The Liverpool of Japan

I'm nearly eight months into a year abroad in Japan. Eight months in a country like this is not an experience that comes without stories to tell and a new perspective on things. If nothing else, it makes for entertaining banter with people who havent had the opportunity to see it for themselves. In a country like Japan, you dont need to trek off into the wilderness with a backpack and a guidebook to see things that force a double take. I challenge anyone to come out here even for a day (although that would be impractical) and not come home with something unique, and more often that not hilarious, to recount. Japan, from the outside, is not an unknown quantity. Everyone has heard about the crazy vending machines, people always ask about the bullet trains and the conveyorbelt sushi. But to be fair, thats not what I see everyday when I go to buy bread or walk to a lecture.

I was in a park last weekend. What a crazy life I lead. The sun was out and peole were walking their dogs, kids were practicing baseball. To all intents and purposes a fairly standard spring sunday scene. It could have been London, except everyone was Japanese. And that is exactly why, upon closer inspection it was in fact not a standard spring sunday scene at all. From just beyond a beautifully manicured rose garden, drowning out the sound of the bees and the chatter of the old ladies follwing them around with outsized camera lenses, came a wall of techno music. At first I thought, and I wouldnt put it past the Japanese, that this was music piped into to the rose garden itself in a totally misguided attempt at atmospheric background soundtracking. And they bloody love that. No, it wasnt that normal. The volume increased as we homed in on the source of the sound until finally confronted with a not unsubstantial stage and about thirty revellers enjoying a casual rave whilst joggers trudged past...totally unphased. The DJ, clearly at the pinnacle of his career, looked the part. Kooky trilby, wife beater vest and loose summery shirt billowing around next to outsize headphones. Behind him a euphoric dance hero waved a neon dayglo banner that he could have nicked from a full moon party (but I know he made it at home, sober as a judge with a cup of green tea). You have to look closer. The DJ never, at any point used the head phones, they are just part of the perfectly executed replication of what a DJ 'must' look like. Naturally, we joined in with the awkardly restrained mirth... asides from the occasional can of lager, no one was drinking and there were certainly no drugs... yet taken on face value this could have been mistaken for a fully fledged Class A fuelled bonanza.

The rave in the park serves as one of many thousands of bizarities I have come accross to illustrate my theory on Japan. As a nation, they have an unrivalled gift for mimickry. Cars, televisions, stereos. Nobody can argue that the Japanese dont make them to perfection. But they dont excite. Jeremy Clarkson bangs on about how the italians put such passion into their hugely unreliable Alfa Romeos or fiats, there's never any string of tedious adjectives from him about Toyotas. The Japanese dont really invent anything for themselves, they just take an idea and streamline it into uncharismatic faultlessness. The humour and interest...and to give them their due, their charm comes from the enthusiasm and dedication Japanese people have for certain things, whilst by and large missing the original point. In case my rambling is lost on you, don't worry. I have plenty of examples.

Take sports fans. I heard that one of the Tokyo football clubs a few years ago offered free tickets to english expats in a bid to recreate a more authentic rowdy hooligan vibe. I dont know the result of this desperate bid for authenticity, but whatever happened it sounds misguided to me. When I went to watch my local 'Yokohama FC Marinos' (often touted as the 'Liverpool' of Japanese football...) the stands were alive with flags, whistles, chanting (and a full brass band). They were going MENTAL. But, as with the rave in the park you must look closer. This crowd of supporters were so well practiced and disciplined... so focused on 'being proper football fans', that there was no erruption of cheering for any of the four goals because their dedication to prepracticed chants could not be swayed by something as unplanned as a goal. When the game finished, nobody shouted 'the referee's a wanker' and there was not a policeman in sight. People filed out in single file to the sound of absolute silence around the stadium. I cannot explain the sheer weirdness of it. They had perfected the 'image' of die hard fans. In the photo at the top you could be excused for thinking this was something as important and passion driven as a chamions league final... except it felt like somehow they had totally missed the point of the whole excercise. You're average Millwall fan doesnt have a full songsheet for every player.. and he certainly wont be continuing to sing when he's full of lager and his team have just gone one up.

