The Homo Sausage, The Beating and Other Assorted Tales

Sorry peeps, John has been visiting for the past two weeks. But the stories shall continue...

The week of 11th October:

As you may remember, I began this week with not much of a voice. Undeterred, I ploughed on through lessons and everyday activities, such as a pilgrimage to see the Homo Sausage. Calle had been promising to show me this amazing product at some point (no comments please) and one evening, he knocked on my door to invite me on this holy quest. The Homo Sausage is a processed fish sausage, which Calle assures me has a wonderful floppy texture when removed from the packaging. Here you can see Calle modelling the Homo Sausage for the (homo)market:

The trip to the supermarket proved fruitful beyond laughing at phallic-shaped items. Everything was 20% which led to some Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Fondants becoming resident in my freezer, although not for long :-)

Unfortunately, the excitement of Japanese supermarket shopping got to me and the next day, my cough returned with a vengeance. During a discreet visit to the toilets to cough and blow my noise (NEVER blow your nose in public in Japan - it's very rude, apparently), I was traumatised by an encounter with an overly-friendly toilet cleaning lady. After I emerged from the cubicle, she proceeded to ask me a host of questions in Japanese.

おばあさん　(old lady): Are you OK?

Me: Yes, I'm fine.

おばあさん　: Do you have a cold?

Me: Yes, I have a bit of a cold. It's OK.

おばあさん　: Do you smoke?

Me: No. I don't smoke.

おばあさん　: Do you drink?

Me: (thinking she was telling me to drink something for my throat) Yes....(seeing her face) No! I don't drink alcohol. Water. Tea. No alcohol!

In Japan, there are a lot of questions you're not allowed to ask, apparently, due to "privacy", or so our teacher tells us. I'm wondering why the above interaction would not be considered an invasion of privacy. Or maybe they don't apply to a dirty, drinking, smoking gaijin, coughing her lungs out in the loo. I did sound pretty rough.

Friday Field Trip to Kamakura!

Kamakura is a very beautiful town about an hour from Tokyo. It's near the sea, surrounded by beautiful trees, contains many temples and shrines and is a site of historical significance. I would tell you why but I don't actually know. I'm a bad student and didn't exactly absorb my little info pack. All I knew was that Kamakura sounds like a field trip win!

I was a little anxious before we set off on the trip. We were to be partnered with "buddies" - volunteer students from Nihon Unviersity - whom we were to talk in Japanese with for the whole day. Given the early start, the prospect of a bus journey making small talk with VERY limited language ability could be exceedingly awkward. Fortunately, my buddy, Eri, was awesome and as 元気　(genki; energetic, lively) as me, who wasn't at all bothered at my limited Japanese making an occasional appearance in the river of English that inevitably flowed from me. Here we are discovering, shaking hands through a rather fun tree:

The tree had its revenge at being molested in such a way by cursing my face when I posed for an individual shot. It is probably the worst photo of myself ever:

To the actual events of the day, we started the trip with some zazen, a Buddhist meditation practice. This involves sitting in a large room on mats in silence for periods of 30 minutes. The catch: can you sit in lotus or half-lotus position for 30 minutes without moving to relieve the pain? I could sit in neither position properly and the monk, although strict on some of the others, obviously gave me up for a lost cause very early on. Maybe it was the shiny purple leggings that made me look more suited to an eighties disco. They were definitely at odds with the main idea, which is to get away from the busyness of everyday life and everyday thoughts. "We would even stop breathing if we could", so we were told.

The first 20-minute round passed slowly and with considerable discomfort. But on the second 30-minute round, I really felt calm and the time flashed by! You have to keep your eyes open and this leads to the most bizarre day-dreams/semi-hallucinations. Faces and dancing figures appeared on the back of Tom's jumper, and wiggled there way in and out of my vision. Crazy stuff.

At the end of the session, the monk demonstrated with a large flat stick how they hit people who fall asleep during zazen. Tom P volunteered first, then Urvesh, then Peter Sensei. And I was just hoping that it was something girls could do. Then, Eri, my buddy, stuck up her hand and was struck twice on each shoulder blade. So then it had to be my turn. It didn't hurt very much and left a rather pleasant tingly sensation! (OK so maybe I did feel a little stiff the next morning...)

After this cultural practice, we were then treated to a vegetarian lunch eaten by the monks. It was very おいしい　(delicious)!

