I found my thrills on Love Hotel Hill...

I wasn`t going to mention this sort of thing on here (seems a bit indecent and all), but recounting the story to a friend I realised it`s a quintessential Japanese experience that I just have to share with you. So, Roppongi Hills 0.2: The Love Hotel.

It was an hilarious evening. Myself and John, a fellow gaijin friend of a friend on holiday from Highgate, left Yellow, the seedy club we`d been in most of the night (stealing champagne and buying beers from vending machines), and headed back to Shibuya, home of the feted Love Hotel Hill, picking up a drunken, hungry Sarah on the way, dropping her off `just anywhere, as long as it does food`. We spent an unfathomable amount of time running around the streets with John asking people if they knew where one was, and me squirming with embarrassment and trying to get him to realise that, though it`s a big thing in Tokyo, you can`t just walk up to an old lady in the street and shout `love hotel?`. We had just reached the point when it almost wasn`t worth trying any more (I had, at least) when we finally found a couple of young Japanese guys prepared to tell us that we were surrounded - we were chasing around central Love Hotel Hill, a district packed with these sordid establishments. The blokes kept saying `ah, lovely couple` over and over, while I stood growing redder and redder and hoping John would hurry up and shut up.

We then found they were generally all full, which amused me to think of all those rutting Japanese (or, more likely, gaijin), but we managed to find one eventually. John had an overly long and awkward conversation with the woman working there and, quite nastily, she had to clear out the room from the previous occupants before we could go in. In the meantime, she sat us behind and small curtain to wait and do whatever we needed to do while it was cleaned, only the small curtain reached our knees and we had to sit on two hard-backed chairs separated by a table full of magazines (I didn`t want to check the content, although the room had a stack of Manga comics, should anyone get bored). The room itself was possibly the best hotel room I`ve been in and far from seedy - I am tempted to go back alone for a decent night`s sleep: very plush; with a jet spa bath; an enormous TV (showing, of course, karaoke shows, endurance programmes and bored-looking girls feigning excitement in uber-degrading porn - had to check...); an amazingly soft bed; and, just what you`d need, a Sega Megadrive. You have to pay until either 10am or 4pm, although it`s the same price, you just wake up in semi-darkness if you go for the earlier option and oversleep.

So, within two weeks of being in Japan, I got myself into a love hotel, several izukayas, seen some temples and been in a couple of Japanese homes. Fairly good going, I like to think.

Teaching is still going well, although I am going to have to brush up on my grammar as the adult classes become slightly more challenging and they feel more confident asking harder questions. The kids are starting to feel far more at ease with me now, which isn`t always a good thing. The climb under the table and openly mock me, although I try to be `genki` enough to win them back into behaving themselves and have scared one or two small boys with my sternness. Yesterday, I spent almost an entire lesson wearing Chihiro`s green frog hood, although I was quite scared that Martin, the other teacher, would peek through the door and catch me. Chihiro loved it though, as did the others to a lesser degree (it was her hood). The lesson was on adjectives and the initially started by saying sensai was pretty, but soon felt comfortable enough laughing and saying I was big, fat and old. I took it on the chin as a concept check and accused the ring-leader, Marina, of being ugly.

You have to lose all sense of self-consciousness to do this job, which I haven`t yet achieved. After class, Chihiro and the others hung around outside the school and pointed and laughed as I had to dance and sing `Hello` with a young boy called Takumasa. He is incredibly cute and not quite sure of what to do, so I just have to get on and show him, jeers or not. He has almost grasped how to say my name. The others tend to just use sensai (which I quite like, but am not allowed to permit), or sow-eee. Zoe is quite difficult for them, the idiots.

I had my telling off from my boss. It wasn`t anything like the earthshattering blast I was expecting, just a `don`t do it again, mate`. Karen was amused that he literally said `mate`, but obviously the darts played off. He won`t be doing my next observation, which I am pleased and disappointed about. I like Matt DoS and I think he knows this. Being possibly the only teacher in Omiya district of this opinion goes in my favour - so far...

My plan to forcibly befriend my cool young advanced student has been hampered slightly by his impending trip to Osaka and Kyoto. I`m here a while yet, so maybe next time, and there`a always tomorrow`s trip to the ice cream parlour to keep me going. Would he really have enjoyed the Scottish Highland Games, I wonder..?