really interesting. There was a genuine frisson of excitement as you realised that you had no idea where you were. At this point, I was not very well-travelled but many of my later trips take this unplanned feel to them although I look at maps a lot more now. As a result, I remember quite a bit about this particular episode, not location but the feel of an area at night.↩
B. Mapping out real locations in games is pretty common now but it was a rarity at this point and it was revelatory to suddenly piece together a game on to real life. The blogpost was written in 2003 as a website and I remember a friend of mine laughing about the fact that I remembered it from a game. I was always rather defensive about my gaming knowledge and I did justify it to him. Nobody seems to think it is odd to recognise, or even visit, locations from films yet it is seemingly odd to recognise game locations. This is not logical, especially as within a gameworld, you have the agency to explore that environment and so have a greater connection with it. He agreed, but said it isn't about logic - it is about the fact that he didn't know anyone else that would say it (or maybe admit to it...).↩
C. This is one of my favourite games and I wrote about it here: [link]. It really was a beautiful and evocative recreation of the concept of Shibuya.↩
D. Shibuya is a very well-known area in Japanese youth culture and so has been used in lots of games, since, as a stylistic backdrop with a number of well known items of scenery such as the Shibuya scramble (crossing) and hachiko statue..↩}

Is this a normal weekend around these parts? pt.2 (Roppongi)

[cont...]
So we walked off to the station and waited on the moderately busy platform. As two random girls walked past, Steve said "You're nice" (in English) which made them stop. I don't know what happened here but we all ended up talking on the train. They were called Nana and Noriko (who I kept on wanting to tell had the same name as the girl in Battle Royale) and Nana was studying English at Nova whilst Noriko had studied there before. Steve and Andy worked their charms but I took a step back (or maybe I was pushed?) and joined in every so often. Unfortunately, my joining in was usually just laughing at what I saw which is always going to make people uncomfortable. Anyway, they said Roppongi was a bit cack and told us not to go (as had Allan and Walid yesterday) but we got them to go to Roppongi. They were going to "show us" the way but we ended up on a train in a different direction. I thought we were going to get shafted but I should have had more faith in Japanese people and we did end up there via another station and a short cab ride.

Roppongi is very busy and there is loads of neon all over the place. There are a lot of foreigners too (or gaijin as they are known here) - far more than I have seen elsewhere so far. We end up at this place called Gas Panic - a club that Andy had heard of. I only knew it as an Oasis song but the place was nothing like that. In fact it was just the kind of place that I don't like. The style was like a rubbish, cheesy, small club back home with crap music to match. It was also full of American guys - apparently navy or other armed forces. There were a few Japanese girls there too but it felt quite far from Japan to me. Roppongi attracts a lot of gaijin^[A] apparently, which also attracts a certain type of Japanese woman - those that want foreign boyfriends. Supposedly, there are loads of girls in Japan that want foreign boyfriends for whatever reason. Anyway, this place was gash and pretty expensive. I bought three drinks (one of which was soft) for JPY 2100, which seemed quite steep to me. Maybe the worst thing about it though, even worse than the music (which was now "pretty fly for a white guy" - with navy, shouty accompaniment), was that there was a massive sign that said that you must be drinking to stay in the club. And they had a load of bar staff that went around and checked that you had a drink! It was not the kind of atmosphere that I wanted to be in but I stayed for a while until I could hack it no more - about 1130. I was tired from the whole week to be honest and we were moving into our actual flats the next day and check out time was 10am. But this was just the start.

Everyone looked a bit pissed off in there so we all left but Andy and Steve wanted to stay out but only decided this at the station exit so I went in without them for my journey to Akabane. I had missed the last train. Even though Tokyo runs on trains and everywhere is open late, the trains stop running at a ridiculously early time - and run no later on a Saturday! So I was stuck. Totally stuck. I legged it outside on the off chance that Steve and Andy were outside but obviously not. And I had no chance at all of finding them in Roppongi either. Slightly panicked, I called Allan (the only Tokyoite I know) at about 1215 and asked him what the deal was. He said that there was no option back other than a taxi^[B], which would be madly expensive. The only other suggestion was find somewhere to drink or eat and stay there for a while! Six hours! Hmmmm.

I really wanted to get out of Roppongi so I just walked. I walked from the station east (at a guess) and thought that I would get to another station soon and then work it out from there. I just wanted to get out of Roppongi as it was doing my head in. It reminded me a lot of that bit at the beginning of "The Beach" (film version obviously)^[C] where he looks around at all the western tourists around Bangkok and feels very out of place. It's a flawed film but the start is decent.

