The Womb

From the relative quiet of Kiyosato prefecture to Shibuya. You couldn't get a bigger contrast if you tried. J-Pop, as I may have mentioned before, is truly base. Japanese DJs however, are something of a rare talent. 'The Womb' houses the best of them. Ironically, I chose a night when a non-Japanese DJ was headlining, but last weekend still served to quell the misconception that Japanese people are reserved when it comes to enjoying a night out. Unlike many Shibuya nightclubs, it is nigh on impossible to find the non-descript grey double door entry to the Womb, especially considering its notoriety as a bloody good place to pass an evening. Up a back alley, past some love hotels with seedy names like 'Paradise Inn', and the only give away is an inoffensive looking bouncer in a black jumper. Even the queue is well hidden inside, snaking with Japanese efficiency towards an ID check and a fairly astronomical entry fee. A few cheap tinnies from the equivalent of Lidl ensures that costs are kept at a minimum; I didn’t go to university to learn just Japanese.

Unfortunately, in central Tokyo you don’t just deal with the Japanese. American soldiers on leave fill in the gaps between the four hundred odd locals on the dance floor, their shirts hardly able to contain all the creatine and obvious frat boy chat up lines. Standing in the queue listening to ‘Chad’ or ‘Curt’ (any generic name will do) talk about how he’s had ‘like, fourteen beers’ and that he heard ‘Travis had totally bailed’, I felt that I may be in for a less than authentic night. At the top of the stairs the smell of dry ice hits; the fog cloaked dance floor occasionally reveals girls in miniskirts surrounded by guys in trendy baseball caps and glasses with no prescription (something I have come to realise is a real fashion statement in Japan). Every so often a U.S. Marine shoves his way to the front in a vain attempt to catch a few drips of sweat from the brow of a DJ they’ve never heard of and then hi five another brash squaddie before shoving his way back to the front of the queue for the bar to ‘chug’ another beer and high five some more. Tools.

For once, my rhymically sterile dancing can go unnoticed as the tsunami of dry ice swamps all visibility leaving vague shadows and outlines of hands intercepting laser beams, the bass drowning out any social interaction. Dancefloor sign language prevails. An impromtu game of charades to explain that I want to go get a beer involves miming drinking, paying...and since I'm in Japan bowing for good measure. The bass, coupled with the dancing feet of several hundred revellers makes the floor feel like theres an earthquake going on. Which is also quite feasible I suppose. The crew that I arrived with quickly disperses. Shy of holding hands all night its not unsurprising considering. Slightly annoying though when everybody leaves without you. More annoying still when you factor in that my jacket was in a locker with everyone elses. Katsu sends me a very helpful text saying that theyve gone and hes got my jacket. Its polar outside and I'm wearing a t shirt. Brilliant.

Not wanting to waste an opportunity, I stayed on for a while dancing with Japanese dudes dressed as stereotypes of late 90s ravers. Kaye West glasses, gayglo check shirts. They even order water at the bar. By the time I leave its dawn and the first of the commuters are falling asleep next to me on the train as I shiver despite the beer jacket I attempted to put on before I left.

Yokohama feels more quiet than it should be walking back towards my dorm to the soundtrack of a slightly sarcastic sounding onset of tinnitus from six hours of sweaty dancefloor electro. Even the crows sound a bit sarky. At roughly 8am head hit hay, where it stayed until about 4.30pm... making it very nearly 48 hours since I had seen daylight. Luckily its raining less than it has been here, so I have spent the week out in the relative sunshine playing american football (who'd have thunk it), pulling muscles in parts of my body I didnt think I had and topping up my melanin levels.

For once I have decided to put up an actual photo of the actual thing I'm talking about purely to demonstrate the sheer awesomness of this truly wonderful place.

