Cherry blossom and sake

Race for Life

2007-06-17T20:04:00.000+07:00

Last Sunday's Race For Life went well. I completed in about 31 minutes 45 seconds and Bek was very close behind.

It was quite an emotional day, especially seeing who the other runners were running for and just how many people have been affected by cancer. It wasn't always possible to work out how many were cancer survivors and others not and was very thought-provoking.

I've raised almost £500 so far. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated. I haven't been able to thank everyone individually as I don't have their email addresses. It's very much appreciated.

For those who haven't sponsored me yet, but would like to, you can sponsor me online at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/zoe_macgechan. All donations gratefully received!

Long time, no post

2007-05-10T01:34:00.000+07:00

So, I've been away. It could have something to do with the impending inspection, maybe it's because I've had to sign the Official Secrets Act, or maybe I'm halfway towards getting a life in this shoddy little backwater. I guess I wouldn't go quite as far as that, but I do at least spend a lesser proportion of my time ironing my teenaged brother's underwear (there's no getting away from folding it, else it would just rot on the line).

I haven't completely salvaged a social life - I've mainled been hanging around the locals, with the locals - but I did manage to cram a fair bit into my bank holiday weekend. First, going to Haverhill's first Private View in a friend's shed. Then, I dined at the fantastic - and expensive - Fox on Friday. They've hoiked up their prices and their portions - so it was a whopping bill following a whopping fill. I'll bore you with the details: I had a sumptuous goat's cheese bruschetta starter and a fairly good steak, although it disappointed in comparison to the lamb sat on the plate opposite (my worst dining fear come true: dinner envy). The cheese board made up for it, as I knew it would.

On Saturday, I got down to Gillian's via Oxford Circus Top Shop, but managed to arrive without any Mossy fashion extras. Not so disappointing when I finally got to get a better look at them a day later. We went out in Camden to a bar that strived to be cool: deck chairs with rock stars (and an exceedingly large number with Junkie Doherty's face), mattresses in trellised private areas, Alice in Wonderland strolling around with her rodent and behatted companions and a 'saucy' Queen of Hearts right out of the Lock's market, including PVC cape and killer heels. It was nice, but rather too contrived and made me, for once, not feel I was missing out. I could not be bothered to get involved in that sort of game at the moment!

After dinner on Friday, I'd got a text from my sister saying the new niece was on the way. She finally arrived, a drawn out 30 hours later on Sunday morning. So I got over to Guildford, flowers and stuffed bunny in hand, to meet Nancy Frances (pictures sure to follow). She was a lovely little 7lb 5oz and slept almost entirely through my visit.

On Monday, I got back to Cambridge and checked out the city's only Japanese restaurant: decked out with Wagamamarian benches, but providing more authentic fare. The tsukune was great (and the waitress did her bit to add the air of Nippon by not understanding my order), the sushi as fresh as you could hope, but the yakisoba was plain old chow mein. I will be heading back, but hope not to get a pube in my bento next time.

Akemashite Omedeto!

2006-12-19T00:33:00.001+06:00

Happy New Year. It feels a long time since Christmas and a bit pointless to send out any overly festive greetings. I'll just assume everyone enjoyed themselves as best they could. I doubt few could beat Bek spending it on a yacht in Sydney Harbour, although Rachel's Malaysian beach might just tie. I spent mine in Olde Guildford Towne, not a bad place, if you've got a penny or two to spend.

Much the same can be said of New York, where my mother, sister and I went for some Christmas shopping. In accordance with tradition, I mainly spent on myself (though not anywhere near enough) and we generally just trouped around baby shops cooing over the smallest babygrows we could get hold of (not so small in the U. S. of A, as you'd imagine). We did also have a helicopter tour of the city, dine in a revolving restaurant and watched the Producers (even non-musical fans should see it, honestly Angus!). I briefly lamented over Matthew Broderick's absence, but just couldn't picture him skipping around the stage with the same gusto as his replacement.

New York was fantastic: the sort of place you could live for a few years. I didn't see anywhere near as much as I'd have liked, although I flukily managed to take advantage of Target Fridays, when MOMA is free, and whizzed around there in twenty minutes, most of which were spent choosing postcards in the giftshop. I can't afford to collect fine art so gobble up photo album-sized replicas. Sad, ne?

I met my old student, Yuka, and got way too drunk as she snubbed Japanese food, but stayed true to her national identity by avoiding as much of the wine as she could, despite it being a hard-won prize. We were asked for ID, mainly because she's only just 21 and looks younger and I had to fight to convince the waitress I'm old enough to drink.

The encounter may have put me off New Yorkers. They seem to need to tell you off or teach you things. As I expected to get drunk with Yuka, I didn't take out my passport in case I lost it (sensible, you'd think) but the waitress at the restaurant patronisingly chided, 'this is New York, honey, you should always carry ID'. I told her I was almost 30 and hadn't imagined it would be a problem, but she had annoyingly stopped listening by then.

Yesterday I started at the prison. The was a shutdown, so no prisoners were allowed out and I missed my first class. It would have been great, had I not missed out on almost a whole night's sleep hoping it would go well. I taught the same lesson to the afternoon group, who didn't warm to me quite so well once they knew I wasn't hanging around to be their regular teacher. One still asked to switch to my morning class, but the others just grumbled that it was 'shit' and 'boring' and tried to shirk the work. Once I'd agreed, but said they had to do it anyway, they got on with it.

This morning I taught my real class. Only one has changed, so I knew what I was dealing with and they were all pleased to see me (except one who hadn't been released). They loved the lesson and I had to rein myself and them in when I was trying to demonstrate how to hold a balloon debate and they used me as an example. As nice as it would have been to stand and listen to men who haven't seen a woman for years say I'm good-looking, I really couldn't let it go on. The guy who should have been released also said I was a good, interesting teacher: this made the others balk far more than the other compliments, but mainly because they don't see it as flattering to be good at such a thing. Right, I'm off to find a suitable article in Viz for proof-reading.

It's a London thing

2006-12-10T16:18:00.000+06:00

Jo had one of her fleeting visits from Athens this weekend, so I popped to London to meet her . An expensive, but worthwhile exercise. On the bus into Cambridge, I had to listen to some locals berating all the 'Chinks' slowing the bus by requesting every stop. Only one Chinese student had used the bus. Their racism is hugely outdated, the Chinese in Cambridge are by now probably third- or fourth-generation and are quietly muttering about immigrants from the Caucasus.

Jo and I met in Oxford Circus, our biggest mistake, and the pedestrian undercurrent hauled us into a heaving Top Shop. One look at the Soviet-style queue forced us back out and towards the V&A's fashion exhibition, where we laughed at how tiring it would have been to been an original mod, fighting your way through the trouser-suited idiots of Carnaby Street. Fearing a two-hour transport-enduced famine, I sought out a very cheap Japanese bento shop in South Kensington and I stuffed myself full of over-spicy yakisoba while lamenting the loss of izakayas from my life. It was strange spending the day in London as a tourist: you're constantly jostled by shoppers ramming shoe boxes in your ribs and have to really hunt out sensibly priced eateries. I am also slowly becoming disorientated on the Tube, like a real outsider.

It was lovely seeing Jo, but I really didn't want to come back. As we strolled through Soho to meet up with her boyfriend, we passed loads of little bars and restaurants whose windows I wanted to press my nose onto. I was quite sad on the train leaving it all behind - more so when I missed the Haverhill bus by ten minutes and had to pass the time in a pub by Cambridge train station. Cash-free, I was forced to try the Osborne, next to the much more savoury Flying Pig, to see if they would accept cards. Fortunately not, as I had to watch an alcoholic barman swaying and squaring up to a 24-year-old he suspected of underage drinking, all while a gaggle of 15-year-olds drank pints and played pool unmolested.

The green green grass of home

2006-12-08T01:01:00.000+06:00

Firstly, I'd really like to get stuck into my ex-employer for being an utter cunt. Having kept a £300 deposit from my last pay cheque, they finally returned the remaining £10 this week, having shaved off £100 for cleaning (although I naively missed sleep because I couldn't afford to lose any cash) and a further £110 for my replacement's hotel, as well as a little extra for the hotel I stayed in when I first arrived, which I have foolishly imagined was part of the extortionate sum deducted from my first five pay packets. If you intend to save money in Japan, don't work for Shane. While I was very pleased to not have to teach American English, I am exceedingly bitter at being robbed in the festive season. My ex-boss being a spineless fantasist didn't help. Thank you for listening to my rage.

Otherwise, I went up the prison and loved it. I went up the prison to observe my class this week. The other teacher is extremely lazy, so it was quite an involved obversation. It was fine though. I managed to show the prisoners I wouldn't be a pushover, despite being a young woman and they showed me that they hadn't had a sniff of a woman for an age and it would be fine whatever. My class were quite laid back, but other inmates were pushing their noses up to the glass of the classroom door to check me out, some trying to make me shake their hands or give them some contact and others asking if they could switch to my class. I feel it was a very modern take on Daniel in the lion's den: my explaining to use a colon was much like removing the prisoners' metaphorical thorns.

It's nice to know I'm still holding my own, even though I'm back to British portions. I've caused quite a stir at the factory I'm temping at and am getting sexually harassed by the local scout leader at least once a day and the warehouse supervisor put a card through the door with his phone number and an invitation to keep me company. Fortunately, I already had plans. I wouldn't want to get in the way of him seeing either of his kids.

I'm practically destitute as I'm being paid in village pounds, but spending as many weekends as possible in London. Last week I visited my beloved Vidal Sassoon and had my haircut by a yuong Osakan who nearly wet herself when I spoke in garbled Japanese. Each of the hairdressers had gifts for their 'models', but as I tried to return the Japanese hospitality I have so often dined out on and invited them to the pub, they were fighting to find me extra gifts. One girl eventually gave me a vacuum packed pack of teabags her mother had obviously stuffed into her luggage. Fortunately, they didn't have time to meet so I treated myself to some dry sushi from Wasabi and watched TV all night.

I did make it out to a houseparty the following night, but after having a small nap among the coats, I lost the rest of the night searching for my friend's handbag, which was under the sofa, but my dress was too short for my to check myself so it stayed there until around 6am when I finally planted the idea it was there in someone else's head.

Next week, my mum, sister and I are off to New York where I'm going to have to make my mum pay for her own Christmas presents. A helicoptor tour around the city will be also involved and sitting through the Producers. Fortunately, Guys and Dolls wasn't showing.

I will soon start charting the culinary conversations I have to sit through at work ("Do you like rice?" "I like rice, but Brian doesn't like rice," "Yeah, I like rice, but Dave doesn't, Anne, do you like rice?"). Have you ever heard of an office with a constant running buffet?! This might be why I'm thickening up around the middle, but it will all drop off when I'm at the prison, where I can only eat at five hour intervals, so I will soon be sporting the jutting hips of a catwalk anorexic, minus the purging vommy smell.

Love and Mr Kipling mince pies.

Sayonara Saitama

2006-09-24T18:27:00.000+07:00

I'm writing this (possibly last entry) from England. I've finally made it back home. So far the jetlag has been negligable and the Stilton plentiful. I feel constantly full, but it's all good so far.

In some ways it's a shame to come back just as I've finally made some good friend. Lisa, Yoriko, Shozo, Pat and various others are possibly people who will drift now I've finally fled Omiya. I'll also miss the others, who I had more time to get to know and therefore will miss even more: Raju, George, Jerry... They have been true friends and extremely kind to me. Accordingly, I've put all my efforts into making some good memories with everyone and have, as a consequence, begun to experience true Japanese life - sleeping for only four hours a day and arranging appointments at midnight after I've spent time with various groups of friends.

I didn't manage to say goodbye to my new fan at Lawsons. Recently, I popped in for some bread and gave her some change to avoid getting too much shrapnel back. She was stunned and explained, with extravagant gestures, that she`s a bit thick and wouldn`t have thought to do that. I laughed and said she wasn`t and she then gasped at the proficiency of my Japanese and asked how long I`d been here. I told her a year, but explained that I didn`t understand much at all. To prove this to her, I confused `understand` with `forget` so either sounded massively stupid or very cocky, but she was too busy scuttling off to tell her mate to listen.

Last weekend seems so long ago. On Friday, I finally managed to get to Kamakura, after a year of unfulfilled pledges. Stupidly, I got off the train at the right place, but panicked, got back on and went back to Kita Kamakura, so missed Daibuttsu, the enormous Buddha everyone goes there to see. I did try to take the trekking path up the mountain, but chickened out one temple and a few metres up some crumbling stone steps at the bottom of the trail. Instead, I loafed around Kita Kamakura and saw more than enough to satiate my small appetite for temples and the like. When you've see one temple...

I was too lazy to ask if I was on the right train home and so shot off towards the airport a week early and almost missed my own leaving do. The whole misadventure justified itself when I spotted a sumo wrestler on the train and was able to tick off another sight from my list. The leaving do itself was eventually fun. We bickered over where to go for food, too many people dropping out to go to the izakaya I'd booked, then enough stragglers making up the original numbers. The second place wasn't too bad, a bit too 'theme restaurant' for my liking, but probably more appropriate for a party mood than the traditional izakaya I'd planned. Afterwards, we went to the obligatory karaoke until the small hours got big again and staggered home under misty grey skies.

On Saturday, having turned down a sudden invitation to camp in the mountains with 20 Australians, I headed to Kichijoji to meet up with Natalie who is refreshed and single having come back from teaching in Hokkaido in the summer. It's a shame she didn't get around to the separation sooner. It was coming for a while and we could have both done with someone to go on the pull with.

