Well, here I am again. Back in Japan, in my own little bedroom, eating my own delicious food, thinking about maybe having a little sleepy later on. It's altogether not too dreadful, I suppose.
Hello, friends.
I'm so glad you could join me. Do come in, you must be freezing. Let me take your coat. Would you care for a cup of hot peppermint tea?
*Ahem* Sorry, I've been in a peculiar mood today. I think it might be because I've been listening to Miles Davis' Bitches Brew whilst trying to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Japanese. The combination of Davis' free, experimental electronic jazz explorations and Carroll's darkly twisted anti-fairy tale received through the filter of a language I barely understand has a uniquely unsettling and disorienting effect on the brain.
Still, I'm sure it's all mind-expanding and wholly beneficial to my mental agility.
So, I've unpacked my stuff, done the washing-up, passed an exam (haven't had the results yet but... it's a pass), cooked myself a delicious pot of 18 different grains and pulses (it's January; I'm on my healthy thing) and watered the tiny cactus that's attached to my phone. I really ought to be writing one or both of the reports I have due in next week, but I felt I owed you a conclusion my last post. I can't go around promising you prompt follow-ups and not delivering them: that's one sure-fire way to lose a readership!
Anyway, as I said, I'm on my healthy thing. I managed to put on 2 kilos (that's about 5 or 6 pounds in English) over the Christmas break, which is a bit shit considering that's more than I lost over all of last semester, so I'm on my healthy thing. So healthy I went for a 'run' yesterday. Running is horrible. Not only is it the most unpleasant way to pass the time that I can possibly imagine, it's downright dangerous. My brief 20 minute 'run' yesterday has left me with some kind of knee injury and barely able to climb stairs.
Okay, so it's not that bad - more of a slight twinge when I bend my knee - but certainly enough to prevent me from going to the gym today.
I'm also trying to healthy myself up a bit in terms of diet and nutrition. I'm already feeling the benefits of an improved dietary fibre intake (to quote Grandpa Simpson, I'm "moving like Ginger Rogers!"), not to mention improved concentration and mental acuity (from Omega 3 fish oil supplements) and improved eyesight (from Lutein). And of course superhuman strength (tinned spinach), hair regeneration (snake oil) and a new-found love for Placebo (sugar pills).
Yes indeed, by the time I get back to the UK this summer I am going to be a veritable powerhouse of timely bowel movements and supple joints. Why, I'll feel like I'm only 38 again!
My "healthy thing" also includes getting on the proverbial wagon: yes, I'm off the booze. For how long, who knows. I've mentioned to some of my friends that I'm trying not to drink for a bit and they have all agreed to make it their specific goal to lure me into getting drunk at every possible opportunity, because (and I quote) "it's funny", and "it's makes their life more interesting". Admittedly, the threat of constantly having beers bought for me is not actually that threatening, but I'll allow them to continue to think that that would be a cruel and hilarious joke.
So far, 3 days without a drink. Ish - it's a bit confusing with the time difference and all.
Anyhoo - the only thing more tedious than trying to lose weight is listening to someone else talking about how they're trying to lose weight, so I'll move on.
I was going to tell you all about my wonderful Christmas holiday that most of you were a part of. Well, it goes a little something like this:
Christmas Eve - wake up at 5am Japan time with a stinking hangover having spent the previous night sitting in the bath drinking frozen sake while watching Mad Max and The Warriors. Gather my thoughts/possessions, empty my bins and leave the house around 6.30 to begin my epic journey. After 2 hours spread across 3 trains I arrive at Narita and go through the usual boring airport rigamarole without incident, except that I got upgraded to Economy Plus, which actually makes quite a bit of a difference. A 12 hour flight follows, for the first 4 hours of which there is no in flight entertainment. I do not sleep (never do), and just spend the 12 hours sittingly glaring angrily at nothing, wishing I could sleep.
It's one of those weird flights where I leave a 2pm, fly for 12 hours and then arrive at 4pm the same day. In theory it's been noon throughout the flight, but because we flew over the North Pole and it's winter, it was actually dark for the entire flight, so my body clock is very confused at this point. I am greeted at the airport by lovely parents who have packed a little lunchbox for me full of cheese, fruit and crackers. I merrily devour all the cheese and fruit but, so as not to appear greedy, I leave the crackers.
Christmas Eve and Day progress very merrily with mince pies, devils on horseback, champagne, presents, Christmas dinner and so on. Unfortunately, when I was doing my Christmas shopping a peculiar short circuit in my brain caused me to completely lose the ability to distinguish "a bit crap, but probably amusing/interesting" from "just crap. utter utter crap". This made it a little awkward when all my family gave me really nice presents and I just gave them enormous piles of entirely crappy crap in return. In my defense, they did get several presents each, and i somehow managed to spend a fortune on all that useless crap, but I still felt a bit bad about it. I'll do better next year, I promise!
I went out on Boxing Day night for the traditional "lets go out on Boxing Day night" night out on Boxing day night, and due to the fact that my ability to drink beer had been seriously eroded by months in Japan, I ended up completely ga-ga, was refused entry to the bar we were going to so me and Jethro went off somewhere else to get more blottoed before stumbling back to my house. At my house we proceeded to devour both legs off the turkey (a cardinal sin in my household, where the turkey legs are to be saved for a special post-Boxing Day meal). I then went upstairs to fetch Jethro his Christmas present, but by the time I got to my bedroom I had clearly forgotten what I had come for or even the fact that Jethro was in my house at all, so I just went to bed. After a while, Jethro came up to see what had happened to me and demand his presents from me (wait a minute, this is all starting to sound a bit gay... it's not, honest. well, I'd best get on with it). At this moment I honestly didn't know why Jethro was in my house or how he had got in, but I grumpily directed him to the pornography and squid I had brought him from Japan and returned to my alcohol induced coma.
Fortunately, I keep a permanent marker by my bed for just such occasions, and before he left Jethro was kind enough to draw an amusing moustache on my face. What a nice friend he is.
There was also a Rob's birthday shindig, which was fun - we seemed to spend rather a long time wandering around trying to find somewhere that was serving food so soon after Christmas, but eventually we did and it was tasty. We proceeded to a pub, I presume, and jollity was shared. Having learned from my previous evening's excessive drunkeness I actually managed to maintain a pretty respectable level of inebriation throughout, even having a brief coffee interlude when I felt I was getting a bit too drunk a bit too quickly. I mean, it was a Bailey's coffee, but still, that practically a soft drink, right?
Shortly after this, I went up to lovely Sheffield to see all my lovely Sheffield friends in Sheffield, where my lovely friends live.
Me and Ronnie had our traditional screaming contest in the car up to Sheffield. Ronnie nearly had nervous breakdown in Waitrose when we stopped to buy a sandwich and have a wee - we spent half an hour trying to find sandwiches, then Ronnie couldn't decide what he wanted to eat so in the end he just bought what I bought (salmon and cucumber sandwich), which turned out to be the only thing he really didn't want to eat because he hates cucumbers. Then when we got back to the car he realised that his car was literally full to the rafters with tons of food his mum had bought for him, so our entire journey round Waitrose was entirely pointless. He had even forgotten to have a wee.
We then screamed our way up to Birmingham, and then screamed ourselves all the way onto the M6 Toll, which wasn't where we wanted to go so we had to pay 4 quid just to turn around and go the other way. Following this expensive and frustrating setback, we passed the rest of the journey in silence.
Sheffield was really good fun. We arrived the day before New Year's Eve and spent a little while in the kitchen, drinking gin and shrieking at one another until the new Shooting Stars special was on. We watched Shooting Stars together happily eating cheese and drinking cheap French lager until Shooting Stars had finished and there was no cheap French lager left.
For New Year's Eve, someone had the genius idea of just doing a really small house party. This is one of the best New Year's Eve suggestions I've heard in years, because going out into town on NYE is universally disastrous. Everything is unbelievably expensive, crowded and shit, and everyone just ends up having a really bad time for about £60, so the idea of just bringing your won booze to a house full of your friends where you get to choose what music gets played is infinitely more appealing to me.
I actually had an awesome time. I danced a lot. Possibly I danced a little too vigorously. Probably I danced a little too vigorously and on camera. There may well be some strange videos of my vigorous dancing appearing on facebook/youtube in the future, if Heg is as cruel as I think he probably is. I've already decided that I'm not going to look at them. As far as I'm concerned, as long as I never see these videos, they don't exist, and I haven't embarassed myself. Laura kindly catered a load of party foos for us, I drank my own bodyweight in gin, and Katie man was a fantastic mess of a state having apparently consumed an entire bottle of rum in the space of about an hour. Bear in mind the fact that Katie man is only fourteen inches tall and weighs about the same as a chinchilla, and you will begin to understand why she was quite so drunk. She spent the night charging around trying to find out who drank all her rum (you drank it, my dear, sorry) and asking people to make her cocktails. Fortunately she has a lot of very responsible friends, so all her 'cocktails' for the night were basically coke and water. Fun times though, and merriment was shared by all parties.
