So, after 7 months (Such talk of remaining time here is henceforth 100 percent zettai-ni Verbotten), I finally managed to make it up to Tokyo...
Mental note: DO NOT buy tickets using a computer system you've never used before and has a large possibility of using an entirely new random assortments of squiggles you've never seen before to book a seat on a train which leaves in 4 minutes...
Incidentally, what I did manage to book myself a return Shinkansen (Bullet train) ticket for ￥7000 using above system. I thought this was suspiciously cheap... then the gate attendant pointed out I hadn't paid for the other 3/4 of the ticket...
So, the Shinkansen... pretty cool. Goes fast... (Osaka to Kyoto takes about 10 minutes...), and best of all, I randomly sat next to some salary-man (who used to live in Uruguay) coming back from Fukuoka who, once he caught sight of the manga I may perhaps have been rather overly prominently reading, started talking to me and bought me beer and snacks all the way to Tokyo! He gave me his Meishi (business card)!
Ryota's response when I told him this was "I wanna be a foreigner!" (then he got cutely paranoid that he'd offended me with that... while I'd like to think it's my radiant personality, I think it's probably the "novelty Japanese reading foreigner" effect that got me the beer...)
So... Tokyo is pretty big... Bit bigger that Osaka. Smells different to... And they have funny accents (I say funny accents, to be honest I hear it every-day on TV etc).
Met Louise on the Friday night at Tokyo station (Just to emphasise, that means "the station CALLED "Tokyo Station", as opposed to the 500 others IN Tokyo) and went over to Shinjuku for some dinner (we have better Ramen and MUCH MUCH better Gyoza down here incidentally...) before heading out to Tsukuba to meet Mei and her boyfriend (Naru) who very kindly lent me their floor for 3 days :-). Tsukuba is... a little far from Tokyo... Mei spends 3 hours commuting to Tokyo and home every day... That's pretty much what the words "大変" and "お疲れ様" were invented for...
Soooo, Saturday Mei and Naru and I met up with Louise again to go for a wander around Aoyama/ Omotesando (I wanted to see the the Comme des Garcons and Prada stores. I stress that I DID NOT BUY ANYTHING- I HAVE WITNESSES, and that I actually went for the architecture...). Also met up with one of Mei's friends who went to Kobe University AND had Ogasawara-Sensei as her supervisor too! (And know's Mayuko...).
Headed over to Meiji Jingu and Harajuku next (DEAR GWEN STEFANI: Way to go hype the place up for like, 5 years or so... bit disappointing to be honest. Also, some-what less famously, Harajuku has a truly inordinate number of Crepe bars...). Went to Shibuya after that to see the crossing (3000 people cross it every time the lights change.) I survived crossing it! 3 times!
Oddly, Shibuya has this famous little statue of Hachiko the dog, who has pretty much an identical life story to Edinburgh's Greyfriar's Bobby...
Anyway, off to Gunma-ken (Ie, 2 hours north of Tokyo.) to go to the yakitori (BBQ) stall run by Mei's friend Tomo's friend the Shinjuku-transvestite-bar-owner at a festival in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Incidentally Tomo's friend's mother and grandmother were also there...
Incidentally, Tomo knew who I was... "Oh, Thomas. Designer's Bitch yes?"
So, after the BBQ we somewhat anti-climactically train-ed it back to Tsukuba for 2 hours. As Mei put it, "Tomo went too far this time. In a geographic sense".
To Be Continued...
Monday 17 May 2010
Monday 10 May 2010
I'm really running out of decent titles, but never mind
Dear UK Electorate: You let Cameron in. Shame on you. Very disappointed.
And now over to that other rather insular island-nation with dodgy politics.
Turns out Meisa Kuroki is half-Brazillian. Sometimes it seems the only thing you need to be famous in Japan is a foreign parent...
Ryota said this is due to the Japanese finding "halfs" (mixed race) people novel and cool (Though at the same time, "not too foreign"). He then went on to claim he was half Himeji-an and half Okayaman... bit like claiming yourself to be mixed-race Glaswegian/Edinburgher...
Failing that either Osakan or Okinawan will do it seems.
I learned a random Japanese expression a while back, ケイワイ、 or KY. Now forgive me, but I was a little bit shocked to learn this was sort of every-day Japanese kid's slang, until I learned it actually means "空気読めない", or "Kuuki Yomenai", which means "Cannot read the situation" as opposed to Jelly...
