Established 2006 – 100+ NEW posts every year: Movie Locations, B-Grade Sights, Cycling Trips, Travel, Films, Railways, Foxes, Star Wars, J-League, Dining Out, Sport, LCFC…….
Last Wednesday I made my appearance at long last on Keikotomanabu.net which I talked about last month after I had had the photo shoot. There is an interview with myself which can be seen (though probably not read as its in Japanese!) here by clicking on my face. For those who have forgotten what I look like I am the one in the bottom left corner with ‘friendly’ written next to me though I don’t know who decided on such a thing! There are a few other teachers featured from other English schools as well as two other teachers from my company (we are in green) though I don’t know one of them.
Last Saturday was a nervous sweaty night for me and not just because I was on ‘standby’ for work the following morning. Instead I was very worried about the plight of Leicester City who looked like they could have been heading down to the third tier of English football for the first time ever had it not been for a vital last gasp winner at Preston.
Though we did ‘the great escape’ act in 1991 it is a whole new game now and we have encountered Play Off finals, Cup Finals and top half Premiership finishes since then. However the last few years have been absolutely dreadful but now we’re virtually assured of starting next season in the 2nd tier and hopefully with a team of players who are committed to the cause of helping Chairman Milan Mandaric realise his dream of getting us back where we hopefully belong.
It was a busy night for me with so much going on. I was rather scared of looking too much at what was happening in our game. I had one eye on the Leicester Tigers’ Heineken Cup semi-final (which they won and keeps their dreams alive of a clean sweep) while also dipping in and out of the Sky Sports on-line videprinter.
However, my main viewing was the three live Premier League games which are shown on SkyPerfect which I have recently had upgraded for the end of season games at home and in Europe. Every Celtic game is also shown thanks to Shunsuke Nakamura’s involvement and it’s fair to say he was very involved last Sunday with an injury time winner to give Celtic the title.
It might cost me a fair whack but it’s already proving its worth with many, many live games as well as highlights shows which saves me from downloading the BBC’s ‘Match Of The Day‘ (although I did see last weekend’s as I was intrigued to hear how the programmes first female commentator faired) which can be dangerous in terms of potential viruses. In fact I recently bought a portable hard drive to back-up all my photos and music as I’m getting more and more paranoid about the computer dying.
Due to the 8 hours time difference games are shown here at unsociable hours so it’s nice to be able to watch the games in bed rather than having to go out all night to watch a game kicking off at 3.45am. This has been highlighted in the last couple of days with a couple of big Champions League semi-finals involving British teams.
After watching the last World Cup with Japanese commentary only its been so nice to hear familiar voices which are taken from the BBC, ITV and Sky feeds. Never thought it would be so delightful to hear David Pleat’s voice! Sadly there is no presentation of the games so half time is very long with no analysis and just adverts and ground atmosphere and unbelievably they don’t edit any of this out on the many re-runs.
It must have been over 15 years since I last did some proper rock climbing but that drought ended last Sunday when I went to ‘Run Out’ which is in Nishi Kokobunji. I didn’t really know what to expect as I’d never done any indoor climbing before and was a little disappointed when I saw the place as I had expected a tower building of some sort.
Little did I know that once inside this wasn’t to be like the climbing towers which I encountered all those years ago at cub scout camp. They were a doddle compared to these which had various gradients with colour-coded routes of varying difficulty. I just could not follow such things as I have always just made-up my route as I’ve gone along.
As some of you will know I am no stranger to heights having done a skydive and three bungy jumps (which I don’t really like to talk about!!) but that certainly didn’t stop me from bricking it a little when I had to let go of the rope and descend. Some of the climbs were managed by an auto-belay device which helps you climb alone and retracts itself at the top and when you let go or fall your life is in its hands as it slowly lets you down.
All in all, 2500 yen (about £11) for three hours including instruction, shoes and the harness belt thing was good value although with the majority of the instruction being in Japanese it made it a little bit scarier as I had no idea whether I was grasping all the essential information. I remember going rafting up in Nagatoro on the Arakawa in Chichibu-tama National Park, Saitama, a couple of years back and being afraid that I would miss a very important, if not life threatening, instruction by simply not being able to understand it. Luckily I lived to tell that tale and this one too.
As maybe the only person who still wanted a ‘Big Mac’ after watching the ‘Super Size Me‘ (2004) documentary film it should be no surprise that I sometimes like nothing better than a visit to the golden arches (known in these parts as Makudonardos or just simply ‘Mac’) or ‘First Kitchen‘ which is the Japanese equivalent selling delicious flavoured fries.
