Got myself connected...

I`m finally online! At 9am this morning, a foolhardy deliveryman, not scared off by a sodden foreigner opening the door in a 3-coin store towel, handed over my modem and I wanted to cancel every appointment of the day. I didn`t, as I had to teach and needed the money. It was also the lovely Yuka, who heads off to New York in two weeks and needs as much practise as possible. I also checked out a guest house (what they call the cheap dives reserved for foreigners) near Shinjuku. I`ve pretty much done Omiya now and didn`t come to Japan to live in a suburb, so am investigating moving. It was a run-down, overly-cluttered shack with tatami mats and a cupboard called an office, but it was quite homely.

Sadly, I would become tenant and rent collector in one move, but it is not the most off-putting aspect of the place. To get there, you have to ride a bike. It`s only about five minutes that way, but easily twenty boring minutes on foot. I wasn`t excited at the prospect anyway, but then the girl announced that it would be OK as cars drive on the same side of the road in England and Japan. The last time I rode a bike was a couple of years ago and the first time in over a decade. I borrowed Rachel`s and nervously set off for Tooting Common and got overly cocky. On the way back home, I bounced off the kerb at a strange angle and fell off spectacularly and slowly in the road in front of some cars so I was quite worried about having to compete with traffic moving at speed. The roads were fine today, but on the way back, I suddenly panicked and lost the ability to steer. We crossed a road at an angle, which I couldn`t handle and as I passed over a pedestrian island in the middle of the road with chicanes to stop cars using it for U-turns, I rode straight into an old lady`s stomach. I apologised over and over and removed my front tyre from her skirt, but she seemed more concerned about me than herself, which was fortunate.

I suspect my hangover might have had something to do with it. Yoko, Nozomi, Kaori and Yukako came round to help me celebrate my birthday last night. We drank masses of wine and ate sushi and yakitori. It was brilliant. I had been tired and dreading it. Kaori has been doing my head in recently, constantly beseiging me with questions about how to capture a `foreign boyfriend` and last time I saw her I ended up telling her off for using the word foreign. She was using it while saying she wouldn`t have a one-night stand on her forthcoming trip to Paris in case the lucky man ran off with her purse! Last night, she was chatting in Japanese with Nozomi and pulled a huge bike chain out of her bag. It was for her suitcase. She isn`t taking a rucksack as it can be cut open more easily. They do finally seem to have realised that as a `foreigner`, I might find their idea of everyone who is not Japanese being a thief slightly offensive. Kaori is, quite sweetly, making great efforts to stop herself using the word `foreigner` now.

My latest campaign is to teach my students to use `Westerner` or perhaps even find out what nationality a person is. Last night, I managed to renew my campaign and also point out that many, many `foreigners` also get robbed, rather than being robbers. That said, if I hadn`t a sense of how memorable my appearance is, I would go on the rob in Japan. It`d be really easy. It`s like living in a village in the 40s. People keep money at home, some don`t lock their doors. It would only be the police`s immediate suspicions that a gaijin had been up to no good that would stop me.

After Nozomi and Kaori had to leave to get their trains, Yoko, Yukako and I had much more fun. Nozomi is very nice, but perhaps chotto sensible and Kaori is just mad. She only wants to talk about boys, which is a bit dull when none of us have them or know anyone we would even want (except Kaori who staunchly continues to stalk Graeme - the ridiculous boy next to Aki flicking the bird! - in spite of him regularly telling her she will never be his girlfriend). Yoko is in the picture smoking in my washing. I`ll have to leave it out there for another week to get rid of the smell. Yukako is crouching by my TV, checking out the cards I`ve got from my family`s pets.

It`s hard to remember what I`ve been up to this week! Saturday, I went into Tokyo to watch the Sumida fireworks. I saw two-thirds of each explosion as my view was blocked by buildings. The friends I wanted to meet had pitched camp along the river at 6am. I just popped in after work. You don`t put in the graft, you can`t expect miracles. Asakusa Bridge was closed when I arrived as it was full and a line of small, polite policemen blocked everyone`s entry. I spent far more time gazing at kakkoii boys in the yukatas and jimbe than at the fireworks. A few seemed interested, but as ever, they never approached. Two actually came and stood next to me after staring for ages, so I asked them the time as a boring ice breaker and to showcase my basic nihongo, but still they wouldn`t take the bait. Weirdoes.