Later on that night, after most people had gone home. I *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* and then, *CENSORED* *CENSORED* in the garden pond. *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* a highly trained team of Peruvian midget acrobats *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* with a melon. *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* one small aubergine, and *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* "Help! Margery is dead!" she wept, *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* Oh, how we laughed! *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* and I thought, Me? In the nearby Catholic girl's school? With half a bottle of madeira and a pair of knickers on my head? With my reputation? *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED* but unfortunately, I was very, very drunk.
I rose the next morn at the very respectable hour of 10am, got dressed, and tried to find my way home.
Later that day we went down to the newly refurbished Notty House in search of their famous pies. Sadly, no pies were forthcoming, so in the end we went into town to go to Nando's for some exciting chickeny goodness. This proved to be a very wise move, and I spent the next half hour off my head on spicy whilst 'The Movie Game' was invented around me. The Movie Game is a bit like charades for lazy people: you just describe film, preferably in a confusing and oblique kind of way. e.g.
"Mad nanny" - Mary Poppins (or, equally, Mrs Doubtfire)
"A team of midgets wandering through the countryside, trying to deliver jewellery to a fire" - Lord of the Rings
"Bloke snogs his sister and then discovers that the main antagonist is his dad" - Star Wars
You get the idea.
We then went off to the Cobden View to talk loudly and at great length about dildos over a pint or two of cider before heading back to Heg's for Jonathan Creek. For those of you who didn't see the astonishing tour-de-force that was Jonathan Creek's spectacular comeback, let me assure you, it was phenomenal. It was utterly, utterly ridiculous and unintentionally hilarious in so many ways. I feel slightly sorry for those people who were watching with me and actually trying to follow the 'plot', because most of us were having far more fun loudly criticising how stupid it was, and trying to guess what the solution was. Some were better at picking up clues than others...
Wilko: Felix Dies? Isn't that Latin for 'happy day' or something?
Me: Felix Dies! That's totally Latin for 'cat god'! It was the cat all along I tells ya!
*ahem* I always wanted to study Latin. At times like that I really wish I had.
So that was Jonathan Creek. We then proceeded to Nisa (a 24 shop which is no longer called Nisa, but I can't remember what it's changed its name to) to pick up more booze and head back to Sellick and the girls' house to drink it. This is where Laura went a bit wrong and, after having spent half an hour showing us her massive minge (not really, but she was rolling around on the sofa flashing the massive hole between her legs... in her jeans) she invented the official cocktail of 2009 - rum and wine with a Special K bar in it. It was all a bit weird, but dead funny, and I've got some horrific photos of Barto looking awful which mean that it's still funny now.
The next day we watched The Mighty Ducks: D2, and considered how much the Mighty Ducks had changed between D2 and D12 (ho ho, just my little joke there...) We went and had some good old fashioned pub nosh at the Tav, and then I came home.
I spent a few more days at home having a lovely time at home with my home. My little brother was in Mixmag, which is exciting (check out his My Space www.myspace.com/slugabedmusic, apparently he's the 4th most influential Aquacrunk producer in Glasgow). I went to the pub. Twice. [You may be able to tell I'm running out of stamina for this post] It was good. Then i packed up some cheese and left for Tokyo. Which is also good.
Now I am here. Which I think is good.
Well, I might come back to this post at some point and add some photos to it or at least give it a proper ending, but right now I am feeling uncommonly sleepy and really struggling to maintain focus on the task at hand, so I'll sign off.
Good bye
Here's some deliciously topical Italo Disco from 1985 to amuse you all
Lovely love,
*CENSORED* Kong
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Genghis Kong vs. 2008
Merry Christmas all, and Happy New Year!
*lots to catch up on: long post alert!*
I hope the start of 2009 finds all you lovely people healthy, happy and optimistic for the year ahead. As for myself, this year promises to be one of many challenges and opportunities, to put it as optimistically as I can. I will be going back to Japan in two days time and from then on, I will not see England's green and pleasant land until August: 7 solid months of hardcore Japtasticness. I have exams starting on the 9th of January, but once I finish my exams and hand in my final projects for the year on the 15th I'll have no more classes until some time in March/April time. During the intervening Spring Break I have a little skiing holiday planned, followed by extended visits from both my older brother and my parents. With a bit of luck I might injure myself horrifically during the skiing, so that when my family come to visit they will have to spend their entire time nursing a cripple.
I am back in lovely, lovely England - that most wonderful of countries where everything is bloody amazing and I am deliriously happy every single day. Nothing makes you appreciate home like spending 3 months in a different country. Well, spending 7 months in a different country will probably have the same effect, but 3 months was quite enough. It's the little things that you come to miss: pubs where people don't look at you strangely if you just want a pint with no food; saying "thank you" to the man in the shop when you buy a paper (in Japan this is considered very strange behaviour); holding the door open for someone (also considered somewhat deviant in Japan); reasonably priced beer, taxis and pub grub; Wi-Fi. All these simple, everyday things which we take for granted in England are either incredibly rare or considered strange and freakish in Japan. Returning to England every little thing is a new and exciting treat for me.
Of course, you also miss your home, family and friends when you are spending a long time abroad, probably more than you miss wireless internet, but that's to be expected really.
Oh, and cheese.
So, what do I miss about Japan when I'm in England? Well, I'm not sure if I really 'miss' much, but I suppose there are things in Japan which I will be glad of when I have them again. For example, my daily Fibe Mini - a fibre supplement drink that looks and tastes a bit like Irn Bru, without which, and thanks to the sudden dietary shift from brown rice and vegetables to meat and cheese, my daily motions have become increasingly traumatic. There's also the gym - the gym at my Uni in Japan is actually remarkably crap, low-tech and badly equipped, but it is on-campus and, most importantly, completely free so I actually manage to go pretty regularly. This will hopefully be a great help with my New Year's resolutions.
Speaking of which, it would probably be appropriate for me to put forth some New Year's resolutions. Usually they just float around my head vaguely and I can conveniently forget/ignore them as I fail them one by one, so I'll put them in writing this year. This way everyone will know exactly how I fail to live up to my own expectations.
This year's resolution, I suppose, is probably going to be the same one which I have failed at each year for the past 5 years: sort my life out. When I told this to Jethro, he told me that, as far as he could tell, my life seems pretty well in order and doesn't need too much sorting out. Upon further consideration I had to concede that this was probably true, and I do in fact worry too much about the state of my life. Nonetheless, there are a few key points about which I have long wanted to make some changes, so I suppose 'sort my life out' can be divided into the following sub-resolutions:
4. Have more sex (perhaps a slightly strange New Year's resolution and not directly linked to 'sorting my life out', but hey, there it is)
So those are my New Year's resolutions, and they have been my New Year's resolutions pretty much every year for the last three or four years. Every year I make these promises to myself and, virtually without exception, fail at them all to varying degrees. This is probably because none of them are particularly easy, they are all very vague, and they pretty much require sweeping changes to all aspects of my lifestyle, so perhaps I ought to go for a single, simpler, more attainable and measurable resolution, for example:
5. Read a Japanese newspaper every day (while I'm in Japan)
Which is something I can actually conceivably achieve to some reasonable degree. So, actually, while I have certainly considered lots of New year's resolutions I don't actually seem to have settled on a single one to actually stick to. Oh well, I guess I'll just do my best. Or at least がんばります, which is almost the same as doing my best, but it actually just means 'persevere' with no implication that I will do well; just that I will continue struggling along even with no hope of success.
Right, now I'm going to try to tell you about all the stuff I've done since my last post, but my last post was 3 and a half weeks ago so this is going to take a long time. Also, as I can scarcely remember what happened 3 weeks ago, it might be a little hazy.
3 weeks ago I was still in Japan. Apart from a History exam for which I didn't study properly, but still expect to get at least 80%, the only events of note, as far as I can remember, were a couple of Birthday parties and a Christmas party. The first birthday party went along the usual formula - we went for a meal with 2 hours all-you-can-eat-and-drink followed by going to Hub, the English Pub (as usual). This party was pretty fun, but only really notable because of the fact that I actually succeeded at catching the last train home and finding my way successfully to my own bed without mishap.
The Christmas party was good fun too. There was a formal dress code at the restaurant (all-you-can-eat-and-drink for 2 hours) so I got to get all nicely dressed up in my smarts.
Here is a nice(ish) picture of me and my friend Kaleb
We both own pink phones and we work out together a lot. If I didn't know I wasn't gay, I would probably think we were gay together, but I know I'm not gay, so I guess we're probably not gay together after all. All the Japs think he's gay, and he gets very pissed off at them. His catchphrase is "I hate this frickin' country", so we have a lot in common. (Not gay).
My catchphrase, incidentally, is "God, what a dreadful country populated by awful, awful people."
The following day it was Byeolyi's birthday (one of the cool Koreans at my school). We went for Thai food (2 hours all-you-can-eat again, although this time only one drink was included), and I actually abstained from drinking altogether. Aren't I just the very model of temperance and moderation?
