Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

Not In Peak Condition After A Day Trip To Hotaka Mountain

Posted on April 6, 2010 by tokyofox

I had to be up very early on the 17th March to meet my colleague Ash to go snowboarding on a one-day return trip. He booked it the day before so I had no idea where we were even going. It turned out to be an eventful day at Hotaka in Nagano but for all the wrong reasons.

No problems with the weather (sunny), the bus (spacious) or the price (3100 yen) but as we went to get on the chair lift to start we got a bit tangled up and having not warmed up I embarrassingly fell off and lay in agony for a few moments fearing I had damaged my thigh badly. As it was, I was back up and ready to go within a few minutes.

Time to continue from where I left off last year but that didn’t quite go so smoothly either as I had a tumble half way down the mountain which ended up with me badly injuring my little finger. A bad case of cramp followed before our next descend and then I decided to alter the board (very kindly given to me by Ethan last year) to make the foot settings ‘goofy’ (right foot forward) rather than normal (left foot first).

Hoping that it would be plain sailing after that I uttered the immortal words “nothing can go wrong now!” and I was right for the next 2-3 hours before Ash decided to attempt a fairly simple barrel jump (that I chickened out of) which he wanted me to record on his camera.

Inevitably he fell but little did I know at the time that there was anything wrong. He was in agony with a bad wrist and walked back up to the top to get help while I had to carry his board down which wasn’t so easy as I found out when I fell on my ar*e to great pain. When I got to the bottom Ash arrived on the back of the snowmobile and that was basically the end of our day as he was left with no choice but to basically wait till we returned to Tokyo to get it seriously checked as cancelling his bus ticket and taking a taxi to the nearest hospital and back would have been more hassle than it was worth. Ultimately, his wrist was broken and has since been fitted with a metal plate and my finger has yet to recover properly.

Posted in Action & Adventure | Tagged hotaka mountain, snowboarding hotaka | 2 Comments

C*ck A Load Of This – Atami ‘Hihokan’

Posted on March 18, 2010 by tokyofox

I’m not really one to spend too much time looking at the statistics for this blog (would make depressing reading!) but when I do look the one article which people seem to look at is the C*ck A Load Of This one from a couple of years back about the penis festival. With that in mind here is a blog entry which could be described as the natural follow up. Last Friday myself and Michael went a couple of hours west of Tokyo to Atami which is loved by the domestic market but not of such interest to international travellers.

The Japanese are obsessed with onsen (hot springs) and travel far and wide to soak naked in a big communal bath. Not for us though. Instead, we walked along the quite picturesque harbour-front to the ropeway where it was not so easy to actually find a way up the hill as the idea of not taking the ropeway is something that Japanese just don’t consider! We didn’t go in the castle at the top as it seemed expensive. The views across the harbour are supposed to be reminiscent of Naples. I don’t know about that but on this sunny day the view sure was pleasant.

Our main port of call was a little further down the hill and was Atami Hihokan; the extremely over-priced ‘Adult’ Museum. Needless to say that I was very amused by this sex museum and its silly and fun exhibits. These included a replica of a Whales sexual organs, traditional Japanese sex-art drawings, interactive displays including a Marilyn Monroe mannequin with a crank attached which you turn to create wind for her skirt to blow up, window boxes displaying some funny figurines involved in sex fetishes, amusing holograms, video’s, a 100 yen penis to ride on, old-school video games to grab some cr*ppy sexual prizes and the ubiquitous souvenir shop which inevitably featured a load of phalic shaped food and crafts.

Posted in Hentai, Japan Life, Japan Travel, Quirky Japan | Tagged Atami hihokan, Atami sex museum, Japan Sex Museum, where is the japan sex museum? | 5 Comments

I Am A Machine!

Posted on March 10, 2010 by tokyofox

The new Terminator is revealed….

Posted in Films | Tagged new terminator, terminator, terminator kids toy | Leave a comment

Use The Forks!