Jerry and I headed off into the mountains for a spot of horse-riding on Sunday. Only a spot, mind. We drove for almost three hours to reach Ogose, in northern Saitama, to ride for less than an hour. It was in a stunning spot though and, having a paralysing fear of heights, I was glad not to gallop up the mountain. It was lovely. The weather was perfect, the view stunning and Jerry's sense of direction reliably bad. It was just missing his cowboy hat.

That night, I met up with Shozo and attempted a monolingual date. It was a bit of an intimidating washout at first. I couldn't even bring myself to ask what he did for work, already vaguely knowing and appreciating that it would be impossible to explain to me in baby Japanese. We passed some time flicking through my handwritten phrasebook (him correcting my Japanese, until I asked about his level of English), then I let slip that I like an izakaya, we drank up, left the bistro and headed off somewhere more earthy for some sake and a chat about why so many Japanese girls pair off with gaijin men, but so rarely gaijin women and Japanese men. My favourite topic. I became immediately fluent.

The last week at work was full of goodbyes, some harder than others. I know I won't see any of these people again and some of them were real favourites of mine. After my last day with Yoshiko, I headed into Tokyo to meet up with Shozo and some his friends. I was tired and resenting the journey, thinking he just wanted to spend time with his mates and have a girl at hand to show off, but his 'mates' were his friends sister and mother and we spent the night at a yatai, an outside izakaya, practising Japanese and eating all sorts of yakitori (lots and lots of offal, which I had to try to explain was something we would ordinarily throw in the bin in Britain). On Tuesday, I met Jerry for yakiniku, but couldn't drag myself from the George so made do with a roast beef sandwich and explained the finer points of seagulling to George's customers in pigeon Japanese. I now know the word for 'spunk' so this is easier than you might think.

I said goodbye to Lisa and Andy the following night and the night after that, Shozo took me to his friend's bistro. Arriving as 'special guest' again, his friend opened us a bottle of Don Perignon as Shozo explained that, in Japan, it's usual to go to high school for three years, but he and his friends had gone for four.

I met up with George on Friday afternoon and found a wonderful French bar I already miss in Ginza. I wish I'd found it before. We were both excited by the small amount of beauty it possesses and which eclipses any glimmer of scenery in Saitama. Sadly, we couldn't go on an all-day bender as I was meeting my old ladies for gay kabuki. First we had a coach ride through nighttime Tokyo, then sukiyaki in an old restaurant in Asakusa before taking in the New Half Show (new halves being newly surgeried transexuals that you have to spot from the real women in the show). My god, what an experience. I was stung with guilt when, in the first dance routine, a gay dancer simulated oral sex on the transvestite, Jennifer, before she then dropped to her knees and mimed a blow job. It did start rude and get better, but I felt for Takako when I thought she'd have to sit through an hour of it. I shouldn't have babied her. Afterwards, they all seemed like it was the best night of their lives.

Japan has been quite a challenge and an experience. I can`t say I`ve enjoyed it, but I`ve laughed too much to say I hate it too. I`ve been out and seen more in the past few weeks than I had before and it`s been great. I am sad that I am coming home before I get to live in Tokyo proper, but I am also quite relieved to be heading back to a far more normal country. Japan has serious issues.

Tokyo nights, Omiya daze

2006-09-18T22:49:00.000+07:00

The keyboard is mightier than the sword. In my hands, at least, because I couldn`t lift a sword. It seems my little missives have been upsetting a friend of mine (and perhaps more!) who thought I was writing about him when complaining about the low-grade male compatriots blighting our country`s image in Japan (this one is about you, but those ones weren`t). I`ve been desperate for company in my time in Japan, but never to the point to actually stooping to spending time with these losers. People who have seen me when I`ve not been paid to be there can generally assume they make the grade and have a Zoe-approved kite mark. Sorry for any confusion or upset. Still, it is hardly the time to be complaining and the kite mark can always be withdrawn.

Rachel came to enjoy my penultimate weekend in Tokyo and we did a fair bit of sight-seeing, perhaps more than I have managed in the past few months alone. On Saturday night, we went into Shibuya to go to a hip hop club and met up with Riaz, Sean and some others, although we only met briefly and stared across a crowded Hub as we couldn`t get a table to fit everyone in. Edwin then somehow convinced everyone to traipse over to Roppongi to meet him to drink JD and coke in the street, although everyone had initially planned to go out in Shibuya. Edwin is silently obstinate and no one so far (aside from, of course, me) has crossed him. I do hope his time comes. He`s a smug little shit. I then forced everyone to go into quite an awful bar which claimed to have a Russian theme, but only had a couple of Eastern European hookers holed up in a corner. It also had a group of young indie lads to whom a pair of Japanese groupies had attached themselves, imagining they were in a bad. One of them tried to tell Yoriko they were in a band too, of course she believed them, but their mate dropped them in it not too much later. She was still smitted with the neckkerchiefs and shaggy hair. I thought they looked like a pack of terriers.

After a couple of hours on Costa del Roppongi watching girls with no brains rump-shake to the death over one fairly kakkoii Japanese boy, before flicking their hair in our faces to warn us off the terriers, we decided to head off to Shibuya. I just couldn`t bear to waste another minute on a low-grade Greek island holiday, so off we went to Shibuya for a night of hip hop in Harlem. Sadly, I had to hand my camera over when we arrived, so I couldn`t snap any of the wide boys on display. I necked with a young judo student who wants to be a PE teacher when he grows up (he was VERY young, though he can legally drink) and he pointed out one of Japan`s best K1 fighters in the club. I tried to surrepticiously take a snap on my camera phone, but just blinded him with the flash and chickened out. I succeded in scaring him downstairs to the dancefloor, so I took the small boy downstairs and introduced him to his hero. We had to wait in the club for the first train, so loafed out at 5am and headed to the convenience store for some sustinence. I also managed to pick up an enormous cardboard box outside the store, the binmen taking it away refusing to let me have the dirty one and giving me a far cleaner one to cart back to Omiya. Yoriko was a bit bemused by me making a spectacle of myself, but it paid off. I can now pack almost all my worldly goods into one box. I can also fit a nice Japanese umbrella in there, which I was hoping for. They are far nicer than British ones.

On Sunday, we flitted between Shibuya and Shinjuku, where I dragged my laptop only to be told that I didn`t have a virus, I just didn`t know how to use the thing. Fortunately, my little beauty is very light, so it didn`t matter too much. We passed a street festival in Shibuya, which was a bit random as it`s usually one of the liveliest places in Tokyo. In the midst of the throng, we spotted some boys in thongs, very common at Japanese festivals and something that no one has yet been able to explain. I can understand the desire to throw off every item that decency allows in the Japanese summer heat, but why keep on your jacket? Rachel also got to lift the cart, a kind man who looked very much like a Dr Suess baddie ushering her in and pushing his friends out to make way.

On Monday, I broke the news to Yoshiko that I was leaving, which sparked tears. She was a bit emotional already as last week she`d been home to mark the anniversary of her father`s death. She travelled back to her home town to pray and visit his grave, something she generally can`t do as her family live so far away. I also told Mina, who was lovely about it and is trying to take the day off work to drive me to the airport. I have only met her a handful of times, but she was insisting on playing some part of my exit strategy. She also treated me to a fantastic meal at my favourite izakaya and told me a story about her friend from Okinawa who blames her move into Tokyo`s polluted atmosphere for the sudden sprouts of nasal hair she`s suffering! I`ll miss Mina, I think she and Yoriko could have been great friends and it`s a shame didn`t have longer to get to know them - though they might have ended up getting on my nerves, most people out here have at some point.

One of the teachers I work with has spent every available minute in the past week boring me until my ears bleed, boasting about all manner of insignificant things, from how lucky he was to go to a grammar school, to describing how he teaches every class. I was vaguely interested when he first told me these things, but he has yet to add anything new to his loop and it is driving me mad. Teaching seriously exaggerates a person`s sense of their own importance. It could be an act of kindness. I wonder if he is patronising me so painfully so I don`t miss Japan when I get home. I can`t see that I will. A few people seem to be conspiring to make my last few days as annoying as possible.

Not Jerry though. Last night I popped into the George to say hello and ended up staying until too late, drinking pink champagne and lamenting the state of Brits abroad woth George. The night was fairly hazy as the gin and champagne mixed, but I vaguely remember me and George teasing him about wearing his cowboy hat for riding on Sunday. If you`re reading this, Jerry, you have to.

Today was obviously quite difficult workwise, but the kids have tests all week. I`ve been threatening to deduct points for talking and been sitting down writing letters. There are so many ways to skive in teaching, it`s genius.

Hungry Horse

2006-09-15T19:48:00.000+07:00

It`s been an eventful week, though perhaps not in a good way.

It started well. I finally got round to visiting Raju at home on Sunday. I also got to meet his cats. One has recently had an operation, so is having to maneouvre with a big cone around her neck. Her head and food bowl disappear underneath it at mealtime, so dinnertime is showtime. It was the highlight of my visit, though playing frisbee eratically in the park, learning `spastic` in Japanese (I have sadly forgotten `I throw like a...` and none of my friends will teach me), playing with Mame, his very smelly dog, and eating a cheese and Branston sandwich were all very enjoyable too.

Afterwards, I met Lisa and her boyfriend and had yakitori in a working man`s izakaya. It was as close to spit and sawdust as you get in Japan, everything very basic and full of workmen, always a good sign of cheap authentic food. We were limited with what we could eat as the menu had no pictures, but we muddled through with our collective Japanese. I am very glad that I made the effort to learn the names of my favourite yakitori. I managed to get the same drink as a customer on another table, though I asked for `his drink` rather than one like his, which the waiter politely ignored. I am quite used to be corrected by waiting staff - they love to contradict, even when I know I am right.

Having my eye on a move to Tokyo, I`ve been taking my camera everywhere recently. On Monday, Kota and Megumi were singing a very popular song and doing little dances, so I tried to snap them, but they suddenly seized up. I did finally managed to convince Kota to go for it by offering the whole class the chance to win extra points for their teams if they performed the SMAP routine while I took photos. I did also teach them a bit of English (only because I knew the receptionist could hear us singing a Japanese song), but not much and it`s usually not very useful. Hironobu, Masahiro and Yusuke were amazed this week when I taught them `I`m bored` as a response to `how are you?`. Far more useful than `it`s a green bag`.

Tuesday night, I met up with Yukako and Yoko and went to what we thought was a yakiniku restaurant, but it turned out to be a nikuashi restaurant - raw meat. Somehow it is a little harder to stomach than raw fish. I let the girls order for me and a dish of nikusashi arrived along with a far more sensible crab and tomato salad that I had drooled at on another table. The heart was tolerable, the tongue tough and the venison `horse`. Yukako had made a mistake and got her doubutsu (animals) confused. I`d already eaten it at this point, it was fine, not particularly special and not distinguishable from beef. It was fine, you wouldn`t have to be overly hungry to stomach it. Still, somehow, what with my trip with Jerry pony-trekking up a mountain cresting the horizon, and cows not being quite so nice to look at or staring in overly-sentimental TV fables, I feel a bit bad about tucking into Beauty.

After the horse supper, we headed to a different restaurant for some Nihonshu and Yukako mentioned her drive home, so Yoko and I badgered and badgered her about drink-driving, me getting as melodramatic and insistant as I feel comfortable being with a Japanese friend, but Yukako just laughed and tried to lie about getting a taxi and walking to her boyfriend`s house. She lies like a ten-year-old boy, so it was very easy to catch her out, but not so easy to stop her getting into her car. I should have rugby tackled her. Although she is fun and in many ways a very kind friend, she is also deeply, unpleasantly selfish and thinks nothing of risking other people`s lives or cheating on her boyfriend. This week, she is considering dumping him because he is going to Canada for three weeks at Christmas and she believes this is too long for her to be left. After dating him for four months, she still is undecided about whether she likes him, but I guess she just needs an average seeing to more than most. Fortunately, the decision of whether to call off our friendship is out of our hands as I`m off home soon. I have to go back to England in a couple of weeks, so it`s sayonara Yukako, Shane and Japan.

I`m not too bothered. It was starting to do my head in again. I know my way around Omiya and my planned move to Tokyo was making me feel a bit sentimental about it, but I don`t feel much affection for the people who live here so it`s not going to be much of a wrench, my better friends have either deserted me for their new-found girlfriends or started compulsive teaching, spewing out boring and patronising daitribes at the slightest provocation. This is the peril of being a teacher, particularly in Japan and especially with a meek Japanese girlfriend hanging on your every word. It will be nice to be able to associate with normal people again. I will miss two people. One, of course, is George. Last night, he set up my tab and gave me all the gin and tonic I could ask for then shut up early to go to karaoke. There`s nothing like a blast of Dolly Parton to take the blues away.

I`m not sure if I`ll miss Mike. Sadly, I got the after shot, he`s had a haircut. Before he was far more Def Leppard.

Yukata be kidding

2006-09-08T12:24:00.000+07:00

Dailymotion blogged video
South Park - Crocodile Hunter
Video sent by PigLips

Saitama and the world has been rocked by debate this week. Was Steve Irwin a genius who brought conservationism to the common man or just a git who dangled his kids over crocs` mouths in juvenile stunts? Undecided, I thought I should still pay him a small tribute.

