The Tipping Point

We then wondered on down stopping in a couple of more temples along the way. During one such stop we under took a huge climb which was fortunately made worthwhile by some fantastic views to admire and a large bird of prey hovering on the thermals (Eagle I think). The temples were all fairly interesting, lots of nice gardens and well just everything you might expect from old Japan.

Just outside Kamakura is Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu. Isn’t that a mouthful. It’s the main shrine for Kamakura and something appeared to be going on there the day we walked through. A load of children were dressed up in traditional dress with their parents, also smartly turned out. I can only guess it was some sort of ceremony, lots and lots of cameras.. we didn’t look out of place for once.. yeah! Well to be honest I didn’t take that many photos cause, Darwin, Dewart and especially Jose were camera happy. Joe’s camera broke at this point for no apparent reason. He got it replaced a day later, that’s Sony for you;)

What then ensued was a very short debate. Go and have a look at the Great Buddha (11.4m high and 850 tonnes) or head down to the beach and drink some beer. The beach won. We sat for an hour or so, drank beer, shared some crisps bar Darwin who had some of our crisps and ate another pack all by himself. The man is a lean mean eating machine. The other thing of note was that it gets Dark in Japan quite early. Somewhere between 4-5pm if I remember correctly. 

Back in Tokyo, we caught some of the rugby world cup in Joe’s flat along with his flat-mates, their friends and some other randoms. Eventually we sort ourselves out and head to Shin-Kiba to catch up with Ray and some of her friends at one of Tokyo’s super-clubs. This place is down in the bottom right hand corner of Tokyo, by the sea. Jose lives up in the top left corner.. it was a long way. The club was huge, like really, really big. A lot bigger than Home (which is now closed) or Fabric in London. However this may not have been the true case, because unlike any club in the UK there was space to move around, lots of space. It would appear that the Japanese aren’t so big on clubbing. Though this place was miles from anywhere. There was three very large dance floors, a swimming pool, food vans, and tented chill out area with air mattresses. Pretty cool place, just not enough people for my liking. It was also really good to see Ray.

We left after sunrise, Joe being Joe and bringing a girl with him. We then hit Sunday engineering works on the train lines and had to use a bus replacement service. It felt almost like the UK! The buses in Japan seem to be from the 50’s or something. The result was that it was approaching lunch time when we got back. Sunday got quickly written off to sleep. When we did get up (well Darwin, Dewart and me), we popped out to the supermarket and bought some food and cooked a very cheap dinner. The pro of this is that we saved some cash. Tokyo is a wildly expensive place and with all the drinking and trains we’d burned though a stack of cash.

Monday would be another early start to meet up with Ray before she had to return to the mountains on Tuesday.

Oh yes Thursday. Thursday started off so sensibly with a trip down to Asakusa. Basically there’s a big temple in that part of the city called Senso-ji which enshrines a golden image of the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Unfortunately like most of Tokyo it got flattened during WWII and was rebuilt afterwards. Though you wouldn’t have known really to look at it. Anyway it’s quite a cool place, there’s a big gate in (the thunder gate) which has two giant Buddha’s guarding it, then there’s a load of little touristy shops between the gate and the temple. Get down to the temple end and there’s some incense burning in a cauldron which is supposed to be healthy for you. To finish with there’s a pretty little garden to the left of the temple which is all neatly organised.

Next it was down to Shibuya to meet up with some of Joe’s friends down by Hachiko Statue. Basically it’s a statue of a dog. His master used to go to work in the mornings, died one day and didn’t come back. The dog continued to show up and wait for his master for 11 years, till it died. So the Japanese built a statue. Anyway Shibuya is big and mad, lots of young people, lots of video walls, flashing adverts etc. We met up with Joe’s friends and then went for food. There are these daft places were you can get all you can drink for two hours for a fixed price and then you buy your food on top. That’s what we did and that’s how we started to get drunk. 

From there we headed to Roppongi. From what I could gather there’s nothing in Roppongi except a bunch of bars and clubs, mostly aimed at westerners. Though I should perhaps stress that I didn’t gather very much.. I remember the fist bar, maybe the second/bar, and a mostly empty club I think. There was lots of alcohol and my old friend Tequila. Oh well, at some point during the night I decided to go for a run, Dewart chasing me down then giving up apparently. I also supposedly argued with some french dude that Ireland would kick their ass at the rugby, guess I was wrong. 