After that, we visited some temples. I paid 100yen for

a fortune (pulling a coded stick out of a box), only to receive the worst fortune you could get,

including some great advice on relationships ("Although the fact is twisted, it will soon become clear." Great, twisted relationships. Thank you, Fate, thanks very much). I later set off on an epic quest for chocolate ice-cream as I'm no fan of the green-tea and sweet potato flavours. I bought a mini-double from Baskins Robbins, got a lucky dip and won a Halloween bookmark. Well, Fate, obviously didn't hate me too much. Or maybe the best things in life are free...

The day in Kamakura ended with a visit to the Daibutsu - Giant Buddha. Here he is in all his glory:

We then returned to Tokyo for some traditional Japanese dance. We arrived late and only saw the final third, which lasted for only half an hour. Tragic? No. No way. I am perhaps the most awfully uncultured person ever but in my shattered state, I failed to find any beauty in this performance. The music was plinky-plonky and jarring, and the heavily made-up man and woman moved in very slow boring steps, like puppets. I wished I was a puppet by the end. Someone could tweak my strings and make my arms and legs move my body towards the door.

Sunday: Veggie Food Festival

Meat is expensive. As it turns out, so are vegetables as well. So if there's a trade-off, I'm definitely going for the fibre, vitamins and nutrients over the protein. The result: I only cook vegetarian food in the evenings and I'm pretty interested in vegetarian cookery.

So on Sunday, Calle, actual vegetarian, and me, nightly vegetarian, set off to a Veggie Food Festival to check out its sumptuous and tantalising offerings. I tend to find with festivals that the food always looks amazing yet whatever I end up choosing is always mildly disappointing. Calle and I set about sharing three different food items to avoid such problems. Sadly I was right in that our food was surprisingly bland and tasteless, aside from the cheap veggie dumplings! Alas! Nevertheless we were amused by the following pictures. Anyone for the loving hut?

We then hit Harajuku and Ometesando for some shopping. Not only did we share a cheesecake, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream crepe which was infinitely more satisfying than the veggie festival food, but we visited the wonderfully futuristic Uniclo T-shirt store. All T-shirts come in plastic tubes stored round the walls, many depicting famous anime series (Calle couldn't resist the Ghost in the Shell T-shirt).

We also found some shop namesakes.

Cannabis:

Freak:

More updates coming soon!

Fatty flesh of tuna ship: izakaya, karaoke, anime and life in general

Hello. Long time, no speak. There’s a lot here. Choose your favourite subtitles below, or read it all if you are a devotee to my wonderful writing ;-)

Lucy's Birthday: karaoke, drunkenness, foot massages

This is Lucy with her birthday candle dinosaur. I should state first off that the title does not refer to Lucy. She is a non-drinker like me. And I don't think she participated in foot massaging. She may have been responsible for the karaoke though.

For her grand 24th, we piled off to an izakaya for much food and merriness. Here’s some of the tempting English menu:

We then gave into her obsession: karaoke. Antony and I duly got the party started with a rendition of “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

And Tom and Niklas did a beautiful duet:

It was sweat-fest and the floor was sticky with spilt drinks but we did ourselves proud and had several dances en masse. Towards the end of the evening, several people were drunkenly slurring their way through “Ring of Fire.” When the fire alarm began to ring. Only Lucy’s Japanese friends and I seemed able to hear it. In my exhausted, semi-trance like state, I just sat and pondered the irony whilst Lucy’s friends rushed to find out what was going on. False alarm, fortunately.

There was of course an after-party. Here’s a riveting scene:

Axel is massaging Tom’s foot and Lucy just can’t take it any more. The night ended with some very very drunk people. An unnamed member of the party brought his own “member” to say hi when someone took pity on him and tried to get him to drink some water and go to sleep.

Life Safety Learning Center: typhoons, earthquakes and penis envy

Friday was our visit to the Life Safety Learning Center so we can deal with the dangers of living in Tokyo. I was in an earthquake when I was here last summer so I was interested to hear what they were going to teach us. Instead I found that the Life Safety Learning Center was more a Life Hazard Center. The whole building was so warm that I almost fainted on several occasions whilst the smiling “Heatstroke Warning” posters mocked me from the walls.

Nevertheless, I endured a magnitude 7.0 earthquake which lasted all of 5 seconds at maximum magnitude and left us all with bums in the air and heads under a table.

I also experienced a typhoon in waterproofs that were clearly misnamed. It was unpleasant as I couldn’t breathe properly without inhaling water. We also crawled on our hands and knees through a dark smoky room, whilst covering our mouths with handkerchiefs. Keep low, keep below the smoke. Don’t you dare go above ~1.4m or …the sensor will locate you and “advise you to get down”.