It might be unfair to say it, but I think its undeniably true that Japan will never understand the concept of spontaneity. Someone must have already done it... Then they can take notes, plan in advance... and then hilariously miss the point.

Same Same, but Different

Faced with the odious task of filling up three weeks of interim nothingness during the easter holidays, with a little help from the usual `friend of a friend's cousin's old school mate' connection, I am now filling up my time as a bona-fide salaryman (complete with 90 minute commute from cabbage patch parkway to skyscraper central) at Nishifutsu Boeki KK. I'm not exactly gainfully employed, but they do cover my expenses and I would willingly pay good money to not spend all day everyday eating pot noodles and watching back episodes of never mind the buzzcocks.

The morning commute honestly needs to be experienced. No matter how much rambling prosaic rubbish I put down here, it wont do it justice. Fifteen minutes after stumbling out of my dormitory half asleep avoiding the incredulous gaze of considerably more japanese looking businessmen, it begins. It takes three trains to get to my office, each one more violent and cramped than the last. People on these trains cannot be counted as individuals, they are all part of a seething mass of suits obediently slammed against doors, windows and other matching white shirted office workers. There's not even enough space for the usual unspoken racial barrier; there's no room to speak let alone worry that there's a foreign invader sandwiched in amongst them all. A rising sense of panic grows inside me when I know that soon I have to get off the train, it feels like an almost herculean distance is required to get through the thousand odd people between where I am stood and the briefly open doorway(although standing is used loosely, because if I suddenly lost consciousness, quite possible considering how tired I usually feel at such an ungodly hour, I would remain in the exact same position bouyed up by the complete lack of air space between anyone). A little bit like a well shaken coke can, when the doors open people dont walk out, its not a conscious decision, they are expelled onto the platform. I imagine for most of them, they cut their losses and walk regardless of whether its the right station or not. If nothing else I am considerably more awake when I get to the office than I might otherwise have been.

Nishifutsu Boeki KK is a strange company, the name couldnt be more Japanese but in fact it is the primary importer for european luxury food and drinks. My mission is straight forward; I am to come to the office at 9 and then spend the rest of the day secretly investigating cafes and bars around Tokyo and reporting on their usage and placement of the company's products. This probably means one of two things. Firstly, that they didnt have a clue what to do with me and so have sent me out into the city to do 'research' for them, whilst they wipe their brow and get on with the actual business. Or secondly, that I am a pretty good person to use as an inoffensive industrial spy and I can always rest on my slightly crappy Japanese to say 'I'm sorry I dont understand' when my cover is blown.

I have spoken a massive ammount of Japanese, but unfortunately the western people who work here are french. This has lead to a few embarrasing situations where I have unwittingly engaged someone in the wrong language or worse still, in an incomprehensible hybrid of english french and Japanese. They're not exactly related languages either. Japanese office banter is mercifully easier to understand than the chat I was party to last weekend, when my aptly named bartender friend Hiro took me skiing for the afternoon with his family.

Hiro has the coolest lifestyle. He owns a kookly little bar littered with surf equipment and neon bar signs. He stands behind his bar in snowboarding t-shirts and oversized basketball tops in front of a floor to ceiling collection of vinyls, none of which are japanese. Immediately in the top thirty Japanese people ever. He also uses his bar as the front for a snowboard clothing shop. Since his bar is roughly big enough to fit five people in, he pretty much chooses when he is open. So when he's not, he goes off skiing. He must have reacted positivly towards my constant requests for Phil Collins because I found myself being used as a totally different kind of marketing tool, this time on the slopes as he tried to sell neon camoflage hoodies to Japanese snowboarders who quite clearly already had clothes on.

Tokyo commuting and Japanese night skiing to a Simply Red soundtrack have done more than enough to cure my recent existential funk. For good measure though, I went to the redlight district for a spot of gay clubbing. I dont know if I have the courage to write about that quite yet though.

