Life is sweet

I`ve had a lot of fun this week. On Tuesday, I had my usual Take Off 1 class, handed to me from another, allegedly more experienced teacher (one of those cocks who `has to` live here as England would no longer tolerate him), and again they were beaming with delight as they filed into school. A weird reaction from nine-, ten- and eleven-year-olds usually, but these ones act like they`ve never been allowed to play a game before in their lives, so I enjoy it and view it far more as their previous teacher`s failings than my success. If you do the lessons you`re supposed to, kids have to enjoy it at some point. The book is very easy to convert to games and one of the kids is doing it for his second time, so ought to be bored but they`re not, which makes it more enjoyable to teach them. Even Hironobu getting a ball in the knackers every lesson has not deterred them.

Even the perpetually mute Toshiki was genkier than usual. Mike-san reckons this is down to a mind-numbing make-up lesson with Rebekah (a gossip vulture I despise), so I readily accept his theory. Whatever the reason, Toshiki was quite a cheeky tike. He came in muttering something about `Joke Abenue` which no one could understand, but I think he was announcing his comedy act. Throughout the lesson he succumbed to devilish chuckles and was slyly naughty at every opportunity. He feigned a lisp for a while, though as he speaks so quietly I wasn`t sure it wasn`t real until he spelt dentist as `dentitht`, quite sophisticated for an eleven-year-old. He`s gone up in my estimations, even after farting at the whiteboard.

Thursday was good too, although I confused an email from Sean saying he`d been to see `V for Vendetta` as a threat or warning and was confused after a late night on Wednesday. I`d been to the George with Yukako and Steven and met up with Jery (Iito-san), who has been reading my blog, so thought I`d give him another mention. Hey Jery!

Yukiko brought me some homemade jam and the other ladies all brought me cookies and biscuits from various trips they`d taken. The previous week, we`d played a guessing game and I immediately guessed that Yukiko was Harry Potter, so this week I read in her diary that, because of this, `I am worthy to be British`. There you go. That`s all it takes. Sachiko and Hidako brought in some treats too - Sachiko is now regularly bringing me cuttings from her garden that need planting in soil and I am regularly taking them home, putting them in water and waiting for them to die. Without pilfering the soil from municipal flower pots, I`m not entirely sure how to get around this. I really can`t be bothered to take myself to a Japanese garden centre. Atsuko, the receptionist, gently warned me not to lean forward too far in Keisuke`s lesson as I was wearing a top that stopped two inches above my cleavage. He was tired and could barely speak in class, but she blamed this on me distracting him. Next week, I will wear a trench coat and see how we get on. I did explain that even in my baggiest, least becoming outfits, as s typical otaku, he stares as where he thinks my chest is, but she just chuckled and made me rule out ever wearing that outfit to Ageo school again. (I`d worn the same top the previous week with no comments, but I can`t be bothered dealing with mock disapproval.)

On Friday, I met up with Hidako and her daughter, much to Sachiko`s chagrin. Mutters of `jealousy` were rippled around the reception area as we made arrangements the day before. I spotted Tomomi immediately as she has Hidako`s face atop a 27-year-old body. Eerie, but convenient as we found each other immediately, even though Hidako was a bit late. We went to the Omiya Plaza Hotel, where another student and her daughter had taken me the week before and I had to pretend I`d never been so as not to disappoint them. This time I got to eat, instead of eating an incredibly small cake (they love cakes here, but shrink them to remain anorexia-thin) and we tucked into more Italian food, an exotic treat in the Far East. It was fabulous though, pasta, a dish that is very Tuesday and bores me at home, comes topped with half a small lobster and packed with clams, mussels and squid. After that, we tried to go to the cinema, but nothing was on (well, the Da Vinci Code is on, but everyone in Japan has already seen it - bar me, of course), so went window shopping. I wasn`t even allowed to pay for my train ticket, which was very nice, but a bit unnecessary. I`m a bit concerned though, Tomomi had to translate the most basic English for Hidako, which makes me wonder just how little she understands of my lessons, if any. She always laughs in the right places and her comments always make sense so I assumed she was OK. I might have to start doing the unthinkable and concept check...