Like most other things going to these types of restaurants is different in Japan as there are many types of person there. The first type of person is the one like myself; the gaikokujin who pops in and scoffs down a set meal while being surprised and amazed at the others. Space is limited in Tokyo so many people use fast food restaurants to relax in. Other common types are:
Sleeping Schoolgirl – this girl buys maybe one or two cheap things on the menu and consumes them with all her books out before inevitably falliing asleep as only Japanese people can in public.
Preening Queen – this is the girl who uses the restaurant more as a make up studio and concentrates all efforts on her appearance using a number of different tools and sprays.
Seat Hogger – this person doesn’t seem to understand that seats are limited but still selfishly uses up an extra seat or two for their coat and/or bag and gets away with it due to the Japanese lack of confrontation.
The One Drink Nurser – they buy one cheap 100 yen coffee and think this entitles them to while away hours conducting their business or reading or whatever while nursing their drink.
The Free Meeting Venue – usually consisting of old biddies having nothing more than a drink each while having their coffee morning chinwag.
The Slow Eater – This may help explain why Japanese girls are usually slimmer than their western counterparts. Although they may buy a regular meal they seem shy of eating it and just nibble at a few fries before they go cold and a few more are later consumed before the rest is left.
No doubt there are many more types but overall fast food restaurants seem to be far from a quick in-and-out for many Japanese who use the place as an office, library or their own quiet place away from their families and the everyday pressures and intensity which comes with living in such an over-populated city.
The new school year started in Japan this month which for me meant Spring Schools and new kids groups. I’ve talked about these schools before but for the benefit of the new reader(s) they are an extra two hour lesson (10am-12noon) for kids before our regular shift. Parents may regard this as a chance for their children to be educated further in English whereas others think its a good chance to get rid of them for a couple of hours!!
These ‘special’ schools weren’t as well-attended as last year so I only had two of them during the recent term break; the first was with Higher Elementary students and the second was with a Kindergarten group and that one was probably my smoothest one yet. Despite the earlier start to my day I was actually close to enjoying myself!
Two regular fun groups departed at the end of March with one of them being a mixed group of gigglers who always found things far more funnier than they actually were but thats kids for you. The one that really got to me though was a six year old called Rika who I have taught for the whole two years with this conversation school. Seeing her progress during that time was a pleasure for me to observe and i have to say I did feel a touch emotional when she said goodbye for the final time, said thankyou and presented me with a farewell box of biscuits.
Cherry blossoms in full bloom and temperatures in the late twenties last Sunday can only have meant one thing! However, i ignored the temptation to have a ‘hanami’ party and went about 140km north to visit Nikko in Tochigi with Gideon. After getting up at 7am we finally arrived there at about 11.30am having buggered up our final connection and sampled the local speciality straight away with Yuba (soy bean milk) soba for early lunch which I thought was very nice but as is often the case in Japan it wasn’t so filling.
First up on the sightseeing was the UNESCO World Heritage listed Toshogu Shrine which really is a beautiful sight and thats coming from someone who doesn’t really like shrines (which may surprise regular readers who have maybe read some of my dull reports on other shrines and temples recently) so much and is often underwhelmed by most things.
I first visited this site nearly three years ago during the summer of 2004 and that was not such good timing as the place was packed full with coach-loads of school kids but this time it was nowhere as busy on that scale but still full of other tourists as is the case if you go anywhere in Japan on weekends or national holidays which tend to be the only times when the Japanese don’t work.
About a month ago I had never even heard of the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ monkeys until my eldest sister Ruth told me about them and not-so-subtly suggested I buy her one. Typically I didn’t even notice this sacred stable of carvings last time but it caught my eye instantly this time and with many people re-creating the three poses I thought I would copy them but with an added twist which can be seen below and will please fans of the ‘Austin Powers‘ films!
We spent a few hours looking round the shrine which was maybe more to do with Gideon taking so bloody long snapping away in every direction and getting every possible angle. Our ticket entitled us to get entry into a few more temples and shrines so we visited a couple more which were very quiet and nice too though not a patch on the tourist trap of Toshogu. I did enjoy one though for no other reason that it had a hoop throwing game which i was very successful with getting a brace of perfect scores.
This special event started off on the other side of Tokyo Bay in Kachidoki last Sunday. La creme de la creme of teachers…..and myself (9 of us in total) were present to take two groups of kids to Odaiba on a London red double decker bus which is certainly a novel form of transport in these parts and all day we felt a little bit like stars as we were driven round Tokyo attracting much attention.
The idea was letting the students travel on a British institution and having a laugh on the top deck of our new workplace while getting the job done in terms of playing games and promoting the company name.
We started off with a reworking of ‘Old MacDonald’ but substituting ‘farm’ for bus’ (genius eh!) and continued with ‘…and on that bus he had a (teacher name)!’ which left us all slightly embarassed. However, as the song continued we were probably enjoying it far more than some of the kids who were very bemused by it all. Renditions of ‘Heads and Shoulders’, ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ and the inevitable ‘Wheels on the Bus’ followed.
