3 Day Weekend

In the weekend in the middle of the conference I took a bus halfway across Ireland to visit a Japanese friend of mine living in Galway. Dublin hadn't exactly felt Irish, particularly as everyone I met was from overseas, but Galway had a very Irish feel. Full of pubs and drunk people. Also the nice small lanes, churches, and country side, but mainly the pubs, which strangely all close at about 1 am.

From Galway we took a day trip out to the Aran Islands, which despite Ireland's almost perpetually damp and unappealing weather, have to be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Fields divided by ancient stone walls, castles thousands of years old, and even a white sand beach. But best of all, it actually stopped raining for most of the afternoon and turned into quite a pleasant day.

We hired bikes as it was about 10kms to the main castle we wanted to visit, and there were a lot of things along the way that buses wouldn't have stopped at. Explored a couple of nice castles along the way and one very nice ruined church. Check my brand new mechanical pocket watch that I had brought in Japan, and seeing we had time, even stopped for a bit at the beach.

Finally got to the castle, and had a nice relaxing lunch lying in the sun on the side of a 100m cliff plunging into the Atlantic. This time checked the time on my cell phone, and was somewhat shocked. Turns out I had forgotten to wind my watch that morning, and it was actually about an hour later than I had thought. The next 30 minutes of my life involved a quick trip down a hill and an energetic bike ride back to the boat that was about to leave. Got there 4 minutes before it set sail.

Europe Trip

Tomorrow I am leaving Japan, and going to Europe. Ill be there for nearly 4 weeks and will be visiting Dublin, Gdansk, Malmo and Madrid. So you don't have to google it, ill be visiting Ireland, Poland, Sweden and Spain. Its sort of an educational thing visiting a summer school in Dublin, with a holiday tacked on the end, that I hastily arranged about 3 weeks ago.

The choice of places to visit was based largely on a night spent using www.skyscanner.net a wonderful web page aggregator of information on European budget airlines. The trip is already costing me far too much and I couldn't really afford to visit specific places, so my apologises to all those people I would otherwise have come to visit. As it is though, I got flights from Dublin to Gdansk, Gdansk to Malmo, Malmo to Madrid and Madrid to Dublin, for about 100euro. That's less than the 137euro I'm paying to rent a room in a flat in Dublin for 10 days... The other days will be spent on couches and in hostels.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do in any of the places, but they all of nice churches and I've heard rumours of a castle or two, so I'm sure ill find ways to spend the time. Its going to be quite bad for my Japanese though, a month of not using it at all would be enough to forget quite a bit, but then i guess its easy enough to find Japanese tourists anywhere in the world.

Godzillas Birthday Party

Every now and then in Tokyo I come across a speciality store that only sells one kind of product. Occasionally its a type of food, or a shop that has every imaginable type of firework. But then other times its a shop that only sells balloons.

And you might wonder how you can full an entire shop only with balloons? Well they don't just stock regular party balloons. The one in the photo is a 90cm diameter one I brought to try out. Unless you've seen one of these in person you have no idea how fun they are, or how hard they are to blow up!

But the best thing is, 90cm isn't as big as they have. They go up to 160cm in diameter! I don't want to consider blowing one of those up without a pump...

So next time anyone is thinking about filling someone's office with balloons, let me know. With these it should only take 7 or 8 to fill a reasonable size office.

The shortest 6 months of my life

I just finished my Japanese Language course, which was actually pretty good. I can read and speak a lot better than when I first came, and a lot better than if I had only been studying on my own for the last few months. As part of the course I had to give a 10 minute presentation in Japanese on a topic of my choice, mine involved semantics with reference to a cat shaped robot from the future. The one really surprising thing about the course though, was that in just over 3 months they managed to complete the promised 6 months of Japanese language training that I was supposed to be given as part of my scholarship. Japanese efficiency...

