Kingsley in Kanto

I had to say goodbye to my favourite student on Friday. Yuka is jetting off to study fashion in New York. Brilliantly and coincidentally, our last few lessons were on future plans, so we spent the hour discussing what she wanted to do when she arrived, with me occasionally remembering to correct her `wills` and `going tos`. Without really looking, I spotted an appointment on her itinerary and asked what she`d be doing at that time, only to have to retract it as she went rouged and spluttered. At lunchtime on Wednesday, she is watching a mock trial, entitled `Drunk Sex or Date Rape`. She is going to learn so much more than good hemming.

My apartment has been like Shinjuku station this week, so many visitors. This fellow popped round on Thursday morning, eerily turning his over-sized head and watching me through the mosquito screen while I waited and hoped he would move onto someone else`s clothes pegs. I don`t believe he was more scared of me than I was of him. I do not slowly tilt my head in a threatening way or rub my legs together like I am about to pounce at the slightest uwelcome movement.

Kingsley was rather more welcome, though didn`t make it to Omiya or anywhere near my laundry. We exchanged Asian experiences over yakitori and soba in Gonpachi (the same place Mike took me and Koizumi took Bush not so long ago). He`s been in China learning martial arts from Shaolin Monks, a bit more impressive than me teaching Taisei `cow` (which he ignored, far more interested in shouting `chinpo` - penis - at the cow`s udders) and Yumiko the `L for Loser` sign (though vitally important for undermining smug gaijin). Again, the strangest thing from having a visitor from home was that it was not in the least bit strange, not even for having not seen each other for three years, getting mixed up on our meeting points and not knowing if it would happen at all was a good technique to distract any strangeness.

We strolled around Ginza on Friday, while I offloaded my many anti-Japanese prejudices and Kingsley sized them up against the Chinese. As a mistreated minority here, I sympathise and side with the Chinese in an unnecessary `all foreigners together` seige mentality, but as a man on the inside, Kingsley sees as them differently. When you`ve seen enough people in one country shitting by the side of the road, I guess it can colour your opinions of them. When my students have described the Chinese as being dirty, I have been sceptical - the Chinese are viewed much like the Germans or French are in Britain (or worse, the Welsh). Hearing Kingsley, who has less reason to be prejudiced beyond imagining they would be much the same as the Japanese or the Koreans, say much the same and give more gross examples of their behaviour, I have to give it more credence. A few students have sneerily complained of the Chinese spitting, but I have seen so many Japanese men clearing their sinuses in the gutter that I needed Kingsley`s additional explanation that the Chinese do this in restaurants for people to then come behind and mop up.

Before we even had time for the yakitori to settle, we headed back to Kingsley`s hotel for him to change and us to head to a sushi restaurant recommended in an Anthony Bourdain book. Kingsley had the hotel concierge write down the restaurant`s address in Japanese, a stroke of unintended genius as I put us on the wrong tube line (why did he tell us to go to the furthest station when we can just use this one?!) and we popped up in the wrong part of Ginza and spent longer strolling around trying to find it, building up the courage to ask locals for directions, running in and out of shops and hotels that might not consider it a business rival and even getting a cab before finally asking a young boy drumming up custom in the street for a competitor who passed us on to a young girl who led us up to a door we would never have found alone. All in all, it took us longer to locate the place than we spent inside.

Not being the flashest restaurant, the staff seemed a little amused at our having made a reservation and lavished us with unnecessary amounts of attention. Muted by greed and indecisiveness, we asked the waiter to recommend something for us - we got wonderfully refreshing cups of iced sake and a spread of the freshest cuts of sashimi from nearby Tsukiji fish market, octopus, some unidentified white fish, something sardiney thiat Kingsley fell in love with and some amazingly succulent, meaty scallops. It was all just an apetiser though, as we headed off to Wara Wara`s in Shibuya for some bright lights and a more familiar menu. We tried out some more sake, but I had to worry about the last train and my early start with Saburo, a new intimidatingly academic student, in the morning.