Once in Odaiba we parked the bus and played games in small groups for about 40 minutes which was not so easy given the small and restricted confines on the top of a bus. My first game was a pelmanism game which involved the kids rolling a dice with colours on each face and the animal cards face-down had colours on them and they then had to individually make the animal noise which the others would guess. As always at any event a lot of improvisation was needed and I had to really stretch this fairly simple game out by slightly changing the rules.
I didn’t need to go on the second kids bus trip but not wanting to hang out in Kachidoki for two hours I thought I would just sit at the back of the bus and help out a bit with the craft part which was to make a 3D bus. Not a chance though as I got told to play an animal bingo game with the kids involving a spinning wheel which was certainly more interesting than the first game I did.
Next up was the adult party which was a bit more straightforward and involved drinking beer and mingling with them for a couple of hours which also included a game or two. These included ‘Guess the picture’, ‘Fizz-Buzz’ counting game and a game where teams were given a category and came up with five examples (i.e. 5 tall buildings, 5 rich people, 5 famous Brits etc) which the other teams had to try and guess.
Overall, it was a fun day and nice to get out of the classroom and do something a bit different even if it was on my day off.
At a bit of a loose end last Friday as part of my three-day holiday I met a friend at Yasukuni Shrine in Kudanshita. Like Meiji Shrine I think that the walk preceding the actual shrine is more interesting beginning with a giant wooden torii gate leading the way through gingko trees and the usual food stalls and a statue of the bloke who founded the Japanese army or something like that.
It must have been three years since I visited this place and back then I knew very little about the controversy surrounding it. When former Prime Ministers such as Junichi Koizumi have gone there it has caused uproar as fourteen class A war criminals among the 2.5 million war dead are enshrined here. Most of these protests are from China and Korea who suffered most from Japanese aggression during WWII. No such protests when I visited and nothing too controversial either.
In fact the most controversial thing to happen involved myself daring to take a photo in the Yushukan Museum where photographs are prohibited! This museum is next to the shrine but we only just made the last entry and so had to really rush round in order to see everything which didn’t bother me too much as I was getting a little bored and tired of looking at all the military related stuff.
In September 2001 I was on a years working holiday visa in Australia and having not done much work, I stopped off in Bundaberg in Queensland to earn a few bob. The only reason any backpacker goes there is to do some farm work and so it was that I spent a couple of weeks working in the field (pun intended!) of snow-peas and sweet potatoes. The type of work that many say is “character building” was actually a really good laugh and it had to be as we worked terribly long days in the heat and earned very little for it!!
The saddest part was that all any of us backpackers talked about in the pub on Friday nights after a hard weeks work was blo*dy peas and potatoes!! Enough to put one off these veggies for life!!
However, last Wednesday I was kind of re-united with my ‘old friends’ when I visited Kawagoe (30 mins north of Tokyo) which is famous for its sweet potatoes and these have been used for every possible concoction including ice cream, coffee, beer and also udon (thick noodles) which I wanted to try but that particular restaurant was too busy.
Kawagoe is nicknamed ‘Little Edo’ (Edo is the former name of Tokyo) and is also known for its old warehouse style buildings which, along with the landmark ‘toki no kane’ (Clock Tower), are the main sights in the Kurazakuri Street area.
I had been to Kawagoe before so don’t think its that interesting but due to its close proximity to Tokyo and the sunny weather, it was quite nice to walk around the city in a leisurely fashion seeing the aforementioned buildings as well as a couple of temples and a so-called castle.
On Monday I was summoned to work a little earlier than usual to do an interview and photoshoot for a Japanese magazine called Keikotomanabu which is for people who want to learn a new skill and they carefully handpicked me as the man to help out their thousands of readers. Or maybe I was just in the right place at the right time in terms of being sat next to my boss when she got the call and being in Shibuya on the day that they wanted to interview a teacher or two!!
Preceedings began with a short interview which was conducted by a rather nervous looking Japanese man and all my answers were relayed to him by a very nice woman. Whether she actually translated what i said i don’t know for sure. I just hope I don’t get misquoted! Unlikely as the typically dull questions were answered by myself in a standard cliched way. The usual stuff like how long had I been in Japan, why did I come to Japan, whats the most rewarding part of the job and what advice would i give to their readers.
Next was the photoshoot. I had thought it would just be a few photos and was quite surprised when I was directed for dozens and dozens of shots which inevitably were the most unrealistic stances and poses ever. This included standing with my hands on my hips in an almost-superhero type manner as well as trying to look intellectual while looking in a dictionary, pointing a pen, waving and holding a fake cheesey smile for what seemed like an eternity. Unfortunately my moment of fame will not be on their website for you to see until late next month but fear not as I will of course send the link when its up there.
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 