Friday night, I quite possibly went on a date. In the sense that a man and a woman having dinner together is a date, it most definitely was, and in Japan this is even rearer amongst friends, but there wasn`t a sniff of romance in the air. When I first met Mamoru (whose name I obviously can`t pronounce, somewhat embarrassing when a friend`s girlfriend whose name I don`t remember came over and I had to introduce them both), he was very flirty, but Friday was very matey. I don`t mind, despite being my age, he looks ludicrously young and is still keen to teach me Japanese and buy me stuff . I had to go Dutch on dinner, which is a bad sign on the date front as you are totally kept by a Japanese boyfriend usually, but he has promised to buy me a copy of Akira in Japanese with English subtitles, which I`m excited about getting, but also means I need to hurry up and get a DVD player to watch it on. Of course, being Japanese, he was ridiculously ambiguous, asking if he could text me the next day, then maintaining complete radio silence throughout Saturday. He did have a test to revise for, so it is not in any way surprising or disappointing, but just why bother asking? He also sent this `cute picture of a cat, a gift for` me after we first met, so at the first opportunity I am going to teach him what cute actually means. I also need him to teach me kanji. He had his Nintendo DS with him, which does a `find the age of your brain` test, but it is all in Japanese. We muddled through him translating the instructions and then I had to memorise and draw 30 kanji - bear in mind the test was designed for the Japanese so most were obscure and difficult kanji, although I only know about 10 anyway, so it could have been for an elementary school student and I would have failed. My brain is 68. Spritely and young in Japan, so not too bad.

Perhaps I should introduce him to Yuka, a new student and the girl whose mother took me to the Plaza Hotel for the first time. She is cuteness personified. She`s adorable, lives an utterly charmed life, studying fashion and learning English so she can go off to New York to make more clothes. In our first lesson, we flicked through Cosmopolitan and discussed the `boho look` with particular reference to Helena Christensen and Sienna Miller and how Johnny Depp and Jude Law are good-looking, but not attractive (she likes Johnny Depp`s `atmosphere`. When we first met, she brought me a couple of cookies from the coffee shop she works in and almost wet herself when I said I`d like to go and watch her old J-Pop band. I can`t wait for her next lesson. I think we`ll discuss big bags and sunglasses...

Japan`s inner psychos

I think I`m a little imbalanced this week. My opinions of Japan, and people generally, have plummetted and rocketed a thousand times within each conversation this week. For the first time ever, I can`t make a rash decision about anything. I normally pass judgement in haste, although rarely repent at any pace, but this week I`ve flitting off the fence, on it, over it and under it. I pity anyone trying to please me this week, as it could make me cry with gratitude or nauseated by their sycophancy.

However, most of my reactions have been fairly reasonable. On Thursday, Keisuke paraded the same nationalistic conceit that wore me out last week, while we were discussing racism and global attitudes. He claimed Japan was not racist or aggrieved by the effects of WWII - aside from shame, of course - while I pointed out that fellow gaijin get spat at in the street by war veterans. He shut his ears and talked over this, but later handed over Kate Bush`s greatest hits, a far better lend than most I`ve received before.

Last night I had what seemed to be a brilliant night out with Yuka and Yukako, but then they lost their way and nearly made us miss the train (I think Yuka wanted us to miss the train so she could go back to the club we`d been in) and passed the journey home asking me if I knew all the other gaijins on the train. I restrained from asking them if they knew each of the hundreds of Japanese people also in the carriages.

After finally making it home, I switched on the TV to see the kaiwaiiest girl in the world holding up a porn magazine to the TV camera and laughing with her `wacky` co-hosts. She then briefly flicked through the rest of the magazine, revealing more and more and more of what I wanted to see less and less and less of. Having sat next to a man gazing freely at porn on the train to work, I understand why he was no in the least bit ashamed at his choice of reading matter.

