Andy in Tokyo

Daily Tokyo Occurrence 1: The Street Sloth

The Street Sloth is a particularly widespread pest. It is native to Tokyo, but has now spread throughout Japan, and can even be found in some of the world’s major cities during the summer migratory period. This heel-clad monstrosity walks along pavements in a zigzag fashion, blocking the progress of anyone who would like to get to work before Christmas.

The Street Sloth has an ingenious method for killing its prey: it will walk in a straight line for a brief period, luring would-be overtakers into a false sense of security, before suddenly lunging “accidentally” into their way, forcing them into the path of an oncoming heavy-goods vehicle. It then feasts on the corpse, taking only the poor victim’s mobile phone strap as a memento of its kill.

The world’s greatest analogies

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Bounce.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now he goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelitly came as a rude shock, like a withdrawal fee at a formerly withdrawal-fee free cashpoint.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Tesco bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
12. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
13. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Manchester at 6:36 PM traveling at 55 mph, the other from Birmingham at 4:19 PM at a speed of 35 mph.
14. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
15. He fell for her like he was a mob informant and she was the East River.
16. Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
17. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
18. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
19. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was acutally lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
20. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fencepost.
21. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a Securicor van reversing.
22. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
23. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
24. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Novemberings

Well, it’s certainly been a while since my last post. Recently, I:

• discovered that any more than three pints of lager renders me out of action for the following two days;
• caved in to fierce internal pressure and bought an iPod Touch, plus a rather nice armchair from Muji;
• have pretty much finished my side of work for this year, although I’m sure something ridiculous will happen, forcing me to work late all December;
• booked my ticket home for Xmas/New Year (23rd Dec!).

Typhoon No. 9

Thursday night saw the arrival of Typhoon No. 9 in Tokyo, and it was a big ‘un: Winds reached speeds of 90 kph, at least two people died, and the city’s transportation network was thrown into chaos.

Meanwhile, I slept through the entire event, waking up at 8am to look out of the living room window to remark that it ‘looks a bit windy out’. Things seem to be back to normal now, at least in western Tokyo. The emergency services are well prepared for disasters – when you expect earthquakes to flatten everything at least once a century, dealing with typhoons must be more of a sort of training exercise for the Big Event, which will hopefully happen when I’m not here.

I came across an Engrish of staggering outrageousness today:

Continuing the phallic theme, I discovered this air freshener in an izakaya last week:

I live a life of exhilaration, of missed heartbeats and adrenalin

No, I don’t really. Sorry.

Since last month’s post life has – with the exception of Golden Week (which I’m sure you won’t need to hear about, as certain parties will no doubt have spread news of helicopter rides over Tokyo, knife sharpeners and little gallowas) – been very, very quiet. At work, we’re currently drafting and proofing material for publication later this year. It’s is a mind-numbingly tedious task with no immediate end in sight, and has left me with little time to do anything else save on weekends. And, to be quite honest, the extent of my weekend activities usually stretches as far as wandering around Inokashira Park, or watching a random movie I had recorded several months earlier.

After silent but ceaseless nagging from one of my co-workers I’ve decided to get back into learning Japanese. It’s been five months since I last picked up a textbook, and realised yesterday something needed to be done to stop the rot: As I stared filling out my details on an application form for a store loyalty card, it dawned on me that I could no longer write my address from memory, which was somewhat embarrassing. Anyway, I’m doing the same worksheets as native Japanese speakers, which means my current level of study is equivalent that of an elementary school student – smooth!

Company entrance ceremonies and hanami

If there’s one thing the Japanese love, it’s ceremonies, and as Japan’s new financial and school year begins on the 1st of April, entrance ceremonies for new recruits were held in companies all across the country this morning. For me (and the three hundred other people in our office), this meant getting to work an hour earlier than usual, and watching the whole thing live via video-link from our company’s headquarters in Osaka.

Now, I’m sure for all those fresh-out-of-uni types this must have been a heart warming day to remember. But… I really cannot fathom why we had to watch it. I mean, they wouldn’t know whether we were watching it or not… but weird things like this happen all the time and you get used to it after a while. Radio taiso – that’s the morning exercise routines – freaked me out for the first few days of work. I thought that had all gone out of fashion years ago, but no, a fair percentage of our staff still go through the whole routine of bouncing around to bizarre nursery-rhyme music for five minutes. I tried it once, and felt like a complete tool. Needless to say I didn’t try it again.