Oh, and I beat a Japanese person on a Kanji reading :-) Granted, it was "Undersea Mountain Range" which is a tad specialised and doesn't turn up very often, but I was still pretty chuffed. Incidentally, that's 海嶺.
So yea, I'm off to Tokyo this weekend it seems... I say it seems because it still strikes me as a little bit odd that it seems that all I have to do is shimmy over to Shin-Osaka station, buy a ticket (for an exorbitant number of Yen I add) and jump on the Shinkansen (bullet train)... seems oddly straight-forward for Japan..
Speaking of Osaka, Dad's going to give a presentation over at 阪大(Handai, Osaka University. Incidentally, I just noticed that's actually Osaka (大阪) with the Kanji reversed... ) when he comes over here next week. The person from Osaka gave us the helpful directions of "meet in front of Osaka station.", which helpfully narrows down the location to about 4 square kilometres of one of the most densely packed bits of the planet... I don't think Osaka station (which is not anywhere near Shin-Osaka station by the way) even has an identifiable "front"... look at it!
And now over to that other rather insular island-nation with dodgy politics.
Turns out Meisa Kuroki is half-Brazillian. Sometimes it seems the only thing you need to be famous in Japan is a foreign parent...
Ryota said this is due to the Japanese finding "halfs" (mixed race) people novel and cool (Though at the same time, "not too foreign"). He then went on to claim he was half Himeji-an and half Okayaman... bit like claiming yourself to be mixed-race Glaswegian/Edinburgher...
Failing that either Osakan or Okinawan will do it seems.
I learned a random Japanese expression a while back, ケイワイ、 or KY. Now forgive me, but I was a little bit shocked to learn this was sort of every-day Japanese kid's slang, until I learned it actually means "空気読めない", or "Kuuki Yomenai", which means "Cannot read the situation" as opposed to Jelly...
Oh, and I beat a Japanese person on a Kanji reading :-) Granted, it was "Undersea Mountain Range" which is a tad specialised and doesn't turn up very often, but I was still pretty chuffed. Incidentally, that's 海嶺.
So yea, I'm off to Tokyo this weekend it seems... I say it seems because it still strikes me as a little bit odd that it seems that all I have to do is shimmy over to Shin-Osaka station, buy a ticket (for an exorbitant number of Yen I add) and jump on the Shinkansen (bullet train)... seems oddly straight-forward for Japan..
Speaking of Osaka, Dad's going to give a presentation over at 阪大(Handai, Osaka University. Incidentally, I just noticed that's actually Osaka (大阪) with the Kanji reversed... ) when he comes over here next week. The person from Osaka gave us the helpful directions of "meet in front of Osaka station.", which helpfully narrows down the location to about 4 square kilometres of one of the most densely packed bits of the planet... I don't think Osaka station (which is not anywhere near Shin-Osaka station by the way) even has an identifiable "front"... look at it!
生麦、生米、生卵
The title has absolutely nothing to do with any of this by the way, I just couldn't think of anything.
So, it seems Hiro is not only alive and well in the UK, but that my fickle Family seem to have decided to replace me with him (>_<). As a result of this evil betrayal, all my future blog entries will be in Japanese.
じゃ、最近はね、別に忙しくなかったんやけど、奨学金は口座にまだ入り込んでいないので、ちょっと貧乏なちゃったなぁ。。。お金ほしい！
ところで、これをグーグルなどで訳したら、どう？
全部日本語で書いて面倒くせぇ。
I've decided to forgive my family.
On a related note, Google translator isn't actually that bad these days. Actually, I just stuck that stuff up above through it and saw the mangled mess that came out (Ironically, particularly the bit that said "How is this if you translate it through Google?), so I should really say what I really mean is it makes a decent job of translating Swedish to English (I use it to read the Lam and Pernilla's blog). That said, it didn't get horrendously screwed up by the Kansai-ben...
So yea, mum calls up (With her usual amazing timing of Friday-evening/Saturdays. Luckily, unlike last time I wasn't drunk and didn't try to get her to talk to Yume), and guess who's having breakfast with them...
Apparently Sean (my little brother) took him to the Sushi restaurant he works in (Shogun Teppanyaki in the Mailbox) and then out clubbing. Sean's restaurant is apparently run entirely by Filipinos, so I hae me doot's about the authenticity, but Hiro said it was pretty good. That said, he mentioned some rather cheesy looking bandannas with rising suns and "日本" written on them. I just want to deny all responsibility for these and emphasis that I most certainly did not help Sean buy these in the departure shop of Osaka Airport.