I guess my reactions are not so unreasonable or unstable. That the night started off well in a nice izakaya with kakkoii boys nodding in my direction (positively begging for it in Japanese boy terms, though nudging my way into a private izakaya booth to make headway with a cute diner in front of his seven friends is still a little beyond me). After eating, we strolled around Shibuya looking for a nice bar. While queuing for a cash machine I couldn`t use (my bank, seemingly not understanding why these machines are automated, won`t let me use ATMs outside business hours), we saw an awful British northerner trying to dodge a fine for hurling a pint glass into a restaurant. Somehow, we later ran into the bouncer who had been demanding his gaijin card as surety, and he explained the man had had a tantrum when he`d been told he couldn`t take his glass outside. You can`t outrun yakuka, even if you haven`t been brought up on black pudding and brown sauce five times a day, and his bloodied and muddied body was testament to that.

After this small, but enthralling piece of excitement (which everyone else in the AM PM ignored, while I fought to give my own two penneth), Yuka took us to the Ruby Room, a very small, cool bar playing drum `n` bass and full of lesbianic Australians. Aside from that it was nice and as I was gazing behind the bar wondering what to use my free drink token on, I realised the man serving me was Gill, a regular from the George that I have abused and bullied into buying me many drinks before. Yuka was a little put out that her `special tour` had been upstaged by me already having direct connections there, so I spent the rest of the night playing down knowing Gill at all. He barely rises above acquaintance really, so it was not hard, but Japanese egos are a chore to control. Perhaps partly why this country has 30,000 suicides a year...

The weather is just as unstable - though how they laugh at the changeable nature of British weather here. Yesterday we had the tailend of China`s typhoon. Everyone here claims it was not a typhoon, though exactly like one, but as the only difference seems to be the timing, I am calling it a typhoon. Yesterday was fabulously warm, though as the temperature won`t stop rising for a good two months at least, I stubbornly refuse to remove my jacket until it is absolutely necessary (working with children every day, I know if there are any unpleasant side effects to this strategy, I will be the first to hear of it). Around 4 o`clock, the sky suddenly clouded over as one solitary, huge black clouded slowly moved above us. We could see the edge of the cloud and the sunshine in the distance, but my classroom was suddenly much darker. Once the rain started falling, the sky was lost in reems of it - it was almost horizontal and bounced off the pavements. A crack of thunder accompanied the dipping of the lights and the class of kids next door squealed. They can only handle things if they are on schedule. It lasted for about an hour and today it has been positively wonderful. I`ve been to the park to study Japanese (well, finish my book - Gide`s Immoralist, which reminds me of an unpleasant ex) and am sorely tempted to treat myself to an ice cream in a minute.

Happy Birthday Papa Bear

That`s Sean to most people. We went to En, a bit of an upmarket izakaya compared to where I am used to, to celebrate last night. I have been a couple of times before, so am not always a povvy guttersnipe, but it was most definitely a treat. The fried chicken was amazing (not very nihonno, but never mind). Afterwards we went to the deserted Space Bar and watched and talked over West Ham vs Liverpool. Sean skipped around like a loon when the penalties went in Liverpool`s favour - it was almost like being on the Costa del Sol. I had the whole bar telling one barman how kakkoii I thought he was and when I offered my email with the pathetic excuse of offering English lessons, all the other barmen laughed. He was like a J-Pop star (a good one), so I was aiming high. A few of us went to karaoke after, but stayed a bit too long. My voice had gone and so sounded even worse than usual and by 6am we were all wilting in our seats.