The next day was my last day of school. I had my history final in the afternoon, after which Kaleb and I went to the Centre for International Studies to check for the fourth time that we definitely didn't need to get a re-entry permit before we left the country for Christmas. We had each independently come to the office to inform them that we were going home for Christmas and ask them about re-entry permits on more than one occasion, and we had both been assured that no, we didn't need to do anything else or get a permit, it was fine, just come and let them know when we got back to the country. However on this occasion, the day before Kaleb was flying home and 2 days before I was to, they suddenly realised that, oh shit, actually we do need to get a re-entry permit before we leave the country, otherwise we invalidate our visas and won't be allowed back in.
Actually they weren't even as helpful as that. They just looked panicky and confused and said "Yes you definitely do need re-entry permit. Very important. What? You fly tomorrow? Oh, maybe you don't need one. Hmmm... It's okay, you don't need one. Should be okay. You be okay." Which was actually entirely not true. We very much did need re-entry permits, but the Japanese compulsion not to be confrontational or tell someone they have done something wrong obliged them to simply lie to us and say that we'd be fine. An entirely unhelpful way to deal with problems.
So, stressed and anxious about our re-entry permits, Kaleb and I proceeded to Hub, the English Pub for some conciliatory Gs&Ts (happy hour G&T still a pretty good price, despite the exchange rate). The more astute among you may be noticing a certain theme of Hub, the English Pub developing in this blog. I don't actually like the place all that much, and their beer is unfeasibly expensive (actually about normal by Tokyo standards, but extortionate by UK prices), but somehow we end up going there almost every time someone wants a drink, largely because their happy hour last for 3 hours and offers £1.50 cocktails.
At the Hub we rendezvoused with Haneul (Korean girl), Alex (American gay) and Alex's brother and friend of brother (American young people) and decided, after happy hour, to go do PuriKura which is basically fancy photo booths which take 'amusing' pictures of you and your friends. I might go into more detail on the subject at a later date but for now I'll just show you the finished product:
Believe it or not, only one person in this picture is gay. (It's not me).
Anyway after purikura we shook off the Alex and his harem, acquired an Australian girl, Tessa, and spent an amazingly pointless hour or two wandering around trying to find somewhere to drink, by which time Kaleb had sobered up enough to realise that he couldn't afford to drink any more,
so we ended up just going to Wendy's for a burger. For some reason I felt compelled to order the Super Mega Wendy's Monster Burger or whatever it was called (basically a triple bacon cheeseburger type thing) which, to make it even worse, comes with a free upgrade to large-size fries and soda. I quickly realised that I did not want to eat this much burger and chips, but a misplaced sense of pride/honour/frugality/greed forced me to consume the entire meal, leaving me feeling extremely unwell.
*parents and family members: skip the next part*
It was at this point Tessa, who incidentally is the girl I asked out a couple months ago and was rejected by, asked me if I wanted to go round to her room to watch Love Actually, share a bottle of white wine and, quite possibly, spend the night. Presumably she had some kind of amorous advances in mind (or just thinks I'm gay), but I had literally eaten so much that I couldn't face it. I had somehow eaten my way out of pulling.
This is just another example of my extraordinary talent for not having sex. There have been a surprisingly large number of occasions when a woman I fancy has been trying to get me into their bed and I have somehow ended up accidentally talking my way out of it. It's like some kind of strange affliction. I think I might be under some kind of malignant curse, although I can't specifically remember pissing off any evil witches recently.
So I went home clutching my stomach and sat around thinking about how I could have got laid.
2 days later it was Christmas Eve and I was on my way home.
I realise that I haven't even got as far as me leaving Japan yet, and I've at least another two week's festive frivolities to fill you all in on, but I feel as though this post has been going on for an awfully long time, and as my tale seems to have reached a natural break, I felt I might just take a little break as well - It's hard work this blogging malarkey, you know. I started writing this at half five and it's now about ten o'clock, so I think I deserve a little bit of a rest, don't you?
I'll try to do another one tomorrow or, failing that, soon after getting back to Japan, to let you know what I did over Christmas (even though most of you, being my friends and family, will already know what I did over Christmas, as you were probably there. Still, it might be amusing for you to read about things you personally witnessed or even participated in from someone else's point of view).
But before I go, I shall deal with a question which a few people have asked me regarding the Japanese children's television program Pitagora Suicchi.
Hopefully some of you will remember the video I posted a while ago of various opening sequences for Pitagora Suicchi with the amazing marble rolling aparatus. Here's a brief reminder for those of you who missed it (sorry for the horrible sound quality):
Well, a couple of my friends asked me what the actual content of the TV show was: was it just half an hour of improbable marble rolling? Well, no. The show is made up of various short sequences which are very diverse and as far as I can tell the only thing they have in common is that they are all works of utter genius. Here is one of my favourites: The Algorithm March. I watch this almost every morning before school and I think it is the sole thing which enables me to cope with life in Japan.
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
Farewell all, and I'll hopefully be updating this again very soon.
Season's greetings and much love,
Genghis Claus
*lots to catch up on: long post alert!*
I hope the start of 2009 finds all you lovely people healthy, happy and optimistic for the year ahead. As for myself, this year promises to be one of many challenges and opportunities, to put it as optimistically as I can. I will be going back to Japan in two days time and from then on, I will not see England's green and pleasant land until August: 7 solid months of hardcore Japtasticness. I have exams starting on the 9th of January, but once I finish my exams and hand in my final projects for the year on the 15th I'll have no more classes until some time in March/April time. During the intervening Spring Break I have a little skiing holiday planned, followed by extended visits from both my older brother and my parents. With a bit of luck I might injure myself horrifically during the skiing, so that when my family come to visit they will have to spend their entire time nursing a cripple.
I am back in lovely, lovely England - that most wonderful of countries where everything is bloody amazing and I am deliriously happy every single day. Nothing makes you appreciate home like spending 3 months in a different country. Well, spending 7 months in a different country will probably have the same effect, but 3 months was quite enough. It's the little things that you come to miss: pubs where people don't look at you strangely if you just want a pint with no food; saying "thank you" to the man in the shop when you buy a paper (in Japan this is considered very strange behaviour); holding the door open for someone (also considered somewhat deviant in Japan); reasonably priced beer, taxis and pub grub; Wi-Fi. All these simple, everyday things which we take for granted in England are either incredibly rare or considered strange and freakish in Japan. Returning to England every little thing is a new and exciting treat for me.
Of course, you also miss your home, family and friends when you are spending a long time abroad, probably more than you miss wireless internet, but that's to be expected really.
Oh, and cheese.
So, what do I miss about Japan when I'm in England? Well, I'm not sure if I really 'miss' much, but I suppose there are things in Japan which I will be glad of when I have them again. For example, my daily Fibe Mini - a fibre supplement drink that looks and tastes a bit like Irn Bru, without which, and thanks to the sudden dietary shift from brown rice and vegetables to meat and cheese, my daily motions have become increasingly traumatic. There's also the gym - the gym at my Uni in Japan is actually remarkably crap, low-tech and badly equipped, but it is on-campus and, most importantly, completely free so I actually manage to go pretty regularly. This will hopefully be a great help with my New Year's resolutions.
Speaking of which, it would probably be appropriate for me to put forth some New Year's resolutions. Usually they just float around my head vaguely and I can conveniently forget/ignore them as I fail them one by one, so I'll put them in writing this year. This way everyone will know exactly how I fail to live up to my own expectations.
This year's resolution, I suppose, is probably going to be the same one which I have failed at each year for the past 5 years: sort my life out. When I told this to Jethro, he told me that, as far as he could tell, my life seems pretty well in order and doesn't need too much sorting out. Upon further consideration I had to concede that this was probably true, and I do in fact worry too much about the state of my life. Nonetheless, there are a few key points about which I have long wanted to make some changes, so I suppose 'sort my life out' can be divided into the following sub-resolutions:
- Study more, work harder, be less lazy
- Drink less booze, less often and be less drunk all the time
- Exercise more, eat properly, lose loads of weight
4. Have more sex (perhaps a slightly strange New Year's resolution and not directly linked to 'sorting my life out', but hey, there it is)
So those are my New Year's resolutions, and they have been my New Year's resolutions pretty much every year for the last three or four years. Every year I make these promises to myself and, virtually without exception, fail at them all to varying degrees. This is probably because none of them are particularly easy, they are all very vague, and they pretty much require sweeping changes to all aspects of my lifestyle, so perhaps I ought to go for a single, simpler, more attainable and measurable resolution, for example:
5. Read a Japanese newspaper every day (while I'm in Japan)
Which is something I can actually conceivably achieve to some reasonable degree. So, actually, while I have certainly considered lots of New year's resolutions I don't actually seem to have settled on a single one to actually stick to. Oh well, I guess I'll just do my best. Or at least がんばります, which is almost the same as doing my best, but it actually just means 'persevere' with no implication that I will do well; just that I will continue struggling along even with no hope of success.
Right, now I'm going to try to tell you about all the stuff I've done since my last post, but my last post was 3 and a half weeks ago so this is going to take a long time. Also, as I can scarcely remember what happened 3 weeks ago, it might be a little hazy.
