old posts...

right...if you've found this site...it's actually just a copy of the myspace...admittedly, not a very good one...but i'm not sure if my myspace thing will always be there...anyway, if you haven't read this junk yet, enjoy...it's all incredibly dull...

;)

28th Dec 2006

…another party last night. However, this one was organised by our RA’s (Residential Assisstants). This time no Pikacho, but I did discover where the costume came from…the guy who brought…well wore it to the party borrowed it off a friend (who lives in halls)….which begged the question why his friend had it and apparently her brother (28) bought it for himself and then lent/gave it to his sister…why he needed to buy one I don’t think anyone will ever properly explain, but it was seriously suggested that he was slightly nuts…SO, there you go.. that’s why there was a Pikacho.

The great thing about the party was that everyone was speaking Japanese as opposed to speaking mainly in English for the benefit for the foreign students…so, good practice…learnt the Japanese for ‘Poo’ (always useful) and ‘Drunk’. Anyway I got through conversations by a mix of guessing, some translation into English and Chinese translation. All good practice.
Also met a Japanese girl doing a masters in Vegetation…who seemed overly ecstatic that when she mentioned her major that I didn’t ask: 1. Why?, 2. How?!?. Anyway she’s studying vegetation on a small (very far off main land Japan) island which takes 26hours by boat and she has to pay for travel there because her university is too poor to help L. Apparently, no sampling of vegetation…just watching…photos

25th Dec 2006

Right, although I thought I would be spending a very lonely and boring Christmas in Tokyo, there was actually a party in my halls on monday night, which was great because it meant I didn't have to battle my way back through Tokyo to get back to my room... so I could stay as long as I wanted...Hurrah!

Anyway, some genius had gone through the effort of wearing a Pikacho (Pokemon) costume...which was then susequently worn by practically everyone else at the party...
I've put some of the photos up on blogspot...kindly provided by Yessy...

15th Dec 2006

Made some apple crumble today…and chips….well potato wedgy things. Not all for me though because I’m going to French-dudes apartment tonight then apparently we are going clubbing. But this is clubbing Tokyo-stylie…where you can’t get home between the hours of 00:00 ‘til 05:30 because the train system is shut and there aren’t really any night buses and taxis are extortionate…anyhow I decided that I would head home after my Japanese lesson in the morning then cook stuff then go back in for the evening seminars (5pm-7pm…I KNOW! How rude…so late on a Friday night?!?!?! Shocking…anyway that’s not as bad as YiPing’s Prof scheduling a seminar on the 25th of December…when they say that the Japanese don’t celebrate Christmas they really mean it….however, they have really gotten hold of the true essence of Christmas – buying presents) luckily the seminars were actually rather short…I *love* the undergraduates and masters students…they don’t go on for hours and hours like silly PhD students…

To be honest the amount of travelling I’ve done today probably wasn’t worth it…but hey…

So, after the seminar I head home again to pick up the crumble (which I left cooking in the kitchen…I had horrible images of it slowly burning down the dormitory because I hadn’t actually set it to stop after 45mins properly…but it was all Fine!) packed up the food, got dressed and went off to Shinagawa to meet Greg and Annalisa.

Now. You wouldn’t think that getting out of the station would be that hard right? No? well, not if you’re wayway…I was told to go to the Konan exit…and usually there are signs all the way through the station, from the platforms to show you how to get out via different exits…but I couldn’t find any…and there was no mention of the Konan exit on any of the maps on the platform…So I got up to the concourse and found the central exit and there was also a small sign for the konan exit pointing to the right…so I followed that and ended up in a shopping centre…which was weird…I walked around and then thought I’d try to go more to the right…but that just took me to the entrance for the Shinkansen trains…so I walked back…then Greg called me to find out where I was…unfortunately I couldn’t understand a word of his instructions. This stresses me out somewhat and i walk around a bit more before deciding to go out of the central exit anyway…That’s when I run in to Greg. It was just my incompetent sign reading that made me turn right too early…usually station exits all have their own ticket barriers for that exit…but HERE apparently there is just the one set of ticket barriers then the exits…argh! Too complicated for my poor brain…L anyway he’d left Annalisa with some shopping and we picked her and shopping bags up before walking to Greg’s apartment…which looks more like a hotel than my room does…he has free breakfast and room cleaning and a spa in his serviced apartment…VERY posh…