Kintama o Mitta

Kiyosato prefecture has a bizarrely Swiss feel about it. From the back seat of a rental car, wedged in with five Japanese students, the scenery appears alpine despite the appaling Japanese pop music and the occasional sign advertising Pachinko or karaoke. The same striking mountain scenery forms the back drop for uniformly ugly concrete towns, designed with practicality rather than aesthetics in mind. A patchwork of agonisingly efficient strips of farmland fills the limited area of flat space amongst a drab suburbia. How these people remember which house is theirs is a total mystery.

Allowing myself to momentarily believe that I am on one of those all too familiar four hour drives towards a european ski resort, I zone out and feel strangely comfortable considering. It is the Autumn 'World Wide Wing's society' road trip to enjoy 'Autumn viewings', 'On-Sen' and drinks party (described poetically in the handout as '8pm until the night never end'). I am snapped out of my day dream by a chorus of Japanese noises expressing awe and wonder (which sounds absolutely hilarious by the way), because for the first time since I got to Japan, the illusive 'Fuji-san' had appeared, framed by a flame red valley of autumn trees. This all sounds gushing, I realise, but there is honestly something truly breathtaking about this mountain, the symbol of Japan. Despite the cabbage patch, jungle surrounds of my dorm in Yokohama, it is easy to think of Japan as being one big city; all neon lights, robots and odd sexual practices. In reality, it is 73% mountains, so really.. these sorts of views should be common place. The array of noises coming from the front of the car at every turn in the road would suggest differently.

We stop for lunch beneath another awe inspiring view, and Joei (the trip's illustrious leader) runs through the schedule. Its On-sen next. On-sen is typically japanese, and definitely a 'try everything once' sort of activity. Hugely relaxing, hugely sociable...but also hugely naked. Its not the most english of passtimes to go for a nude bath with three hour old friends, but 'when in rome'... As with the halloween costumes, Japanese people double take when they see a group of westerners in an abnormal situation. Nude would be one of these. The jacuzzi cleared out pretty quickly once it was filled with awkward westerners...so it had a bizzarely similar resemblance to our late night train rides back from karaoke. But a more naked version.

The Inn we stayed at had a rural, late-night-low-budget slasher film vibe about it...not helped by the fact that we were the only guests there. A kindly old lady (also a bit B-Movie style scary) and her equally kindly old husband had put on a huge meal for all thirty of us which I whiled away with a trio of girls consumed by a totally pedestrian anglo-japanese fusion chat about beans. Food finished, more photo ops, more peace signs...and on to the 'drinking party'. Unsurprisingly, there were drinks. Singing, dancing, shouting, laughing drunken japanese people are, if its at all possible, more amusing than their sober version. The night ended with a few passed out japanese guys and a made-up song called 'kintama o mitta'. Roughly translated as, 'I've seen your balls'.... in gratitude for the day's earlier on-sen experience.

I was angry when I woke up. My bed in Yokohama, as I've mentioned before, is about as comfortable as sleeping on the street, but the beds at the inn were worth their weight in gold. I was only granted three hours sleep in it though, as I was rudely woken by an overly chirpy Japanese lad at 8 o'clock. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the Japanese for 'get bent' in time before he went off to ruin the next room's morning. It was time for the next activity. Needless to say, the banter in the car was considerably less than the previous day. Having made some noodles and done some wandering around, the final stop was Suntory Whisky's distillery. This made everyone feel a little bit sick, and after the tasting session, fall asleep in the car. Luckily, in a very japanese style, the designated drivers were duty bound to wear a very embarrasing looking sign around their neck so they didn't get merry and end up in a ditch.

My zeal for all things Japanese has been topped up, by a weekend sejourn to the country. A strictly japanese withnail and I style romp through rural Japan has, however done nothing to soothe my endless hatred for asian pop music. It has literally no redeeming qualities. You might think to yourself, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...there must be at least one good song. Trust me, after an agregate of six hours of it (with backing vocals from my road tripping crew) I can safely say, there isnt.