3 weeks ago I was still in Japan. Apart from a History exam for which I didn't study properly, but still expect to get at least 80%, the only events of note, as far as I can remember, were a couple of Birthday parties and a Christmas party. The first birthday party went along the usual formula - we went for a meal with 2 hours all-you-can-eat-and-drink followed by going to Hub, the English Pub (as usual). This party was pretty fun, but only really notable because of the fact that I actually succeeded at catching the last train home and finding my way successfully to my own bed without mishap.
The Christmas party was good fun too. There was a formal dress code at the restaurant (all-you-can-eat-and-drink for 2 hours) so I got to get all nicely dressed up in my smarts.
Here is a nice(ish) picture of me and my friend Kaleb
We both own pink phones and we work out together a lot. If I didn't know I wasn't gay, I would probably think we were gay together, but I know I'm not gay, so I guess we're probably not gay together after all. All the Japs think he's gay, and he gets very pissed off at them. His catchphrase is "I hate this frickin' country", so we have a lot in common. (Not gay).
My catchphrase, incidentally, is "God, what a dreadful country populated by awful, awful people."
The following day it was Byeolyi's birthday (one of the cool Koreans at my school). We went for Thai food (2 hours all-you-can-eat again, although this time only one drink was included), and I actually abstained from drinking altogether. Aren't I just the very model of temperance and moderation?
The next day was my last day of school. I had my history final in the afternoon, after which Kaleb and I went to the Centre for International Studies to check for the fourth time that we definitely didn't need to get a re-entry permit before we left the country for Christmas. We had each independently come to the office to inform them that we were going home for Christmas and ask them about re-entry permits on more than one occasion, and we had both been assured that no, we didn't need to do anything else or get a permit, it was fine, just come and let them know when we got back to the country. However on this occasion, the day before Kaleb was flying home and 2 days before I was to, they suddenly realised that, oh shit, actually we do need to get a re-entry permit before we leave the country, otherwise we invalidate our visas and won't be allowed back in.
Actually they weren't even as helpful as that. They just looked panicky and confused and said "Yes you definitely do need re-entry permit. Very important. What? You fly tomorrow? Oh, maybe you don't need one. Hmmm... It's okay, you don't need one. Should be okay. You be okay." Which was actually entirely not true. We very much did need re-entry permits, but the Japanese compulsion not to be confrontational or tell someone they have done something wrong obliged them to simply lie to us and say that we'd be fine. An entirely unhelpful way to deal with problems.
So, stressed and anxious about our re-entry permits, Kaleb and I proceeded to Hub, the English Pub for some conciliatory Gs&Ts (happy hour G&T still a pretty good price, despite the exchange rate). The more astute among you may be noticing a certain theme of Hub, the English Pub developing in this blog. I don't actually like the place all that much, and their beer is unfeasibly expensive (actually about normal by Tokyo standards, but extortionate by UK prices), but somehow we end up going there almost every time someone wants a drink, largely because their happy hour last for 3 hours and offers £1.50 cocktails.
At the Hub we rendezvoused with Haneul (Korean girl), Alex (American gay) and Alex's brother and friend of brother (American young people) and decided, after happy hour, to go do PuriKura which is basically fancy photo booths which take 'amusing' pictures of you and your friends. I might go into more detail on the subject at a later date but for now I'll just show you the finished product:
Believe it or not, only one person in this picture is gay. (It's not me).
Anyway after purikura we shook off the Alex and his harem, acquired an Australian girl, Tessa, and spent an amazingly pointless hour or two wandering around trying to find somewhere to drink, by which time Kaleb had sobered up enough to realise that he couldn't afford to drink any more,
so we ended up just going to Wendy's for a burger. For some reason I felt compelled to order the Super Mega Wendy's Monster Burger or whatever it was called (basically a triple bacon cheeseburger type thing) which, to make it even worse, comes with a free upgrade to large-size fries and soda. I quickly realised that I did not want to eat this much burger and chips, but a misplaced sense of pride/honour/frugality/greed forced me to consume the entire meal, leaving me feeling extremely unwell.*parents and family members: skip the next part*
It was at this point Tessa, who incidentally is the girl I asked out a couple months ago and was rejected by, asked me if I wanted to go round to her room to watch Love Actually, share a bottle of white wine and, quite possibly, spend the night. Presumably she had some kind of amorous advances in mind (or just thinks I'm gay), but I had literally eaten so much that I couldn't face it. I had somehow eaten my way out of pulling.
This is just another example of my extraordinary talent for not having sex. There have been a surprisingly large number of occasions when a woman I fancy has been trying to get me into their bed and I have somehow ended up accidentally talking my way out of it. It's like some kind of strange affliction. I think I might be under some kind of malignant curse, although I can't specifically remember pissing off any evil witches recently.
So I went home clutching my stomach and sat around thinking about how I could have got laid.
2 days later it was Christmas Eve and I was on my way home.
I realise that I haven't even got as far as me leaving Japan yet, and I've at least another two week's festive frivolities to fill you all in on, but I feel as though this post has been going on for an awfully long time, and as my tale seems to have reached a natural break, I felt I might just take a little break as well - It's hard work this blogging malarkey, you know. I started writing this at half five and it's now about ten o'clock, so I think I deserve a little bit of a rest, don't you?
I'll try to do another one tomorrow or, failing that, soon after getting back to Japan, to let you know what I did over Christmas (even though most of you, being my friends and family, will already know what I did over Christmas, as you were probably there. Still, it might be amusing for you to read about things you personally witnessed or even participated in from someone else's point of view).
But before I go, I shall deal with a question which a few people have asked me regarding the Japanese children's television program Pitagora Suicchi.
Hopefully some of you will remember the video I posted a while ago of various opening sequences for Pitagora Suicchi with the amazing marble rolling aparatus. Here's a brief reminder for those of you who missed it (sorry for the horrible sound quality):
Well, a couple of my friends asked me what the actual content of the TV show was: was it just half an hour of improbable marble rolling? Well, no. The show is made up of various short sequences which are very diverse and as far as I can tell the only thing they have in common is that they are all works of utter genius. Here is one of my favourites: The Algorithm March. I watch this almost every morning before school and I think it is the sole thing which enables me to cope with life in Japan.
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
Farewell all, and I'll hopefully be updating this again very soon.
Season's greetings and much love,
Genghis Claus
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Genghis Kong vs. Article
Hello fans!
(and all the rest of you)
I'm afraid this is not going to be much of a post. I promised you a nice newsy update at the end of my last post, but the sad thing is there is not much news to tell. I have been going to school some days, not going to school on others. Doing homework some days, failing to achieve anything productive on others. I've been getting drunk at the weekends, and sometimes accidentally getting drunk on schoolnights too, but apart from a couple of fairly embarrassing/tedious episodes involving me falling asleep on the train home because I was drunk and waking up several hundred miles away from where I had hoped to be, not much of note has happened. I somehow managed to repeat this ridiculous process twice in a single weekend! I 'accidentally' went clubbing in Roppongi on the Friday night: left the club around 3/4am, finally got home at 11.30 (it's usually about an hour, at most). I spent Saturday nursing a brutal hangover, but somehow managed to let myself get talked into going clubbing AGAIN... It was actually a really good club, and the music was awesome (Dubstep an' ting), but yet again I somehow managed to completely fuck up getting home - left the club at 4am, got home around 1pm the next day. D'oh!
So that's about it. Other significant notes about my life:
Incidientally, yes, I have drunk Baileys from a shoe, but no, I don't want to go to a club where people wee on each other, thank you very much.
So anyway, not much going on. But that's not the real reason I wrote this post. The real reson is that one of my friends in Sheffield edits/produces/curates a sort of magazine. I guess you could call it an arts/culture/fashion/music/current affairs/amusing nonsense sort of magazine. It's called Article, presumably because that's what it contains. Anyway, I wrote an article for Article recently, and Article issue 4, featuring my article, has just been printed.
If you are in Sheffield, keep your eyes open for real live hard copies of Article, but for those of you living further afield it can be found online in an eco-friendly version here:
http://www.myspace.com/articlemagazine
although as I type this, their myspace claims to be undergoing routine maintenance and is inaccessible. Should you have trouble with this one, please seek for the magazine here:
http://www.impursuit.com/article/issue4.pdf
Mine is the cheery piece on suicide on page 26 (page 14 on the pdf because the pages are double-scanned), but you should definitely take a look at the rest of the magazine too because it's usually very entertaining (I haven't read this issue yet).
(Watch this video as you read the top of the third column of my article)
If you enjoyed anything you found written in Article, or even if you didn't, please go and list yourself as a 'fan' of Article magazine on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Article-Magazine/17179551383?ref=ts
The more people sign up as fans, the more they can charge for advertising, the more money they get, the more content goes into the next issue. There's even talk of printing parts of it in colour, which is very exciting.
Now I'm about to something very unpleasant to all of you, but can I assure you that it's not my fault: blame Evil Ronnie for this one (I knew there was a reason his name's 'Evil').
Get ready for the Jingle Bass!!!
I apologise for that. Truly I do.