I'm a legal alien... I'm an Englishman in Japan

Clearly I'm English. You can check my passport. Having said that, my alien registration card is a little unclear, apparently my nationality is 'Wadhurst'.. I havent been keeping a close eye on current events, but as far as I am aware TN5 has not declared itself a separate state in my absence. A little over four months into my year abroad, and Japan's abnormal charms are, I hesitate to say, wearing a little thin. Gaming arcades, overpoliteness, casual racism and mechanised sushi restaurants are less a thing of wonder than a time filler between homework deadlines. Well, the racism is still quite entertaining.

Ten months, when put into perspective, is not a huge span of time to learn a language as complex as Japanese and soak up such a fitfully eccentric culture. So recently, gleefully ignoring it, I have been trying to be as english as possible. This is not so guilty a pleasure as it seems, because of course, when something is deemed 'english' in Japan, it is in fact the result of a few episodes of Jeeves and Wooster and the teachings of Japan's comedy Dalai Lama; Mr. Bean.

The Hub. A guady chain of 'British' pubs, almost as common as MacDonalds, has a wonderful approach to Englishness. On an increasingly regular basis, following the revelation of Happy Hour, five pm is Gin O'clock. Thats not to say that I've turned to hard liquor, but because the Japanese seem to think that the British still take a gin on the veranda in the early evening, they have made it the cheapest thing to purchase. On each table there are step by step instructions as to how to order a drink at the bar complete with pictures and a brief summary of the history of pubs. Apparently they were pretty multi functional places; according to Hub management, in the days of yore Joe England could attend a church service and send off his tax return all from the comfort of smokey village pub bar stool. In an attempt to emulate this, there are London street signs plastered around the bar saying 'Kensington', 'Picadilly' and worryingly 'Manshester United'. The latest American punk rock and hip hop soundtracks conversations between salarymen and their trendy girlfriends eating fish and chips with chopsticks and fat, tired looking western bankers drinking overpriced lager yearning for the real deal.

Following happy hour, it is usually appropriate to go for karaoke. Following the same train of thought, we have catagorically banned all Japanese music. Not because I want vengeance for all the subversive racism in public transport, but because, as I have mentioned before, it is shit. There is also something really pathetic about a group of western students sitting in a room trying to emulate the whiny high pitched awfulness of an anime soundtrack whilst stumbling over the Japanese characters they cant read. Much better to belt out Africa by Toto. The upshot of this J-Pop apartheid is usually not the alienation of the Japanese people who join us on these soirees, but the weird European and American people who signed up to study Japanese because they have watched all seven thousand episodes of some random Japanese cartoon about a basketball playing ninja with gender confusion. And frankly thats fine by me.

The six nations rugby is on, Endiburgh flats are filled with lads shouting at the TV debating over who will trek the hundred metres to winerack to buy more carlsberg, and I get stories about 'how fantastic the atmosphere at Twickenham was' from family and friends. Luckily, through some internet voodoo I dont understand, I can watch iPlayer in my room, which has further bolstered my yearning for englishness. My long suffering neighbour probably really hates me now, especially after last weeks Wales game. A fresh supply of Reggae Reggae sauce arrived from my brother a week ago, and it serves as perfect reflection of the last few weeks; I still love the Japanese staple chicken katsu, but I reckon it tastes better with a bit of help from Levi Roots.

Orijin's ex-part

A shared bath, spicy soup, iPod speakers and a broken spine. Wings international student society proudly presents the annual ski trip. 40 people and a 14 hour round trip coach journey with the usual suspects from november's laugh riot adventure to the countryside ended with a few interesting stories to tell.

Nagano prefecture, home of the 1998 winter olympics and Japan's skiing mecca, greeted us from beneath weary overnight-bus-trip eyelids with equally weary snow burdened houses and blanket white scenery. In the name of fun, we were not allowed the simple liberties of normal bus journeys; such as selecting who to sit with or freedom of speech. Instead, we drew seat numbers out of a hat that had been cheerfully decorated with amusing statements in Japanese. Mine said 'Who knows? You might be sitting next to a fit guy...'. Wishful thinking on their part. Chandra is a massively dull and not particularly conscientious neighbour to sit with for seven hours straight. With the generous three inches of space granted by him after blanking most of his inane, slightly offensive questions about my Japanese language proffiency level, I managed to bag a grand total of two hours sleep before day one of skiing. As the sun began to rise the bus continued through quaint villages, barely visible under thick drapes of snowfall. As you might be able to guess, the raw beauty of the surrounding scenery rolling past as we climbed was not met with stunned silence, but a chorus of pantomime asiatic shrieking and sighing. I would have found it more amusing if I could feel my legs.