Yesterday, JeDoS visited me in Ageo so I could sign my second year contract, so now I have another 12 months of work and a three year visa. I also have a decreasing enthusiasm for work for the man who delivered the paper. This Sunday, I was hoping to go on a yukata cruise with Lisa, Chantal and a few others, along with some Shane staff and a few more random strangers. We would have toured Tokyo bar in our yukata, enjoying a subsidised trip and Japan`s finest invention, nomihodai (all you can drink) for ¥2500. As it is now, my boss claims to have not seen either of my emails about the trip and so didn`t reserve me any places and we`re not going. Lisa`s boyfriend had re-arranged a shift so he could come and we had variously been plotting how to coax our Japanese friends into helping us dress. All for nothing.

As small as the problem may be, it is the last in a long line of disappoint-
ments and cock-ups by my boss at my expense; the most serious being him not explaining that `compass-
ionate leave` to Shane is set out in the same way as sick pay, in that we have to pay for the privilege, so I`m down by about ¥68,000 this month because of my recent trip home. The company line is clearly more out of line here, but when you have things on your mind, you are not going to be checking small print and I know every boss I`ve had previously would have explained this to me, whether to benefit me or to take a swipe at the policy. He either assumed I would know or forgot. He hasn`t apologised for this - I think a litigiously-aware silence - but that would have cooled my fury immediately. We all make mistakes, after all...

It is a peril of the EFL world that your bosses are little more than reluctant, over-promoted teachers (a workshy breed in themselves), most of whom have been forced to rise up through the ranks because of their spouses and mortgages and not because of any desire or ability to manage. My own boss allegedly resisted rising any further than his previous post as best he could, but the sudden departure of the previous DoS forced his hand, and the salary was kind of handy too. I have requested a change of districts, partly to experiment with some new management (I still hold a torch for the previous DoS, as neurotic and unpopular as he was, mainly because He Got Things Done - sadly, not always things that were welcomed by the teachers beneath him), but my mind is racing with all sorts of procrastinational cliches: better the devil you know; the grass is always greener; out of the frying pan...

It has made me realise how spoiled I was working in Britain with people who were vaguely interested in being decent managers. This wasn`t a skill that blessed everyone I`ve worked for. One line manager was so absent from my working life it was only in my second job that I realised that she should have been someone I knew from places other than the pub, where I generally avoided her bloated, whining mass as best I could anyway. I`ve also had a job where my main responsibility was keeping my manager`s pending breakdown at bay. It doesn`t seem to matter so much in the comfort of an office environment, where you can moan and grumble to other staff before distracting yourself with more interesting and pending matters, like regular updates on reality TV from workshy colleagues who spent all their time surfing entertainment sites for gossip. (Better and worse than it sounds).

The TTA most definitely raised my expectations to an unmanageable level This morning I couldn`t keep my frustration at yet another let-down to myself and so spouted to the ADoS. My second attempt at using him as a sympethic ear. Instead of being led into a small office for a serious listening to, I was rushed off the phone and thanked, with arid sarcasm, for my candour. In EFL, there is no problem, as long as the students are paying up and my students most definitely are. To give the ADoS his due, he did then try to firefight by calling the cruise company to book my mates some places, but they`re all booked up. Lisa and are probably going to go to an izakaya instead, which could be just as good and won`t involve Raju`s mother-in-law dressing me.

After work, I went to meet Jerry for a beef sandwich and a Japanese for horse-riding lesson at the George. Among other things, I learned the Japanese for walk, trot, canter, gallop, stop, turn, jump and help. Jerry learned a few Japanese riding words too. I don`t know if he`s ever been on a horse. His previous allusions to being an experienced rider are quickly being revealed as weak attempts to impress. He had to finally admit last night that he had ridden for around two hours in the past few years and hasn`t gone much faster than a walk. This was brilliant for me and George, who spent yet another evening Jerry-baiting. It`s a lot like bullying and perhaps something I should stop, but oh so tempting when he gets caught out so easily. I ought to be nicer to him though, he`s found an amazing and quite affordable stable. We have a 40 minute lesson `to relax on a horse`, according to the brochure, then ride out around a mountain. I`m a bit scared of this bit, as it does look quite high, but I`ll hopefully be able to secrete my camera somewhere in my jodphurs without attracting too much attention.

George pulled out his Darth Vader mask, which we all tried on, but no one wore it as well as Ken. Vader should wear bonnets more. We practised some more `bad` Japanese and I impressed everyone with Yoriko`s `special needs`. I like it best as it uses `desu` and not `arimasu`, so it`s `he is special needs`, not `he has...`. Later, Pat danced.

The girl on the train is wearing a t-shirt that said `I`m built like a brick shithouse`. I don`t think anyone else could wear it so well.

Japan`s underberry

2006-09-06T22:08:00.000+07:00

I started this entry when I was in a worse mood, now I`m quite keen on Japan as I`m in an izakaya mood and have just had a lovely Japanese lesson with Marikosan, the undervalued receptionist (all Shane receptionists are, but Mariko seems very special) at Koga. For one, she is teaching me for free, claiming it is good practise for her future career as a Japanese teacher, but having been through a similar process myself, I know two minutes in front of a class of real students will far outweigh anything she could learn by practising on me. I haven`t told her yet. Along with this, I got home to find a package of internet shopping perched by my door, unstolen by human hands. I know Britain is not awash with thieving vermin, and will berate any guide-quoting Japanese tourist who claims otherwise, but it`s nice that this happens because postmen know that this is safe and are not just being lazy and shirking off taking it back to the depot. I`ve also had a few emails about apartments, so hopefully the stress of potentially being homeless by the end of the month will be alleviated enough for me to sleep tonight and the black bags under my eyes will go out with the gomi in the morning.

My home viewing for this evening has not been quite so pleasurable. I saw the same drama last week, and its plot centres around a man`s boss raping the man`s wife. However, the `drama` unfolds not from the ensuing court case, but from the resulting domestics as the wife disapproves of her husband accepting the sly boss`s backhanders. The boss performs the deed and heads off to a hostess bar, then the disrupted family are left bereft of trust as the wife tries to work out how the husband got hold of that very expensive new briefcase... Rape fantasies are big business here. Many of my male friends have complained of `friends of theirs` watching Japanese porn only to find the important bits pixellated (childlike breasts and any flesh that isn`t revealed by a school uniform, which is not much) or that through the pixellation the very clear outline of a man violently attacking an unwilling, childlike victim can be seen. Sex on TV rarely gets beyond some samurais peeping into a women`s onsen, though the women are still unwilling (and pure and worth attacking, I assume).

On Monday, I was speaking to Yoshiko about the prevalence of infidelity in Japan, possibly not a sensitive conversation, given that she is a Japanese wife whose husband is most likely out at every opportunity spending his pocket money on hostesses. She explained that men`s attitudes to infidelity, and the period samurai dramas depiction of onsen perving, stem from long ago, when the Shogun would spot a young lovely he fancied, and whether she was up for it or married or whatever, he`d have her dragged into his harem. Later, he`d stroll in wearing white kimono and point at the lucky woman and she`d be prepared for him.

This has been adjusted more recently to companies providing prostitutes for men on company away days. A colleague`s wife went on a team-bonder and, while getting into her PE kit, heard from the men`s changing rooms the unmistakable grunts of four or five prostitutes servicing the 20 or 30 male staff. She decided to quit her company, though she would have to be of a certain age to hope to find re-employment elsewhere. The saying here is that women are like Christmas cake, no good after the 25th.

These days, modern Japan offers women a lot for tolerating this gross objectification, like their husband`s whole salary. He hands it over on pay day and is given back an allowance, which he will promptly squander on other women. The wives must have some inkling of this, it is so widespread (think everyone, everywhere, and with no shame), but they give the men a budget that allows for hostessing. I`d give mine sandwiches, yoghurt and bus fare.

In the midst of all this, Princess Kiko has given the Imperial Palace the male heir it has been longing for, allowing the Government to pause the debate over legislation changing the line of succession to perhaps allow the Crown Prince and Princess Masako`s daughter to ascend the throne. Kiko`s son has leap-frogged over her depressive sister-in-law`s offspring, Aiko, who had prompted the debate. Though only for now, as some see this as a perfect opportunity to have the debate in a less personal way discussing whether Aiko, Mako or Kako will make a better leader.

Most of these discussions have been fuelled, not only by the ruling elite`s preference for a male leader, but the country`s dislike for Masako. Her critics demanding she and the Crown Prince divorce. Princess Masako was initially a very successul diplomat and was reluctant to marry the Prince as she didn`t want to give up her career. Eventually he asked too many times for her to refuse him politely again and they married and, according to my Daily Mailian students, fell in love. He was already a bit stalkerish long before then from what I can work out. She then, disappointingly, gave birth to a girl and developed serious depression as the country turned against her. At the end of last year, she braved her first public appointment in a couple of years, having been locked away dealing with her issues or leaning very closely to her husband if she ever did leave the Imperial Palace. Yukiko, the student who no longer thinks George Michael is cool, severely disapproves of Masako`s inability to face the public whilst apparently frolicking (in Japanese terms, this is a muted, pained smile) with her friends. Web forums have flourished with disdain for the poor woman who had tried to avoid this lifestyle as best she could and been calling for their divorce so a real woman can produce a real heir. For now, her sister-in-law has taken a little of the heat off her.

It`s hard to say in the same passage that I enjoy Japan again. You do need to experience it for a long time to see it objectively. I suspect my own positive spin comes from these elements slowly becoming less shocking and allowing me to focus again on the nicer bits. However, the position of women in Japan is grossly inferior to lesser, older men and it has made me fall completely in love with Britain. Many people here say they could never go back home, but I just don`t understand why. On a material level, life can be very enjoyable here, but you have to be blind and dumb to not find the values at work beneath Japanese society chokingly offensive. I eat out more times a week than I used to in a month, and for ugly or unfortunate men, there are other benefits, but there is far more respect for others in Britain. Even counting the bullies, racists, louts and thugs, there is a widespread belief in society that this type of behaviour is wrong. There are rules to stop it, even if people choose to flout them.

This is why I have spates of absolutely HATING the British men who come here and exploit it. Married women are not allowed to work (they are taxed at an exceptionally high rate if they try), are brought up to feel they amount to whatever their Estee Lauder makes them and they (and, to be fair, the men too) should never, ever complain. British men who come here know how wrong this is, it`s far worse for them to milk it than the men who were brought up with it as their normality. Our lot should know better.

You should also know that Stitch is fashionable and Chicken Little is not. As told to me by Miyu today. She is 15, bless her.

Where did you get that hat?

2006-09-01T10:32:00.000+07:00

I had a small eureka moment this week when a very small earthquake gave one of my classes a little jiggle: I`m a responsible adult and have to take care of small Japanese children, including calmly ushering them under a table should the Great Kanto Earthquake repeat itself, as it has been due to for the past decade. They know far more about how to handle them than I do so I might take advantage of some of the earthquake training events that are taking place to mark the earthquake`s anniversary. They have them every September and October, and you can go in an earthquake simulator.

This ludicrous chancer has volunteered to language exchange with me. His pose annahilates any doubts about language exchange being a euphimism for blind dating. I had applied to around 10 exchanges in a panic when my Japanese classes closed for summer, and he is one of the five (men only) replies I received. I`ve met one of them a couple of times and he seems to give a passable attempt at language exchange, the first time I managed to ask why the Beatles are bigger here than in Britai, but he couldn`t answer in either language. There`s still a sniff of unwelcome potential romance; Friday night he insisted on paying for dinner (not exactly a problem, but a strong hint of a date in a country where men are very accustomed to paying for female company) and we generally spoke in English because I was too tired to bother. He has also mentioned a girlfriend, but fidelity is literally an alien concept here. Itsuma, who gives his job as `guard man` looks like quite a playa and probably has three girlfriends already, and could be fishing for a fourth. He was after a photo of me from the off, but maybe he just wanted to show off his hat.

Last night Jerry and I discussed horse-riding over some very good yakitori. We had to traipse around a bit to find somewhere to eat as everywhere was booked for wedding parties, but I think it was for the best. The place we went to was great. We`re off to the mountains for a trail lesson at the end of the month. Horse-riding is an even more expensive pursuit in Japan than it is in Britain as you have to join clubs and then pay a nominal fee for each ride. The joining fee can be anything from ¥10,000 up, though this wouldn`t be out of the question. Clubs in Tokyo proper charge far, far more. We then headed to the George as I wanted a bit of impartial employment advice, but neither of us can remember getting home. I just got an email from Jerry asking `how did I get to my home`. I had been hoping to ask him the same question. I guess we both fell out of the same taxi, but what happened before we got into it is anyone`s guess.

Today I had an extremely tiring session at Cafe Lamp. Why these people come to `conversation time` with no intention of speaking, I don`t know. I was too tired to think of a topic, so turned the tables on the students and asked them to come up with some questions. This went quite well, and very interestingly, on the more advanced table, with one wacky boy asking why it is only in Britain that we have the insult `sheepshagger` and who also asked another student his opinion of necrophilia, but the beginner`s table was stumped and too shy to venture anything. I tried a new angle, by asking why they wanted to learn English, but in spite of claiming to want to use it to make friends, none of them dared ask another a question, until a `maverick` from Osaka asked the table if they had attended any horse-races and finally they warmed up and got going.

Afterwards, there was the usual faffing over lunch arrangements, before we headed off for Thai and Lisa came to meet us. I was so pleased as she got to see Graeme the JET Kaori has been stalking for the past year. I had warned Lisa before that he was a bit ridiculous and she spotted it immediately. The Japanese just think he`s cool, but he clearly isn`t. This is him with me and Aki last November. He has since let the bleach grow out and only spikes his hair on special occasions, but his general demeanour is much the same. Ultimately, he`s a decent, well brought-up boy, but seems ashamed of this and retardedly desperate to shock (as is Aki, much to her mother`s despair).