Much love,
Genghis Claus xxx
(and all the rest of you)
I'm afraid this is not going to be much of a post. I promised you a nice newsy update at the end of my last post, but the sad thing is there is not much news to tell. I have been going to school some days, not going to school on others. Doing homework some days, failing to achieve anything productive on others. I've been getting drunk at the weekends, and sometimes accidentally getting drunk on schoolnights too, but apart from a couple of fairly embarrassing/tedious episodes involving me falling asleep on the train home because I was drunk and waking up several hundred miles away from where I had hoped to be, not much of note has happened. I somehow managed to repeat this ridiculous process twice in a single weekend! I 'accidentally' went clubbing in Roppongi on the Friday night: left the club around 3/4am, finally got home at 11.30 (it's usually about an hour, at most). I spent Saturday nursing a brutal hangover, but somehow managed to let myself get talked into going clubbing AGAIN... It was actually a really good club, and the music was awesome (Dubstep an' ting), but yet again I somehow managed to completely fuck up getting home - left the club at 4am, got home around 1pm the next day. D'oh!
So that's about it. Other significant notes about my life:
- I'm still not smoking - about 2 months, ish? I haven't even bothered keeping track.
- I'm currently drinking heroic quantities of coffee every day
- A sort of vaguely-healthy-eating/diet type thing which I had been pursuing has long since fallen by the wayside
- I've been going to the gym thrice a week (6 times a fortnight) for the last month or two, which is nice
- I'm falling way behind on Kanji and other homework
- I've trimmed my moustache into a ridiculous Hulk Hogan/James Hetfield/Leather Dude out of The Village People big gay handlebar
- I just cut my hair (I don't really know how it looks yet, but I think I might be balding rather disastrously)
- As it approaches Christmas it occurs to me that I secretly quite like Baileys, and it is Christmas after all, so I go and buy myself a bottle of Baileys
- I pour myself a nice chilled glass of Baileys and watch Disney's Robin Hood or The Box of Delights or something similar
- I enjoy the delicious rich creaminess and wonder why I don't drink Baileys more often
- I finish my first Baileys and pour myself another. I gag on the cloying rich creaminess and, beginning to feel rather nauseous, I remember precisely why I don't drink Baileys more often
- I force myself to finish a whole bottle of gross, cloying, sickly-sweet Irish muck over a week or so
- I find out (too late) how many calories there are in a measure of Baileys and weep, swearing never to drink it again
- Until next year
Incidientally, yes, I have drunk Baileys from a shoe, but no, I don't want to go to a club where people wee on each other, thank you very much.
So anyway, not much going on. But that's not the real reason I wrote this post. The real reson is that one of my friends in Sheffield edits/produces/curates a sort of magazine. I guess you could call it an arts/culture/fashion/music/current affairs/amusing nonsense sort of magazine. It's called Article, presumably because that's what it contains. Anyway, I wrote an article for Article recently, and Article issue 4, featuring my article, has just been printed.
If you are in Sheffield, keep your eyes open for real live hard copies of Article, but for those of you living further afield it can be found online in an eco-friendly version here:
http://www.myspace.com/articlemagazine
although as I type this, their myspace claims to be undergoing routine maintenance and is inaccessible. Should you have trouble with this one, please seek for the magazine here:
http://www.impursuit.com/article/issue4.pdf
Mine is the cheery piece on suicide on page 26 (page 14 on the pdf because the pages are double-scanned), but you should definitely take a look at the rest of the magazine too because it's usually very entertaining (I haven't read this issue yet).
(Watch this video as you read the top of the third column of my article)
If you enjoyed anything you found written in Article, or even if you didn't, please go and list yourself as a 'fan' of Article magazine on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Article-Magazine/17179551383?ref=ts
The more people sign up as fans, the more they can charge for advertising, the more money they get, the more content goes into the next issue. There's even talk of printing parts of it in colour, which is very exciting.
Now I'm about to something very unpleasant to all of you, but can I assure you that it's not my fault: blame Evil Ronnie for this one (I knew there was a reason his name's 'Evil').
Get ready for the Jingle Bass!!!
I apologise for that. Truly I do.
Much love,
Genghis Claus xxx
Thursday, 4 December 2008
Genghis Kong vs. Arianna Huffington
Dear World,
I have just watched today's edition of The Daily Show with John Stewart (if you don't already watch this programme religiously - or at least cultishly - you really, really ought to. It's the only source of American political news I trust.) On today's edition (December the 3rd; actually yesterday thanks to the 15 hour time difference between me and New York) a lovely lady called Arianna Huffington appeared to promote her new book about blogging. She told me that the key to blogging is spontaneity and not thinking too much about what you write, so here I am, spontaneously not thinking about what I'm writing. Apparently blogging is supposed to be like an intimate conversation, without any of the intimacy (it's so convenient having someone tell me exactly how I'm supposed to act and think - it was getting confusing having to work it out on my own.) So I'm going to try a semi-spontaneous off-the-cuff post, currently having little idea what the actual content of this is going to be.
Because that, apparently, is blogging.
Also, spontaneous stream-of-consciousness blogging rather precludes self-censorship, so if anything unsavoury comes up: sorry, parents.
I have recently been amused by the merry spin Japan puts on alcoholism. Firstly, alcohol is advertised widely, proudly and without 'drink responsibly' tags attached to all the ads. As far as I can tell there are no real regulations to alcohol advertising, and on my way to school I pass many 30-foot-wide billboards extolling the virtues of Japan's many fine beers. Which can, when I am trying not to drink (a frequent struggle) be more than slightly troublesome, although I have to say I feel it more keenly on my way home from school in the evening than on my way to school at 8.30 in the morning (I'm not THAT bad... yet...)
Secondly, there are the wonderful, uplifting messages printed on Japanese beer cans which make the whole idea of getting drunk seems so much more appealing. Asahi Clear have clearly paid someone who can actually speak English to write theirs:
Clear Asahi is brewed with select barley malt, hops and grains by using our pure cultured yeast. Its unique brewing process creates a distinctively bold, clear and smooth taste.
Now that sounds pretty damn tempting, and not at all retarded.
Kirin, thankfully, has no such compunction about asking a genuine English speaker to tell them whether their beer slogans sound retarded or not.
Kirin Tanrei:
Sheer refreshment! Open up the good taste that goes perfectly with good times.
Kirin Green Label:
Green label brings you a comfortable time. The refreshing taste cheers your mind.
Kirin Nodogoshi Nama (their cheapest beer-flavoured brew):
Kirin's brewing technology elaborates the Nodogoshi!
And my personal favourite, on Kirin Strong Seven (that's their tramp-flavoured 7% ABV beer-flavoured beverage):
This hard and clear taste brings you the great feeling. (No messing. No apologies. Hard. Clear. By 'great feeling' I presume they mean 'numb to the outside world')
I honestly didn't think anyone could make super lager sound appealing, but somehow these tricksy Japs have achieved it (nom nom nom).
To continue my discussion of how GOD DAMNED CRAZY these people are, allow me to tell you of the fabulous drink known as 'a Hoppy'.
No doubt you are all familiar with the concept of an alcohol-free beer. They are those mysteriously overpriced, sad-looking bottles of misery that live in the fridges of many nightclubs and are never bought by anyone. They are the social outcasts of the beverages world. Even amongst the alcohol-free clique of drinks, they are shunned. I mean, J2O may be alcohol-free, but compared to low-alcohol lager it's the coolest girl at the party. To offer a badly-thought-out American-high-school analogy, J2O is known to be a geek and a loser, but someone caught low-alcohol lager masturbating in the school toilets 2 years ago, and no-one has spoken to him since. That's how low low-alcohol lager is in the grand hierarchy of drinks.
And yet in Japan there is an alcohol-free beer known as 'Hoppy' which is widely popular. Many bars hang banners outside their premises advertising that they sell Hoppy. Let me tell you now that Japan is not a nation of teetotallers. Their drinking culture differs from ours in many significant ways, but no one could accuse the Japs of not liking a wee drink or two every now and then/every night of the week.
You see, the thing is, 'Hoppy' is an alcohol-free beer, but 'a Hoppy' from a bar is something rather different.
'A Hoppy' (I shit you not) is a chilled bottle of Hoppy alcohol-free beer, served in a chilled glass tankard, with a large chilled measure of Shochu (liquor) stirred into it. Shochu is Japan's rough liquor - it is diatilled from grain or potatoes and fills the role of Vodka in Japanese society. It's only 25%(ish) but has no significant flavouor and is cheap as dirt.
So basically, what I'm getting at is: alcohol-free beer + alcohol = commercial success in Japan.
...??!!///...?...........
B... Wha...?
Utterly baffling. What can I say.
Right - school tomorrow, so I shall start signing off.
I shall firstly bring to all of your attentions the 'Get Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" to be Christmas number one!' campaign, which is a serious issue in which I believe very strongly. I urge all of you who read to this join the Facebook group, invite all of your Facebook friends to join the group, and then to actually buy the single (wait until after December 15th otherwise it won't count for Christmas no. 1).