Oh I should probably mention that I have decided that I will probably not being doing my masters degree here. I've learnt a lot more about the Japanese system since getting here and I don't really think the masters degree would be worth it. One of the biggest points is the time it would take, if I was still in NZ I would finish by the end of this year, but here I wouldn't even start until next April and it would take two years after that. I would have to spend a few months studying for the entrance exams, which are in areas completely unrelated to what I want to study and which have no bearing on what I've studied until now in New Zealand. Add to that rumours that the exams and courses require as much rote learning as actual understanding and it doesn't seem like my sort of thing.

So my current plan is to stick around until next year at least and decide whether I want to try and get into a Phd program here, while spending my time on my own research and hopefully get a paper or two published. If I decide not to stay I will look at getting another scholarship and moving on to Europe to do my Phd there. Of course during my time here there are a lot of people I can learn a fair bit from, and I will of course be able to improve my Japanese. Plus to be honest, the lifestyle here is enjoyable enough that I'm not in any hurry to leave.

Vending Machines at the Top of the World

This week I climbed mount Fuji. Its not an impressive accomplishment once you realise the number of retired people who reach the summit everyday, but it was still good fun. I climbed it with a couple of my foreign friends who I often go hiking with here. We started climbing at about 9pm so we would reach the summit at sunrise. Yes, yes, its very Japanese climbing a mount for a photo opportunity, but I have to say climbing a fog covered mountain by torch light is one of the most surreal experiences I can imagine.

It was foggy when we started so pretty much all you could see was the beam of your flash light fading into the middle distance. But once we got above the fog the view was excellent. Stars, so many stars, including 23 shooting ones. It was a nice change from the Tokyo sky where I've never seen more than 6 stars at any one time...

The climb isn't actually too bad, a well marked trail and to be honest, restaurants every 500 meters or so. We stopped at about 3000m for a bowl of noodles in a restaurant that didn't really look a lot different than the ones where I normally eat dinner. Got to the top at about 3.30am, and watched a reasonably unimpressive sunrise. Once the sun was up however the view was magnificent, like the cloud layer seen from an air plane, except there was a mount rising up from it under your feet.

Oh and I cant remember who it was I joked to about there being vending machines everywhere in Japan, and suggested there was probably even a few on the way up mount Fuji. I was wrong, they are not on the way up, they are at the summit! (oh and a bottle of coke costs about $6)

Drinks in a Dungeon

Neil and Chris came to visit Japan for a couple of weeks recently. It was good catching up on news from NZ and having an excuse to avoid my Japanese course and go sightseeing. It was pretty much the standard Japanese holiday, temples, raw fish, sky scrappers, small explosions, electronics, crowded trains and a few gardens. Well the only exception was Neil trying to avoid eating fish, which is decidedly unjapanese, and not the easiest thing to do in this country. (Neil if you eat fish you will have something in common with your cat...)

I don't know what there impressions of Japan were, but considering Neils first full day in Japan ended in a simulated dungeon, with two Japanese girls, fighting off monsters with a mace, drinking shots from test tubes, and trying to avoid eating fried balls of tobasco sauce and octopus, his impression should atleast be interesting. I've come to accept themed restaurants as part of the Japanese experience, but still I am occasionally surprised. I came accross a new one last week, unhappy with just a prison or hospital theme, it decided to combine the two, giving Alcatraz Prison Hospital Restaurant.

On the day they were leaving we had lunch together in Shibuya, with Neil complaining that he "wished he could stay longer". Well in an inspired stroke of unconscious planning, he confused the departure/checkin times for their flight back, missed the plane, and got an extra two days in Japan. He also got a sizeable bill for Chris and himself to share, but I'm sure he was able to look on the bright side about it.

もう一回

I'm back in Japan, and after an abortive attempt at keeping a blog on a wiki, I have decided to resurrect my old Japan blog. I will try and post frequently, but as past experience shows this is not something I am particular good at, so my apologies in advance.

If you didn't know me back then, please feel free to have a look at some of my older posts, Japan was equally as strange two years ago. I would appreciate comments, so long as they don't concern my spelling or grammar.