On Sunday, I went to an international festival with Kaori, Nozomi and some of the other Cafe Lampers. We`d been planning to go in our yukata for ages, so I imagined it was a festival, but was quite disappointed to find myself in a stuffy community hall until I spotted the food and beers stalls and the handsome boys signing people up for Australian rules football. Nozomi and Kaori had to help me dress before we went, there is no way I could tress myself up in one of those things alone. I intend to learn though - I am sure the internet holds the key. Anything is possible now, including drunkenly emailing randoms from my past, as some people seem to have been doing to me lately. Kaori had bought a book to do the obi, the band around the waist, and she and Nozomi struggled to make me presentable, often muttering `it`s difficult` to one another. I think the width of my body made it more of a challenge as bits didn`t meet and Japanese chests tend to be flat and easily hidden. I might strap myself down next time. We managed it, but the usual five minute stroll to the station was a mammoth trek as we could only take two-inch steps at a time.

The feminists who complained that high heels were designed so women couldn`t run from rapists should spare a thought for their Asian sisters. You`re practically shackled in yukata and the geta (wooden flip flops) that go with them cripple your feet and impede you more. It was nice for a tourist though, until `Elton` (suspiciously unJapanese, ne?) started asking if French kissing had anything to do with blow jobs and ruined the fun. I passed him over to Chris, a fat male JET, to deal with rather than drilling French polish.

I had a visitor on Thursday. I got home from work, having forgotten to plug all the plugholes, to find a cockroach strolling around my room. They`re impolite little fuckers. It moved like a real animal and charged straight at me. I`ll never complain about spiders again. At least they have the decency to flee. I had to leap out of its path twice before it calmed down enough to be scooped up in a tub. There`s one downstairs in the lobby right now, it`s almost two inches long. This one didn`t go for me, fortunately, it was too busy checking its post.

Last week`s unsubtle birthday hints went down a storm. On Tuesday, one of my students bought me a bag of goodies from the local patisserie and yesterday I had two parties! I had told my first afternoon class to prepare some work on Japanese folklore and told them, as it`s festival season, we should have a mini-festival - and because, of course, it was my birthday. They took the hint and came armed to the hilt with food. I had Chinese mixed rice, samosas, grapefruit jelly (I was scared it was this hideous tomato jelly people love here, but it was actually superb. I shouldn`t have doubted Michie) and chocolate cake. I also got some awful presents. The dried corn has a small hook on the back so I can hang it up if I like... I drunkenly laughed about it with the girls last night, but I suspect I just made myself look like a horrible, ungrateful retch. My next class forgot to bring in the cake they had ordered, so they got some extra practise after the lesson when they had been to fetch it. A fine exchange.


On Tuesday, Omiya had its own Sparks Festival, which gave the loca retirees an opportunity to stroll around almost bottomless while drinking beer and lifting floats. I saw some quite unfortunate sights as the men bowed hello and goodbye. As pert as they were for 60-year-old arses, it`s still not top of my must-sees. Afterwards, Edwin and I carried on drinking in my apartment where he continued to appal me with his hideous views. A week or so earlier we had had some weird, unwitting date, when he asked me if I needed a hug or a beer (he`d seen me in a mood the previous evening) and I opted for beer, but had to provide my own, and a movie. It was much as I remember `dating` when I was a teenager, being surrepticiously lured into lascivious situations (near-total darkness, in this instance - he did ask if I minded, but you aren`t actually allowed to say yes, are you?), laughing excessively at things I said that weren`t funny (and using this as an excuse to touch my leg, so I shuffled further and further away, until I was half-wedged under his table), trying to get me drunk (it`s a rich man - or a landlord - that can do that) and, finally, when all else had failed, whipping out some home-cooking. All during this, he continually deferred to my opinion and played dumb by claiming not to understand the goings-on in a fairly simple movie plot. As he`s almost a foot shorter than me, he wasn`t exactly ruining his chances, but he didn`t help himself by punctuating all this with claims that men are genetically programmed to cheat and that racism is also natural, so not worth fighting. Tuesday we had more of the same, but without the warm rice.


Premier Club. Worth getting up at 7.30am on a Saturday for?











This is Omiya, the view from my apartment building. Compare it to the picture of the Japanese garden and you`ll understand why I haven`t shown anyone before.





My street.















Yoshitatsu.













The Asahi Building, Asakusa, Tokyo.












The Cafe Lampers: Yukako, Kaori, Ryoko, me, Nozomi. I`ve no idea what the men`s names are. The one on the left is Ryoko`s boyfriend, possibly Takeshi - the Japanese Steve.






Reina, Yoshitatsu and Nanaka.














Sean enjoys FHM.