Lisa and I finally managed to shake Graeme off (being a JET he gets less time with other gaijin than us and bursts with English when he has a chance to speak at his usual pace) and did a lot of very depressing window shopping. I couldn`t resist a brooch from the second-hand shop of my friend in the Pepsi Cola dress from the George`s mod night. I still don`t know her name, but hopefully we`re going to a mod night in Tokyo together next month. Lisa and mooched around, tried checking out boys using Loft`s music studio, stalked my hairdresser a little bit, looked in shops we couldn`t afford and tried on glasses.

It was lovely. So, so easy. No slowing my speech or downgrading my diction, no need to explain reference points or politely deny my dislikes. I hadn`t realised how much hard work it can be spending time without real friends. She`s someone I would most definitely get on with back home (suddenly the world`s biggest compliment), but I like her all the more here as she is such a rarity here. Most gaijin here are men, and most of those are losers, and I don`t enjoy spending time with them so much. It`s not because I feel I am better than them (I`m a bit of a geek myself, though some here do epitomise the term `loser`), but they do have a tiresome perspective on life and an essence of bitterness that no number of up-dated Japanese shags can quite extinguish.

The girls are generally Australian or Canadian, and brilliant fun, but they don`t provide a full friendship service. Partying is an ever-ready attribute, you dance and drink until the sun comes up and they will never tire, but if you want a quiet chat about something boring and sensible, don`t go to an Australian. Canadians bridge the gap between Britain and Australia, so are generally better (some openly admit to studying Japanese), but most Australians think it is soft to show any signs of intellectuality or to think and not do. This is why sport is such a national treasure there. I was told off recently by Mike for referring to them as half-people, but congratulated by Roisin for the same thing, which is worth a little more in my eyes. Kate, as I have said before, is a lovely (and still sport-loving) exception. Having had almost a year`s drought of mindless girl`s chat out here (aside from the occasional oasis from Rachel breezing in from Osaka), talking nothingy rubbish with Lisa today was so utterly normal and enjoyable.

After loafing around we headed towards the station to find this trio busking with considerably more style than you could expect in Leicester Square tube. They had brought their own generator, mics and amps, but had to mill around and blend into the crowd as the police ran over to move them on. The started packing up slowly, let the police get back to the koban and started up again, their groupies blowing bubbles at them as they sang. The were very boy-bandy and I could feel the air palpitating with teenage hormones as the girls swooned along with them. The guy in the middle could easily have gone solo, but his nerves gave him worse shakes than Parkinsons.

I`ve just finished watching the first X-Men movie on TV, which was immediately followed by a programme about a very small Chinese girl with a home-cut pudding basin haircut. At the moment, she is eating chicken from the whole leg, the claw scratchingly close to her face as she tucked into the anaemic-skinned boiled thigh. I think I might have nightmares tonight.

For all my unexpected enthusiasm for Japanese boys, my heart belongs to a Banksy.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1325440.ece

The importance of being girlish

2006-08-28T20:04:00.000+07:00

George opened the doors to his new bar on Saturday night. The lure of free champagne and chicken nuggets was irresistable so I took advantage of being in Ikebukero to meet up with my brand new friend, Yoriko, who works in the area. She`s a bit of a muso so I might finally get a real introduction to the Japanese music scene (`shit` according to her). I tried to prise some bad Japanese out of her, then regretted using the word `manko` in Ken`s earshot as he pointed to demonstrate what it is (not something a nice young lady wants highlighted in any circumstances). It served me right for showing off my already extensive `bad Japanese` vocabulary, I suppose. Yoriko did teach me `special needs`, which I intend to mutter into the ear of the next ojiisan that shoves me out of a queue for being young, female and foreign. Yoriko and Mayumi had to head home early (Tokyo`s last trains are laughable - they stop long before the bars do, along with ATMs, which have opening hours). We all got the last train back to Omiya and continued into the small hours there drinking shot-sized concoctions of worrying colours and bullying Jerry into moonwalking and trotting around the bar.

Last night I had to drag the resulting hangover to Kate`s leaving do. She`ll most definitely be missed, being an utter diamond in this desolate rough. The other Nova teachers tried to bully me into drinking and dancing, both of which I refused, nursing my head and an orange and lemonade, and holding back from the dancefloor close to a very kakkoii Japanese boy. I never quite managed to speak to him properly (we started three interrupted conversations, but never got so far as introductions), but whilst lurking in his vicinity I got speaking to a refreshingly normal Mancunian girl. She has offered to drive me to a retail outlet not too far from Omiya (I never dreamed Clarks and Next could be so desirable) and is looking for someone to hang around with on a Sunday every now and again. I had been seriously worried what I would do without Kate, so this is an enormous relief. It won`t make her any less missed, but it might keep me slightly more sane. Lisa is also friends with the kakkoii Japanese boy, it seems, who headed off with her and her boyfriend for the last train with a deeply, cornily, meaningful `mata ne`. Until next time...

It made me realise just how valuable, not only female, but British female company is, something I took for granted to the point of almost shunning it in England. In a brief and fairly superficial chat (centring around our acceptance of Japanese hankies as things of great use and wonder and how close we have come to beating our ADHD-suffering students), it was immediately obvious that she had a wonderfully British view on things. It was undefineably different from everyone else`s and very familiar: homely. I now have a good group of party girls from Nova, but they`re all from Commonwealth countries and still not quite what I`m used to. I`ve been desperate to meet some girls to go on the lash with, but Lisa has that incredibly rare quality of being someone I would happily associate with at home. There aren`t many of those around.

Being a woman landed so far from home and having to build an almost instanteous circle of friends, you find yourself either lowering your standards, spending much of your time alone or wanting to cling on desperately to anyone who appears half-normal. Some of the guys out here may experience it too, but less so as they have that ever-ready back-up of an eager Japanese girlfriend to act as guide, companion, teacher and emotional prop. What this situation does to girls is make meeting new friends as politically-charged as meeting a potential date (though that is far less intimidating as there are so many more of those). You don`t want to act like a mad loner, but being too casual could mean you miss the opportunity of meeting a decent friend. And it`s so weird asking a girl for her phone number. When I did ask Lisa for hers, I was almost as nervous as if I was fishing for a date, though this was slightly more important. What made me feel considerably better about the whole thing was her reaction and, later, a very drunk Lauren chasing me out of the pub door asking if I wouldn`t mind terribly if she got my number from Chantal, if that was OK, if I didn`t mind, could she, if that was OK...

Showing me the way to get home

2006-08-25T17:22:00.000+07:00

Recently, I`ve been reconsidering my move into Tokyo. Omiya seems more like home than Dullsville, so my laziness had me pondering a happy, suburban future in Saitama. Not for long though, I didn`t come to Japan to live in the suburbs. I`ve decided to investigate moving into the Big City a bit more, spurred on by my increasing boredom and frustration at having a nihilist for a boss. His unquestioning acceptance that life and Lipscombe are shit doesn`t hold with my own world view (though parts overlap).

Before I can completely let go of the security of the Japanese Croydon, I thought I`d check out what was available for what price, so today I met Kenji and went to an apartment letting agency in Sasazuka to do just that. I feared cockroach-ridden shoeboxes with mould-spattered bathrooms and the pervasive scent of dead tenant. Overall, everything was fairly clean, presentable and considerably bigger than the company accommodation I`m currently paying over the odds for. The idea of having my own little home ten minutes` walk from Shinjuku is massively exciting and, unlike flat-hunting in London, every apartment had a certain appeal and it was only my unyielding fickleness that swiped a couple of the wish list. They are only marginally more expensive than my current apartment and considerably larger, though the key money is a huge obstacle.

Japanese landlords have somehow devised a wonderously beneficial system to line their pockets. Tenants usually provide one or two months` deposit up front, along with your first month`s rent and this crippling, non-refundable gift - usually two months` rent again, dubbed key money. Money you will never see again, it`s just a gift to your new landlord. It is this which puts most gaijin in guesthouses (which I am now loathe to do, having seen one amazing apartment in Sasazuka that I just fell in love with) and some salarymen on benches while they save up their spare yen for key money. The apartment I fell for was around ten minutes from Sasazuka station, had a huge kitchen (my current kitchen is a sink and plastic hob in the hallway, so as soon as I slipped my shoes off in the genkan I just knew), a separate tatami bedroom, a huge loft space that could double as a spare room and a small private balcony. (Kenji is standing near the genkan of the first place we saw, which I dismissed over its bedsitness - I do not want a stove in my bedroom.) All I need to do now is cobble together the ¥485,800 for the first month and its mine.

Kenji has vowed to look for places online that only need one month up front. Without him, I would most definitely be Omiya-ridden. He and David are very new friends and I was initially cynical of their exceeding niceness. They most definitely aren`t trying to get me in the sack, so I was confused about what they might be up to. Why would anyone go out of their way to be so incredibly kind to someone they barely know? We`ve met a handful of times, but they have double-handedly restored my ever-decreasing faith in human nature. They have taken me under their wing completely. David quickly recommended a good letting agency for me to use (some are a little gaijin-phobic, to say the least) and readily offered Kenji`s assistance in dealing them, something that only threatened a small squabble because Kenji didn`t have the chance to do it himself. They have slyly denied the genuine cost of bills, refused my money when I catch them out at this and turned a blind eye to my greed to insist I only pay a small portion of what I genuinely owe in a wonderfully Marxist levelling of wealth and are generally being good in ways I haven`t experienced from men who aren`t after getting their hands on my chocolates. Hideously, while writing this, I am still pondering what the catch is. Maybe they want me to harvest their baby.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

2006-08-24T20:41:00.000+07:00

I`ve just read the most absurd story of the summer on BBC Online. If it were April, I`d dismiss it as a joke. Tokyo Metro, which advertises soft porn and hostess bars with wanton disregard for its female passengers, has finally overturned its decision to show nude pictures of a pregnant and allegedly `over-stimulating` Britney Spears. This in a country that has men flicking through titty shots between stations and posters dangling from train carriages touting scantily clad women and their costings. Japan either has a wicked eye for irony or is utterly blind.

Maybe I will finally be chickaned after all.

Nothing much has happened since Kingsley`s departure. I imagine he is basking in the relative cool of Thailand`s tropical heat, while Japan sweats into the concrete. If you have a choice, DO NOT come to Japan in the summer, it is a hideous place right now (though better than winter, when I felt like I was living in a squat). The water I boiled for breakfast is still hot. It`s 2am. I don`t understand how people don`t die. Given the topical over-awareness of the type of people teaching attracts (if he didn`t get Jon Bennet, I definitely wanted her), it is wrong to say I am sweating like a a paedophile in a playground, but it`s not far off. I lose my own body weight in fluids every night and wake up feeling hung over, my dehydration is so severe.

And teaching does attract some weirdoes. I`ve been told that on my birthday I dubbed a colleague `Peter the Paedophile` (disappointingly unoriginal, but oh so tempting) and started a spate of name-calling amongst my invited guests, but `Peter the Paedophile` couldn`t have a better job, was that his preferred target. I think his is actually closer to childlike, blind-drunk Japanese wives, who are downtrodden and grateful. I do often worry when my little Ayano demands that I pick her up so she can draw on the board, or insists that she sit in my lap, or just lunges into a hug because she hasn`t seen me for a while just what rich pickings there could be for the wrong-minded (am I one to even consider this?!).

Thought I`d stick in a picture of me and Jery celebrating England`s long forgotten victory over a team I can no longer remember. If it wasn`t Portugal, does it even matter?

Kingsley in Kanto

2006-08-20T16:18:00.000+07:00

I had to say goodbye to my favourite student on Friday. Yuka is jetting off to study fashion in New York. Brilliantly and coincidentally, our last few lessons were on future plans, so we spent the hour discussing what she wanted to do when she arrived, with me occasionally remembering to correct her `wills` and `going tos`. Without really looking, I spotted an appointment on her itinerary and asked what she`d be doing at that time, only to have to retract it as she went rouged and spluttered. At lunchtime on Wednesday, she is watching a mock trial, entitled `Drunk Sex or Date Rape`. She is going to learn so much more than good hemming.

My apartment has been like Shinjuku station this week, so many visitors. This fellow popped round on Thursday morning, eerily turning his over-sized head and watching me through the mosquito screen while I waited and hoped he would move onto someone else`s clothes pegs. I don`t believe he was more scared of me than I was of him. I do not slowly tilt my head in a threatening way or rub my legs together like I am about to pounce at the slightest uwelcome movement.

Kingsley was rather more welcome, though didn`t make it to Omiya or anywhere near my laundry. We exchanged Asian experiences over yakitori and soba in Gonpachi (the same place Mike took me and Koizumi took Bush not so long ago). He`s been in China learning martial arts from Shaolin Monks, a bit more impressive than me teaching Taisei `cow` (which he ignored, far more interested in shouting `chinpo` - penis - at the cow`s udders) and Yumiko the `L for Loser` sign (though vitally important for undermining smug gaijin). Again, the strangest thing from having a visitor from home was that it was not in the least bit strange, not even for having not seen each other for three years, getting mixed up on our meeting points and not knowing if it would happen at all was a good technique to distract any strangeness.