In other news, the cherry blossom has already… well… blossomed here in Tokyo. We went to the park yesterday to check it out, and it appeared the entire population of west Tokyo had decided to exactly the same thing. It was ridiculous, you literally couldn’t move for groups of shit-faced students singing and old fogies taking photographs with enormous cameras. The weather was fantastic also (above 20 degrees Celsius), which only helped increase the crowds by a further twenty percent. We sacked the whole thing off and went shopping after about fifteen minutes.

My word… I really shouldn’t write on here after working eleven hour days ever again, it’s far too depressing…

Like an old friend

The film that has done the most to ingratiate Tokyo to Western audiences over the past few years has to be Lost in Translation. The first time I saw it was towards the end of my first stint in Japan, and for some inexplicable reason made me feel a huge wave of nostalgia.

The first couple of months in Japan had streaked through my life like a Sunday morning train from Roppongi station (and I know all about those, much to displeasure of my bank account). I can’t say I was able to spend my time exploring the fascinating new country that lay beneath my feet, as my feet were usually trying their best to avoid stepping on the hyperactive throng of kindergarten kids I was supposed to be teaching. This miserable situation was compounded by my dismal surroundings: an apartment that, in any other country, would have been deemed too inhospitable for even the most savage of serial killers. The walls were made of toast. Toast made from very, very thinly sliced bread. I could hear the humming sound of my neighbours-neighbours fridge as clearly as if I had been wearing it for a hat.

Thankfully, I was able to move to a different city after a couple of months, and was befriended by a number of my fellow countrymen, who wasted no time in regaling me with their colourful accounts of life in this wonderful prefecture they called Saitama – “the Essex of Japan.”

Yes, together, we were the most negative group of individuals mankind had ever seen, but spend a few months in Saitama and you would understand. Its proximity to Tokyo invariably led to comparison, and an ever-present feeling that incredibly exciting things were going on just a bit further down the train line, just ever so slightly out of reach. And yet, here we were, with only our local video rental shop and Seven-Eleven’s for entertainment.

To be fair to Saitama the majority of complaints were made against our employers, who seemed to take great pride in screwing us over at every possible opportunity (and from what I’ve heard recently, still do). For me, every single Monday afternoon was hell on earth: Abandoned in the lowly confines of a scabby franchise school in the suburban wilderness with only a severe receptionist for company, whose only hobby – wrestling – incidentally happened to be first sport I would choose to be wiped from the entirety of human history. Add to that six hours of almost continuous kids lessons, and I was beginning to see the logic behind those lost souls who choose to jump in front of speeding express trains.

But as time passed, things began to fall into place. Those once-stressful days at work became carefree and routine, the holidays were long, and the weekends were for a good night out.

Eleven months after arriving in Japan, as I watched Bill Murray lovingly perform “More Than This” in some random karaoke box, at some random time way past normal people’s bedtime, I realised that it would be exactly those kind of things I would miss the most about Japan. The little things, the unusual things, the things that couldn’t happen anywhere else. I returned home one month later. But, as fate would have it, I wasn’t to return for long…

SARS!

The past five days or so has not been entirely enjoyable: I contracted a virus of some kind and was feeling pretty nasty come Sunday night. Foolishly, I decided to go to work for the next three days, under the delusion that I’d be able to fight it off.

I couldn’t.

Common sense (Ayako) prevailed on Thursday; I took the day off and visited the doctor, who gave me an injection of some kind and various other medications to take for the next few days. I’m currently taking seventeen pills a day and there’s no chance of a cheeky pint for the duration of this three-day weekend. Bollocks. I am feeling much better, though, so at least the drugs are working.

On Wednesday I finally received my JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) result, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I passed. I had been thinking I’d either scrape a passing grade of 60% or, more likely, fail by the tiniest of margins. I ended up with 77%, which wasn’t too bad at all. Listening turned out to be my weakest point, and writing/vocabulary my strongest, which is no way surprising.

Now, don’t think this in any way means I’m fluent in Japanese. I only took the third grade level out of four (with one being the toughest), so I have a long way to go yet. The second grade is, by all accounts, much harder; my current knowledge of kanji is around the 300-400 mark, but I’ll need to have mastered over 1,000 before I can even think about entering. If I can manage it before the end of the decade, I’d be more than chuffed!

Anyway, one thing I’ve learned from studying Japanese is if you don’t use it, or at least have a crack at it on a regular basis, it will quickly disappear from memory, which I imagine applies to all languages. I’ve been talking in Japanese a lot more recently, although my lack of vocabulary becomes absolutely mind-bendingly frustrating if I have to explain something I haven’t studied beforehand. I feel stuck in a bit of a trough with that at the moment, and really need to kick myself out.