It’s 5am or something, you’ve just left a club in Tokyo, what do you do? Go home? Perhaps not, perhaps like us you’d rather watch the soon to be branded ‘angry’ Joe get upset at taxi drivers ignoring his Japanese requests to take us to Tsukiji fish market. Eventually we get there, and wonder around, Jose trying to ask what type of fish any given fish was (in Japanese) and getting the handy reply of fish! What’s the point you’re asking, well this place is where all the fish comes in before being trucked out to shops. I later learnt from Ray that the place is supposedly close to the public. But if you do go watch out for the mad little carts that everyone drives around on and go to one of the sushi bars there.. where you can have the freshest sushi on the planet, probably. So you’re wondering why we didn’t go at a more sensible time.. well you gotta be there before 7am apparently.

Ohh look, it’s Friday now, we get back to Joe’s. I pass out and sleep, then sleep some more, then wake up in the evening hung over. As punishment the lads take us bowling, which was fine to start with, what with us being the only people there.. but as the lanes filled the noise started to do my head in. Joe’s local Indian then bed.. it was a hard day for me.

Saturday is another bright and early start, yet more tourism and drinking to be had. I’ll leave it there though, for the mean time.

Tuesday was another long lie in. Though we did managed to get up and head into central Tokyo. Our first attempted stop was the Imperial palace gardens, despite the sign saying they were open, we were politely informed that they were closed. Disappointed, not especially. Darwin seemed to have an endless thirst for beer by this point. From there we wondered down through Hibiya-koen and towards Ginza which is an up-market shopping district. On the way we stopped of at the Godzilla statue. After much debate and me insisting that we where in the right place and must be standing on top of it we found possibly the smallest statue ever. Even smaller than the Dane’s Little Mermaid. Who says the Japanese don’t have a sense of humor. 

Anyway Ginza is something like Regents street only an entire region rather than a single road. It’s got some pretty cool shops, there’s the Sony building for a start and just because I’m a sad Apple person there’s an Apple store now a days. 

So there you go. We had yet another night of drinking with Jose and all of a sudden it was Wednesday.

So Wednesday starts, we drag our asses out of bed and then go to Ueno and spend the day wondering around the Tokyo National Museum. It’s a huge place. It is 4 rather large buildings and we managed to get around 1.5 of them in just over half a day. Nice collection of swords and other Japanese art. Cheap as well. From here we went down through Ueno park and to the Ameya-yokocho arcade. Prety much like a market, lots of hussle and bussle. We’d some strange cooked ball things which Darwin loved and I burnt my mouth on. Dewart was somewhat indifferent I think. We then wondered back though Ueno park so Darwin could see the Pagoda and the life size, plastic, Blue Whale outside the National Science Museum. After a couple of photos Darwin was happy and we headed back to meet Jose after work. Upon meeting Jose he took us along with his work colleagues for station beer. Basically go to the train station and have beer. Station beer is a strange and interesting thing. Unlike the UK there’s no problems with drinking in public. So you just wonder into the train station, buy some beer from a shop or vending machine, find somewhere to stand, drink the beer and watch the people go by and in Shinjuku that’s a lot of people. The closest thing in London is probably sitting in one of the bars in London Victoria watching people go past outside.. Though I believe this is only something done by Jose and his friends. Beer was followed by 100 Yen sushi, how cheap and good was that.. finished of with a western bar. It’s Thursday.. where is the time going?

The flight was long. Without a doubt, the highlight was Dewart and Darwin disappearing off together for at least 45 minutes, allowing me to stretch out and sleep across 3 economy class seats. (The nice guy next to them swapped seats with me). Probably the only 45 minutes of sleep I got on the flight out. Though the in-flight entertainment wasn’t to bad on the way out, well at least for someone like me who never goes to the cinema.