We strolled around Ginza on Friday, while I offloaded my many anti-Japanese prejudices and Kingsley sized them up against the Chinese. As a mistreated minority here, I sympathise and side with the Chinese in an unnecessary `all foreigners together` seige mentality, but as a man on the inside, Kingsley sees as them differently. When you`ve seen enough people in one country shitting by the side of the road, I guess it can colour your opinions of them. When my students have described the Chinese as being dirty, I have been sceptical - the Chinese are viewed much like the Germans or French are in Britain (or worse, the Welsh). Hearing Kingsley, who has less reason to be prejudiced beyond imagining they would be much the same as the Japanese or the Koreans, say much the same and give more gross examples of their behaviour, I have to give it more credence. A few students have sneerily complained of the Chinese spitting, but I have seen so many Japanese men clearing their sinuses in the gutter that I needed Kingsley`s additional explanation that the Chinese do this in restaurants for people to then come behind and mop up.

Before we even had time for the yakitori to settle, we headed back to Kingsley`s hotel for him to change and us to head to a sushi restaurant recommended in an Anthony Bourdain book. Kingsley had the hotel concierge write down the restaurant`s address in Japanese, a stroke of unintended genius as I put us on the wrong tube line (why did he tell us to go to the furthest station when we can just use this one?!) and we popped up in the wrong part of Ginza and spent longer strolling around trying to find it, building up the courage to ask locals for directions, running in and out of shops and hotels that might not consider it a business rival and even getting a cab before finally asking a young boy drumming up custom in the street for a competitor who passed us on to a young girl who led us up to a door we would never have found alone. All in all, it took us longer to locate the place than we spent inside.

Not being the flashest restaurant, the staff seemed a little amused at our having made a reservation and lavished us with unnecessary amounts of attention. Muted by greed and indecisiveness, we asked the waiter to recommend something for us - we got wonderfully refreshing cups of iced sake and a spread of the freshest cuts of sashimi from nearby Tsukiji fish market, octopus, some unidentified white fish, something sardiney thiat Kingsley fell in love with and some amazingly succulent, meaty scallops. It was all just an apetiser though, as we headed off to Wara Wara`s in Shibuya for some bright lights and a more familiar menu. We tried out some more sake, but I had to worry about the last train and my early start with Saburo, a new intimidatingly academic student, in the morning.

We had to skip our Saturday night shabu shabu in Shinjuku, which would have been a greater shame had I not squeezed a small tour of the host and hostess bars on Friday. We stood in the street gazing up at billboards of rank Japanese men who are paid to spend evenings wtih the onely singles of Toyko. An array of wonky Duran Duran wannabes fill bar after bar in Shinjuku and command enormous fees just to save Tokyoites too busy to date the shame of a dateless night. Hostess bars function in much the same way, and my awareness of the Great British Hen Night convinces me these men are just as goosed as their female counterparts. At what point hosting becomes whoring, I don`t know.

He`s Shinkansenning to Kyoto this evening, so we could only meet for lunch today. We tried to get something nice in the plushest department store in Ginza, but sat down in the tea shop rather than the restaurant so enjoyed some Jasmine Earl Grey and split a mango dessert before heading up the road for yakiniku, my favourite food ever, though Korean, not Japanese. One of the best things about having Kingsley to visit was his shared enthusiasm for anything and everything edible. Japan is a wonderfully rewarding country for the culinary adventurous. It can cater for those who are more timid in their tastes, but if you aren`t prepared to at least try, you are missing out on some seriously special experiences. Friday`s sashimi was proof. Yakiniku is hardly a problem for the squeamish, it`s a table-top barbeque. A meal and an activity all rolled into one. The best part of today`s meal was the beef, but some might skip the super-spicy kimchi and tongue and squid are not to everyone`s liking, but you start with the tongue and build up, with every taste bursting with richer and more wonderful flavours. It was amazing. I could eat it forever.

After Kingsley headed off for Kyoto, I got the Metro to Harajuku and checked out the shrine and the freaks. The Meiji Shrine is a rich one, you can judge its wealth from the barrels of sake that have been donated to the monks. I had wanted to look at the flower garden, but couldn`t be bothered to walk, then found myself doing a huge lap around the aesthetically displeasing woods just to end up where I started. I did get some snaps of the goths and Lolitas who congregate there at weekends and are happy, if you don`t mind asking, posing for photos. As, by asking for a photo, you are at a more basic level, telling these people they are freaks, I always feel awkward asking, but am more than happy to snap away. I also, with a worse sense of bullying voyeurism, got sight of a Lolita tranny strolling up Takeshita Dorii with a parasoll and black lace gloves and spent more time and energy than is pleasant or healthy trying to stealthily take a snap, before feeling grossly disappointed in myself when I spotted him scuttling up the train platform away from the gasping open mouths of the other travellers.

Now I am boxed into my apartment, boarded up against the enormous cockroach I confronted on my way to put the gomi out (trying to swack it off the building with a pathetic swing of my little rubbish bag, I just sent him cantering up the bricks towards my floor) and sitting through some shocking Japanese `comedy` (never has the term been used more loosely) while waiting for Superman to start. A host of comedians have been dressed in skin-tight blue body suits (a la Superman, though I am not sure how much of a coincidence this is) and given a table of props to amuse a group of young boys. The measure of their success is not how heartily the stern-faced boys laugh, but whether they spit the ping-pong balls which are wedged into their mouths as they laugh. These are then picked up from the floor, counted and replaced. Something of a surprise in this OCD suffer`s paradise. So far the comedy has been weak. A young man, most likely from Osaka, sang about the city and interspersed his act with regular chants of `baka` (stupid), as the ping-pongs stayed put, the baka rate increased and teh incidental language eventually vanished. There has also been a small man sporting a Hitlerian moustache and a child`s school rucksack sitting on a chair flailing his legs in a dry breaststroke. He also shouted baka a lot. A tall Elvis has sung nonsense into a red plastic cone with huge levels of success even after laughing at his own `joke`. Hitler has just been blasted with dry ice. From Elvis`s sympathetic hand on his shoulder, the swimming demonstration didn`t go down too well.

God rained on our Parade

2006-08-17T18:08:00.000+07:00

I got back into a bit of marching this week, attending Tokyo`s Gay Parade with a couple of gay boys from Nagoya. I won`t name them. Tokyo doesn`t host Pride and it is appropriate and telling that they`ve chosen to change the name to something less challenging and more shame-faced. It was a ludicrously Japanese experience. The parade was due to start at 2pm, at which time a bell chimed, thunder struck and the heavens opened. I had soltaned all over, but soon it was washed off and glistening in oily puddles around Shibuya koen. Because we were forced to shelter until Allah`s disapproval passed over, we were slightly late for the kick-off, though being Japanese, this still had us arriving a good 45 minutes before anything actually happened. However, we were barred entry to the actual march because we needed to register at 2pm. I was sullenly muttering about no one understanding what a march actually was, when a Japan`s Big Gay Al came over to explain the situation an unnecessary second time, before passing his queenly decree and letting us join in the back of the march (perhaps only to spite us as my friends and I snapped at each other `we don`t like him`.

We were given brown ribbons - another source of discontent - and placed at the back (too much irony for me). I was kept in line by my friend taking fatherly control as I continued to grumble through the rain at the unnatural levels of organisation taking place, until we were shuffled around so each row had approximately four people in it, with two randoms allowed to straggle at the back and clearly irking the boy whose sums didn`t leave us in a respectably militaristic group. It was then explained that we were not allowed to take photos of the parade as some people felt uncomfortable being seen there. I was nearly kicked in the shin for whisperingly wondering what they had bothered coming for, before we finally, slowly, moved off. A huge pink parade bringing the safari to Tokyo`s drop-jawed shoppers, all keeping clear of the barriers and not attempting to feed the gays. With no cameras or videos allowed, it is pretty much a non-event to those outside the gay community (except the fag-haggers, nicely named Omamasans) so people stopped dead in the street trying to get a look at these weird creatures plodding behind rainbow-bannered floats blasting cheesy house that no one dared dance to (I forgot myself and had a go, but it didn`t last long).

It was a very muted demand for acceptance. That even my friends, who have been more brutalised by homophobes in Britain, should not want to be seen while demanding their place in society was quite a shock to me. Japan has a long, long way to go before it can claim in any way to be a developed nation. Socially, it is further behind Victorian Britain. Because of this, I spent most of the parade feeling like I had wasted my time. No one would hold their hand up to attending, no media would cover and force the straight-acting community to face the fact that Japan is not only a playground for philandering straight Salarymen, so very little was achieved. The two young kids being encouraged to greet us was a small, but positive step, but my friends were terrified that somehow, though they had travelled miles from their homes, that they would be seen and instantly lose their jobs and social circles. Whatever the laws against discrimination (I doubt such things exist), students and parents would not accept them and it would not be good business to employ them, so the more nervous of the two, huddled between me and the other, a borrowed baseball cap tugged down to his brow, where sunglasses took over the camouflage, and maintained a nervous silence, constantly watchful of cameras and video equipment that somehow might wind up on his Vice Principle`s desk. Here Japan`s notorious non-confrontationalism causes yet more problems (I don`t know of many instances where it helps) as no one is prepared to ask to be accepted. The parade meekly presented itself, almost apologetically, and barely made a millimetre`s progress as a result. In the 60s, black and women`s rights activists regularly faced brutal assault for their beliefs, and slowly made progress. They achieved a lot, but more still has to be done. At the rate Japan is moving, it will be 2106 before it is level with 1920`s Britain.

It is clearly not something society is ready to accept here. One very angry man - his hair scraped into a Bickleish mohican and a Smirnoff Ice bottle full of fireworks poking from his army fatigues, my friend from Nagoya swore that he was gay, but he seemed to be swearing that every man in Japan was - shouted at the parade to get out of the way and stalked us down the road until the police asked him, ever so politely, to move on. Of course, he didn`t and the only reason we could figure for his not being arrested was the police`s tacit agreement with his ideas. He badgered the back of the parade, frothing cheap sparkling wine at us a la Formula 7 and then coming back to harass a young Japanese boy who was so thrilled to be part of the parade and not at all upset at having to shoulder a banner all alone (and the only person, aside from me, visibly enjoying being there) that not even acts of aggression could dampen his spirits. Finally, when they spotted the fireworks, the police stepped up and the man was removed, but not as swiftly as you would have expected at home. I was just losing any faith left in Japan as a potentially progressive nation, when I spotted a woman and her mother encouraging her young daughters to wave at all the foreign gays. Clearly enjoy the safari park sensibilities, but also perhaps planting at least two seeds that not all gays are filthy perverts who need to be sacked from their jobs for fear of spreading their germs. And before anyone else asks, no, I am not `one`.

Friday night was Kate`s birthday and so I trundled off down the George. A few mod DJs were playing, but I was too sober to dance, although the Nova teachers tried to make me. I tried to join in, but a foolish (though aesthetically pleasing) choice of footwear and stark sobriety stopped me, so I downed a Sambuca and hoped to quickly join in with the party. I kicked off my sandals and was just getting going when everyone made a dash for the last train, so I latched on to the DJs and their friends and won them over by announcing, in painful Japanese, that 1968 was the best year. I was so caught up in this conversation, I didn`t notice what Ardir was up to with my camera and woke up the next day with all sorts of weird shots, mainly featuring Ken`s facial comments on the night (and me) and this woeful attempt to impress (it is sort of impressive - go to a Japanese swimming pool and you won`t find that much hair around the communal shower plughole). I tried to woo a Japanese mod and got so far, but while we were chatting he rounded off every sentence with `Zoe wakkaru?` (do you understand?) to which I had to reply in the negative and so we would potter over to his more fluent friend in the Pepsi Cola dress for assistance - I think the expense of having to fork out for her, as well as me, to come along on dates was the final, unsurmountable hurdle.

It justified my sudden spurt of Nihongo study recently. I use the term study loosely. I have bought a new book, which I showcased in front of my newly-permed and suddenly less attractive hairdresser (which is just as well, he saw me unwashed in my PE kit on my way to play tennis with Sean when I mistook him for a woman and thought it safe to go in and book an appointment) and haven`t touched since, as well as buying some kanji flashcards, which I flicked through and put down before I got out of the numbers, which I already know, for fear of being disheartened. I did arrange some language exchanges, unaware that this a euphemism for `study date`. My first date was clearly uninterested, we skipped through the `te` form of Japanese verbs without a pause for thought (it makes it much harder, believe me) and then he had me record some sentences. He claimed these were for the TOEIC exam, but then said he didn`t study for TOEIC. He took me to a karaoke booth so he could record in quiet surroundings, but did jokingly offer me a microphone for one song before we left. A sudden and unexpected show of humour. My first attempt hadn`t even gone that well, the man in question suddenly vanishing when I put my foot down about meeting on home turf. The third was not so bad; unattractive but we did have a genuine and useful language exchange. He did send a dubious email after suggesting we make our meetings `meaningful`, and there has been radio silence since I replied in perfunctory gratitude. My next `date` is with a 23-year-old that I don`t have the energy to even bother with now I have accepted this has nothing to do with studying.

I had a disappointingly giftless birthday party with the Menopause Sisters. This time, Sachiko showed off her house, where we startled her husband into a thousand bows when he stumbled across us in the living room before scuttling off to hide in the office across the path. Sachiko piled plates of homecooked food in front of us, the low table sagging with the weight, and my knees buckling from all the kneeling, while she fried up pork and chicken because I have somehow tagged myself as a vegetable-loathing carnivore. Takako and Hideko tried to broach corn on the cob with ladylike pickings at each kernel, before I picked mine up in my hands and they copied. Afterwards Sachiko dragged us to an empty karaoke bar (owned by Mamasan, who looked a lot like my own mother), where she forced everyone to sing. She was leafing through the book trying to coax me into Mariah Carey numbers and demanding to hear my `Yesterday` and bluffing offense when I said I didn`t like `Yesterday`. I felt her bullying and buffering everyone into something only she enjoyed negated any rudeness of an outright refusal on my part. The other two spotted long before that I was not keen on singing (karaoke is really only a means of getting and enjoying being drunk, singing sober is a vile thing to do), but Sachiko kept on like a pitbull on a baby`s face. Eventually, I had to buckle and attempt to sing a `popular Japanese song` after my protests that not knowing the tune or the words or even being able to read the words on the screen made it practically impossible were either incomprehensible or conveniently ignored.