DJ Will

Charity isn't big in Japan. Clearly it never came into vogue in the same way as it has for the western world's Bono, Live Aid, save- the-world-by-having-a-huge-party obsession. In fact, streaming Chris Moyles' breakfast show this morning from the relative comfort of, once again, Robin's floor, I hear there is a children in need gig with the likes of dizzee rascal and Cliff Richard tonight in London if anyone's interested... Robin, being half welsh and half Japanese, bridges the gap of cultural divide, notably by organising and hosting the 'Cows for cows' charity event in Omotesando last night.

I'm not entirely sure what the charity does, but the general gist is straight forward enough. Each party aims to raise enough money (roughly £600) to buy a cow. But it doesn't end there. The purchased cow then enters into a life of mixed reward at the hands of impoverished Cambodian farmers for a period of a few months; enjoying a rigourous work routine and, with a little help from mother nature and a randy bull, producing a baby that the village can keep. The cow then gets taken off for its next tour of duty at the next village, and so on. A bit like pay it forward... but with a cow. Someone had the bright idea of hosting the event in a bar called the Pink Cow. I think the reasoning speaks for itself.

The Pink Cow is a kooky, bohemian feeling bar. It has one of those vibes that makes you feel as though it would be ok to start an impromtu freestyle poetry battle, in a suit made from hemp and radical thinking. This was confirmed when I saw the open mike night sign up sheet. Two acts, one of which was called 'Chit', both described their genre as 'New age folk vocals.' Hippy bashing aside, it definitely seems an appropriate place to attempt to woo the Japanese populus into charity. Robin ended up hosting the event himself becuase the main man behind the charity had decided not to show. Whilst working an inumerate number of jobs and going to university, he managed to secure a stand-up comic/ magician, a singer, an apres-ski style cover band called 'V1 Rocket'...and DJ Will (thats me...)

Cut back to the day before the event. I recieve a stressed call from Robin saying that he has lost the DJ.... careless really. Would I be interested in filling in? 'No.' For two main reasons; One, I have never touched DJ decks in my life, and two, I only had mincy little headphones that just wouldn't make me look like a hardcore DJ at all. Of course, I gave in to peer pressure and spent that evening frantically trying to learn how to use 'Virtual DJ' instead of trying to learn Japanese vocab. I achieved neither, and ended up babysitting a playlist that would have been right at home in any of the Edinburgh clubs that require you to say 'Will Dobbs' on the door.
I ended the night winning 500yen off of the lead singer of the V1 rockets at poker and eating a luke warm bacon cheeseburger alone in Robin's Kitchen at 3am. Apparantly not all DJs get all the girls. I just got Robin and a futon.

A radish, a racist and a romper suit

Halloween is pretty odd. Its odd as a concept. Its odd in practice. Its totally beyond help bizarre in Japan. This halloween, I decided not to do the standard Darth Vader costume that has become a loveable stalwart of the Edinburgh 'dress up as anything remotely applicable to a theme most people will ignore in favour of whatever is cheapest' party scene. I went in an oversized all in one pink panther romper suit. I consequentially enjoyed the most comfortable evening of my life in the reassuring pink envelope of cheap nylon fleece and cheap canned lager.
YNU enjoys its annual festival at the same time as halloween, this meant that there was a purpose built infrastructure for lash; complete with breakdancers, close harmony singers, foodstalls....and my personal favourite 'the Miss YNU competition.' What is usually a fairly standard stroll towards the library on an ordinary day at uni was magically tranformed into a rampant Japanese hybrid of the Koh San Road and a world foods fair. Every concievable society had a stall selling something, and some ferociously polite groupies using a formidable combination of giggling smiles and emotional blackmail to secure a £1.50 sale of some slightly undercooked teriyaki sticks. Obviously the arrival of a horde of westerners in various permutations of cute and cuddly onesie outfits is not a normal spectacle in Japan. It did however win me a free curry, a free beer and a slightly warm kitkat by way of remunerations for trick or treating.
Miss YNU turned out to be rather less than the hype made it out to be. And the hype was fairly minimal. I did meet one of the five contestants, but I get the impression she was only being nice to get my vote.... I had absolutely no idea how to vote anyways so I think it was mainly a lost cause. Some of the costume highlights included; my friend from the yakuza (no jokes) dressed as a radish (he normally wears all black and looks like a seriously mean piece of work), a japanese guy who didnt understand the racist connotations of trying to scare people whilst wearing a mask of a generic looking black guy, and someone dressed as a giant sperm.
The hilarity has been cleared up as quickly as it arrived, and today the university looked and felt as if nothing had happened. It felt strangely Narnia like to walk into a normal lecture theatre and find it transformed into a UV rave....or best of all a room full of commotase/ paralytic drunk Japanese students who hadn't made it past 9pm.
Its suddenly got cold here, so its finally time to crack out scarves and hats....maybe I'll wear my halloween costume in bed tonight.