Honestly, I adore this song more than almost any other and I would be utterly beside myself with joy if it were Christmas number 1 this year. I'm not sure if they're actually re-releasing it as a single, but the charts include download sales these days, so if everyone just downloads it from iTunes then it could make it.
Come on people: we can do this!!!
Also, if anyone wants christmas prezzies please give me a shout what Jappy stuff you fancy - if it's cheap enough you might just get your wish! (seriously, this country is DAMN expensive and I'm running out of cash fast, so keep 'em small if you want any chance of getting your wish.)
So there you are. That's it. All that remains is to say that I wrote this post while drunk with absolutely no forethought, and I feel it's possibly one of my better ones, so please COMMENT and give me feedback about how you feel about it.
Also...
wait a minute...
I've forgotten what I was about to write,
but don't worry,
it'll come back to me in a moment, I'm sure...
...
...
Oh yeah, I remember!
Don't stop believing,
Hold on to that feeeling,
Streetlights, people,
Ah a-ah a-ah a-ah
Love, love, love,
Wood, wood, wood,
X, x, x
PS. Journey at number 1 would be the best Christmas present ever. Don't forget it.
PPS. I'll try to do a more 'newsy' post soon, to let you all know what I'm actually doing with myself. a bit. if any of you actually cares *sob sob*
I have just watched today's edition of The Daily Show with John Stewart (if you don't already watch this programme religiously - or at least cultishly - you really, really ought to. It's the only source of American political news I trust.) On today's edition (December the 3rd; actually yesterday thanks to the 15 hour time difference between me and New York) a lovely lady called Arianna Huffington appeared to promote her new book about blogging. She told me that the key to blogging is spontaneity and not thinking too much about what you write, so here I am, spontaneously not thinking about what I'm writing. Apparently blogging is supposed to be like an intimate conversation, without any of the intimacy (it's so convenient having someone tell me exactly how I'm supposed to act and think - it was getting confusing having to work it out on my own.) So I'm going to try a semi-spontaneous off-the-cuff post, currently having little idea what the actual content of this is going to be.
Because that, apparently, is blogging.
Also, spontaneous stream-of-consciousness blogging rather precludes self-censorship, so if anything unsavoury comes up: sorry, parents.
I have recently been amused by the merry spin Japan puts on alcoholism. Firstly, alcohol is advertised widely, proudly and without 'drink responsibly' tags attached to all the ads. As far as I can tell there are no real regulations to alcohol advertising, and on my way to school I pass many 30-foot-wide billboards extolling the virtues of Japan's many fine beers. Which can, when I am trying not to drink (a frequent struggle) be more than slightly troublesome, although I have to say I feel it more keenly on my way home from school in the evening than on my way to school at 8.30 in the morning (I'm not THAT bad... yet...)
Secondly, there are the wonderful, uplifting messages printed on Japanese beer cans which make the whole idea of getting drunk seems so much more appealing. Asahi Clear have clearly paid someone who can actually speak English to write theirs:
Clear Asahi is brewed with select barley malt, hops and grains by using our pure cultured yeast. Its unique brewing process creates a distinctively bold, clear and smooth taste.
Now that sounds pretty damn tempting, and not at all retarded.
Kirin, thankfully, has no such compunction about asking a genuine English speaker to tell them whether their beer slogans sound retarded or not.
Kirin Tanrei:
Sheer refreshment! Open up the good taste that goes perfectly with good times.
Kirin Green Label:
Green label brings you a comfortable time. The refreshing taste cheers your mind.
Kirin Nodogoshi Nama (their cheapest beer-flavoured brew):
Kirin's brewing technology elaborates the Nodogoshi!
And my personal favourite, on Kirin Strong Seven (that's their tramp-flavoured 7% ABV beer-flavoured beverage):
This hard and clear taste brings you the great feeling. (No messing. No apologies. Hard. Clear. By 'great feeling' I presume they mean 'numb to the outside world')
I honestly didn't think anyone could make super lager sound appealing, but somehow these tricksy Japs have achieved it (nom nom nom).
To continue my discussion of how GOD DAMNED CRAZY these people are, allow me to tell you of the fabulous drink known as 'a Hoppy'.
No doubt you are all familiar with the concept of an alcohol-free beer. They are those mysteriously overpriced, sad-looking bottles of misery that live in the fridges of many nightclubs and are never bought by anyone. They are the social outcasts of the beverages world. Even amongst the alcohol-free clique of drinks, they are shunned. I mean, J2O may be alcohol-free, but compared to low-alcohol lager it's the coolest girl at the party. To offer a badly-thought-out American-high-school analogy, J2O is known to be a geek and a loser, but someone caught low-alcohol lager masturbating in the school toilets 2 years ago, and no-one has spoken to him since. That's how low low-alcohol lager is in the grand hierarchy of drinks.
And yet in Japan there is an alcohol-free beer known as 'Hoppy' which is widely popular. Many bars hang banners outside their premises advertising that they sell Hoppy. Let me tell you now that Japan is not a nation of teetotallers. Their drinking culture differs from ours in many significant ways, but no one could accuse the Japs of not liking a wee drink or two every now and then/every night of the week.
You see, the thing is, 'Hoppy' is an alcohol-free beer, but 'a Hoppy' from a bar is something rather different.
'A Hoppy' (I shit you not) is a chilled bottle of Hoppy alcohol-free beer, served in a chilled glass tankard, with a large chilled measure of Shochu (liquor) stirred into it. Shochu is Japan's rough liquor - it is diatilled from grain or potatoes and fills the role of Vodka in Japanese society. It's only 25%(ish) but has no significant flavouor and is cheap as dirt.
So basically, what I'm getting at is: alcohol-free beer + alcohol = commercial success in Japan.
...??!!///...?...........
B... Wha...?
Utterly baffling. What can I say.
Right - school tomorrow, so I shall start signing off.
I shall firstly bring to all of your attentions the 'Get Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" to be Christmas number one!' campaign, which is a serious issue in which I believe very strongly. I urge all of you who read to this join the Facebook group, invite all of your Facebook friends to join the group, and then to actually buy the single (wait until after December 15th otherwise it won't count for Christmas no. 1).
Honestly, I adore this song more than almost any other and I would be utterly beside myself with joy if it were Christmas number 1 this year. I'm not sure if they're actually re-releasing it as a single, but the charts include download sales these days, so if everyone just downloads it from iTunes then it could make it.
Come on people: we can do this!!!
Also, if anyone wants christmas prezzies please give me a shout what Jappy stuff you fancy - if it's cheap enough you might just get your wish! (seriously, this country is DAMN expensive and I'm running out of cash fast, so keep 'em small if you want any chance of getting your wish.)
So there you are. That's it. All that remains is to say that I wrote this post while drunk with absolutely no forethought, and I feel it's possibly one of my better ones, so please COMMENT and give me feedback about how you feel about it.
Also...
wait a minute...
I've forgotten what I was about to write,
but don't worry,
it'll come back to me in a moment, I'm sure...
...
...
Oh yeah, I remember!
Don't stop believing,
Hold on to that feeeling,
Streetlights, people,
Ah a-ah a-ah a-ah
Love, love, love,
Wood, wood, wood,
X, x, x
PS. Journey at number 1 would be the best Christmas present ever. Don't forget it.
PPS. I'll try to do a more 'newsy' post soon, to let you all know what I'm actually doing with myself. a bit. if any of you actually cares *sob sob*
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Genghis Kong vs. Gachapin
Lordies and Gentleforks,
I noticed today that it has been exactly two weeks since last I updated my blog, and that last post was not even a real update: just an amusing video of Japanese people being silly (they are so very silly), so I felt that I really ought to write something. More than that, I feel I owe you all an apology for keeping you waiting so long. I will try to make sure this little post is all you could wish for and more.
I have of late been somewhat troubled by two things in particular. The first is insomnia, or some kind of problem with my sleep pattern, and the second is the plummetting value of the Pound. I think I may have mentioned my sleeping problems before, possibly at great length, so I'll try not to go into too much wearysome detail, but in short I can't sleep. I lie down, I close my eyes, I even count sheep, but nothing happens. I seem to have forgotten some vital step in the going-to-sleep process, but I can't for the life of me work out what it was. I'll eventually drift off around 2 or 3am, then wake up several times, usually at 5, 5.30 and 6.30, each time thinking "hmmm, I'm pretty awake now, maybe I should just get up", but when my alarm clock goes off at 6.50 my only thoughts are "Bleeaaarggh. Mrrrrfffff? Hrmrmrmrmr fuck offfff..." and I wake up groggy, woozy, headachey and pissed off, which is not a great way to start the day.
No - that's not just a hangover. I know what I hangover feels like, and this is much worse.
In fact, my difficulty sleeping is driving me to the drink. Now, those of you who know me well will be aware that I was not a teatotaller before i came to Japan. I have been known to enjoy a drop of bubbly at Christmas, and sometimes even a shandy or two at the end of a long week. But recently I've been thinking "God I can't be bothered with another sleepless night and feeling shitty all day tomorrow. I'll just get drunk" which is not a healthy lifestyle or frame of mind. The fact is though, I feel better with a hangover but having slept well than I do when I haven't slept properly.