Luke

Too Many Foreigners

The Japanese attitude towards foreigners is something I could say a lot about, but its not something I could even pretend to understand yet, so Ill avoid that topic for a year or two. But occasionally I am going to hear/see something so ridiculous that I have to say something about it, such as today when I found out the number of foreigners living in Japan.

Now its obvious that there aren't a lot of foreigners here, I can remember by the end of my stay in Nara that if I went to a place and saw more than 2 foreigners I would start to wonder what was going on. But its always good to have a number, and today while reading an international newspaper I found one, 1.6% of the Japanese population is officially a foreigner.

Ok now lets compare that to NZ, 17.5% of people living in NZ were born overseas as of the last census. Now before I said 1.6% of people in japan was OFFICIALLY a foreigner, well what makes you a foreigner in Japan and NZ is slightly different. Of that 1.6% over half were actually born in Japan! They just had the misfortune of foreign parents, so cant possible join the exclusive Japanese club.

BANG

One of my favourite things about Japan has always been the fireworks, and generally the ones that fly or go bang, not just the cute little ones. You can buy fireworks at any time of year here and they aren't tied in to any particular holiday, so its something you can do a couple of times a year which is what makes it even better.

Of course its still too early in the year for the massive 2 hour long fireworks displays, which make summer evenings fun, but that didn't stop me and some friends letting off our own in a park one night last week. Ok you might think that doing them in a park is a bad idea, but this is Japan, where else are people going to do them? Well the first pair of policemen who we met in the park also thought it was a bad idea and suggested we do it in our gardens.

Now about 90% of the population of this city we don't have our own gardens, so we didn't really know what to do with our bag full of fireworks. Though when we were leaving an hour or so later we thought that letting off a few little ones would probably be ok. The second set of police men didn't think so... and I am so glad that it was a different pair. The chances of be recognised there are now much to high and I wont be able to do fireworks in that park for at least a month, which is a pain as its the only large park nearby.

That night left me with a large surplus of explosives sitting on the shelf in my room. That particular surplus got a lot larger today when I discovered a fireworks wholesale shop. It was paradise, a shop where everything was cheap and explosive! Some very interesting types including rocket propelled toy cars! And the best thing was right next door was another shop exactly the same. I now have a truly scary amount of fireworks in my room though...

Natural Onsen

As I said in the last post I went to Nikko over the weekend, and one of the things I wanted to do while I was there was goto an Onsen. Now my past experiences with Onsen have be somewhat mixed, ranging from natural hot springs in the middle of forests, to essentially large bath tubs and given Nikkos reputation for natural beauty I was hoping to find something of the former.

Having been somewhat lazy about organising the trip I just decided to ask at the Tourist information centre which of the onsen are of the more natural kind, and was told about 3. Me and my friends chose the cheapest of these which turned out to be owned by a hotel. That's quite normal here, so I wasn't overly worried. We went there paid our money and were lead to the onsen.

Turns out what the tourist information centre consider natural is in the basement of a building, with no natural light, tiled wall-to-wall, with several rocks to one side of the room and the hot water coming out of a tap. I hate to think what the others were like.

We did find another one while tramping that was about as natural as you can get, some hot puddles in the middle of a swamp. Unfortunately they were only big enough to bathe your feet in, still was nice.

Crime in Japan

Well despite 6 months worth of warnings last time I was in Japan about all the things I shouldn't do because of the crime rate here, I never actually saw any crime. That changed yesterday when I saw a theft from a souvenir shop in Nikko (Oh yeah, I went to Nikko, nice place). Of course the theft was by a monkey, so it doesn't really contribute to the crime rate.

Cute little bastard walk over to the shop, took one of the bags of snacks, and then just bolted. I call it a bastard because like every other animal in this country it tried to attack me, all I wanted to do was take its photo...

Oh yeah and as to crime I recently heard on the news that there had been a rash of gun related crime, apparently last year there were 53 shootings! 3 of which were fatal. Considering that the population of Tokyo alone is over 3 times that of NZ, how do you we compare.