Still no wiser

2006-08-05T03:51:00.000+07:00

So far, I`m quite enjoying 29. I feel a bit like a real grown up, although this might be because I am living out of context and spending day after day with eight-year-olds who find it hilarious that foreigners could ever be the same age as their mothers and repeatedly check their understanding of newly-taught adjectives on me ("old teacher" and "ugly teacher" are favourites, the smarter kids go for the double-blow of "handsome teacher", smartarses). Somehow it really is a big joke that I might be the same age as their parents. Maybe because their mothers are cloaked in ageless skin, while I sport wrinkles that put the old obaasans to shame.

After suffering hideously all day Friday, Saturday night I found it surprisingly easy to get back on the horse. I met an assortment of teachers, students, receptionists and randoms in Omiya station before heading off for a plush and perhaps over-priced izakaya for the party. David and Kenji brought me ten bottles of five kinds of Nihonshu and I committed myself to drinking it for the rest of the evening, though not from their stash. It was a very thoughtful, if slightly weighty gift, as was Rob`s bottle of Bailey`s; `because all ladies love Bailey`s, don`t they?`. Not entirely accurate, but nicely thought out.

Sadly karaoke was off the menu, so we missed Takeshi`s Queen medley. Next time perhaps. He and Raku hit it off very well comparing tattoos. It was like a yakuza initiation. Because the group was split across three tables, I had to flit between the three for the majority of the night, stealing the best food from each before moving on for my next helping. It kept me relatively sober for the majority of the night, but once everyone was nicely settled and the latecomers had been seen to I hit the sake with Sachiko and my memory fades there. I have vague recollections of haranging Shozu in broken Japanese for smoking, but sober I can`t even remember the verb for that, so I suspect he had no idea what I was going on about. As I`ve re-caught my cold for a third time, I have found I have accidentally stopped smoking. It has been over a month now, Thursday and Saturday being my biggest tests, and I have turned into one of those overtly puritantical quitters. Just what I always wanted to be.

On Sunday morning, I managed to get to Cafe Lamp almost on time (it was before the start time, but the organiser was already calling to check where I was). I almost regretted not letting on to everyone that it was my birthday when another teacher was handed an envelop of cash, but then he had to stand and endure `Happy Birthday`, which no amount of money could make fun for a second time in a week.

After the session, I ran off to meet Yuka, but decided to take her to lunch with everyone for some English practise, but I got caught up in a conversation with a demanding Japanese boy who accused all gaijin males preying on Japanese girls of being paedophiles. I couldn`t possibly comment. Yuka and I then went for her lesson, which she hadn`t been expecting - the poor girl needs to learn to question things more assertively if she`s ever going to survive in New York. She had thought I had, without any warning or checking if it was OK, had bumped her lesson for a get-together with some of my mates. Afterwards, I met Darrell for a few drinks, which stretched way past the last trains and I put him on the spare futon. Perhaps a little too cosy for non-blood relatives.

Monday was a struggle, but on Tuesday I got to meet the long-lost and long-missed Takumasa, who came into my lesson for a make-up class. He still gabbles away in Japanese, but this time I understood slightly more of it. His new teacher is OK, but makes him sing karaoke if he misses two lots of homework. Sadly, he had done his this week as I was hoping to get a chance to be a bit sterner and make him sing. He enjoyed the alpha-twister and almost wet himself when he found out that dodgeball was still in the lesson plan.

Last night, Yoshiko (with me) and Miyoko (with Mike) took us out for another birthday meal and my favourite, quietest student, Fumitake came along. He was a bit drunk when he arrived, and 15 minutes late, which had the ladies in a flap, but still as quiet as ever. He has told me before he doesn`t like his job as it involves communicating, so I was flattered that he came and am still confused that he ever chose to study.

To make my toils with hiragana worthwhile, I`ve decided to take the Japanese profficiency test in December, so have been trying to increase my levels of study (which had reached nil). As well as buying a kanji book for 7-yeaar-olds, I have applied for a tonne of language exchanges, but I very quickly realised this was just a euphimism for dating. Many long-established mixed race couples now blush at their naivety at coming together in such a way. I had previously considered and ruled this out as the magazine I used also had a dating personal ads column, so assumed the weirdoes would use that. I am going ahead anyway, but with caution and an open mind. Who knows. Apparently most mixed couples in Japan owe their inception to these exchanges, but most involve girls who want a foreigner and little else. I am overly, and probably unjustifiably, fussy and know exactly what is good-looking, a quality Japanese girls cannot discern.

I`m enjoying being connected to the internet at home for the first time but can`t use my computer very well. I know it has somewhere a facility for voice recordings as it has an internal microphone, but I have no idea how to access it. None of the help pages seem to offer any insight, but I am persisting. I have offered to record a speech for one of my students to learn intonation so I must. I also don`t know what my password is for my email account, so can`t use the iChat facility, which is hindering me. The shop set up my laptop with no password to access it, but the mail account is demanding one and I can`t find anything anywhere - it could be there, but be signposted in Jap.

I`ve had another unwelcome guest. Shortly after finishing my last blog entry, this casual intruder strode into my room, swanking like a championship boxer. Cockroaches know they will fuck over the meek and steal their inherited Earth. This one wasn`t so awkward or quick as his predecessor and almost felt like a pet. He casually checked out a pile of clean underwear as a possible den, before meandering within range of my plastic tub. While telling a friend about his capture, the friend let slip that Japanese cockroaches (and maybe others, I am no mushi expert) can fly. If I`d been countering his flight into my face, like the other one`s dash for my feet, I would have invested in a less environmental way to deal with him and his friends. Japan is much like Britain in one respect. I have had to stop talking about these unpleasant experiences as people here can`t help bu add unsettling information to that I already have. Apparently, for each cockroach you see, there are another 50 hidden close by, which means my flat is host to around 100. In an apartment already overcrowded by my solitary presence, this is bad news indeed.

The other ailing fellow is a Cicada, a huge flyer incompetent. They never live long enough to learn how to steer their own bodies so you often feel them bouncing off your head before hitting the dirt and waiting to die. This one was two steps from Heaven and an inch from my cash card (note Saitama`s local cartoon character adorning the card). Everything is vastly bigger to what we`re used to in England, but Yoshiko put my paltry fear of spiders into perspective when she explained that she isn`t scared of insects as, when a child working in her parent`s rice paddies, snakes would often swim past and her brother would pull them out of the water and whip her with them!

Got myself connected...

2006-07-28T10:22:00.000+07:00

I`m finally online! At 9am this morning, a foolhardy deliveryman, not scared off by a sodden foreigner opening the door in a 3-coin store towel, handed over my modem and I wanted to cancel every appointment of the day. I didn`t, as I had to teach and needed the money. It was also the lovely Yuka, who heads off to New York in two weeks and needs as much practise as possible. I also checked out a guest house (what they call the cheap dives reserved for foreigners) near Shinjuku. I`ve pretty much done Omiya now and didn`t come to Japan to live in a suburb, so am investigating moving. It was a run-down, overly-cluttered shack with tatami mats and a cupboard called an office, but it was quite homely.

Sadly, I would become tenant and rent collector in one move, but it is not the most off-putting aspect of the place. To get there, you have to ride a bike. It`s only about five minutes that way, but easily twenty boring minutes on foot. I wasn`t excited at the prospect anyway, but then the girl announced that it would be OK as cars drive on the same side of the road in England and Japan. The last time I rode a bike was a couple of years ago and the first time in over a decade. I borrowed Rachel`s and nervously set off for Tooting Common and got overly cocky. On the way back home, I bounced off the kerb at a strange angle and fell off spectacularly and slowly in the road in front of some cars so I was quite worried about having to compete with traffic moving at speed. The roads were fine today, but on the way back, I suddenly panicked and lost the ability to steer. We crossed a road at an angle, which I couldn`t handle and as I passed over a pedestrian island in the middle of the road with chicanes to stop cars using it for U-turns, I rode straight into an old lady`s stomach. I apologised over and over and removed my front tyre from her skirt, but she seemed more concerned about me than herself, which was fortunate.

I suspect my hangover might have had something to do with it. Yoko, Nozomi, Kaori and Yukako came round to help me celebrate my birthday last night. We drank masses of wine and ate sushi and yakitori. It was brilliant. I had been tired and dreading it. Kaori has been doing my head in recently, constantly beseiging me with questions about how to capture a `foreign boyfriend` and last time I saw her I ended up telling her off for using the word foreign. She was using it while saying she wouldn`t have a one-night stand on her forthcoming trip to Paris in case the lucky man ran off with her purse! Last night, she was chatting in Japanese with Nozomi and pulled a huge bike chain out of her bag. It was for her suitcase. She isn`t taking a rucksack as it can be cut open more easily. They do finally seem to have realised that as a `foreigner`, I might find their idea of everyone who is not Japanese being a thief slightly offensive. Kaori is, quite sweetly, making great efforts to stop herself using the word `foreigner` now.

My latest campaign is to teach my students to use `Westerner` or perhaps even find out what nationality a person is. Last night, I managed to renew my campaign and also point out that many, many `foreigners` also get robbed, rather than being robbers. That said, if I hadn`t a sense of how memorable my appearance is, I would go on the rob in Japan. It`d be really easy. It`s like living in a village in the 40s. People keep money at home, some don`t lock their doors. It would only be the police`s immediate suspicions that a gaijin had been up to no good that would stop me.

After Nozomi and Kaori had to leave to get their trains, Yoko, Yukako and I had much more fun. Nozomi is very nice, but perhaps chotto sensible and Kaori is just mad. She only wants to talk about boys, which is a bit dull when none of us have them or know anyone we would even want (except Kaori who staunchly continues to stalk Graeme - the ridiculous boy next to Aki flicking the bird! - in spite of him regularly telling her she will never be his girlfriend). Yoko is in the picture smoking in my washing. I`ll have to leave it out there for another week to get rid of the smell. Yukako is crouching by my TV, checking out the cards I`ve got from my family`s pets.

It`s hard to remember what I`ve been up to this week! Saturday, I went into Tokyo to watch the Sumida fireworks. I saw two-thirds of each explosion as my view was blocked by buildings. The friends I wanted to meet had pitched camp along the river at 6am. I just popped in after work. You don`t put in the graft, you can`t expect miracles. Asakusa Bridge was closed when I arrived as it was full and a line of small, polite policemen blocked everyone`s entry. I spent far more time gazing at kakkoii boys in the yukatas and jimbe than at the fireworks. A few seemed interested, but as ever, they never approached. Two actually came and stood next to me after staring for ages, so I asked them the time as a boring ice breaker and to showcase my basic nihongo, but still they wouldn`t take the bait. Weirdoes.

On Sunday, I went to an international festival with Kaori, Nozomi and some of the other Cafe Lampers. We`d been planning to go in our yukata for ages, so I imagined it was a festival, but was quite disappointed to find myself in a stuffy community hall until I spotted the food and beers stalls and the handsome boys signing people up for Australian rules football. Nozomi and Kaori had to help me dress before we went, there is no way I could tress myself up in one of those things alone. I intend to learn though - I am sure the internet holds the key. Anything is possible now, including drunkenly emailing randoms from my past, as some people seem to have been doing to me lately. Kaori had bought a book to do the obi, the band around the waist, and she and Nozomi struggled to make me presentable, often muttering `it`s difficult` to one another. I think the width of my body made it more of a challenge as bits didn`t meet and Japanese chests tend to be flat and easily hidden. I might strap myself down next time. We managed it, but the usual five minute stroll to the station was a mammoth trek as we could only take two-inch steps at a time.

The feminists who complained that high heels were designed so women couldn`t run from rapists should spare a thought for their Asian sisters. You`re practically shackled in yukata and the geta (wooden flip flops) that go with them cripple your feet and impede you more. It was nice for a tourist though, until `Elton` (suspiciously unJapanese, ne?) started asking if French kissing had anything to do with blow jobs and ruined the fun. I passed him over to Chris, a fat male JET, to deal with rather than drilling French polish.

I had a visitor on Thursday. I got home from work, having forgotten to plug all the plugholes, to find a cockroach strolling around my room. They`re impolite little fuckers. It moved like a real animal and charged straight at me. I`ll never complain about spiders again. At least they have the decency to flee. I had to leap out of its path twice before it calmed down enough to be scooped up in a tub. There`s one downstairs in the lobby right now, it`s almost two inches long. This one didn`t go for me, fortunately, it was too busy checking its post.

Last week`s unsubtle birthday hints went down a storm. On Tuesday, one of my students bought me a bag of goodies from the local patisserie and yesterday I had two parties! I had told my first afternoon class to prepare some work on Japanese folklore and told them, as it`s festival season, we should have a mini-festival - and because, of course, it was my birthday. They took the hint and came armed to the hilt with food. I had Chinese mixed rice, samosas, grapefruit jelly (I was scared it was this hideous tomato jelly people love here, but it was actually superb. I shouldn`t have doubted Michie) and chocolate cake. I also got some awful presents. The dried corn has a small hook on the back so I can hang it up if I like... I drunkenly laughed about it with the girls last night, but I suspect I just made myself look like a horrible, ungrateful retch. My next class forgot to bring in the cake they had ordered, so they got some extra practise after the lesson when they had been to fetch it. A fine exchange.