Now the thing about flying to Japan is that it’s 9 hours ahead and err you miss night time. It just sort of doesn’t happen for your body clock. Anyway we touched down in Narita airport got off the plane.. wondered through customs, passport control and out into the arrivals hall. Opposite us was Jose, giving us the finger, looking like some sort of bad Irish Mafia with his hair longer than I can ever remember. We wonder over.. tell him to fuck off and get a response in American, perhaps he’s been adopted by the American Mafia? Anyway sadly I’m forced to report that Jose now has an American accent. I don’t know how, though he claims the why is so that his Japanese students can understand him. All Dewart, Darwin and myself (I’m one to talk really, as is Darwin) have to say is, “pathetic.”

So Jose lives the far side of Tokyo, the far western side.. supposed to the north eastern side of the airport. Fortunately the trains are rather good so after a couple of hours and several trains, we’re at Joe’s place. Small, no beds, no kitchen, kind of reminded me of some of my student digs in London.. well the small bit anyway. So we dump are stuff and then head out to Shinjuku, the busiest train station in Toyko and were Jose works (1-2 million people a day pass through it!! Can you imagine making all off Northern Ireland go through one train station every day?) Anyway we wonder around, marvel at the big buildings, the video walls, number of people and just about everything else. Oddly Jose takes us to see a huge pendulum based clock, well it was quite cool. Then it’s dinner in an Asian restaurant on the 49th floor of a building.. It was at this point it really dawned on me that Toyko is a damn site larger than London. So the food was good, we followed it with some beers and got home about 1am. This 30+ hour stint awake meant that we didn’t rise until 5-6pm on the Monday which, was ok as Jose was at work.

Right that’s all I’ve got time for now.

Yes it has been an eternity since i last pulled my finger out and sat down to email you….
as always my appoligies…. What can i say – i have become a terrible correspondant..

Well the 1 year mark has been passed…..i have to say that my time in Japan thus far has absolutely flown… Especially since I arrived in Tokyo FIVE months ago!!

So i recently had the pleasure of entertaining the 3 Amigos (Namely Darwin, Dewart and Burly)..
A good time was had by all…… i hope (the photos seem to back up my brash statement).
You can ask any of them when you see them what their highlight of the trip was…..
i am guessing that:
Sushi at dawn at the worlds largest fish market
Beers on Kamakura beach
Impressive views of the Tokyo Skyline from a restaurant on the 49th floor in Shinjuku
Geishas in Kyoto
CRRRRRAZZY Burly
“Angry Joe’s” problems with Taxi Drivers
Darwin’s relentless consumption of sandwiches
My hair – Yes it is Currently awful
My ‘American’ accent – probably the only thing worse than my hair!
– Will all figure high on the list…

I am now trying to go throught a huge amount of photos on my hard drive to organise them into a CD – time consuming considering the inevitable reminissing that goes hand in hand with hunting through photos…

On top of that – the Kyoto tip was a harsh wake up call towards my Japanese ability – My speaking isn’t too bad (i was able to order beer for the guys – so they were happy) – but my Kanji is abysmal – out of about 2000 Kanji needed for every day life , i know about 50 – so not so good on that front – plenty of study needed to improve on this area.

Well it is FINALLY getting cold in japan – although it was 24 in Tokyo on friday – night time see’s a dramatic drop in the temperature.. so that means i need a vacation somewhere warm….

SINGAPORE!!!
yup i am off to Singapore for xmas this year – i had considered going home for a bit but the price of flights at this time of year is a bit extreme – so i will definately be home for a bit sometime next year…

Currently i am still enjoying the job – the students are still very quiet at times and still make strange thinking noises (EEEEHHHHHHH???!!!) – Ask Darwin!!
But now i have Sundays off so i can enjoy the best nightlife that Tokyo has to offer on Saturday nights – even if it does cost an arm and a leg!!

Well i am going to cut this email short as i am pretty tired – deadly all-nighter last night at an all you can drink night club (needless to say it was almost entirely populated by Gaijin {foreigner})
Hope to hear from you guys soon (this side of xmas would be nice :-))

As before anyone wishing to come and vist is more than welcome – just no more than three at a time thanx….
March or April will be a good time to visit as it will be getting warmer (but not too Humid) and it is the time of year for drinking parties in the park!!!

take care and i will be in touch soon..

Joe

‘the frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean’ – japanese proverb