I've been thinking perhaps I ought to go and buy another mattress; my bed is spectacularly uncomfortable. I've bruises on my hips just from rolling over in the night. I think my futon might be stuffed with granite or iron filings.
And then there's the money issue. It's almost like there was some kind of global economic crisis going on or something... Basically, the value of the Pound is unimaginably low, especially when compared to the Yen which has remained relatively strong throughout the turmoil. 5 months ago £1 was worth 215 Yen. 2 months ago it was 185. Now it's around 140. That's a fall of 25% over 2 months, or 35% since July.
To put this in context for those of you not particularly familiar with Japanese currency, as long as I've been paying attention to Japan it has always been around 200 Yen to the pound, give or take. Sometimes it was a little more, sometimes a little less, but it was close enough. This made the calculations pretty convenient: 1000 Yen (the smallest note) was worth a fiver (our smallest note), so it all made sense and was pretty easy. 10,000 was £50. A 600 Yen pint was a £3 pint - pretty much average. Now a 600 Yen pint costs £4.28. Whenever I want to take out fifty quid, it costs me £71.50, not including the £1.50 my bank charges me for the privilege of using my card abroad!
Needless to say, this has caused me much fiscal consternation. Fortunately I have some money in Yen format, so I haven't actually had to use my Pounds too much, but I've not got many Yen left so I'm going to start feeling the rub pretty soon.
On the other hand, as my Father pointed out, this would be a very good time to start earning some Yen - exploiting the credit crunch to my own advantage - so I'm going to look into some English teaching work or something.
Aside from these two minor worries, however, the sun is shining, I only have one more lecture left this week, and all is pretty much well with me. I've been doing a fair amount of work, although I'm falling wa-a-ay behind with my Kanji - it turns out 60 kanji per week is rather more than i can realistically keep up with. My mid-term exams are all behind me, I've no major deadlines for 2 weeks, and I'm making progress with my Year-Abroad research project.
Also, possibly more significantly, I've recently been starting to feel like I can speak Japanese. Not especially well, mind you, but on the whole I understand when people speak to me, and they seem to understand what I say in response, so I guess I can speak Japanese... There's no other explanation for it.
I think that's all the 'serious' bit dealt with. No more real 'news' to tell you, except that I'll be back in 5 weeks and my cheese cravings are almost unbearable. Every day on my way home I detour to walk past a bakery where they are always giving out free samples of cheese bread - the typical sweet, spongey Japanese bread with a few meagre pieces of yellow and orange generic-factory-cheese in the middle. I also, once or twice a week, go to the food court underneath the Seibu department store and eat all the free samples at their cheese stall. Sometimes when I'm a bit drunk I buy a little pack of salami and smoked cheese, but apart from those three indulgences, there is no cheese in my life. They do have cheese in this country; in fact, at the fancy department stores they even have some pretty good cheese, but it's so gosh darn expensive that I can't bring myself to buy it. 150g of Stilton at the supermarket is 1,680 Yen, which is £12 at today's exchange rate, and there's no way I'm going to pay that much for a piece of cheese. Even the cheap crappy Japanese cheese is 400+ Yen (£2-3) for 100g.
Now, on to the important stuff. Let me start with the Shelf of Tat. You will be excited to know that the Shelf is positively groaning under the weight of Tat arrayed upon it. In fact, some of the older Tat has been pushed back slightly to make room for the newer Tat.
So, to introduce the new ones, and refresh your memory on the older ones, let's do a quick roll-call, left to right.
1. Battleship Yamato beer mug
2. Daruma
3. Talks-just-like-your-father SoftBank Dog
4. *NEW* White dog with your Father's voice
5. Sexy Dr Pepper can
6. *NEW* Minnie Mouse ears
7. *NEW* Bag of Yen
8. *NEW* Mickie and Minnie shot glass
9. *NEW* Singing employment mouse
10. Gachapin
That's right: there are 5 - count them - 5 new additions to the shelf of tat. Lets take a closer look at this motley bunch.
You all remember the talks-just-like-your-father SoftBank dog, right? With classic one-liners like "You are too young for that!" who could forget? Well, I am proud to introduce to you one of the finest pieces of tat I have found so far: a really naff plastic rip-off of the SoftBank dog! That's right, this isn't just a smaller version of the talks-just-like-your-father SoftBank dog, this the 'white dog with your father's voice', made by the White Dog Company. I won it in a 100 Yen UFO-catcher machine (took me about 6 tries, so the little bastard cost me about £4). It even comes complete with naff crappy rip-off pieces of fatherly advice. (Look back to September's post, 'Genghis Kong vs. the SoftBank Dog' to remind yourself of the nuggets of unfiltered fatherly wisdom that the original SoftBank Dog dispensed).
White dog says:
ボイズ・ビー・アンビシャスだ！
Boys be amitious! (he just says this in English but with a Japanese accent, so it comes out as boizu bii anbishasu)
コラ！
Look!
意思が弱い！
Your intention is weak!
And other crappy bits of nonsense. Well, he used to say those things. His battery is already dead.
SoftBank Dog says: "That's quite enough of that!" and I think he's right.
The Minnie ears are from DisneySea (like DisneyLand, but wetter), which I went to a couple of weeks ago. They were lent to me by Lisa (one of the Japs), so I wore them all day with everyone laughing at me. Here's a picture of me modelling them with Yumiko (Dude! Chick! Hot! Bang! Totally!!!)
I believe this is what the Japanese call 'kawaii'.
Lisa says she wants the ears back.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
No.
The bag of Yen came free with a bottle of tea I bought. Well, the bag came free. I had to provide the Yen, unfortunately. A bottle of tea had a strange small item attached to it, so I bought it out of curiosity. The small soft 'free gift' turned out to be a tiny (about 3" square), see-through yellow drawstring bag with a picture of Rilakkuma (Relax Bear. Rilakkusu means relax, kuma means bear. Rilakkusu + Kuma = Rilakkuma. Genius) on it. How utterly pointless, I thought at first, but then I realised that my pockets, desk and floor were overflowing with another achingly pointless item: 1 Yen coins. So I put my 1 Yen coins in the bag. Problem solved.
Minnie and Micky shot glass. Another souvenir from DisneySea. For those dark, dark times, when the only thing that can cheer me up is shots of gin and a picture of Mickey Mouse.
Finally there's the singing employment mouse. I can't quite remember where I got him, but if you squeeze his belly he tells you to go get a job.
Well, not exactly, but it sounds better if I tell it that way. If you squeeze his belly he sings a little jingle which goes "If you're looking for part-time work, go to Baitoru.com". It's very irritating, and mind-numbingly catchy, and just thinking about it has got it stuck in my head again. Oh... God... Make... It... Stop...
So those are the new contestants in the international Tat parade. I'd like to make a brief mention of Gachapin though. Gachapin, if you remember, is the one who says that giggling is good for your balls. It turns out he's some kind of Tom Cruise-esque action man super hero. And he has a friend who is a red yeti called Mukku. Here's proof.
How fucking cool/ridiculous is that? I particularly enjoyed the bit at the end where he's burying a corpse... and then the freaky magnet people?
*sigh* Somehow I can't help feeling that I'm more of a Mukku than a Gachapin...
So what kind of fun stuff have I been doing for the last few weeks? Well, briefly (because I've been at this post for about 2 hours now), Simon (coursemate from Sheffield) came up to Tokyo for the weekend, which we used as an excuse for a larger Sheff-crew gathering. All told Me, Simon, Jimmy, Morrell, Lisa, Rachel, Katherine, Evie, Ildze, Morito and a couple of Catherine's friends whose names I sadly can't remember met up (apologies if I missed anyone out there). Food and booze was had with much merriment. There was also Karaoke and a Curry, I can't quite remember in what order these events occurred.
Simon stayed with me the first night, and we had a day of doing some low-paced sightseeing which was nice. We had Okonomiyaki for lunch.
The one on the right is the one I made. The one on the left was Simon's...
In his defence, mine was an okonomiyaki, ans his was a monjayaki, so we were working from rather different recipes, but I'm still not entirely convinced monjayaki is supposed to look like that...
We then went up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building,
Which offers a very fine view of Tokyo,
Although it was a little too hazy to see Mt. Fuji.
Then there was DisneySea. A really fun day out, but the rides were all rather tame (well, it is for kids after all) and it was pretty expensive. There are tons of photos of it, but I can't quite be bothered to upload them here. If you've ever been to a Disney resort before it looked just like that. If you've never been to a Disney resort before, just imagine a 3D Disney film with me in it. The photos should make it on to Facebook eventually.
At some stage later that week I went out to the English Pub. The Fish and Chips are pretty rubbish and the beer is very expensive, but cocktails are cheap and it looks like a pub, so it makes me feel at home. This started out as a pretty low-key, low-drunkenness event, just me and three Japanese girls (dudechickhotbang? Totally!), but more and more people turned up later on and I ended up in a fairly disgraceful state of inebriation. Happy hour is 4pm until 7pm, and all cocktails are half price. That makes it about £2 for a pint or so of G&T. Not good G&T (no ice, no slice), but a pint of it.