My favourite part of the trip was easily the fire extinguisher practical. We got to fire real fire extinguishers at a screen with a simulated fire - whoosh! Hoisting up the heavy canister was uncomfortable but hosing the screen was immense. It was the closest thing I’ve ever had to peeing up a wall. Guys, I envy you so much. I might have to rethink my career plans just based on this 15 seconds of freeeeedom and train as a firewoman. Judging by this photo, I wasn't the only one who enjoyed it....

Sophistication, with a hint of naughty snacks

Despite the above note, I passed the weekend in a very sophisticated manner. On the Friday night, I hosted a film night. We opted to watch “The Ghost Writer”, which purported to be an intense political thriller. Sadly, I discovered that even though a film may star Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor does not mean it great. In fact, I found Ewan McGregor to be incredibly annoying in serious need of accent coaching because his English accent made him sound part-Cockney. Also, my dreams of being a grand hostess were shattered when Axel brought back chocolate-covered crisps and some other crunchy things labelled “Bukkake”. According to Wikipedia, bukkake means “splash” or “heavy splash” and represents a practice that occupies a “relatively prevalent niche in contemporary pornographic films.”

Undeterred in my pursuit of sophistication, on Saturday I met my friend Akiko for lunch, before admiring her new apartment and borrowing some literature. I will casually skip over the fact that I then napped for an hour and half before passing out for eleven-and-a-half hours that night due to cumulative lack of sleep. My start of the day on Sunday was therefore closer to the start of the afternoon. But still undeterred, I transformed myself into a domestic goddess. I hovered and scrubbed my floors, I cleaned my cooker, my sink my bathroom, my toilet and put on two loads of washing Then I cooked myself a nutritious meal and did my homework. Oh yes. My mother would be proud…or scathing that such transformations never rarely occur at home.

Reality check: Japanese classes

In case you were wondering, I am learning Japanese in the interludes between these anecdotes. Still, classes can be fun. In Japanese, they have a distinction similar to “this bike” and “that bike” in English. You say kore if the thing you are talking about is near you, sore if it’s near the person you’re talking too, and are if it’s far away from both of you. This gave our wonderfully enthusiastic teacher Iwami an excuse to steal our items and hide them around the room for the lesson. She managed to sneak items into pencil cases and bags, turning students into unwitting thieves. I hope that I manage to make a grammar lesson half as fun when I teach English!

Apathy of a lazy student…leads to boy love

No. I was not involved in any boy love. Boy love is between boys only, you see. And sadly, despite my penis envy during the fire-extinguishing, I haven’t yet saved up enough for the op. What I’m talking about is yaoi, anime about love between boys, apparently made by women for women. It’s the equivalent of yuri, which is the girl love stuff (read: lesbians) for guys.

During serious vocabulary learning procrastination, I set out on an Internet tour to explore yaoi. I was hoping for stories of forbidden love, deep and complex relationships, and lots of angst, but ultimately touching and sweet. I was wrong. Let’s see….

Forbidden love: check.

Lots of angst: check.

Deep and complex relationships: well, I suspect that’s what they were aiming for.

To be honest, I couldn’t get past the fact that whatever the hell I’d loaded was depicting an older, masculine male raping an effeminate teenage boy (yes, that is a boy in the picture) that he’d bought at a gay sex slave auction in order to “save” him, because he knows the boy from a forgotten past and loves him, really he does. He feels so guilty in fact that he promises he’ll try not to rape him too much in the future. And he even made him dinner when the boy was sick, and he’s a mean person who has never made dinner for anyone before. Isn’t that sweet? Needless to say, I didn’t make it to episode 2. I don’t know which women are enjoying that but I'm not one of them.

Friday fun :-)

Friday came round again. I like Fridays. We finish classes at 12.10 on Fridays. However, I don’t like 3 hours of chapter tests, a hiragana and katakana (Japanese scripts) dictations “quizzes”, a review, followed by more grammar. My TEFL-instincts were also inwardly screaming at the teacher to let us practice the phrases in pairs instead of going round and round the class for 40 minutes, speaking on average once every 5 minutes. Yet lunch in the cafeteria which serves amazingly delicious food, followed by hardcore shopping in Harajuku was enough to maintain my mood. Here we can see Calle examining the choice of male clothes on Takeshita Street. Which do you prefer: Bi-Men’s or Nudy Boy?

The evening resulted in another sophisticated film party, with a beautiful yet mind-bendingly crazy anime suggested by Calle called “Tekkon Kinkreet”. Fantastic animation. Sadly, the night degenerated into some not-so-sophisticated content being loaded onto my computer amidst snorts and giggles. At least I avoided more “boy love”.

Weekend update coming soon.

Who knows what was going on here? Simon says, touch your head!