Anyway the first thing me and Annalisa do is look around the apartment…Annalisa manages to show Greg a light he didn’t know he had…I find a cupboard that he also didn’t realise he had…he obviously hasn’t been exploring his room enough…Apparently it took him 3 days to find his washing machine, which was hiding behind his bathroom door….craziness. I point out that his ‘microwave’ does have an oven…He lied to me and told me it didn’t!!! which is one of the reasons why I cooked at my place and brought the food over! Only then does he look at his instruction manual again…the fool!

Anyway we get a good feed and then at midnight Rei turns up…dragging Greg away from his crumble (he seems to have gotten rather attached to it and isn’t happy about leaving it) we finally leave for the club at about half past and as the trains have stopped we get a cab. I say get a cab, but what I really mean is TRY to get a cab…which for some unknown reason is rather hard… all of them seem to be going to Shinagawa train station for a rest… and not to pick up new customers….weird. After launching our selves at several cabs we managed to get one and head to Ebisu. We get ID’d on the door (compulsory here, has to be photo ID and you must be over 20) there is some horrendously high cover charge to get in and it’s house music…some DJ dudes are actually mixing live…which is nice…but not really my kind of thing…

Greg however is exuding energy for some unknown reason…he loves clubbing in foreign countries. 1) they can serve redbull (illegal in France-land) and 2) you don’t have to wear a suit to get into them (like you do in France-land), odd eh?

We drag Greg away from his clubbing at 5am (he’s noticeably upset by this…poor mr. froggy…) and Head home on the first trains…I swear I’m too old for this kind of thing…but was good to try at least once. Okay, now I know I’m too old…
Winging about clubbing indeed…oh well who cares…

26th Nov 2006

Had a good sleep, then a shower. Amble about having breakfast then I get a call from Mike at 10am to meet up at Shinjuku to say a final goodbye to Marc. We head to the bookshop again so that Marc can get the books that he wants…including ‘Captain Underpants’ what a cool name for a book!...then we go for lunch at a tempura restaurant. We sit at the counter, behind which there are about 4 tenpura chefs working away and behind them a tank full of prawns who are scuttling about at the bottom…while we are chatting away our chef suddenly pops two very bemused looking prawns on the counter just in front of us and says something in Japanese…I didn’t hear what he said but my instinctive reaction was to wave hello to the little prawns…Marc meanwhile was in midflow of talking and sonly realised the prawns were there just as they were being whisked away…anyway they came back half a minute later having been beheaded and tenpurified…they were sooooo tasty…not the nicest way to die for the prawn…but his demise was a very tasty one…well for we anyway. We also had squid, which was very fresh…I could tell because it didn’t have the consistency and taste of old rubber…Marc at some point managed to mistake the soy sauce pot (which looks much like a tea pot) for tea and proceeded to pour rather a lot of soy sauce in to his tea cup, much to Mike’s amusement, who saw exactly what was going on but had obviously decided that it was funnier to watch than to intervene…

A delicious lunch later, we headed off to Shinjuku station to put Marc on to the Narita express to the airport…

25th Nov 2006

Argh! Seemed to have ignored my alarm and woken up at 7am! So I’m late! Rush out of my room to meet Marc and Mike at Shinjuku. Ends up not being soo bad as they are a bit late too… We have breakfast at the station noodle bar which is almost as cheap as the university canteen…330 yen for a bowl of udon…
Then get on a train to Kamakura. The train is packed so we have to stand most of the way…however, when we do manage to get some seats Marc falls asleep within about 2mins of sitting down…poor guy hasn’t had much sleep…Mike and Marc have been staying up all hours catching up on the past 6years in which they have not seen each other…

When we get off the train we then go find the large buddha (see http://waywayinjapan.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html) Go walk around some temples. We even get to walk into the Buddha…for a sum of 10yen..which was fun…it was and empty Buddha…with people standing inside it obviously thinking ‘I’m inside a hollow Buddha…isn’t that nice…now how do I get out?’ anyway there was one tiny staircase to get both in and out of the Buddha…and that was just wide enough for one person to happily do that and there were people trying to get in and out at the same time through this space…so that was fun.

