Firstly, a huge apology. I haven’t updated in a long time because I’ve been really busy. I know that’s no excuse, and to make up for it I have lots of updates ready to go. This first one is about my recent visit to Odaiba, a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay. To get there, you must travel over the Rainbow Bridge by rail. As I was inside a train I couldn’t take any photos of the bridge, but here is the best one I could find of the bridge by day;

and by night;

Don’t worry, Japan have not stolen the Statue of Liberty. For some reason there’s a replica of it in Odaiba. I don’t know why but I think it’s to promote international cultural interest or something. It’s not working, as when I told one of my students at the school that the statue in Odaiba is based on a statue from America, they immediately told me that I was infact wrong and that the Americans had stolen the idea for the statue. Those crazy Americans!

Anyway, I was joining one of the teachers from the school and his daughter on a trip to the huge Panasonic centre and science museum. From the moment I got there I knew this was serious business when I spotted this in the middle of the room;

You can’t really appreciate how big this thing is from the photo. It’s about the same height as I am lengthways (~6″2), and the image quality was razor sharp. The rest of the floor was covered in various Panasonic products, including home entertainment systems that clocked in at up to £8,000 ($16,000/¥1,800,000), mobile phones thinner than Calista Flockhart and plenty of other very expensive things I could write terrible analogies about. One company who got a lot of floor space were Nintendo, who never miss a change to spread their influcence to another generation of their motherland;

I didn’t get any photos of the science museum itself because they didn’t allow flash photography and the room it was held in was pitch black. The museum itself was amazingly clever though – everything you do is fed back to a little control you carry round with you. Based on the order you do the activities, as well as the speed and success, a little computer character grows on your screen. Mine was purple and blue and spinny and that can only be a good thing.

The other fun thing we did in Odaiba was go on the huge wheel. It’s not as big as the London eye, but it does boast heated seats and really small cabins for that “I’m going to die and I won’t even have room to walk around when I do” feeling. I hope I can go again during the day so I can get some arial Tokyo shots. For now though, this photo will have to do.

Well, that’s all for my trip to Odaiba. I know this update was a little boring but I’m getting back into the swing of things after my haitus. Bear with me! :)

Quite a few people have been asking me if I was affected by the recent Tsunami warning. It wasn’t that big a wave, and it missed Tokyo by a long way. Even if it hit Tokyo, it would have a hard time making it all the way to my flat. So don’t worry!

I’m working on a few updates right now – they should appear soon. Stay tuned! :)

Welcome to the second part of the epic. Sorry I didn’t post this yesterday but I had to teach my evening English class. Anyway!

Saturday Night

All pictures for this section taken by Matt.

By now the wear and tear is starting to show. We had to drag ourselves into work (on a Saturday! What is this madness?!) and promote the school by smiling and handing out paper, then teaching a lesson to the visiting twelve year olds. Overall it was a success, which was surprising considering we were practically unconscious throughout. By all accounts it would have been wise to stay home and recuperate after the last two evenings. Any sane person could see that, whilst going out would be great, it’s just not good for you to go out three days in a row. But then we went out anyway because that’s just the wacky, off-the-wall kids we are.

We decided to head to Shibuya with two friends of ours, Saki and Satomi. Both of them are studying English at university, so they cleverly trick us into teaching them English despite the fact we’re not their teachers. Still, it’s more fun than sitting at home, I guess.

What we forgot was that most Japanese people have incredibly low alcohol tolerance thresholds. By the time we’d got through a glass of cheap Champagne and a Malibu & Coke each, poor Saki was quite literally out of there, with Satomi not that far behind. The picture above was taken as we came out of the first bar before heading to the second. We found a wonderful little bar called Moonshiner, on about the 10th floor of one of the many towers of entertainment that loom over Shibuya. It was great because it had exactly none of the following;

• Groups of loud, drunken businessmen who don’t want to upset you they just want to talk at each other really really loud because apparently when Japanese men drink all their friends become hard of hearing.
• Japanese Pop music. This is made by taking American Pop music, dipping it in sugar, then playing it at 4x speed.

Infact, it was just us there. It was fantastic. It was maybe a little bit on the expensive side but it was absoloutly worth it to get a break from the mobs. I am confident that Saki and Satomi enjoyed it too, although I wouldn’t bother asking them as they probably can’t even remember their own names.

Sunday Night

What The Dickens is an English pub in Ebisu, famous because before it was a pub, it was used by the Aum Shinrikyo sect to pray and to plot their various terrorist attacks on Tokyo. Nowadays it plays host to much more innocent things, including Matt singing Croatian songs.

The entire thing was in support of ending Fistula in the third world. It’s not a pleasant subject so if you’re really interested in it you can look it up yourself. It was made up of very abstract, unique acts, which ranged in quality from Nobody Understands Us student performances to some really quite fantastic stuff. A band called Rain In Eden put on a rather good show, but I think the night was stolen by The Croatian Singers, which consisted of a Croatian, a Canadian, an Australian and a Brit.

Of all four nights, I’d say Sunday night was probably the most interesting – I’ve never heard a song about a Croatian Peacock before and now I have and that’s something I can write in Christmas Cards. Still, I think this may be the last time for a while that we go out four times in a row. At least until the Hokkaido volunteers visit us at Christmas, because they want to go out every night. For two weeks. Urk.