The Lie-in, The Bitchslap and the Floordrobe

According to Helen Leitch at the Edinburgh University International student office, the would be exchange student will experience four stages of emotional change during their year abroad. Similar to the four stages of grief; denial, anger, grief itself and acceptance. Helen's version had some thing to do with four H's, although I seem to remeber there only being three, and one wasn't an H. This morning I have experienced all stages of Helen's guide before I even got out of bed. The Honeymoon period; the initial feeling of excitement and awe for the new experiences of a new place. The Homesick/Hate period; the realisiation that the rose tinted telescope used to view Japan from the otherside of the world had hidden a few important details, and they don't sell reggae reggae sauce. Then finally acceptance, peace, love and harmony; the part where everything falls into place and life has a soundtrack by the beegees.
I have a free friday, so I went to bed thinking tomorrow could be a day for exploration. Stepping out like Scarlett Johannson in Lost in Translation to find Robots and Buddhists in zen gardens. At the very least find some bloody blue tak. This morning brought on stage two of Helen's irrefutable three fold plan. Somewhere beyond the Sumatran jungle beneath my window is a school, at least I think its a school... it could be a young offenders institute. I was bitchslapped from sleep by a rousing stalinistic communist work song cum nursery rhyme and the sound of a few hundred Japanese children chanting at full pelt in unison. They mercifully stopped pledging allegiance to the motherland after 45 minutes and a headache, and I managed to sleep for another 10 minutes. Then there was an earthquake. Stage three came as I finally got up, rearranged my spinal column and opened my blinds. In a morning has broken, blackbird has spoken sort of way I realised stood amongst the clothing strewn around my holding cell bedroom that I've got grand plans with genuine, authentic Japanese people today and I have marmite...but still no reggae reggae sauce. If anyone feels like sending me some, I'll reciprocate by sending back a week's supply of crunky.
I am playing tennis with Susumu and some of his mates at two forty this afternoon. Susumu is a fairly jokes character, he's eighteen and a prime mover and shaker in Ryu Soc (the 'lets get giggling akward Japanese people together with socially inept western people and see what happens club'). Actually I think what happens is pretty classic. At yesterday's lunchtime gathering I met a heavy metal obsessed student, dressed like pinnochio, two slightly punk lads who said I looked like a pirate of the caribbean (one of them had a skull and crossbones earring....I pointed this out, but they stuck with their first impression), and was finally accosted by a gang of Japanese girls who all knew my name, I don't remember meeting any of them. Tonight is the official welcome party for International Students, and I have been caught on camera for the promotional video.... a moment I will not be revelling in when they air it at the event this evening.
Japan presents an overwhelming feeling that it has intentionally chosen to write a sign in the most complicated fashion, and that it doesn't understand your textbook perfect attempts to order two large beers. An old lady genuinely turned her nose up at me on the train when I sat next to her in a free seat, and got up to move two seats further down from me. However, my driving instructor Graham Howe (of Howe to Drive driving school), always told me that 1st gear needs to be the most powerful gear even though it is moving the car the slowest, because eventually the car only needs to be kept in perpetual motion.... its building up momentum that takes effort. So thats why I'm going to go and kick Susumu's arse at tennis.