Mercifully we arrived soon after and stumbled our way to the 'hotel'. Those burdened with the cheap beer for 'drinking party' that evening occasionally fell on the ice resulting in erruptions of laughter, photo taking and accompanying 'v' signs. I was hoping to get on the slope as soon as possible, but the Japanese are not as efficient as capsule hotels and bullet trains might lead you to believe. Apparently all the information I provided in advance about shoe size, weight, height, 'did I need a ski jacket?', 'would I be drinking beer?' (what a stupid question) needed to be asked again whilst we waited around an industrial strength gas heater to get our ski equipment. 'Ski trip' is a misleading title. Ninety percent of Japanese people snow board and so consequentially, due to an apparent lack of demand, the skis on offer were all older than me. Bored of waiting in a corridor for two hours to get some neon pink planks selected for me, I took it upon myself to have a rifle through the collection on offer and proudly emerged with a late nineties pair of carving prototype skis.

The ski lifts in Japan, or at least where I was, are hugely annoying. There is no safety bar, which if it went more than ten metres off the ground at any point might be a reason for alarm, and far more concerningly, every other pylon knew exactly how to ruin my day by playing the worst form of japanese pop music to ruin the view. Initially we were placed into groups. Unbeknownst to most of us, this was so that they could take our previously provided information about ability level and then assemble groups of mixed ability so that we could teach people who hadn't been before. Cruel but inventive. After an over expensive, high carbohydrate lunch (some things do translate from european skiing....except there's more rice... and you cant read the menu...and what I ordered was not what I expected when it arrived on the plate.....and there's no chips), the farcical group system disbanded in favour of 'expart' and 'biginner' crews (sign writers in Japan have not yet worked out that they can ask any foreigner, use a dictionary, or even google how to spell words).

Skiing ended at five. After team meeting around the gas heater, most people decided to go to on-sen (naked bathing...same deal as last wings trip) and pass on the option for night skiing under floodlights because they had had little sleep on the bus and many had spent the day falling over after their unwilling 'teachers' had buggered off and left them to their own devices. Guilty. Orijin (pronounced Origin...which makes for many amusing jokes, about as funny as the ones people made about 'WhyNot' in first year) had spent all day obediently teaching his girlfriend to snowboard and hadn't had a chance to 'tear it up'. So in an epic decision making moment, a bit like the Carling 'You know who your mates are' adverts, four of us dragged ourselves away from the increasingly popular gas heater and headed out again.

What was orijin-ally (I just made that up....) a crowded piste full of those bastard snowboarders who sit around in the middle of the run and get in the way, was now floodlit by pastel coloured lights and totally empty. We did the first run in less than two minutes and continued to bomb down for the next hour and a half. We came back to find everyone returning from the onsen, the japanese girls crying out with awe at the four idiots who had gone skiing again. In the hotel itself, there was a smaller bathing area that fits four people. I really wanted a bath, but this meant an entirely more awkward version of the naked bathing I did last wings trip. Just me, Orijin and Eric. Two guys who I hang out with on a regular basis, chatting, drinking, laughing..and most importantly clothed. For them, it seems, clothed or not clothed, its business as usual. So I enjoying a bathing experience cupping myself and discussing run of the mill topics, imagining what it would be like if I did this with my flatmates last year...or more importantly, what everyone would say if they saw it.

The 'drinking party' followed supper, and I felt completely hammered after two beers. I sat around making tired monosyllabic chat in japanese until twelve thirty and put myself to bed.