ところで。お母さん、日本語の勉強をがんばってね！

Ginza

Taken from a restaurant in Ginza last night. I’m writing this entry using my mobile phone on the train home from work as there’s not enough arm space for me to open a book and read, and to be quite honest I’d rather not just have to stand and stare at the back of someone’s head for 10 minutes, which is the only other option. Last Friday some random weirdo decided to do a full gymnastic warm-up by using the handles for standing passengers. It was like a mobile version of the olympics, only totally rubbish. What was the other passengers’ reaction? Pretend to sleep, of course!

Moving On

Yes indeed, after eighteen months of teaching at A Big university I will finally be moving on to pastures new come the end of December. Learning some Japanese seems to have paid off and I’ve managed to secure a job in central Tokyo doing interesting stuff (well, interesting for me, at least). My new company wants to employ me for at least the next five years, so it looks like I’ll be in Tokyo for quite a while yet. But… it’s very possible I’ll be making business trips between Japan and the UK (as well as Australia, South Africa and Singapore – cool!) over the next few years, so I’m sure I’ll get a chance to see at least some friends and family sooner rather than later!

In other news:

• Bought a new sofa last week, which arrived this morning and is sweeeeeet. Lying on it feels like being back in the womb.
• The weather has turned: It’s now most definitely cold. The upside is that almost every day is incredibly clear and bright; I can see Mt. Fuji from my office again!
• Christmas has arrived. It’s impossible to go shopping without being bombarded by Xmas songs, tinsel, horrendous plastic reindeer and lights, so so many lights. But – what with Japan being not being a Christian country and all that – Xmas Day is in fact a normal working day. So what’s the effing point? Ey?
• Have a Japanese exam next Sunday and have come to the conclusion that I haven’t studied anywhere near hard enough recently. Oh well…

Today we decided to have dinner at home for once (we usually eat out on Saturdays). This is what we bought:

Now that’s what I call fresh! Cooking them proved a bit of a heart-wrenching experience (word of advice: never grill shrimp unless you are 100% sure they are dead first), but as you can see, the end result looked pretty good, and the taste wasn’t bad either. Recently I’ve been trying to at least put some effort into cooking. I think everyone has the impression that everything in Tokyo is ridiculously expensive (melons more expensive than human kidneys and so on…), but to be honest I would say the UK is probably even more expensive these days, especially when it comes to restaurants… But anyway, it’s late and I’m in dire need of sleep. Ciao for now.

The Train Warrior

On Wednesday I witnessed my first ever train fight, although it turned out to be somewhat different from how I imagined; which was something along the lines of two guys going at it using finely-tuned ju-jitsu techniques to defend the honour of their briefcases and ¥300 neckties. But anyway, allow me to indulge you…

As per usual Ayako and myself had managed to get a seat on the train (our station is the first stop, so it’s just a matter of waiting for the next train to arrive and then legging it on board to get a seat), and I was trying not to fall asleep. Ayako has to change trains a couple of stops before me, and after she and a few others disembarked all hell broke loose:

A middle aged woman had been patiently waiting to board the train and was first in line to get on, but!… behind her stood a complete tosser of a guy – no older than thirty, typical junior salaryman suit and demeanour – who was absolutely determined to get a seat, AT ANY COST.

Middle Aged Woman sensed the presence of a challenger as she boarded the train, and spied a free seat opposite my position. Junior Salaryman leapt onto the train, side-stepping Middle Aged Woman in an attempt to sit down first. Unfortunately both of them went for exactly the same seat, at the same time, which looked a lot like two highly competitive eight year olds playing musical chairs.

Middle Aged Woman had clearly had enough of dickheads pushing in front of her and, quick as a flash, stood up and elbowed the guy in the head. And when I say elbowed, I don’t mean in a “oh I’m so sorry” kind of way, this was a professional, advanced street fighting-style manouvre. Junior Salaryman looked, well, pretty shocked to say the least, but before he had a chance to say anything Middle Aged Woman decided to give him a few punches to the temple. Junior Salaryman’s legs flicked up in an attempt to shield himself from the blows, while all I could do was stare gormlessly at the two of them (well, what was I supposed to do?).

Eventually an older guy came and broke it up. Amazingly it was Middle Aged Woman who moved to a different carriage. Junior Salaryman, after rearranging his now deshevelled suit, pretended to sleep for the rest of the journey. I wanted to ask “how does it feel to be decked by a grandma?”, but my Japanese skills don’t stretch that far.

So, let that be a warning to you. When in Japan, DO NOT MESS WITH THE OLD WOMEN.