Crunky

The view from my room isn’t exactly in keeping with what I expected from the second largest city in Japan’s national university. It feels more like I’ve landed in the Sumatran jungle. The sound of crickets and the angry debate between crows in nearby tree canopies do little to suggest that I am in a country responsible for bullet trains, pokemon and heated toilet seats. I am 5 floors up in the B block of Minesawa international house, and glad that the typhoon four days ago has been and gone. Sleep was given a back seat in favour of exit strategies and a nagging fear that if my window were to smash in, I would be fully transported from my rock hard mattress to join the Jungle Book 2 auditions sixty feet below. The other Edinburgh peeps at Tokyo universities were given the day off because of the severe weather (which had cleared up by 9.30 to reveal cloudless blue skies and redundant umbrellas). We were not.

Google maps shows Yokohama National University to be right in the centre of town, a ten minute walk from anyone who’s anyone. This is an optical illusion. There are lots, and I mean lots, of cabbage patches. Despite the backwater area, the university has much the same feel as any other; it has a canteen, faculty buildings and best of all their own brand of door to door God squad oozing broken English charm, desperate to get anyone to come to bible study sessions. The layout of the dorm is similar to one of the grimier Pollock halls buildings. A dingy Japanese Grant, for those of you in the know. The shared showers require 100 yen for ten minutes, making it an impossibility to maintain a suitable level of hygiene if you don’t have the right shrapnel in your pocket. Blue tak does not translate well into Japanese, so I have had to make do with a large pin board to put up my photos from home. The typhoon made quick work of its not so secure position on my, ironically, blue tak stained wall. So now it sits, looking a little forlorn propped up against the wall on my floor.

Japanese people love bureaucracy. I have never had to sign so many sheets of paper that I cant read. I may, quite feasibly, have signed away my human rights for all I know. Luckily the university appoint every new international student with a ‘tutor’ to help wade through it all. Mine’s called Koshi. Koshi is quiet, but mercifully has a fair grasp of English thanks to a year spent in California. He is keen to learn slang, so I have been indoctrinating him with a few choice London rude boy turns of phrase to compliment his already terrifying arsenal of ‘bummer’ and ‘dude’. Despite his enthusiasm, he has a tough time grasping the concept of ‘wagwan’, let alone pronouncing it. With his help, I have enrolled with the university and have a rough timetable of grammar, kanji and culture classes. One of the latter being ‘Cool Japan’, a class involving a syllabus of sword waving, calligraphy and T-shirt painting. Last weeks calligraphy class involved public ridicule in front of the whole class because apparently my lovingly crafted kanji character looked like spongebob squarepants.

Last weekend served to take the edge off my somewhat dingy accommodation. I have a free Friday every week, and Monday was a national holiday. Cue triumphant four day weekend music. The Keio University guys live somewhere between Yokohama and Tokyo in an area called Hiyoshi, so Friday night was deemed to be a suitable time for sushi and Karaoke. Although almost too much of a cliché to be taken seriously, I totally understand the obsession with both. Forget Yo Sushi (which was set up by a rowdy Scotsman from dragon’s den), there is something undeniably weird and wonderful about ordering one more horse meat dish in broken Japanese and no-one thinking it out of the ordinary….although Black beauty was a bit stringy for my taste. I’m no singer, even in the shower, but a few drinks and a selection of songs the right side of the Pet Shop Boys meant that no tonal range was out of the question. Each karaoke booth faces onto a corridor, at the end of which were the loos and the manager’s desk. Returning from nature’s call to the booth revealed the reality of the situation. Brash English accented attempts to do any semblance of justice to ‘Man in the mirror’ drowning out any of the much more serious J-Pop renditions from our, by 5am, long suffering neighbours.

The slightly truncated time frame of all this is due to the fact that only today have I actually got internet in my room, thanks to a very efficient 10am wake up call by a Japanese IT gremlin, who sat on my floor for half an hour. We both revelled in the awkwardness of our inability to communicate until he told me that I was officially connected to the internet. Not that I understood him when he told me. So this smattering of accounts does justice to nearly two weeks of life in Japan. I have a few Japanese names in my phonebook, a few new friends on facebook and a growing addiction to a chocolate bar, amusingly called Crunky.