Glad he's doing fine. At the same time WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO SPEAK JAPANESE TO IF YOU ALL RUN OFF TO HAVE FOREIGN ADVENTURES! lol
Woo, and I'm famous! Sort of... Should you ever come across the Kobe University Faculty of Intercultural Studies Prospectus (English version), turn to page 6...
For some reason I've lately found out who about half of those random people who are on TV/adverts all the time are. Oh, wait, that's because I watched TV with Yoo and just pestered him for half an hour. Turns out that one I always thought was Swedish is Wentz Eiji and half Japanese, half German-American, and his friend is Koike Teppei. Bekki turns out not to be French after all, but half-British, half Japanese. Apparently she's best friends with Ueto Aya. Oh, and "Sunglasses man" is タモリ (Tamori) from 笑っていいとも (Famous Japanese comedy show I've never seen.).
This has obviously greatly increased my understanding of Japanese culture, and was a critical learning objective of my study abroad programme.
Dunno why I've particularly noticed this recently, but I keep sitting next to groups of either 1) Japanese people who won't say a word and sit in total silence once they realise I understand Japanese or 2) People who realise I can understand Japanese and then just talk about me or foreigners in general to annoy me.
しょうがないわ。
Oh, and I'm off to Tokyo this weekend and Dad and step-mum are coming over at the end of next week :-)
So, it seems Hiro is not only alive and well in the UK, but that my fickle Family seem to have decided to replace me with him (>_<). As a result of this evil betrayal, all my future blog entries will be in Japanese.
じゃ、最近はね、別に忙しくなかったんやけど、奨学金は口座にまだ入り込んでいないので、ちょっと貧乏なちゃったなぁ。。。お金ほしい！
ところで、これをグーグルなどで訳したら、どう？
全部日本語で書いて面倒くせぇ。
I've decided to forgive my family.
On a related note, Google translator isn't actually that bad these days. Actually, I just stuck that stuff up above through it and saw the mangled mess that came out (Ironically, particularly the bit that said "How is this if you translate it through Google?), so I should really say what I really mean is it makes a decent job of translating Swedish to English (I use it to read the Lam and Pernilla's blog). That said, it didn't get horrendously screwed up by the Kansai-ben...
So yea, mum calls up (With her usual amazing timing of Friday-evening/Saturdays. Luckily, unlike last time I wasn't drunk and didn't try to get her to talk to Yume), and guess who's having breakfast with them...
Apparently Sean (my little brother) took him to the Sushi restaurant he works in (Shogun Teppanyaki in the Mailbox) and then out clubbing. Sean's restaurant is apparently run entirely by Filipinos, so I hae me doot's about the authenticity, but Hiro said it was pretty good. That said, he mentioned some rather cheesy looking bandannas with rising suns and "日本" written on them. I just want to deny all responsibility for these and emphasis that I most certainly did not help Sean buy these in the departure shop of Osaka Airport.
Glad he's doing fine. At the same time WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO SPEAK JAPANESE TO IF YOU ALL RUN OFF TO HAVE FOREIGN ADVENTURES! lol
Woo, and I'm famous! Sort of... Should you ever come across the Kobe University Faculty of Intercultural Studies Prospectus (English version), turn to page 6...
For some reason I've lately found out who about half of those random people who are on TV/adverts all the time are. Oh, wait, that's because I watched TV with Yoo and just pestered him for half an hour. Turns out that one I always thought was Swedish is Wentz Eiji and half Japanese, half German-American, and his friend is Koike Teppei. Bekki turns out not to be French after all, but half-British, half Japanese. Apparently she's best friends with Ueto Aya. Oh, and "Sunglasses man" is タモリ (Tamori) from 笑っていいとも (Famous Japanese comedy show I've never seen.).
This has obviously greatly increased my understanding of Japanese culture, and was a critical learning objective of my study abroad programme.
Dunno why I've particularly noticed this recently, but I keep sitting next to groups of either 1) Japanese people who won't say a word and sit in total silence once they realise I understand Japanese or 2) People who realise I can understand Japanese and then just talk about me or foreigners in general to annoy me.
しょうがないわ。
Oh, and I'm off to Tokyo this weekend and Dad and step-mum are coming over at the end of next week :-)
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