Posted on March 3, 2010 by tokyofox

Not exactly topical but one present which I got from my sister and brother-in-law while home at Christmas was a spinning fork (I should add that this wasn’t all they bought me!) which is designed for eating spaghetti and possibly even noodles. This could easily be considered a useless appliance and the kind of thing which may have featured in the ‘Useless Japanese Inventions’ book which I bought my dad for Christmas a couple of years ago.

These inventions go by the name of chindogu (of which some can be seen in the photos below) although no student I mentioned this to over the years has ever heard of the word! I tried to use the fork to eat a special White cup noodle bought a month ago but gave up fairly quickly. I didn’t fare much better a few days later when eating spaghetti pasta.

Posted in Family, Food & Drink, Quirky Japan | Tagged chindogu, useless japanese inventions | Leave a comment

10 Years On…

Posted on March 2, 2010 by tokyofox

Last weekend saw Manchester United win the League Cup which incredibly means that its ten years since Leicester became the first Wembley cup winners of the 21st century. That win for us in the final (ensuring European qualification) followed by the 5-2 crushing of Sunderland had us City supporters believing that we were to become one of the Premier League’s top teams.

What happened after that was a downward spiral which saw that great team ripped apart followed by relegation, administration (albeit in a promotion season), relegation, a few years of keeping our heads above water and then relegation to the unchartered waters of third tier.

When the latter happened in May 2008 we thought the worst but maybe it was a blessing in disguise as the club appointed Nigel Pearson, which didn’t exactly capture the imagination of the fans. However, we bounced back at the first attempt with him at the helm and are currently looking odds-on for a Play-Off spot which would give us the opportunity of taking our place back in the top flight. We may not be ready for the big stage just yet but I am a believer that its better to do it ASAP rather than staying in the Championship for a few seasons like some people would seemingly prefer.

Posted in Leicester City, Sport | 2 Comments

My GF Thinks The Word Jewellery Has A Nice Ring To It

Posted on February 20, 2010 by tokyofox

It was my girlfriends birthday recently so I treated her to some jewellery. Now, I have no idea what women like when it comes to this kind of thing so I insisted that she come shopping with me and choose something. Being a typical woman she couldn’t decide whether to have a ring or necklace that she liked. Apart from having my ear pierced for a while in the year 2000 I have never really worn jewellery and don’t really have an interest in it so wanting to get out of the store I said that she could have both and very pleased she was too. We then went to a restaurant and another bar followed by a karaoke session.

Posted in Japan Life | Leave a comment

Doing It By The Book

Posted on February 16, 2010 by tokyofox

Not only did I bring back the cracker toy frogs from England at the start of the year but I also brought back a couple of books to use in some kids classes as part of a storytime session. I picked up these books cheaply in the charity shops in my hometown. One was a Winnie the Pooh (simply called Pooh or Pooh-chan over here) book about colours for the really young ‘uns and the other was a Ladybird book about time which the lower elementary students have been studying recently.

Obviously when you’re using a story book in a lesson the kids aren’t gonna understand so many of the words but this shouldn’t stop one from using these extra resources. Much is often written about the more exciting games which can be done in kids lessons but a few calming activities are needed of which this is one. It’s not something I plan to do too often but its nice every once in a while. Previously, I had only done a ‘Where’s Spot?’ (about Spot the Dog) book with kids and the art of using this (and other books) in lessons is to make it a two-way reading session with the kids taking it in turns to turn the page and eliciting colours, objects and animals from them constantly while also (kind of) concept checking the nouns which I usually just do by acting the fool and saying the wrong animal name which they recorrect. As long as the books are fairly short then they can be a welcome addition to the classroom.

Posted in English Teaching, Japan Life | Tagged kids lessons, storytime in english lessons, using story books in english lessons | 1 Comment

A Cracker Of A Game

Posted on February 8, 2010 by tokyofox

Just before tucking in to the turkey on Christmas Day we pulled the crackers laid out on the table. As usual this was a waste in return for just a pathetic bang sound, a sh*te joke, a paper hat and a useless plastic toy. A couple of the cracker gifts this time included a couple of jumping frogs which after a bit of thought I decided could be put to some use in kids lessons when I returned to Japan.