12th December Update: I rewrote part of this article to clear up some issues about our relationship with Saki and Satomi. We are not their teachers and we would never go drinking with our students. I apologise for any misconceptions. I am not a bad guy! Thanks to Bryce Tanner for pointing this issue out.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night all saw Matt and I hit the town. Four nights in a row really starts to punish you after a while. So much infact that it’s taken me all of Monday and most of Tuesday to recover enough to write this update so that’s why it’s late stop emailing me asking me if I died.

Thursday Night

Part of the Gap Year project in Tokyo is working with in a Kindergarten in Higashi-Jujo, one train stop away from Oji. This means coming into school on Thursday morning, teaching a 10 minute English lesson, walking back home, getting changed, walking to the nursery, helping out for a few hours, walking back home, getting changed and walking back to school. Whilst it sounds like a huge hassle that isn’t worth it, the attention that we get from the kids makes it all worthwhile. Simply put, they love us. We’re big, strange looking people who pay lots of attention to them and let them bully us and really that’s the coolest thing ever for a Japanese three year old.

Most of the staff are ~23 years old, and have an inexhaustible amount of patience. There are a few children that are scared of us because we’re big scary caucasian juggernaughts and they’ll point blank refuse to come near us. At the same time, there’s kids who just want to see what it’s like swallowing bleach, not forgetting the kids who just want to know if an adult’s back can be broken with a well aimed punch to the spine or, in my case, the knee. Through all of this, the staff will organise the children into groups for singing or origami or whatever activity we have lined up today, as well as fight off intrepid four year old martial artists and put out fires and whatever else the kids have done.

So it’s hardly suprising that when Matt and I invited them out for a meal and a drink they leapt at the chance. Because they are continually in the prescence of children who’s English consists of “Hello! Hello! Hello!”, they get little chance to practice. So we had one of our most challenging nights, but through the miricle of “~nan desu ka?” (What’s is it?) we had a great time.

Friday Night

Work on friday consisted of angry 13 year Japanese boys refusing to speak English, lots of nasty bright halogen lights and a mild hangover. In the interests of our health, then, we decided to head to local Irish bar The Warrior Celt, situated in lovely Ueno. They usually have a live band playing, hundreds of people packed into a room, and a thick blanket of smoke looming overhead at all times. Surely they will speed the healing process?

Sadly, they didn’t. However, I’m glad we went as we made more friends. More friends means more photos! Hurrah!

I don’t photograph well on sleep deprivation…

The Japanese guy (bottom left, second photo) is my buddy Yoshiaki. We meet up and he teaches me Japanese and I teach him English and then we drink too much and forget everything and the beautiful cycle restarts, like the seasons.

The entire room was packed for the African Drumming Tribal Band (Great…that’ll cure the headache…) and there was no room to sit down unless you had been there for hours previously. Lucky then that we were dining with Austrailians so they had got there to save us the table much earlier. They then realised they had two extra seats so they invited a pair of Japanese girls to sit with them and then we arrived and now we are all best friends. That’s how Japan works.

Anyway, I will write the second two nights out tomorrow, as the son of the headache I slayed may be coming back to avenge his father.

What do three young, hip and crazy cats with time to kill do in Tokyo? They go to Karaoke! Last weekend Matt, Lynsey (who came to see Feeder with us, remember?). It’s actually our third or fourth time doing Karaoke but I thought I’d write about it anyway.

Karaoke is not what everyone thinks it is. It’s not a load of drunken businessmen disgracing themselves to Bohemian Rhapsody. Karaoke in Japan is a very serious, multi billion dollar industry and, just like everything else in this country, it’s organized meticulously. You go in and you book your time in slots – down to the nearest minute. If you want to sing for 59 minutes, you’ll get 59 minutes. (Although if you run over by a few minutes to finish a song the staff will let you because in Japan you do not interrupt someone’s song if you do a thousand curses will descend upon you.)

To order a song you pick up the hand held infra-red controller and find the song by searching it’s onboard library. The library is updated in real time from the control deck downstairs, so if a new song is added you can select it immidiatly. The song itself will then appear in the queue of tracks, and when it’s your turn the words pop up in front of some random stock footage video. The videos that play behind the words are hilareous, and their plots include;

• Japanese man falls in love with Japanese girl, has fight with jeleous boyfriend of said girl, then sings a song for no apparent reason.
• Rain falls over Tokyo. People dance for no apparent reason.
• Girls wearing next to nothing dance for no apparent reason.
• Flowers sway in the wind. People eat rice then dance for no apparent reason.

It’s a real challenge to keep a straight face when two fully grown men are pelvic thrusting in a shopping mall on widescreen TV.

It’s hard to imagine how big these Karaoke places are, but as a rough guide I’d say you could fit around 7 people in each room, and there can be up to 700 rooms in one Karaoke establishment, and after 5pm weekdays and all weekend these will fill up entirely. Karaoke has become totally essential to the Japanese as an icebreaker and really is ingraned into society. I asked my students if they like Karaoke and it’s like asking Madonna if she likes making poor career choices. I guarantee you, if you ever come to Japan, the Japanese will ask you if you like Karaoke. If your answer is yes, they’ll laugh and take you to Karaoke. If your answer is no, they’ll take you anyway.

Whoops! I forgot!

I want to show the video of a song Lynsey sang at Karaoke once. It’s by a Japanese woman from Okinawa. Thanks to Youtube ect. Enjoy! The video is available here. It’s by Rima Natsukawa and it’s called Nada Sousou. Everyone in Japan knows it – it was huge a few years ago.