On Tuesday, Omiya had its own Sparks Festival, which gave the loca retirees an opportunity to stroll around almost bottomless while drinking beer and lifting floats. I saw some quite unfortunate sights as the men bowed hello and goodbye. As pert as they were for 60-year-old arses, it`s still not top of my must-sees. Afterwards, Edwin and I carried on drinking in my apartment where he continued to appal me with his hideous views. A week or so earlier we had had some weird, unwitting date, when he asked me if I needed a hug or a beer (he`d seen me in a mood the previous evening) and I opted for beer, but had to provide my own, and a movie. It was much as I remember `dating` when I was a teenager, being surrepticiously lured into lascivious situations (near-total darkness, in this instance - he did ask if I minded, but you aren`t actually allowed to say yes, are you?), laughing excessively at things I said that weren`t funny (and using this as an excuse to touch my leg, so I shuffled further and further away, until I was half-wedged under his table), trying to get me drunk (it`s a rich man - or a landlord - that can do that) and, finally, when all else had failed, whipping out some home-cooking. All during this, he continually deferred to my opinion and played dumb by claiming not to understand the goings-on in a fairly simple movie plot. As he`s almost a foot shorter than me, he wasn`t exactly ruining his chances, but he didn`t help himself by punctuating all this with claims that men are genetically programmed to cheat and that racism is also natural, so not worth fighting. Tuesday we had more of the same, but without the warm rice.

Premier Club. Worth getting up at 7.30am on a Saturday for?

This is Omiya, the view from my apartment building. Compare it to the picture of the Japanese garden and you`ll understand why I haven`t shown anyone before.

My street.

Yoshitatsu.

The Asahi Building, Asakusa, Tokyo.

The Cafe Lampers: Yukako, Kaori, Ryoko, me, Nozomi. I`ve no idea what the men`s names are. The one on the left is Ryoko`s boyfriend, possibly Takeshi - the Japanese Steve.

Reina, Yoshitatsu and Nanaka.

Sean enjoys FHM.

Let me eat cake.

Puppets `performing` kabuki in the Tokyo-Edo Museum.

Kyu Yasuda Garden, Ryogoku - where the Sumo tournaments take place. Everyone was disappointingly slim when I went.

Yuta and Kippei learning prepositions: the boys are on the table.

To be continued...

2006-07-28T10:13:00.000+07:00

For those of you kind enough to notice I`ve not been as talkative as late, I`m just waiting for my broadband to be set up (never a speedy process in this least efficient, but overly thorough, of countries) before I barrage you with a deluge of nonsense. Watch this space.

Slight return

2006-07-09T14:57:00.000+07:00

It seems like a long time since I was home scorching myself at Felixstowe with Billy and Bentley, but I thought I`d stick up the pictures of them anyway. Billy is the one with jaw-jut and Bentley the one with an attitude problem. He went for me almost every day in England. It didn`t do much to stop me missing Stussy. It would be nice to have a pet out here, so I am taking small steps to befriend a pack of ten tabbies who have appeared from nowhere. When people move house in Japan, sometimes they move quite literally, taking the place apart and rebuilding on a more desirable plot of land. This has happened by my apartment and ten overly friendly strays can now be found lurking in the muddied grounds. I have my eye on two of them, but am not sure my conscience can really allow me to steal them from such a happy and healthy extended family. I expect it can.

It`s taken no time to get used to being back. In spite of no one believing me, Japan can be quite mundane. By Saturday night, I was dreading returning to my little box and having to work on Monday. Work was, as always, quite fun, until I lost my voice from a combined assault of air conditioning, jetlag and the Japanese summer. By Saturday, I was a hacking mute and had to whisper to a class of five rowdy seven- and eight-year-olds that I couldn`t shout so they would have to be quiet. Ludicrously, they consented.

It`s been very nice being back. Japan has taken its World Cup Defeat on the chin and the joozu Kawaguchi can be seen on TV with `I Will Survive` as the backing track. This week, I have been in a mood because of over-tiredness, but very little has happening to genuinely warrant it. I`ve had several very nice nights out catching up with everyone as though I had gone for two months, instead of two weeks. On my first proper night back, I went to the George and got drunk with the man himself and Jerry and Koji. Kate and her boyfriend popped in to say hello and some other people were also involved, but the red wine blanked them out.

On Thursday, I had a girls` night out with my lunatic friends, Kaori and Yukako and the more sensible Nozomi and Yoko. Kaori wanted to go to the George for pizza, which was a disappointing suggesting I was unable to deflect until we passed a new izakaya called Gachi Samurei and I managed to herd them all in there where we were drowned out by the bellowing `rashaimase`s` of the staff. I didn`t miss this yodelled ritual which humiliated you whenever you enter any establishment that expects you to spend money. The nicer ones do it quietly, so it seems homely and authentic, but other places make such a meal of it, there`s a vocal Mexican wave ending with a newly deaf customer clutching their bleeding ear drums. We spent the night with Yukako and Kaori propounding their strange beliefs about `foreign boyfriends`. Kaori is scared of them, but won`t date Japanese for no good reason, whereas Yukako dislikes the traditional values of Japanese boyfriends so is dating a man she is not attracted to, has sex with with the light off and is trying to `decrease the opportunities she has to see him`. Rob, if you`re reading this, give up.

Wednesday, I had had a far more reasoned evening with Mike and on Friday he accompanied me as I bought my laptop. I knew what I wanted, but I needed his emotional and moral support to part with such an enormous sum of money. I am now the overly-proud owner of a brand-new MacBook and as soon as I have my broadband connection, will be updating these pages more regularly. I am not sure when that will be, as Gerraint and I had quite an ordeal sorting it. We went to a store Friday evening to get it sorted, but were abandoned in the aisles by a fat man in an apron, so decided to try a different store. There, a man with perfect English directed us to a man with none who was to complete the deal.

Before this, Mike and I had an epic shopping trip. First we tried Akihabira, but it`s is full of low-budget electrical stores that reek of dishonesty, expired warranties and faulty goods, so we tripped off to the Mac Store in Ginza (much like ditching Dixons for Bond Street) and I fully exquiped myself for all eventualities. After that, we marched around trying to find somewhere reasonably priced for a drink or some food (Ginza is too posh for vending machines) and eventually came to stop on the roof terrace of a plush department store, complete with pet store and golf range. It was mucky and quite random, even offering its own shrine for those who wished to get their newly purchased koi blessed. After that, we decided we deserved a treat and headed to Ganpachi, the restaurant Koizumi took George Bush to during his recent visit.

Under wild East Anglian skies

2006-06-29T17:44:00.000+07:00

I'm fully settled into English life again. I've watched Jeremy Kyle and the Wright Stuff almost every day, I went to Felixstowe for fish and chips by the sea (and scorched myself a very patriotic shade of red in the process) on Wednesday, last night Mum, Tammi and I watched Charlie sing in Bury St Edmunds Cathedral before coming back to Haverhill for Mum's first Indian in six months (my last was far more recent) and today I went into Cambridge to go shopping. Unfortunately, in my excitement, I ended up with a size 7 and a size 5, neither of which are ideal, so have to go back on Monday, but the joy of being in the lower end of the size spectrum was infinite.

The only thing missing so far is a picnic on Hampstead Heath, but I can make do with a pasty up by Haverhill reservoir. The dogs would prefer it, what with Billy being car-sick.

Tomorrow I hope to find a pub to settle into to watch the football. It will be the first step of my new programme to reclaim Britain from the louts. I'm going to take it back. A friend sent me this, which is inspiring me further. I particularly like the barman's Churchillian quote:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17302491&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=beer-we-go-name_page.html

This afternoon I went down the Woolpack to watch the predictable English quarter final penalty defeat against Portugal and that vile thug Rooney acting like a spoiled hooligan and bringing the team down to ten men, although ten men who upped their game considerably once they were missing Beckham and Shrek.

I've just got back from seeing Alan Carr, and a few local faces, at the Arts Centre (formerly known as the Town Hall). Missing nine months of the Friday Night Project didn't matter at all. It was bliss to enjoy comedy that didn't revolve around someone falling over or goofing around (funny faces have always been a sophisticated part of British humour and were most likely stolen by the Japanese...). Now I'm taking my premature hangover to bed with a large glass of water and some Richard and Judy recommended fiction. Good night.

I'm coming home, I'm coming...

2006-06-26T18:21:00.000+07:00

I'm in London, happily being rained on (I get the quintessential British experience, coming home in Wimbledon week), having paid my first visit to a British shop to invest in some Melton Mowbray pork pies and a hunk of Danish Blue. I get back to Japan looking like Bella Emberg, but I will be very, very happy.

The journey was uneventful, perhaps a mercy given the potential expensive of any cock-ups and perhaps a curse as it was almost 24 hours of bored nothingness. My backside is numb from sitting and sitting and sitting and my shoulder is hanging a few inches lower than usual from the weight of my hand luggage (everything I could not risk losing should my case go astray, so practically everything). I did nearly miss my connection in Hong Kong by arrogantly ignoring the advice video on the flight and then having no idea what to do and where to go and finding myself in a queue for a desk I didn't need to visit before finally, frustratedly asking someone how long I had to wait and told I didn't have to wait at all being pointed in the right direction at the back of a thousand-person queue for security checks. I also got checked for bird 'flu as I entered Hong Kong airport and reassurely passed...

Hong Kong airport is a holiday in itself. It's huge and has loads of designer stores that I could never hope to shop in. The view of the city itself is breath-taking too. The airport overlooks the bay, which is fenced off by regiments of enormous high-rises and all this is nestled at the base of a fair-sized mountain range. Narita airport is not bad either (perhaps I have just travelled from Stansted once too often, where there is "not even a MacDonald's") and while waiting for my flight I stood on the observation deck watching the cargo planes take off and land and pondered how in the hell they managed it. I might get into physics for a while so I can get my head around it.

I needn't have bothered packing my textbook in my hand luggage. I took it out of my bag and stowed it into the pocket on the seat in front for the full duration of the flight, instead sitting through the embarrassingly homophilic Bentback Mountain (maybe I'm just getting a bit "small 'c' conservative" in my old age, but the story hardly justified the many, many gay love scenes - although I think I would have relaxed more had I not been painfully aware of how visible my screen was to a very kakkoii passenger a few rows behind me. Everyone else was watching Disney and I was browsing soft gay porn... I also watched the Libertine (better) and a unnecessary racist drama with Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore. I made the most of the free-flowing red wine, although once the air cabin staff clocked this, I was provided with ever greater portions of snacks to soak up the alcohol and so left the plain with my hand luggage spilling Tim Tam bars. At one point, the passenger next to me opted in for a red wine at the same time as me, so I said 'let's get drunk', but, possibly being the only Chinese person to not understand English, he just looked confused and I looked embarrassed.

Getting onto the cramped, grubby Tube was disappointing. I'd actually been looking forward to it, but had forgotten the littered state of neglect it falls into on Sundays until I had to dig my seat out from under a mountain of Sunday supplements and KFC wrappers. I am not sure I could honestly recommend London to a Japanese traveller. I love the city and am so pleased to be back here, even the rain is welcome (despite making the two bikinis I packed for the heatwave utterly redundant), but it compares badly to Japan on a superficial level. The trains, the service in shops. I was completely thrown by a lad in a t-shirt chatting into his mobile asking if I needed any help while I was dousing myself with duty free perfume testers at Heathrow, rather than bowing and excusing the intrusion while offering me something weird, but free to taste (this occasionally means Dairy Milk and bagels, so I often lurk around supermarkets trying to look rich and inexperienced in diet). I've often felt uncomfortable with the level of needless servitude in Japan, and still do, but it does make our lot look like a bunch of louts.

It is wonderful to be back in the company of the relaxed and the sane. I've only been here a few hours, but I've already clocked up more TV hours in one day than I had in Japan in the last month. It's been brilliant. News, football coverage in English (stupidly, I asked if the game was live, having got so used to seeing 11pm kick-offs) and daytime TV. Bliss. This morning, I watched an unbelievably chav-tastic episode of Jeremy Kyle. A woman who had been taken into care for having scabies and adopted was physically attacked by her birth mother for calling her a prostitute, though the mother then admitted she was, but that the daughter manned sex lines while her children were in the house. From the state and sounds of them, I can't imagine either drummed up a roaring trade... Later, a fat girl and her special needs ex-boyfriend fought over his visitation rights to his son. Her new boyfriend came on and was excessively patronised by the self-loving Kyle, while the ex's sister told her to get off her fat arse and stand up for herself. It blows Trisha out of the water. This Morning made it a double-whammy with an aristocratic photographer grubbily romanticising a sexual fling he had with his own mother at the age of 15 (I can't help wondering if the piece would have been handled as light-entertainment had it been a girl and her father). He was showing off her portrait with a 'well, wouldn't you?' attitude, which Fern seemed eager to bolster, while his wife was introduced with the caption 'husband had sex with mother' and yet still managed to pull off a fairly dignified interview. It's good to be back.

Japanese cuisine

2006-06-23T11:23:00.000+07:00

Manboo is doing it`s best to see off its rivals by giving customers an oxymoronically named `SoyJoy` bar when they come in. I haven`t dared taste it yet. I`ve had too much weirdness already this week. Tuesday night I went for my regular `how to bag a foreigner` session with Kaori and Yukako and was offered the most unnecessary food on the menu. I had requested we go somewhere quite nice as I wanted as much Japanese food as I could get before my trip back to England on Sunday. They were quite excited and ordered flying fish sashimi, which was wonderful, and some various other bits and bobs, including chicken gizzards yakitori and `soft bone` yakitori - what seemed to be skewers of fowl back bones. Japanese chefs are quite efficient when it comes to carving up a chicken, they often serve up what we would toss into the bin.

