I’m sure you’ll be devastated to hear that new rules coming into Japan in the summer will stop you from making calls or blocking the rain whilst cycling. According to Asahi (the news company, not the beer);

Proposed revisions this spring will ban cyclists from holding an umbrella, listening to music, gabbing on the phone and riding in other reckless ways, sources said.

I can see the logic here. I wouldn’t call listening to music “reckless” if you have the volume down low. I move an extra rule be added “If the rider is listening to C-ute, he or she deserves what’s coming. Bonus points to be awarded to drivers for swerving to hit said rider.”

The article goes on to state;

“Triple-riding,” an unsafe practice in which a rider carries two children on a bicycle in attached front and rear seats, will also be prohibited.

Triple-riding will be punishable by a fine of up to 20,000 yen. Warnings will be issued for other violations.

Quite a hefty fine for providing two people with a helpful lift. Notice that whilst the article doesn’t mention “double-riding”, it also doesn’t talk about other multiples of people on one bike. My theory here is to bring enough people on the bike to avoid the rule. If all I get is a warning for balancing fourteen people on one bike then so be it. Notice it also states nothing about animals. Finally some slack for the many giraffe owners of Tokyo.

Not a particularly exciting news article so far, huh? Don’t worry. It’s all about to change;

Other more minor infringements, such as constantly ringing a bicycle bell while riding on a crowded sidewalk, will also be discouraged.

Yes! YES! Yes! Finally! There is nothing worse than walking along a sidewalk and having some idiot come up behind you and ring their bell every ten seconds. I seem to remember strolling down the pavement with friends in Oji and, upon being annoyed by some bell happy fool, forming a one person line in front of them. At least now I can rugby tackle them and perform a citizen’s arrest.

But wait! It gets better!

Under the proposed revisions, bicycles will in general be required to be ridden in road lanes, not on pedestrian sidewalks.

I don’t know if I should consider this an early birthday present (March 29th!) or a late Christmas present, but either way this is the best news I’ve heard in a while. Bikes were the absolute scourge of the pedestrian; swinging out in front of you left, right and centre. More than once I considered jamming a stick into the spokes of some annoying kid’s stupidly expensive bike.

So there you are. One-nil to us walkers. But what of the unicyclists?

Good news everyone! Due to some generous gifts from my family, combined with my ability to live without spending any money, it looks like I’m going to be able to afford to go to Japan for a few months in the summer! Hurrah!

Whilst I don’t know much about the trip yet, I wanted to talk about what I plan to do, and I urge anybody who reads this blog to post any suggestions they have for trip activities. If all goes to plan I will be staying in Oji in Tokyo again, hopefully staying with Junten school for very little. Whilst this does limit my travel slightly I am planning to travel. Here’s a quick list of my plans.

1. Visit Kyoto & Osaka
I am 100% going to do this. My mother will be on my trip with me, and I would be a terrible son if I didn’t show her the amazing sights of Kyoto. Visiting Osaka is something I wanted to do in my gap year but for one reason or another I couldn’t make it. What made it worse was that Nate managed to make it there and told me it was fantastic. So I blame him.

2. Visit Nikko
Considered the “other Kyoto”, Nikko isn’t too far from Tokyo and plays host to some of the most beautiful shrines in the country. Long term readers will know I am utterly obsessed with shrines, so I will definitly be making a trip here.

3. Visit Kyūshū?
This again was a plan I thought about in my gap year but sadly I couldn’t make my funding stretch far enough to cover it. Hopefully being able to just pack up all my belongings in one bag will allow me to get there. I may even hitchhike, as I hear Japan is the only country really safe enough nowadays to do so. Plus I hear you can meet some great people doing so. If I do hitchhike, I’ll post about it on here before going. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, call the blog police and they’ll come find me.

4. Get horribly drunk
Obviously.

5. Ascend the Tokyo Tower
Something I never did, even though my volunteer partner Matt did it twice (I think). I’ve been in an apartment that looks onto it which was about half it’s height, and even from there the view was huge. I would love to get a couple of photographs from the top of the tower, then spend a good hour or so trying to find my old flat on it.

6. Return to Tsukiji Fish Market
My mother absoloutly loves seafood, so even if I din’t want to this is pretty much guaranteed.

7. Make a wish at Meiji Shrine
Last year I wished for good luck at university, something that I’ve had so far, so I think another journey would be in order.

8. Ride the Odaiba Wheel Again
In daylight this time.Even though it was nearly pitch black when I rode it last time the view was spectacular, particularly the rainbow bridge.

So there you are. Add to this the obvious ones like eat lots of sushi and look like an idiot in Karaoke, and you have my basic plan. This is where you guys come in – please comment with suggestions. I want to know what to do, and who better to tell me than strangers over the internet?

Roll on summer 2008!

According to Jamaipanese and Yahoo News, Tokyo is “Asia’s Capital” and the 4th most important city in the world. Apparently it was beaten by Paris in 3rd, New York in 2nd and a great win for my own country, with London coming in first place. Shame it’s a horrible city, really.