The TESOL course last year taught me the importance of finishing lessons on a high (as kids and indeed adults often remember only how they felt as they left the classroom) so as a warm-down activity for the last few minutes the kids and I had a couple of simple frog jumping competitions with the winner being the one who got the frog nearest to the end of the table. If it went off the table then it would not count. I gotta say that I was pretty amazed how much the kids loved these pointless and meaningless activities!

Posted in English Teaching | Tagged cracker toys, english games, frogs, warmer | 1 Comment

TF Film Review: Invictus (2009)

Posted on February 2, 2010 by tokyofox

Nelson Mandela was one of those names I grew up hearing quite often without actually knowing too much about him. Difficult to believe now but when I was a child I only knew the name from Nelson Mandela Park in Leicester or Nelson Mandela House in the BBC comedy series ‘Only Fools & Horses’. It wasn’t until he was released from prison that I really found out the important facts. The 1995 Rugby World Cup soon followed which the South Africans won on home soil spurred on by their then-new inspirational leader and that is what the new Clint Eastwood directed film ‘Invictus‘ is about. The film is released in Japan on February 5th but I managed to see it the other week thanks to the wonders of the internet.

I am a fan of Matt Damon (who plays the Springbok Captain Francois Pienaar) and Morgan Freeman (as Mandela) is a legendary actor and while their South African accents seem OK to me (lets be honest, I am not the best person to judge what is a good accent) I don’t think they’re as good as Leonardo DiCaprio’s in ‘Blood Diamond‘.

The political side of the movie is very interesting and while I can’t really fault the main actors it is the usual scenario for re-creating sporting action which bothers me. The final was played in Johannesburg but in the film it is clearly played in Cape Town and at the start of the game the kick off is one of the tamest kicks which seemingly only travels a few metres which is technically an infringement. Also, the film does not at any time mention the fact that the All-Blacks squad were sick with food poisoning. No doubt there are a few other innaccuracies which I didn’t notice from just one viewing of the movie. What I did see while watching the end credits (I wanted to see if there were actually any professionals used for the teams) was that my country was shown as England Rose’s rather than just England which is just the kind of Americanisation thing that annoys us Brits.

Overall, it is a film about the South African nation coming together (although the events in the film are portrayed as solving the country’s problems) and if you just treat it like the Hollywood production which it is and forget (or don’t know) about the Rugby side of it then its enjoyable. After all, its not a Rugby film but one of Mandela’s first presidential term after the fall of apartheid.

Tokyo Fox Rating 7/10

Posted in Films, Sport | Tagged 1995, films about nelson mandela, invictus, matt damon, morgan freeman, nelson mandela, rugby world cup, south africa | 1 Comment

Attack Of The Clones Filming Locations: Star Wars Traveller – Naboo (a.k.a. Seville)

Posted on January 26, 2010 by tokyofox

A lot of my time in Seville was spent at Plaza de Espana which is a semi-circular open place featuring ceramic tile buildings, a fountain, bridges and a canal.

This place was my first port of call for the main reason that it was used for about 30 seconds in ‘Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones‘ (2002) when Anakin and Padme followed by R2D2 arrive on Naboo and walk to the Queen’s palace. It was also used in ‘Lawrence of Arabia‘ and played the part of ‘Cairo’ officers’ club.

CGI was used in the Star Wars film to add domes, modify buildings, alter towers and mirror the whole place to create an oval.

First impressions as I entered the site were of disappointment that parts of it were like a building site which often seems to be the case when visiting tourist hotspots. They are seemingly always under construction! Thankfully, that was only near the entrance and although the canal was dirty it wasn’t really noticeable as I wandered round the place.

Although it was a bit run-down and decrepit in parts it really was a beautiful place and I am quite surprised that it features so little in the guidebooks on Seville. There were basically only three parts of the plaza used by the Star Wars film crew (only two made the final edit – all three can be seen in the first couple of minutes of this video) and they included the fountain, one of the bridges and the undercover rim of the plaza. Having used my R2D2 figure in Tunisia I couldn’t resist the idea of using it in a few photo’s at the Plaza. What luck that I just happened to have it in my bag!!