Orijin had gotten away from the girlfriend and had free reign to do his own thing the next day, so he woke me up enthusiastically at seven thirty. Recurring theme with these trips I feel. Breakfast was not continental, as Swiss had told me it sould be, utterly convinced, the night before....but a bowl of rice, a fish and some rank soup. We caught the first lift, and made the most of the morning by taking the 'expart' run straight off. Unfortunately Orijin fell quite a long way onto a path, landed on his back...and broke his spine. This slightly dampened the morning, with the arrival of blood wagons and such. Whisked off to hospital, it was announced later that he would be ok, but had to be horizontal and would have to spend a month in bed recovering.

I taught snowplow for a part of the early afternoon, and was chuffed with the resulting semi-confident skiier I created. A few final runs after lunch, and at three we had to end to catch the bus back. Its not as extensive as alpine skiing, but clearly not as uneventful. My whole body is still in pain, but that hasn't stopped me from googling my options for another weekend's ski before the snow goes.

Two thousand and temple

New year, new perspectives...and I should probably have thought about jotting down a resolution or two. Maybe use moisturiser more often.... Thats not as entirely random and slightly off topic as you might think. I had been warned that Japan turns very cold and very dry around this time of the year, and they werent bloody lying. Outside my window (the jungle below has lost all its leaves to reveal that in fact it was more like two massive trees hiding yet another cabbage patch...so apologies for the misinformation) the sun is shining and the skies are clear. Now that I have a heater in my room it is far too easy to trick myself into believing that it is pretty mild outside. I have but to look down at my dry white hands to remember the feeling of standing outside the liquid rooms on new years eve, hardly able to hold the tinny that had been tactically purchased to minimise costs (turned out to be a plaster for a bullet wound)... now they look they might be used for fingerprints during an autopsy on CSI.

New years eve itself was a blast. I have already written about japanese clubbing, and I'm in a lazy mood... so just refer back to that. Usually on new years the Japanese have a tradition of going to one of the larger temples and ringing in the new year, with a very literal bell ringing ceremony. I have already done this once, and to be frank, judging by the reports from some of my friends who opted into it this year.. it hasnt changed much. However, I felt that there deserved to be a cultural element to new years in Japan (when I say 'I'... I really mean, that it was someone elses idea that I have chosen to hijack as my own for the purposes of this blog).

The day after new years day, the Emperor of Japan comes out onto his balcony and greets the nation in four bitesize installments throughout the day. The palace is usally shut off to the public, and so the police presence was massive. Riot vans, jeeps, the ones in suits with curly wires going into their ears that you reckon have definitely killed someone before, bag searches, body searches. You name it, they had it. Although just like everyone in Japan, all the police look totally unthreatening. I can even imagine the mean wire-in-ear CIA style ones totally wankered in an izakaya sporting the asian glow that comes with half a pint and ends with pock marks of vomit down every major street in shibuya come 3am. Never the less, they carried themselves with polite japanese efficiency... even giving me a smart salute after gingerly patting down my trouser leg for fear of some organised gai-jin attack of the royal family.

I hate the way you are forced to walk at major public events. The Queen's Jubilee, Notting Hill Carnival and now this... the awkward shuffle walk of thousands of well wishers to the soundtrack of hundreds of police men trying to keep camera toting tourists from stopping every five seconds to capture more 'moments'. Every single person who entered the palace grounds was given a Japanese flag to wave by some ultra nationalist OAP volunteers. By the time we reached the emperor's, frankly rather bland looking crib, the courtyard beneath his balcony was a sea of Japanese peole....and by some higher power's grace we arrived with only five minutes before the emperors lunch time appearance. An unspoken swelling of tension, like the type you get before they announce theyre bording group A passengers for an easyjet flight, ended with an erruption of calm and collected flag waving signalling the arrival of 'E dogg' himself. More controlled explosions of flag waving follwed his new years message... and the whole courtyard of people calmly shuffled off in the same awkward fatiguing fashion as they had entered.

Every time I see a side of Japan that shows their deeper emotional and spiritual personality, it is juxtaposed almost immediately by something completely incomprehensibly stupid. This time it was the queue of about a hundred people in ginza to get into the new abercrombie shop that had three bouncers on the door and staff who are made to dance all day and promote a party atmosphere. We only went there because we wanted to get a polaroid with the new topless model at the entrance. Robin.