No I dont hear Voices

This week is "health check week" at Tokyo University. Apparently the University wants to check all students, except for first years, to see if they are dying or not, and apparently its something I'll have to look forward to every year while I'm here.

I guess its good that the University cares about its students (well, except for the first years), but I really wonder why they want to know? If they find that I have some horrible incurable disease does that mean I don't graduate?

Thinking about it, I expect they are more practical than that, and I would probably be passed on to the medical department for study. I want to be involved in writing a few papers here, but that's not the way I have in mind. I find out in two weeks.

They were thorough, blood tests, X-rays, ECG, etc. and then just for foreigners a mental health survey. I have at times thought the Japanese consider most foreigners to be crazy, but I was somewhat surprised that the mental health survey was reserved solely for us.

No I don't hear Voices that no one else hears, and in the last year I haven't believed anyone was out to get me. I answered no to so many questions that by the end I was starting to get slightly nervous, it was like sitting a multi-choice exam and answering A to every question.

Oh and apparently I am 168cms tall...

Fucking Bird

Why is it that every animal I feed in Japan attacks me? Last time I was here it was the deer in Nara park, this time a bird. I was sitting under a tree eating lunch and a raven landed nearby and was just hopping round looking for crumbs. Everyone here thinks they are horrible birds, but until today I quite liked them, so I threw it a chunk of bread. It took it and flew off, seemed happy enough, a couple of minutes later it came back. Landed on the seat behind me, snuck up behind me and tapped my back. I went to look round and the bloody thing bit me. If all the wildlife here is like what Ive met so far I understand why the Japanese don't pay much attention to looking after the environment.

Chemical Brothers

I went clubbing with some friends last night to a club called Womb in Shibuya It was my first time going to an actually dance club in Japan, so I was expecting to be surprised. I was, both positively and negatively.

Although it wasn't a surprise the door charge wasn't pleasant, 3500yen, it was worth it. The dance floor was brilliant, with lazy light show and an almost 2m diameter disco ball. The music wasn't bad either, but will be better this week, they have the chemical brothers coming.

Me and pretty much every other international student from the hostel will be going (most of the Japanese people we've mentioned it to have no idea who they are). Only costs about $40 to get in tonight, so isn't even to expensive. Oh and I got membership last week which means I get a $10 discount.

Membership is one of those strange Japanese things, nearly every bar, restaurant, shop or Internet cafe has a membership program. They normally cost nothing to join, and get some pretty good discounts and special offers, just takes a few minutes.

Unlike all the other membership programs I've seen though, the one at the club didn't give a membership card. Instead they take a digital thumbprint scan! Not only does it mean I don't need a membership card, but also I don't need to carry ID to get into the club, just a scan at the door.

As to the negatives, there were a few, the worst being the gender ratio. It seem liked there were at least twice as many guys as girls! Tonight may be better

L and R

There are so many examples of bad English being used in Japan, so its not normally something worth mentioning. Occasionally though you come across a case that is particularly funny or ironic, and those can be worth sharing.

To be fair I probably make similar mistakes when speaking Japanese, so I don't normally find mistakes when people speak funny (Except for the Japanese guy who was talking about "the big election", but always confused L and R). However lots of Japanese companies use English in advertising campaigns and you would kind of expect them to have someone check it first.

Last time I was here I worked for a company which on their website offered "professional transration services" which fits the ironic category. One I saw last week might beat it though, an advertisement for a talking electronic dictionary that helps people learn English. The picture in the ad of course had a speech bubble, and what was it saying? "Lets Listening!"

The best Ive come across so far this time was when I went to karaoke last night. Lots of the songs are western and of course have the words in English, though not always the words you would expect. For example missing a space turned "I want you to hold me at night" into "I want you to hold meat ..." and a slight confusion between "you" and "your" gave "I want you baby" a whole new meaning.

WTF?!? level four?

Well last week I had a japanese language placement test and interview. The test went ok and the interview went well and they told me I would probably in course 3. There are five courses, from beginner 1 to advanced 5, and to be honest I was quite pleased with myself for getting into level 3, its what I was aiming for.