Tea time of the living dead

Its 5.16pm... apparently. At this point you could tell me the four horsemen of the apocalpyse are coming over for a chat about drapes and I'd believe you. I landed into Narita through thick low fog, very symbolic considering the jet lag fug of thirteen hours of trashy films and rubberised food. I have yet to decide if I'm really here, sat in Robin's toilet cubicle sized room listening to slightly camp music in the sleep making (as if thats necessary) low light of his 'mood lighting' drape hung over the ceiling lamp. Probably a fire hazard. Come to think of it, I do smell a slightly toasty smell... but that could be an onset of a brain tumour as a result of about 17 coffees in a bid to remain awake. Robin has taken me on a little tour of Ebisu and the surrounding area in the grey drizzle of Japanese october on the back of his 50cc scooter. This is totally illegal. Robin casually tells me that he has never had a run in with the authorities regarding minor moped related traffic infractions...this suggests he's had others of different natures.

Within five minutes we have had to outrun the fuzz (who was on a bicycle), and having stopped for noodles costing all of 500yen, found ourselves outisde Keio university. Before we had a chance to meet up with Elliot and Henry, who are on a tight schedule because they are trying out for modelling jobs at the new Abercrombie shop in Ginza, we have another confrontation with the law. I imagine its probably quite an amusing site for a security guard to see two western lads, one of which is barely hanging off the back of a black hairdryer powered Honda, creaming past him up the hill towards the back entrance of the university. He didn't see the funny side. In fact he was, as only a Japanese security guard can be, politely really pissed off. Robin called him a racist and told me to bail out of the situation. So I walked off (helmet still on head) down the road trying not to look western, guilty or jetlagged. Shigeko Lewis, my student advisor/ liason at Yokohama Uni, told me that if I were to stay in Tokyo before coming down her way that I should stay out of trouble. I've been here 5 hours.

Its surreal, being used to certain people in certain settings, to sit in a cafe surrounded by japanese bijiness (read business) men, with Elliot, Henry and Robin (who finally decided to drive away from his spot of bother with johnny law and join us) on the other side of the planet. I have a date with the rest of the Japanese crew from edinburgh this evening, but I think by the time it gets to eight o'clock I may have to crawl there. Even though I am viewing this city through the head fog of twenty four hours of sleep deprivation, consequently feeling like an extra from resident evil walking past neon vending machines and little old ladies sweeping their front porches, it is just so cool. Fashionsta youths with winkle picker shoes and chain smoking salary men. 15 different types of iced coffee from 15 different vending machines all glowing in a row next to a wooden shrine with rain dampened prayers tied in paper knot bunting. Now I need to work out a way of sleeping in Robin's room tonight without waking up in a comrpomising position

Space Chimp

I have just come back from a three day 'last hurrah' farewell tour of Edinburgh (and more specifically The Cumberland) courtesy of an extended overdraft and a raped credit card. Perhaps not such a wise move. Now in stasis between the empty pint glass that is the summer, and the fresh Asahi waiting eight time zones away in Japan. I am supposed to be sorting out all my crap since I have three days, two hours and twenty minutes before I disappear for ten months to Yokohama. My desk is littered with evidence of the summer. My brother has amusingly left a chlamydia advice leaflet on my desk in an attempt to make our cleaner think that I might be hiding something (not a very subtle place to leave it if I had). Hendo's thoughtful birthday present, 'Shane Ritchie reads Rags to Ritchie...the story so far', is under a pile of fourteen thousand ugandan shillings, roughly four pounds sixty. Travelex receipts, ticket stubs, twenty first birthday invitations and half arsed attempts to practice some Japanese before I go are surrounded by a pirate's cave worth of loose change of varying value and currency.
People from last year's Japanese course are already settled in to a life of Tokyo, tempura and tutorials... posting status updates on Facebook about how they can't believe how much Japanese they have spoken today. Its all getting a bit real. I feel like Ham the astro chimp, doing a few final checks before launch.