Friday I had to work in Iwatsuki, which was a long and boring day, although the receptionist is lovely, so hopefully it has yielded a new friend, as well as an extra ￥5,000 for doing a six-day week. All the students loved me too, which was nice, although perhaps they felt like that because they have had so many difference teachers lately, they just want to cling on to anyone. I had some nice kids classes, although one bunch of five- and six-year-olds were virtually unmanageable - it was more like a creche. I would have normally let them fuck about and just concentrate on those that were interested, but the receptionist was peering through the door with some of the mothers so I had to make an effort. The adult classes were all fairly high level and none had books, so it was mainly free conversation, which was good. I had a very interesting chat with a middle aged Catholic who thinks the yakuza have really let themselves and their manners go.

Today I ventured into the optician`s, which was weirdly pleasureable. So many people have bad eyesight in Japan they have really put a lot of effort into designing nice, reasonably-priced frames. It was almost as enjoyable as shoe-shopping (something I am missing terribly with my gaijin-sized plodders). At one point I was considering buying three pairs, although this would have been a ridiculous extravagance - I could barely afford the one I ended up with. No one in the store spoke English (from a Japanese person, this means we could conduct a stunted, but understandable conversation at a very slow pace and with lots of gestures), but I thought I might be able to soldier on in Japanese. Fortunately, optomotrists are well educated, so he did have a small amount of English and we fumbled our way through his most painful appointment of the day. I had to read a hiragana sight test, but the questions were still the same and I still couldn`t work out if red was clearer than green.

Racist intolerance

For various reasons, I am pissed off with Japan this week. It seems to be full of self-involved arses and tiresome mentalists who pester me for attention when it suits them, but tardily refuse to return the favour. It is also rammed with conceited racists. Some people defend Japan by saying that racism in Britain is far worse than it is here because it is more aggressive. I don`t pretend to compare myself to a victim of a violent attack, however, it is more prevalent and far more acceptable to be racist here. Some Japanese even expect pity as the foreigners scare them. That `foreigner` is an acceptable word and has even found its way into my vocabulary is a sign of how every day the attitudes towards non-Japanese are.

Extreme examples are male friends of mine having old men spit at their feet in the street. These are WWII generation men, so you can understand their anomosity to some extent, but not their expression of it. People stare and openly discuss you. A month or two ago, two Salarymen sat opposite me clearly discussing me and a Brazilian couple who were sat next to me. They found it very entertaining to see three of us in a row and when I stared back at the instigator, he just carried on and stared back at me. At the best you are a novelty act, at worst, a murderous circus freak. Women who travel abroad are known as `yellow cabs` as anyone can ride in them - obviously the minute their visa is stamped they are defiled by foreigners and become wanton sluts. I was told this by Yoshiko, who previously modelled how to use the word `hena` (strange) by saying `weird foreigners`.

After my experiences in Hiroshima, everything this week has lost proportion. My Japanese teacher refusing to accept that in Britain we don`t like warm food so not telling me how to say `this isn`t hot enough` (although there is an equivalent for drinks and bath water as they like to scorch off their skin in an onsen once in a while) really wound me up. She also told me it was impossible to grow my hair, rather than imagining she didn`t know the verb `to grow` could be used for hair (I can`t imagine what word they use here, but her suggestion was to get extensions).

Keisuke, the word otaku, brought up Sting and the Police and their ill-advised Japanese-language album track. Apparently the Japanese thought this incredibly stupid as they were just trying to be cool (they do have a point), but had used a stupid poem. When I asked if Sting using a respected poem would have made a difference, I eventually dragged it out of Keisuke that it was the Police not writing it themselves. He foolishly then asked my opinion of J-Pop. I don`t know any artists particularly, but have noticed that lots of them use broken English to make their songs more impressive. When I pointed out that they were doing the same thing, but by writing the English bits themselves were actually using incorrect English he spoke over me. Keisuke`s shutters go down whenever I say something he doesn`t like. Probably because I am foreign. My opinion only really counts when it contradicts the Philipino he works with.

To give them their due, they are also very classist and offensive to those Japanese they feel are beneath them. My Japanese teacher told me it would sound very strange if I said `thank you very much` in Japanese to a person in a shop. They are serving me, so I am above them and only need to say the equivalent of `cheers`. I told her in England we try treat everyone equally and be polite regardless of their job or position (maybe this is just me), but she insisted it would be bad Japanese and I ignored her.