Anyway – I was thinking of ways Tokyo could change to win the title of “Best city in the world”. Hell, with a little work, it could even take “Best city in the universe”. Here’s my rundown of things Tokyo needs to take the title.

1. Marshmallow Rain
Whilst it doesn’t rain in Tokyo that much, when it does it really rains. We’re talking people having to swim to work and back. I think the only way to address this is to get a huge fan which gets turned on to blow all the rain away before it hits the city, then have planes fly overhead and drop marshmallows down on the unsuspecting but hungry public.

The drawbacks, I would imagine, would be getting marshmallows constantly stuck in your hair, cars chewing them up into their wheels and grinding to a halt, and people getting morbidly obese. But think of it this way – more people will shave their heads, leading to acceptance of those with bald heads already. Furthermore, less cars means less pollution! As for the weight issue, well I guess you could call it “packing for the winter”.

2. Futurama Transport Tubes
How awesome would that be. Imagine if you need to get from Shinjuku to Harajuku in 3 minutes. What do you do? Pay a measly 400 yen and hop in the tube. Whoosh. Thirty seconds later you are in the fashion capital waiting for your stupid friend who got the train.

3. Giant Fans
Anyone who’s been in Tokyo in the summer knows it gets unbearably hot and humid, like sitting in an oven. The only logical solution to this is to have giant fans everywhere. There are two ways to do this. Either they could have hundreds of little fans stuck to walls and so on, which would be nice but might make it a bit noisy. The other option would be to have one colossal fan, although that would mean if you jumped in the air near it you might land somewhere in China.

So there you go – three surefire ways to get Tokyo to #1 in the rankings. The city scored 74/100 (where London got 100) and thus has some way to go. But with enough money and little sense, my dream of a well ventilated city covered in marshmallows with tubes everywhere may become a reality. Vote Mike in ’08.

Engrish. It’s a fun name for the bizarre yet oddly meaningful misused English found on Japanese products and advertising. Today I thought I’d have a go at making my own Engrish. Engrish.com, the biggest site on the net for the stuff, suggested using the Babelfish translator to turn a block of English text into Japanese, then turning it back into English. So here’s what I came up with;

The welcome to JapanIsDoomed! I being able to understand this writing make that here, looking at that I desire, am delightful. In order to make that, I used the online translator for turning English to Japanese. After the thing where I turn that to English. I who actually am cheated have known. I should use that entirely from my own myself, but excessively it is lazy. Because I write this, the English north covered with the snow. I today speak in my friend of Japan, the fact that it is thing there where he is hot and burns was called to me. Me AM it emphasizes this not to lie exactly from the house to some rank. As fC-ute updator me it is not possible to wait in order to go to the summer!

What a lovely post. Apparently something burns my friend in Japan, which is kind of worrying. This was meant to be a little paragraph about the site and about me and my situation, but it turned into a poem of beautiful sentiment. Let’s try another. This time I’m going to translate my strangely popular °C-ute update. It was quite a long passage, so I’ve cut it down to just my favourite parts.

There is a video here. That do to see, the stop and reset bleeding from your ear. Depending upon me we being the same page, we want here. I warned.
Here’s the video. Watch it, stem the bleeding from your ears then return. I want us to be on the same page here.

“reset bleeding from your ear” sounds like collecting up all the blood and pouring it back into your ear. Gross.

If England is visited, I can record in the rocket, intending to bet blast on month can feel at rest.
If you visit England you can rest assured I’m going to tape you to a rocket and blast you to the moon.

Frankly this is lovely. I love the idea of being sent to the moon to feel truly at rest.

When song is enjoyed, leave the comment which includes your name, to come to sometime, me whether you desire in order for the spanner to strike address and.
If you enjoyed the song, please leave a comment including your name, address and what time you’d like me to come round and beat you with a spanner. Many thanks.

That’s right. Don’t mess with me or I’ll order a spanner to strike your address with. I assume that means hit your postbox.

So there you are. Whilst at first it may look like Engrish does little more than rip all sense out of English, I think it has a warm sentiment somewhere in there. I’m going to finish by translating a song. If anyone can guess what song it is in the comments, they will win a prize. (Entrecard credits probably). It’s quite easy.

The girl of exactly small town, having lived in the lonely world, him it can withstand her in south Detroit which takes the train of the midnight when it goes anywhere the train of the midnight when it goes exactly anywhere you raise the city boy the wine for smiling which you take and those ranges of the singer of smell of smokey room A of the cheap perfume depending, steadily and it can share the night when it goes steadily

I’ve been writing a lot about other places on the web that are of interest. That’s not because I want to get rid of you guys, I just want to share with my readers some of the places I use for Japan related news and so on.

In my New Year’s Resolutions post comments, Nick Ramsey posted about a new site called JapanSoc. Think of it as a Digg for Japan related things – users submit content and people vote on them if they’re interesting.

It’s pretty handy to say the least. Whilst it is very new, I fully intend to delve right in there, submitting and voting as much as I can to try to build a solid, sensible community. Plus, if you write content on your blog that applies to Japan rather than to you alone, it couldn’t hurt to submit your own content, right? Just don’t overdo it…

See you in the JapanSoc comment section, then… Look out for Mike. That’s me.