[tbc]

---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---
<sup>A. Gaijin means, literally "outsider" and I came to saw it less as a term for foreigners and more as a term for unwanted foreigners. There is a more polite version which was printed on my ID card "gaikokujin" - the extra character refers to country and so is closer to "foreign person". Over time, I realised the difference in the contextual meaning of these words - at the time, I knew but the one word. Interestingly, the word gaijin was used much more regularly by those foreign people that spoke little or no Japanese themselves.↩

B. The lack of public transport at night was genuinely surprising and I have heard it be said that this was due to effective lobbying by the taxi trade. I don't know if this is true - but they do gain quite massively by it.↩

C. I do not read very often so the film version of The Beach is what I referred to. The relevant scene is about how Richard wants to escape the beaten track and I felt a bit like that at the time. I realise now that escaping the heavily beaten path is also the beaten path but this was also a little about wanting to escape the identikit nature, sometimes, of nightlife in these areas.↩</sup>

Is this a normal weekend around these parts? pt.1 (1st karaoke)

Saturday (31/05/03)

What a messed up day!
Today was the last day of training; we have Sundays off and start on Monday. There was a bit of a chat in the morning to make sure we had everything in our heads and also a few administration tasks that needed doing. The real work was in the afternoon - lesson planning^[A]. Our training so far was, apparently, sufficient to start teaching all ages and we had to plan the lessons for that whole week in the afternoon. Two hours later and I had still not quite finished one lesson. And I was no slower than anyone else! This was the point everybody started getting worried and frantically photocopying all the books so that they could plan at home. I knew my photocopying skills (honed by years in non-gainful employment) would come in useful one day. I photocopied two days worth and then thought I would come in during the week to do the rest. This was a popular idea as everybody looked shattered after 4-5 hours. We left at 6 because the company had offered to take us all out, which would have been great except we were all shattered. And it was only 6.

We all got taken to a karaoke place^[B]. Karaoke is apparently nothing like what I, and all of the newcomers, thought. Karaoke on a stage in front of everybody is supposedly a western creation (or bastardisation) so we were all a bit surprised when we walked in. Shoes had to be taken off and left in nifty little lockers and then we were shown to our room. The room had a table that was "in" the ground and we sat on the floor. It was pretty comfortable actually and the ambience was nice. Everyone got their drinks in and then we started getting food. Our "bosses" ordered all the food with a couple of requests but I was not too fussed as long as it was pigless. I can't remember exactly what we ate but it was all fairly decent. There was definitely a selection of meat, fried potatoes, salad, sushi and genuinely raw fish (called sashimi). I tried some of that and thought it was merely OK. The shrimp, however, was especially fantastic.

After food came the music. It was not exactly flowing but my boss started it off with an old Rolling Stones number. The choice of songs was vast but, unsurprisingly, most were in Japanese. The English selection was slightly smaller and restricted to really famous songs^[C] (or those that have done well in Japan - stand up "Girl Power" by Shampoo). The set up was two microphones and this weird karaoke machine (a TV that you put numbers in) that it was connected to. You could put all kinds of effects on the mics and adjust the levels and stuff. Eventually more people sang but it was a limited choice to be honest. There were a few Beatles tracks, like "Hey Jude" and "Eight Days A Week", and I managed to get a bit of "Girls and Boys" by Blur in too. It was a laugh and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. 

We were chucked out at 9 though it felt so much later. This was where the party got split up, inadvertently. Steve made a call to his friend Mark and I was having a chat with Andy. Whilst we did this, the others walked off without a glance back (they "thought" we were there).
Steve and Andy wanted to go to a place called Roppongi^[D] that they had heard of. This was a place with loads of bars and clubs that was a magnet for foreigners. I was not too keen but I knew I would go there eventually so I thought, "why not now?"

[tbc]

---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---

<sup>A. Lesson planning is really hard and requires a lot of effort - so I have great respect for teachers. The biggest issue is that you have to plan for a number of eventualities too, until you have some experience and a better understanding of the students you have in the class. Trying to work out the timings and to keep focused was pretty hard at first but I learnt a lot from the processes over the years.↩

B.This was not really a karaoke place - but actually an izakaya. Karaoke places have a greater focus on the songs although it seems, ostensibly the same. Karaoke "booths" or "boxes" are the normal way in Japan now although there are a few places where you can sing with lots of strangers too.↩

C. The choice of English (and Korean and Chinese in many places) songs at proper karaoke places is vast and greater than I would expect in the UK. I have been a few times in the UK too, and the selection is not as good as even the sunset in Japanese karaoke places. They take it seriously.↩

D. This means 6 trees and has some beautifully simple kanji,六本木 , for the name. Later, Roppongi became better known for the Roppongi Hills complex but at this point, it was known for US armed forces having a good time.↩</sup>