When I get home, I am going to start a campaign to point out how brilliant Britain is. Our self-deprecating humour is getting us spat on by the rest of the world, while they are outright offensive, but claim to be polite. This is how they maintain their reputations. We need to fight back.

Golden Week

On Tuesday, I shinkansenned down to Nagoya to meet up with Kaiah. Nagoya is not a city to add to your itinerary unless you have a reason to go there. It`s Japan`s fourth largest city and as they`re all much of a muchness, you can skip it. It has no outstanding features of natural beauty (aside from Kaiah, perhaps) and the shrines are pretty run-of-the-mill. We had brilliant fun though. Kaiah still doesn`t know the city too well, so we navigated by stalking handsome boys - into coffee shops, through department stores and around the red light district. We went to Nagoya-jo and rebelliously went down the `up` stairs and stopped off for some famous miso nikomi ramen (ramen soup with udon-like noodles).

After grading the kakkoiiness of every customer in a trendy coffee shop and trying on some tardis-like hats, we went to an izakaya for tea. Kaiah has a degree in Japanese and lived in Hokkaido for a year, so was able to handle the picture-free menu with ease. As I am a huge fan of squid, he ordered some squid sashimi, which is not how I generally like it to be served, but squid is squid. A few of the kanji were indecipherable, so we were presented with inedible purple slop and an amused expression from the waiter. We`d ordered squids innards. We both had a go each, and as we couldn`t chew it was tasteless, but vile. It looked like something a Jewish doctor would throw in the bin.

We tried to find some more entertainment later, but every izakaya was full and the Hub was the only option. Kaiah was tempted to try it, but being greeted by Australian and American accents is not a good welcome, so I suggested we try Wara Wara, a cheap and reliable chain izakaya whose menu I am pretty much bored of and know off-by-heart. It was full, but we did meet a drunk girl in the lift who was going to the same place and so I asked her to join us. Sadly, Wara Wara had a waiting list, so we headed back to the Hub with our new friend. She turned out to be only 20 and slaughtered, but not ready to take herself home. She loved us, even though her English wasn`t great. She sat and occasionally squealed, while showing me her new shopping. She had bought every possibly hair ornament and accessory going, including two hairpieces, so we came to the conclusion she was a hostess - one that would be far more successful if she could handle her drink. She eventually went home and we tried stalking boys for new places to go, but every time we spotted any that looked like they`d know cool places, they veered off into blow job bars (`Snack Bars`) and we were left at a dead end.

We eventually headed back to the smallest town in Japan and picked up Kaiah`s gaijin friend and a physics teacher he works with before hitting karaoke. The physics teacher thought I was `sugoi` and I thought the same of him as he is the only person in Japan who thinks I look young and can sing. He was clearly lying to be smooth, which works as well on a Japanese physics teacher as it does on an English one, but bless him for trying.

The next day I took my hangover to meet Rachel in Hiroshima, a relatively painless exercise for me, but not her as her phone had run out and she`d been hanging around the shinkansen platform for an hour. We dropped off our bags at the station and walked around the dead ends of Hiroshima. A wonky-toothed weirdo tried to invite himself to dinner with us, but we managed to shake him off and head to a Chinese restaurant for a huge lunch. Rachel had travelled by boat and thought she was suffering seasickness in the restaurant, but it was actually a small earthquake - possibly her first.