We had to skip our Saturday night shabu shabu in Shinjuku, which would have been a greater shame had I not squeezed a small tour of the host and hostess bars on Friday. We stood in the street gazing up at billboards of rank Japanese men who are paid to spend evenings wtih the onely singles of Toyko. An array of wonky Duran Duran wannabes fill bar after bar in Shinjuku and command enormous fees just to save Tokyoites too busy to date the shame of a dateless night. Hostess bars function in much the same way, and my awareness of the Great British Hen Night convinces me these men are just as goosed as their female counterparts. At what point hosting becomes whoring, I don`t know.

He`s Shinkansenning to Kyoto this evening, so we could only meet for lunch today. We tried to get something nice in the plushest department store in Ginza, but sat down in the tea shop rather than the restaurant so enjoyed some Jasmine Earl Grey and split a mango dessert before heading up the road for yakiniku, my favourite food ever, though Korean, not Japanese. One of the best things about having Kingsley to visit was his shared enthusiasm for anything and everything edible. Japan is a wonderfully rewarding country for the culinary adventurous. It can cater for those who are more timid in their tastes, but if you aren`t prepared to at least try, you are missing out on some seriously special experiences. Friday`s sashimi was proof. Yakiniku is hardly a problem for the squeamish, it`s a table-top barbeque. A meal and an activity all rolled into one. The best part of today`s meal was the beef, but some might skip the super-spicy kimchi and tongue and squid are not to everyone`s liking, but you start with the tongue and build up, with every taste bursting with richer and more wonderful flavours. It was amazing. I could eat it forever.

After Kingsley headed off for Kyoto, I got the Metro to Harajuku and checked out the shrine and the freaks. The Meiji Shrine is a rich one, you can judge its wealth from the barrels of sake that have been donated to the monks. I had wanted to look at the flower garden, but couldn`t be bothered to walk, then found myself doing a huge lap around the aesthetically displeasing woods just to end up where I started. I did get some snaps of the goths and Lolitas who congregate there at weekends and are happy, if you don`t mind asking, posing for photos. As, by asking for a photo, you are at a more basic level, telling these people they are freaks, I always feel awkward asking, but am more than happy to snap away. I also, with a worse sense of bullying voyeurism, got sight of a Lolita tranny strolling up Takeshita Dorii with a parasoll and black lace gloves and spent more time and energy than is pleasant or healthy trying to stealthily take a snap, before feeling grossly disappointed in myself when I spotted him scuttling up the train platform away from the gasping open mouths of the other travellers.

Now I am boxed into my apartment, boarded up against the enormous cockroach I confronted on my way to put the gomi out (trying to swack it off the building with a pathetic swing of my little rubbish bag, I just sent him cantering up the bricks towards my floor) and sitting through some shocking Japanese `comedy` (never has the term been used more loosely) while waiting for Superman to start. A host of comedians have been dressed in skin-tight blue body suits (a la Superman, though I am not sure how much of a coincidence this is) and given a table of props to amuse a group of young boys. The measure of their success is not how heartily the stern-faced boys laugh, but whether they spit the ping-pong balls which are wedged into their mouths as they laugh. These are then picked up from the floor, counted and replaced. Something of a surprise in this OCD suffer`s paradise. So far the comedy has been weak. A young man, most likely from Osaka, sang about the city and interspersed his act with regular chants of `baka` (stupid), as the ping-pongs stayed put, the baka rate increased and teh incidental language eventually vanished. There has also been a small man sporting a Hitlerian moustache and a child`s school rucksack sitting on a chair flailing his legs in a dry breaststroke. He also shouted baka a lot. A tall Elvis has sung nonsense into a red plastic cone with huge levels of success even after laughing at his own `joke`. Hitler has just been blasted with dry ice. From Elvis`s sympathetic hand on his shoulder, the swimming demonstration didn`t go down too well.