Reality dawns: Nihon University...or "We'll School You"

I had almost forgotten why I was in Japan. But then it was time to go to Nihon University for an introduction and for endless forms. I soon discovered that I need to be able to write my name in katakana and I really need to remember my address and Japanese phone number!

On Tuesday, we went to the university for our "placement test". This presented some difficulty to the six of us who couldn't read or/write a thing! Fortunately, we were let off any test that would have been horribly demoralising and instead we had a 5-minute informal chat (in English!) and then headed out to Harajuku for some hardcore shopping and general ogling at the foreignness of the place! Sunday is the best day for seeing the youths dressed up in amazing costumes. Here you can see me with some crazy Harajuku girls:

Sadly, our Tuesday shopping proved somewhat underwhelming for me. I actually

restrained myself from buying anything because I am acutely aware of the cost of living here. My commuter pass for 3 months cost me over 30,000 yen (over £224!) The Cambridge crew were also depressed by the fact that Cambridge didn't enter us for the JASSO scholarship. If so, by now I would have over £2500 in my pocket. Actually, I wouldn't because I would have been gripped by a shopping craving so violent that I would still be recovering whilst rolling luxuriously in my new goods. Still, Kaisa did a good job for me. Look at her go!

Yesterday was an "orientation day". I failed from the moment I woke up. In fact, I failed at being "orientated" before I went to sleep. I managed to set my alarm for the time we were supposed to be leaving. Somehow I managed to get washed, dressed, packed and out the door in 8 minutes. This impressive feat was then somehow ruined when I failed to understand English questions addressed to me by the other students and fell off a step in my confusion.

"Orientation" itself was not much of an improvement and included a "tour" round Ichigaya, the area in which we will be studying, which was less a tour and more of an obsessive photo opportunity. Things improved when we returned to the campus at Shimo-tokaido (where we're living). This was due to the gastronomic opportunities an incredibly cheap cafeteria presented me with. Not only did I get a massive and delicious plateful of Japanese curry, rice and tonkatsu (breaded pork fillet) for 360 yen, but I got a cookies and cream ice cream, followed by a caffe latte. Then they took us to a café and bought us drinks and more ice-cream/desserts. It's a shame that my gastrothon has left its very distinctive marks down my white vest top.

The evening ended amazingly with karaoke. Although not everyone was keen, the majority of Cambridge and the Finns turned the energy levels up to 11 and I bopped up and down like a kangaroo on speed.

Reality once again struck when the high of singing non-stop cheese began to sink down into the depths of our stomachs and the memory of a speech in Japanese the next day bubbled its way up. I went back and panicked consulted the oracle AKA the Internet.

The next morning gave us our true experience of rush hour on trains in Tokyo. Soaking wet from the torrential rain, we pushed ourselves onto the train with no room to even lift our arms. Or put your arms down if you're already carrying your bag above your head. A wet bag that then comes to rest in a Japanese man's face. But he didn't complain and so I didn't notice. The bag was then placed in Antony's face instead to the sound of much grumbling.

Our first lesson of the day was given by a very, energetic teacher who conducted the class in hellos and name-giving. We needn't have worried about our speech as by the end of this lesson we were reasonably well-versed in all the appropriate introductory phrases.

Self-introductions are a BIG THING in Japan. Everyone has to say "hajimemashite" (how do you do?/nice to meet you) to the group, before introducing themselves and then bowing whilst wishing the group well again! Here I was thrown off course by my martial arts training: never take your eyes off your opponent. I bowed, keeping my head up and staring intently round the room. The teacher, however, was quick to emphasise the difference between samurai and polite company! Fortunately, I was more successful in the actual opening ceremony and managed to bow correctly and blabber my way through some broken lines, whilst nodding and smiling in a desperate attempt to be ever-so-kawaii (cute - it's another big thing in Japan! It explains why everything has smiley faces. Hello Kitty stickers give instructions on the train!)

Lessons went downhill after lunch when we were given an hour-and-a-half-long speech by an elderly man over 70 who spoke very quietly in poor English about his life story. I had to change position in my chair every 10 seconds to prevent my head rolling and pinches on my leg failed to keep my eyes open. However, I amused myself by watching his ears. He said he was a Buddhist and he had very large ears that hung down and wobbled as he moved his head. They were perfect Buddhist ears. Some people are just suited to their religion.

Things to look forward to: a Japanese culture lesson on honne and tatamae, two Japanese emic concepts that became essential to my dissertation!

Engrish T-Shirt awards:

"We'll School You" worn by a guy just outside of the Nihon University campus

"Crack is Back"

"Masterpiece Bitch" - worn by male