Let me eat cake.













Puppets `performing` kabuki in the Tokyo-Edo Museum.














Kyu Yasuda Garden, Ryogoku - where the Sumo tournaments take place. Everyone was disappointingly slim when I went.









Yuta and Kippei learning prepositions: the boys are on the table.

To be continued...

For those of you kind enough to notice I`ve not been as talkative as late, I`m just waiting for my broadband to be set up (never a speedy process in this least efficient, but overly thorough, of countries) before I barrage you with a deluge of nonsense. Watch this space.

Slight return

It seems like a long time since I was home scorching myself at Felixstowe with Billy and Bentley, but I thought I`d stick up the pictures of them anyway. Billy is the one with jaw-jut and Bentley the one with an attitude problem. He went for me almost every day in England. It didn`t do much to stop me missing Stussy. It would be nice to have a pet out here, so I am taking small steps to befriend a pack of ten tabbies who have appeared from nowhere. When people move house in Japan, sometimes they move quite literally, taking the place apart and rebuilding on a more desirable plot of land. This has happened by my apartment and ten overly friendly strays can now be found lurking in the muddied grounds. I have my eye on two of them, but am not sure my conscience can really allow me to steal them from such a happy and healthy extended family. I expect it can.

It`s taken no time to get used to being back. In spite of no one believing me, Japan can be quite mundane. By Saturday night, I was dreading returning to my little box and having to work on Monday. Work was, as always, quite fun, until I lost my voice from a combined assault of air conditioning, jetlag and the Japanese summer. By Saturday, I was a hacking mute and had to whisper to a class of five rowdy seven- and eight-year-olds that I couldn`t shout so they would have to be quiet. Ludicrously, they consented.



It`s been very nice being back. Japan has taken its World Cup Defeat on the chin and the joozu Kawaguchi can be seen on TV with `I Will Survive` as the backing track. This week, I have been in a mood because of over-tiredness, but very little has happening to genuinely warrant it. I`ve had several very nice nights out catching up with everyone as though I had gone for two months, instead of two weeks. On my first proper night back, I went to the George and got drunk with the man himself and Jerry and Koji. Kate and her boyfriend popped in to say hello and some other people were also involved, but the red wine blanked them out.

On Thursday, I had a girls` night out with my lunatic friends, Kaori and Yukako and the more sensible Nozomi and Yoko. Kaori wanted to go to the George for pizza, which was a disappointing suggesting I was unable to deflect until we passed a new izakaya called Gachi Samurei and I managed to herd them all in there where we were drowned out by the bellowing `rashaimase`s` of the staff. I didn`t miss this yodelled ritual which humiliated you whenever you enter any establishment that expects you to spend money. The nicer ones do it quietly, so it seems homely and authentic, but other places make such a meal of it, there`s a vocal Mexican wave ending with a newly deaf customer clutching their bleeding ear drums. We spent the night with Yukako and Kaori propounding their strange beliefs about `foreign boyfriends`. Kaori is scared of them, but won`t date Japanese for no good reason, whereas Yukako dislikes the traditional values of Japanese boyfriends so is dating a man she is not attracted to, has sex with with the light off and is trying to `decrease the opportunities she has to see him`. Rob, if you`re reading this, give up.

Wednesday, I had had a far more reasoned evening with Mike and on Friday he accompanied me as I bought my laptop. I knew what I wanted, but I needed his emotional and moral support to part with such an enormous sum of money. I am now the overly-proud owner of a brand-new MacBook and as soon as I have my broadband connection, will be updating these pages more regularly. I am not sure when that will be, as Gerraint and I had quite an ordeal sorting it. We went to a store Friday evening to get it sorted, but were abandoned in the aisles by a fat man in an apron, so decided to try a different store. There, a man with perfect English directed us to a man with none who was to complete the deal.

Before this, Mike and I had an epic shopping trip. First we tried Akihabira, but it`s is full of low-budget electrical stores that reek of dishonesty, expired warranties and faulty goods, so we tripped off to the Mac Store in Ginza (much like ditching Dixons for Bond Street) and I fully exquiped myself for all eventualities. After that, we marched around trying to find somewhere reasonably priced for a drink or some food (Ginza is too posh for vending machines) and eventually came to stop on the roof terrace of a plush department store, complete with pet store and golf range. It was mucky and quite random, even offering its own shrine for those who wished to get their newly purchased koi blessed. After that, we decided we deserved a treat and headed to Ganpachi, the restaurant Koizumi took George Bush to during his recent visit.