Mike buys some incense sticks to pray to the Buddha with, and I manage to offend…well…Buddha I guess by blowing on the incense to get it burning…although in true wayway style I was rather overly efficient at this and instead of burning like incense should it caught fire properly…ooops! Yeah, anyway apparently you shouldn’t blow on the incense to make it light…bad luck or something. We wonder around the grounds for a bit…very peaceful…

On the way to the next temple we stop off to buy some yam crisps (sweet and very nice) and some yam jelly (meant to be eaten with green tea) and look into a crazy souvenir/heavy weaponry shop…although I think most of it is for ‘displaying-on-your-wall-at-home’ purposes…which includes lots of knives swords and ninja stars…nice. There’s also a special ‘plum’ shop, which sells a range of things made from plums…kind of condiment for savoury foods…

We then walked to another temple, although I think this one was actually a Shinto temple rather than Buddhist…on the account that I didn’t see a giant Buddha. It had an amazing view of the town as it was high up on the hill.

We then get on a tram to Kanagawa and have lunch at a nice little restaurant. We had Japanese omelette which is veg and some meat (if you like) or seafood fried with egg on the hot plate in front of us. We also tried the non-eggy version which was just fried veg. I kept doing every thing wrong but is was fun to play with the spatulas any how…and it was sooo tasty. Will have to do it again.

After lunch we walk around to the island, this involved lots of stairs…and a nice temple at the top…we happened to see lots of eagles flying about overhead. Eventually we reach to beach and rest for a bit before taking the boat back towards the station to save us the walk.

We get to the station and buy tickets back to Tokyo but as we have to wait an hour for a train we go sit in a bar and have root beer. The train we got wasn’t any train…it was called the ‘romance car’!!! I have no idea why. Anyway we ate the yam jelly and yam crisps.

Back at Shinjuku we decide to go to dinner in Koenji to a flamenco bar that a guy that Mike knows owns. It’s tiny and packed (there are 3 birthdays going on there)The great thing is that we can see the owner (john) cooking! It’s great. We drink sangria and eat tapas…everyone is tired (particularly marc) but the food is amazing. Parma ham, chorizo, olives, burdock root, cockles, mushrooms stewed, hand baked bread sticks, duck and chicken terrine, chicken liver pate (soo smooth). Had some deep fried meat balls with aubergines, peppers, fresh tomatoes and handmade mayonnaise.

24th Nov 2006

Just after finishing my Japanese lecture I get a call from Mike…well actually it’s mark on Mike’s phone…they apparently have just gotten up and are going for breakfast in Harajuku and suggest meeting at the station at 1pm.

We walk around the back streets to find a nice little restaurant Mike knows which sells tradiational japanese porriage dish…like water rice (congi) with egg and meat and veg. very tasty. We then take a walk towards Shinjuku park, past the 1964 olympic stadium. Unfortunately, one of the gates to the park is shut so we have to walk around to the other side. Wonder in there for a bit…very peacful…and has the equivalent to Kew Botanical Gardens there too…but it’s just shutting.

After wondering through the park we then walk around Shinjuku. We head to the nearest Tokyu Hands store. Tokyu Hands is a chain store which sells nearly everything under the sun…it’s the shop chain in which I found the dog nappies and this one has 7 odd floors of stuff…buy some weird sweets which look like a bento box. We then head to a big book shop with a large english novel collection. Then a sushi place in Shinjuku. It was Very cheap, small and had a conveyor belt. We tried sea urchin (specially ordered) and practically everything else there too. Under 1000yen (a fiver) for about 10 plates each. Genius.
Then walk to the station have a coffee (or a special green tea + tofu soya milk). Agree to meet at 8 the next morning at Shinjuku.