Yesterday though I found out what class they actually put me in, level 4, I am so buggered. I just finished my first class and in 2 hours there was a grand total of 3 words of English. I can survive the explanations in Japanese, my speaking/listening isn't to bad, but the problem is the writing.

I've only ever studied Japanese on my own, so I always skipped over the boring bits, ie how to read, and just concentrated on speaking. So of the thousands of Chinese characters hat are used in Japanese I know about 100, most of which refer to different types of food.

In class however Im supposed to know 600+, so it looks like im going to have a fun few weeks trying to catch up. Hmm maybe I should stop complaining, its just after months of complete laziness I have to actually do some work.

11mm Cell Phone

Living in Japan without a cell phone is difficult, well actually not difficult, just bloody boring. When you have a city of 12million people you don't often run into friends by accident.

Of course like everything else here it take a fair amount of paperwork to get one, but annoyingly you also need to have an alien registration card before they will let you get one. I waited until I had mine then went shopping, which involved about 4 hours talking in Japanese with sales people that had to constantly keep checking what rules applied for foreigners to buy one.

Following that I decided to get a phone from softbank (they used to be vodafone and so my phone will work in NZ when I come back). I got a 2 year contract, at $15 a month, for which I get a free phone, free txt/pic/video messaging to all other softbank users, and free calling before 9pm to softbank users. Other messages cost 4 cents, and calls are 40 cents a minute.

The free calling is great, I convinced all the other foreigners I know to sign up for the same contract and so apart from my Japanese friends all my calls are free. The actually phone is pretty cool, much like a RAZR (but thinner I think, 11mm), has a 2 mega pixel camera, blue tooth, Internet, micro SD etc. Ok its not the wonderful compared to what you get here, but you've all seen what sort of phone I use in NZ, and this one was free!

$115 Bike

My rent here is cheap, but thats only because I'm a student staying at the on campus hostel, but some things in Japan are cheap regardless of who you are. Tokyo is flat, and even though it is quite large most of the interesting bits are close together, its perfect for biking.

I've been thinking about buying a second hand bike since I got here, but hadn't seen any second hand store. Well it turns out that its not much of a problem, because brand new bikes are ridiculously cheap anyway. I'm not sure what I'm going to buy yet, but this one is only 10 400 yen, which is about $115. Japan isn't really that expensive.

First Months Rent

I thought I should probably say something about what my accommodation is like in Japan, it is small, cramped and somewhat tiny, that is to say it is Japanese. I didn't really have any problems with that, but the kitchen is completely unusable.

I have a mini-fridge that could probably store 12 cans of coke, no freezer, no microwave, a single cupboard, no drawers and a one element stove. I was thinking about buying a microwave, but then I realised there are also no power points. Umm I haven't been doing all that much cooking since I got here.

The bathroom is similarly minimal, it has a toilet and a shower, though not both at the same time. You slide the sink to one side an there is a toilet, to the other side and there is a shower head.

On the plus side the location aint bad, its walking distance from Shibuya which means there is lots to do nearby. Have been going there most nights for dinner, but have been having a hard time convincing any of the other international students to do karaoke with me.

I was planning to move out and find somewhere closer to the university to live, but then I got the bill for the rent. Only $130, including expenses, and being japan thats per month, not per week! Unfortunately Ill only be able to stay there for my first year, but at that price, i should be able to save a bit, or more likely do some traveling.

USB Missile Launcher

I was walking through Akihabara last week looking for a new cell phone when I found the coolest USB device I have ever seen, a USB Missile Launcher!!

It cost 1000yen, so about $14, and fires three foam darts. Using the arrow keys you can rotate it through 360 degrees, up and down and then fire using the space bar. Bloody powerful too, can easily fire from one side of my lab to the other which is about the same width as Memphis.

Here's a photo of it, and I'll try and get a video up later.

Yes I'll go back and see if they have any more, Memphis needs one of these. Also if anyone else would be interested add your name to the discussion page and I'll see if I can send some back (Postage might be expensive).