Kaori and Yukako again amazed me with their dating ettiquete. Kaori could not believe my taste in saying a fellow teacher called Alex was quite cute, but was still actively stalking him in spite of her low opinion of his looks and his character not being to her taste. She also couldn`t understand why I might quite like a date with Takakun, while not being madly, obsessively in love with him... Yukako stole the night by asking how many times you need to have seen a man before he might consider it a relationship, not imagining that having seen Rob six times in a month probably had him patting himself on the back for his own outstanding achievement. Kaori dropped her head into her hands in disbelief at this moment, while I was left to explain the situation. I feel like a teenage exchange student at times.

I did manage to put across my point of view that sleeping is not a hobby (so many of my students say this, it is utterly depressing) and now Kaori is going to tell people that going to the toilet is her hobby. I suggested cleaning her teeth as an more ladylike alternative, but it isn`t seen as a necessity here so lacks the same clout in the punchline. I also taught them, something I am not overly proud of, `sloppy seconds`. Kaori intends to use it if any of Yukako`s other cast-offs try it on with her. They taught me that there are no alcoholics in Japan. It is fine to call your friends `alchos` as it is not a serious problem, and therefore a joke. In America there are serious alcohol problems, as they have clinics... Red-faced, sozzled salarymen weaving along platforms, supping Asahi at 10am and occasionally toppling under trains is not a serious concern.

On Thursday, Sachiko used her `topics` to denounce my appalling behaviour on Saturday. I had invited her out to a small get-together of my mainly Japanese friends in the King George and later that night found a message from her saying she`d tried to come in, but couldn`t find me. I assumed she hadn`t bothered and this was a feeble lie to cover her tracks, but it seems not. Each of the students take turns to read their prepared topics, Hidako`s on her trip to Los Angeles and Takako`s on her stay in China, and Sachiko became quite grave as she started to read hers. It was a ridiculous guilt-trip and attack on my manners, although I wasn`t quite sure what she expected of me, but much of the story involved her needing consoling from her husband and daughter-in-law. The other students just laughed and thought she`d been into the wrong bar, but eventually I managed to get her to say she had got to the door and not even opened it to look inside. As I was in the basement, I had no reception so her calling and standing in the street was pointless. I am meeting them for dinner later (I think I am getting to finally try eel!) and intend to redress the whole situation and educate them on the traditional English pub.

It`s the countdown to my brief return to England. I fly on Sunday, so really ought to be packing now. My room is in complete disarray with a suitcase hidden somewhere under a year`s worth of clothes. I do have my new cheek pillow safely placed in my hand-luggage, but that is the firmest step I have taken so far. I am dreading the flight, but looking forward to going home. I certainly won`t miss the small porch that doubles as my kitchen or the `retro` washing-machine that swills my clothes around in cold water and old dirt. Half my case is going to be full of laundry.

Girl power

2006-06-18T18:01:00.000+07:00

It`s quite possible I over-reacted slightly in my last blog entry. Been a bit stressed sorting out my trip to the UK and had too many alcohol-related late nights to think straight. I had a bit of a get-together in the George last night and it`s weirdly set everything back in place. A few of the teachers here still lack they imagination to do anything with a woman if they`re not going to fuck her, but some of the saner ones reminded me that these losers are in a minority and it`s probably why they had to leave home in the first place. Strange that some of these pearls of wisdom came from a Stretch Armstrong-alike ex-stripper called Troy. We spent much of the early hours of this morning berating these leonards and describing just where they go in the food chain.

On Friday, I met Atsuko for lunch and we did a bit of window shopping. She helped me reserve a seat (well, she fully reserved the seat, I stood beside her and nodded `hai` a few times) on the coach to the airport. I have to get to the station at 5.40am. Ugh. This week I have to sort out my re-entry visa and pack. I have just remembered that I hate travelling, particularly from airports. I love flying - except when I get a bit claustrophobic - but having to get to airports on time and making sure I check in at the right place always drive me insane. Having missed two flights last year due to my own stupidity, I expect to sleep 0 minutes on Saturday (always a performance-enhancing exercise).

After meeting Atsuko I treated myself to an entirely unnecessary `cheek pillow` for the flight. It`s a small, scented pillow with a cute face and arms to keep me company on the journey. I am not sure I`ll use it though. It seems a shame to grubby its sweet little face with make-up, then I came home and spoke to Jo at length about the ridiculous similarities between Greece and Japan. We do seem to have found ourselves experiencing very similar things, possibly inevitable if you leave quite a progressive country and move a man`s paradise.

Today I met Sean for lunch and then took him to the international supermarket under Omiya station, where he paid a small fortune to treat us to feta cheese and olives. Thank you, Sean. It was worth every yen. When I get back to England, I am going to spend the entire time gorging on olives, brie, ham doorstep sandwiches and butterscotch Angel Delight. I may throw in the odd bag of prawn cocktail crisps too. Sashimi is all well and good, but there`s nothing better than a big plate of carbohydrates. (Japan has finally discovered the Atkins Diet and is unlikely to be stopped by any warnings of developing bad breath, seeing as it is already suffering a severe epidemic.)

The woman-hating new teacher (who apparently likes me, though I am difficult, opinionated and Western-looking), was in the pub last night trying to crack on to Kaori. Ridiculously and very short-sightedly, seeing as he met Kaori, along with Yukako and Nozomi, the night he snogged Yukako and tried to get me to steer her towards his room when she was so drunk she was about to collapse. Kaori reported all this back to me, along with the ADoS`s adolescent attempts to get to Yukako through Kaori. I love being the female gaijin today! I get to hear of all the failed attempts of my colleagues to pull my mates, it`s hilarious. I also seem to have the power to veto any relationships I deem unworthy as they don`t trust their own judgements because I have dismissed so many of their idols as losers. I should probably stop doing that, but it can sometimes give you the creeps when you see a huge, buck-toothed loser letching on a nubile 21-year-olds Anglophile.

I`ve also had the amusement/consternation of possible date, Takakun, to deal with this week. I really need to study Japanese dating more than anything else in the world. I have no idea about how it works (I understand how it works for the Japanese girls with gaijin men, both seem to accept the first offer, regret it later and cheat at leisure). It seems, rather than being polite about it, if someone asks you out and you are busy, you either refuse to reply or replying saying no and expect them to continue fielding possible dates and times until the woman offers up something convenient. Not seeming all that dignified to me, I was ready to throw in the towel, but was encouraged to continue by my female friends (`it is always a good time to email`). I eventually got an explanation that his work was busy, but he wants to stay in touch, so all may be well, but I do need to explain that my Japanese is not quite up to native fluency yet. All his emails are packed with kanji and I either have to get a friend to translate or send it back and ask for hiragana only messages. I am not sure why, when the Japanese spend years of their own childhoods writing and rewriting these things to ensure they remember them, they expect a lazy foreigner who has been here less than a year to know as many kanji characters as them.

Just not cricket

2006-06-16T11:00:00.000+07:00

What a rollercoaster of emotions this week has been. On Saturday night, I drank my way through the England match - enjoying the rowdy, mispronounced singing and misplaced enthusiasm from the Japanese fans watching far more than the game itself. Did anyone else think it was a bit boring? I did meet a hilarious boy called Taka, (I can`t say why he`s hilarious, I just remember laughing a lot while he was around), who has inspired me to learn how to say `he laughs like a donkey` in Japanese. Useful, ne? I initially thought he was Jery`s younger brother, but when I sobered up, realised this was a failed joke.

Sunday I went on a wash-out of a date with a guy from Cafe Lamp. I was extremely tired and hung over, which was not a good start, and rainy season had begun. Possibly. One Japanese person will tell me it`s rainy season, but then when I say it to someone else, they say the opposite - ad infinitum. For people who hate confrontation and argument, they can be bloody awkward. We went to Yokohama, but being Japanese, he put us on the wrong train, so it took half the day to make an hour-long journey, then tried to get me on a big wheel, despite my claiming many times that I don`t like heights (they act as cheap love hotels and teenagers go in the London Eye-like capsules to neck for 30 minutes). I was fairly confident I wouldn`t be scared, but didn`t want to risk any improper behaviour. He`s really not my type and I haven`t got to the chapter on knock-backs in my Japanese book yet. I finally managed to avoid the big wheel as the boats to Yokohama`s China Town stopped running early and we didn`t have time to do both. He rather sweetly offered to pay my fare, which amounted to a couple of quid. Then we wandered around the soaked streets trying to find an affordable, nice restaurant. The Japanese technique for choosing seems to be to follow the masses, rather than branching out and trying somewhere that looks good and undiscovered, so we ended up in a very cheap, busy place that looked to me like the Chinese equivalent of a trucker`s cafe. Apparently it`s traditional for men to pay on the first date (when they know it`s a date, last time, we went ambiguously Dutch), but Mamoru`s job is incredibly badly paid, so he paid ￥4000 and I ￥2000. It was quite fun, but totally unromantic and all his plans failed. Aside from the big wheel and the poorly plotted journey, everywhere sold tofu, which I stupidly announced I hate and we missed the cinema. However, he did teach me a brilliant bit of Japanese slang. Apparently the police are called `public dogs`, a phrase I think should be spread in Britain, too. Please use it.

I`ve also had more issues with Omiya Men`s Club. I invited a new member round to my flat on Tuesday to check out my single female Japanese friends, thinking he and Yukako would hit it off. They did and snogged in my flat, but I was so drunk I didn`t actually notice. Last week he announced, as though it was a fact, that Western women are not attractive. In my opinion, conceited dwarves are also not attractive, but I know some people have unusual fetishes so would not brandish my opinion as a wholly undeniable truth. This week, I caught him trying to butter up the Japanese girls by saying he doesn`t like Western women because they have opinions. I certainly have one on him...

It is not just this one. Before I came to Japan, I was prepared to encounter a bit of sexiam from the locals, this not being a particularly progressive country socially. It`s practically Stepford circa 1972 - they suffer from almost every `ism` imaginable and are not in the least bit ashamed of it. In fact, the Japanese people I have encountered, generally seem unaware that these are viewed as faults by outsiders. I thought I`d find it quite tough as a woman because here everything I perceive as a quality in myself is regarded as unnecessary, or even ugly. Personality is most definitely not ranked highly and the best way to shine is to reapply your lipgloss. But it`s my colleagues that are the bain of my life. Some are so ridiculously old school it is obvious why they`ve had to come to Japan. Britain is way too progressive. I`ve never been overly aware of my own gender before, but here I feel branded. While discussing my current situation of practically having no gaijin to confide in (Japanese girls only talk about getting boyfriends - I am a `How To` guide, not a friend) I was told that men don`t feel comfortable spending too much time alone with a woman (why?!) and that after spending all their time with their girlfriends, I shouldn`t expect to get too many invites out as the other teachers want `men-only` nights. I sort of understand this mentality, but find it absurd and offensive and it leaves me lurking around the George on my own. Thank god I have met a sensible group of Australian Nova teachers to hang out with. (Not a sentence I previously imagined I`d find myself saying).

Monday night, I went to watch the Japan game with some of the Nova teachers and some of their Japanese girlfriends. One had a complete fit when Australia scored and eventually had to hide in her boyfriend`s bedroom crying. Chotto excessive, perhaps. I got to practise my stumbling Japanese on the girlfriends, but speak a garbled mix of Janglish, plotting a basic sentence structure in Japanese and filling in the hard bits with English. I think they understood. One had just recorded an advert for Nova and seemed quite good, but you can never be completely sure if you are understood as a standard response to anything is smiling and nodding. Obviously, everyone here is now gutted at the defeat. The build-up to the start of the World Cup seemed bigger than in England, with far more enthusiasm, unless I just less attention back home. It`s been fun winding up my students about it though.

On Tuesday night, the Japanese girls came round for more advice on how to date gaijin they don`t fancy. Yukako thinks her boyfriend is `strange` and Kaori doesn`t like the guy she is asking out, although I once referred to him as cute, so I think I have inadvertantly given him the stamp of approval. Not exactly ideal, considering I might have wanted him for myself. They are hilarious though. Yukako appalled the others by announcing that sex is her `hobby` and later asked Kaori to join her in a threesome with Kaori`s stalkee, Graeme the JET. Kaori, of course, refused, but I have since learned the Japanese for threesome. My vocabulary is growing and growing.

My students have been amusing me this week. One of my kindergarten students, a four-year-old lunatic called Maica, was shouting the Japanese for `tits` on Saturday, and also the word for `can`, but I couldn`t understand what it was she could do. Sachiko and Hidako, after plotting my date with Mamoru last week, told me that he was not good enough because he doesn`t have prospects and were horrified when I explained that dating here is only fun and prospects don`t matter as I am never going to marry a Japanese man and live here. I think they were hoping that they`d never have to deal with getting a new teacher by shacking me up with a salaried ball and chain. Sachiko asked me to `hear` her life story as an example of how love should work (or a man should work, love rarely seems to be involved) and then asked Hidako to follow suit. Hidako`s English isn`t so good spontaneously, but something was said about a second love and a baby. At first I thought she meant her husband had a girlfriend before she met him and she stole him away, but it turned out that while they were married, he had an affair, at which time she became pregnant and threatened to leave him, so he had to ditch the mistress. I am not sure how this was supposed to convince me to marry a Japanese man.