Leaving Eri and, to a lesser extent, Japan, was the most difficult thing I've ever done. We went out that evening to do some last minute shopping and then to visit the 8bitcafe - a cafe in Shinjuku dedicated to the 8bit era of video games, with Famicoms and Master Systems to play. It was really nice, as was the expensive hotel, but we weren't really in the mood. Anyway, after that glowing introduction, here are some photos I took...
Archive for the 'Japan' Category
Incident 1: On Tuesday evening, I had just finished a jog (stagger) round the local park and was walking down one of the little backstreets that leads from the park back to my house. Just up the road were three large crows, the type that can often be seen loitering on the streets of Tokyo. Crows in Tokyo are everywhere and are huge. This is due to an incident in the 60's where nuclear waste was spilled on a pile of rubbish which was then eaten by some crows that mutated and caused a race of mecha-crow that killed all the normal crows and now rule all of Tokyo. They can be seen every money ripping apart rubbish bags, extorting lunch money from little kids and mugging old women.
This time, one crow was walking down the road and the other two were sitting on telephone wires on either side. As I approached, they started squarking, much more than usual. I chuckled to myself, not realising the Tippi Hedren danger I was in, and walked on until I was anout 20 feet from the crow in the middle of the road. Suddenly, I heard a massive swooosh and felt wings hitting my head, as one of the two crows divebombed me from behind and flew only centimeters above me. No sooner had I ducked, pointlessly late, when again, with a swoooosh, the other crow narrowly missed me. A little spooked, I checked to see that no-one was watching, luckily they weren't, and I started walking/trotting a little faster. By now I was only a few feet from the crow on the ground, and suddenly one of the first two blitzkrieg crows swooped down, screaming as it did so and just avoided hitting me again. The crow on the ground then started jumping towards me too, and again, the third crow attacked. This time, I couldn't have given a shit who was watching and I started running off down the street. After about 30 metres, the attacks stopped and I had a chance to catch my breath, exhausted after this extra unwanted exercise. Turning round, I saw the crows attacking another guy walking down the street. Obviously braver or, perhaps, more stupid than me, he was fighting back and aiming punches at the swooping death-birds. I didn't see much after he fell and, screaming, was set upon.
Incident 2: Yesterday, on my way out of school, I was chased by a FUCKING TORNADO. That is all. I think something may be trying to tell me something...
Nice to see that the Japanese police are living up to their reputations as the most incompetent police in the 1st (ish) world. In what has to be the funniest piece of happy-news this year, Japanese police officers at Narita Airport planted half a bar of weed on some poor bastard at the airport, in the hope that the airport's sniffer dogs would find it. They didn't and the officer apparently forgot which bag he put it in, allowing the passenger to walk off with the dope. Brilliant. Serves the fuckers right. It's interesting, in all the reports I have read about it, the officers said how sorry they were that the mistake was made, but none of them seem at all guilty about planting weed on some poor passenger in the first place. I can't imagine anything much worse than a bunch of sniffer dogs attacking and then police actually finding drugs on you, particularly somewhere like this with the laws here. Imagine the trouble they would have been in if they had planted it on someone with a heart condition or something...Unforgiveable behaviour. Shocking...but time for some lucky so-and-so to get high!
My bedroom is the one near the top/middle with the lights on. They started work at 9.00pm and go on until 6.00pm. This has been going on for about 2 months, but this was the first time they had been literally right under my window. I couldn't sleep at all and left the apartment to take this picture at about 2.00am. As you can see, they are still working and drilling away hard. I told one of my teachers about this and she wasn't surprised at all. I think Japan has got to be one of the few countries I've ever been to where people wouldn't bat an eyelid about it. Maybe it's just where I come from in London, but if this happened and the council had made a conscious decision to work only from 6 til 9 despite it not being a busy street, something would have happened by now. Unbearably annoying.
I just got emailed an invite to this event next week, organized by the folk who run the great Hitotoki, a site dedicated to short written snapshots of Tokyo (and now also New York & London), generally, but not exclusively, written by foreigners. I had sent them this story about a little girl on a train a while back and not heard anything from them since. I figured that the story didn't really fit in with their usual kind of "Tokyo as bittersweet, peach sunrise train station" style, which was fair enough, the story I had sent was a bit depressing. The invite suggested though, that there was an opportunity for Hitotoki writers to read or perform their stories live. I checked the website, and it seems, that they had published my story, which is quite a nice surprise. Reading it again after 6 months or however long it is, there are a lot of things I would like to have changed before submitting it, but I suppose that that's always the case. I'm not sure I will be able to make it to the event next week though as it falls on the day of me and the missus' anniversary, and some things are more important than non-existent legions of fans. Click the picture below to get to my story on the site:
Today is Coming-Of-Age Day (Seijin No Hi) in Japan, where all those kids who are currently 20 officially come of age. As it's a public holiday here today, and because there are 3 universities near here, there have been loads of perfectly-manicured young girls walking around in their coming-of-age kimonos, getting drunk on the free-samples of beer they are finally allowed to drink, and clutching their free samples of tobacco and condoms. A wonderful, wonderful day. Too much oogling to take any photos.