After dinner, we got the tram to our hostel. It was far from the centre of Hiroshima, near Miyajima, an island famous for its torii (the gate to the shrine is in the sea). We were led to our hostel by seeing blind man with a white stick under his arm whose perfectly good english disintegrated into mumbled Japononsense. Worryingly, he was very surprised when Rachel spotted the hostel - hopefully because she could read Japanese and not because he was leading us somewhere unpleasant. The owner resembled Fu Man Chu and hugged us because we were so late, but we were more distracted by the OCD sufferer licking cream off a celophane cake wrapper who had stubbed out 20 cigarettes after taking one drag. Not somewhere we wanted to spend too much time alone. We quickly headed out to an izakaya where we had to eat squid and octopus tempura as it was the only thing we could order from the all-kanji menu. The chef loved having some foreigners in and gave us some chips for free. The waiter, however, took to calling me `kiwi sour` as I ludicrously asked if they served them.

We were forced to share a room with two boring (one down-right unpleasant, actually) JETs who were friends of friends and a mosquito who ate us alive. I have a line of bites across the sole of my foot. We barely slept so got up early to explore Miyajima - we did some shrines, bought masses of tat from the sovenier shops, and then got a cable car up the mountain. I was not as scared as I expected, although did have a hissy fit while waiting on some stone steps for the second leg of the journey. Climbing down the mountain was more of a challenge. We apparently picked the toughest route, though some fools were going up the same way and gasped `konnichiwa` with strained red faces as we passed.

On Friday we did Hiroshima proper - the museum and A bomb dome and moved into a new hostel. Everywhere was booked for Golden Week, so we were lucky to have the upgrade to a real YHA bed. We also got an 11 o`clock curfew which ruled out any fun, but we were too tired and skint by this time to worry.

The museum was amazing and presented a devastating piece of history in a very dignified manner. Emotional blackmail would have been entirely justified, but rather than tugging on heart-strings with depictions of vicious and prolonged deaths, it wielded this only against the destruction of buildings. It was moving, but nowhere near as traumatic as I had expected. Weirdly, the 30th Anniversary flower festival was taking place, so we heard lots of commotion from outside and wanted to get out into the sun. We found a spot and watched masses of groups perform roughly the same traditional dance over and over again.

One thing I did notice about Hiroshima is that, although an obvious tourist mecca (Rachel seemed much troubled by the gaijin count, though it didn`t compare to Nowhereville Omiya), the locals seemed enthralled by our presence. Perhaps because we were two loud, busty girls, or perhaps it was straightforward racism, we couldn`t quite tell. Generally it was very sweet and whenever we stood still for more than two minutes, we were forced to entertain yet more curious natives. However, in the izakaya near our first hostel, some of the waitresses ignored our `sumimasens`, even though between us we could order a meal without falling back to English. We also had a bizarre experience in a cafe. Two young boys were sat opposite showing no interest in us whatsoever (we both knew this as they were fairly kakkoii, so we had shown interest in them) when suddenly the braver of the two gestured to a camera and asked if we`d mind. Rachel got ready to take a shot, just as the young man lowered himself on the sofa to pose next to us. We laughed, but got on with it and the second one took his turn. Fine in itself (ish), but when we tried to chat with them and asked them to join us, they went back to their seats and acted like nothing had happened.

On our last night, we had to race into town from the hostel to find somewhere to eat. This time, we managed to get into Wara Wara and got laughed at by the waitress for trying every cocktail on the menu. Do not order anything with Calpis in it. I got home yesterday, but as I had swapped dates for my return, my ticket was not reserved and there was standing room only on the shinkansen. A stop or two into the journey and I managed to elbow an old lady out of the way and get a seat. Whatever she had been through, I had descended a mountain and my legs ached. I wasn`t going to stand for four hours.

Last night I took my holiday snaps to the George and befriended a hairdresser called Shin who perhaps sees himself as a future Mr MacGechan. I am less sure. This morning I went to Cafe Lamp and showed off the photos again - my god, they love it. Afterwards, we went for lunch and I ended up chatting to a young guy called Abe who wants a girlfriend who can cook - more precisely, who will boil the vegetables he chops. He has no other criteria. He initially said a Japanese girl would be best, but he only insists she can boil. Looks and personality are not important. Kaori suggested he date me, but I would like to think I had bagged someone who was a little fussier.