Here's me earlier on in the night (don't let the blurriness of the photo or the droopiness of my eyes fool you - I was pretty sober).
Then the other Gaijin turned up, and the Japanese people questioned my abililty to drink a litre of beer.
(Wilko, I drank this and thought of you)
Then I was quite drunk.
Then... well... I don't know to be honest. I like to think I was playing peek-a-boo with a child under the table. Or demonstrating the brace position for a plane crash. Hopefully not crying.
Actually, I think I might have just hit my head. That seems the most plausible explanation. That would also explain the headache I had the next day...
Onwards and onwards and I've been at school, studying hard. I've started going to the Gym (I've lost about a stone, I think, which is nice). Yada yada yada.
Believe it or not Ive been writing this thing for about 3 hours now, so you'll forgive me if my patience is starting to run out.
I've also written an article for Article (my friend Dunmore's magazine that he prints in Sheffield). Keep your eyes peeled for it in paper format if you live in the Steel City, otherwise there will be an online edition at some stage too.
I have to go now - my vision is starting to blur and I'm starting to suffer from typist's headache, not to mention diarist's ear and blogger's ballbag - but before I do, I would like to leave you with a few more words from Gachapin. In fact, a whole song from Gachapin. It's called Tabechauzo (Eat it up!), and I find there's something amazingly creepy about it.
Lyrics in Japanese:
Eat it up! Eat it up! Naughty children eat it up!
With butter spread thickly on it and sugar sprinkled on top,
Open your big big mouth - which child will eat it, which will it be?
We'll rock, paper, scissors for it: if you win, you eat, if you lose, run away!
God that was creepy.
I've got some other stuff I might like to write, but I can't be bothered right now, so hopefully you won't have to wait quite so long for the next post.
Let's making happy! You are number one biggest friend and always filling your love!
Genghis xxx
I noticed today that it has been exactly two weeks since last I updated my blog, and that last post was not even a real update: just an amusing video of Japanese people being silly (they are so very silly), so I felt that I really ought to write something. More than that, I feel I owe you all an apology for keeping you waiting so long. I will try to make sure this little post is all you could wish for and more.
I have of late been somewhat troubled by two things in particular. The first is insomnia, or some kind of problem with my sleep pattern, and the second is the plummetting value of the Pound. I think I may have mentioned my sleeping problems before, possibly at great length, so I'll try not to go into too much wearysome detail, but in short I can't sleep. I lie down, I close my eyes, I even count sheep, but nothing happens. I seem to have forgotten some vital step in the going-to-sleep process, but I can't for the life of me work out what it was. I'll eventually drift off around 2 or 3am, then wake up several times, usually at 5, 5.30 and 6.30, each time thinking "hmmm, I'm pretty awake now, maybe I should just get up", but when my alarm clock goes off at 6.50 my only thoughts are "Bleeaaarggh. Mrrrrfffff? Hrmrmrmrmr fuck offfff..." and I wake up groggy, woozy, headachey and pissed off, which is not a great way to start the day.
No - that's not just a hangover. I know what I hangover feels like, and this is much worse.
In fact, my difficulty sleeping is driving me to the drink. Now, those of you who know me well will be aware that I was not a teatotaller before i came to Japan. I have been known to enjoy a drop of bubbly at Christmas, and sometimes even a shandy or two at the end of a long week. But recently I've been thinking "God I can't be bothered with another sleepless night and feeling shitty all day tomorrow. I'll just get drunk" which is not a healthy lifestyle or frame of mind. The fact is though, I feel better with a hangover but having slept well than I do when I haven't slept properly.
I've been thinking perhaps I ought to go and buy another mattress; my bed is spectacularly uncomfortable. I've bruises on my hips just from rolling over in the night. I think my futon might be stuffed with granite or iron filings.
And then there's the money issue. It's almost like there was some kind of global economic crisis going on or something... Basically, the value of the Pound is unimaginably low, especially when compared to the Yen which has remained relatively strong throughout the turmoil. 5 months ago £1 was worth 215 Yen. 2 months ago it was 185. Now it's around 140. That's a fall of 25% over 2 months, or 35% since July.
To put this in context for those of you not particularly familiar with Japanese currency, as long as I've been paying attention to Japan it has always been around 200 Yen to the pound, give or take. Sometimes it was a little more, sometimes a little less, but it was close enough. This made the calculations pretty convenient: 1000 Yen (the smallest note) was worth a fiver (our smallest note), so it all made sense and was pretty easy. 10,000 was £50. A 600 Yen pint was a £3 pint - pretty much average. Now a 600 Yen pint costs £4.28. Whenever I want to take out fifty quid, it costs me £71.50, not including the £1.50 my bank charges me for the privilege of using my card abroad!
Needless to say, this has caused me much fiscal consternation. Fortunately I have some money in Yen format, so I haven't actually had to use my Pounds too much, but I've not got many Yen left so I'm going to start feeling the rub pretty soon.
On the other hand, as my Father pointed out, this would be a very good time to start earning some Yen - exploiting the credit crunch to my own advantage - so I'm going to look into some English teaching work or something.
Aside from these two minor worries, however, the sun is shining, I only have one more lecture left this week, and all is pretty much well with me. I've been doing a fair amount of work, although I'm falling wa-a-ay behind with my Kanji - it turns out 60 kanji per week is rather more than i can realistically keep up with. My mid-term exams are all behind me, I've no major deadlines for 2 weeks, and I'm making progress with my Year-Abroad research project.
Also, possibly more significantly, I've recently been starting to feel like I can speak Japanese. Not especially well, mind you, but on the whole I understand when people speak to me, and they seem to understand what I say in response, so I guess I can speak Japanese... There's no other explanation for it.
I think that's all the 'serious' bit dealt with. No more real 'news' to tell you, except that I'll be back in 5 weeks and my cheese cravings are almost unbearable. Every day on my way home I detour to walk past a bakery where they are always giving out free samples of cheese bread - the typical sweet, spongey Japanese bread with a few meagre pieces of yellow and orange generic-factory-cheese in the middle. I also, once or twice a week, go to the food court underneath the Seibu department store and eat all the free samples at their cheese stall. Sometimes when I'm a bit drunk I buy a little pack of salami and smoked cheese, but apart from those three indulgences, there is no cheese in my life. They do have cheese in this country; in fact, at the fancy department stores they even have some pretty good cheese, but it's so gosh darn expensive that I can't bring myself to buy it. 150g of Stilton at the supermarket is 1,680 Yen, which is £12 at today's exchange rate, and there's no way I'm going to pay that much for a piece of cheese. Even the cheap crappy Japanese cheese is 400+ Yen (£2-3) for 100g.
Now, on to the important stuff. Let me start with the Shelf of Tat. You will be excited to know that the Shelf is positively groaning under the weight of Tat arrayed upon it. In fact, some of the older Tat has been pushed back slightly to make room for the newer Tat.
So, to introduce the new ones, and refresh your memory on the older ones, let's do a quick roll-call, left to right.1. Battleship Yamato beer mug
2. Daruma
3. Talks-just-like-your-father SoftBank Dog
4. *NEW* White dog with your Father's voice
5. Sexy Dr Pepper can
6. *NEW* Minnie Mouse ears
7. *NEW* Bag of Yen
8. *NEW* Mickie and Minnie shot glass
9. *NEW* Singing employment mouse
10. Gachapin
That's right: there are 5 - count them - 5 new additions to the shelf of tat. Lets take a closer look at this motley bunch.
You all remember the talks-just-like-your-father SoftBank dog, right? With classic one-liners like "You are too young for that!" who could forget? Well, I am proud to introduce to you one of the finest pieces of tat I have found so far: a really naff plastic rip-off of the SoftBank dog! That's right, this isn't just a smaller version of the talks-just-like-your-father SoftBank dog, this the 'white dog with your father's voice', made by the White Dog Company. I won it in a 100 Yen UFO-catcher machine (took me about 6 tries, so the little bastard cost me about £4). It even comes complete with naff crappy rip-off pieces of fatherly advice. (Look back to September's post, 'Genghis Kong vs. the SoftBank Dog' to remind yourself of the nuggets of unfiltered fatherly wisdom that the original SoftBank Dog dispensed).
White dog says:
ボイズ・ビー・アンビシャスだ！
Boys be amitious! (he just says this in English but with a Japanese accent, so it comes out as boizu bii anbishasu)
コラ！
Look!
意思が弱い！
Your intention is weak!
And other crappy bits of nonsense. Well, he used to say those things. His battery is already dead.
SoftBank Dog says: "That's quite enough of that!" and I think he's right.
The Minnie ears are from DisneySea (like DisneyLand, but wetter), which I went to a couple of weeks ago. They were lent to me by Lisa (one of the Japs), so I wore them all day with everyone laughing at me. Here's a picture of me modelling them with Yumiko (Dude! Chick! Hot! Bang! Totally!!!)
I believe this is what the Japanese call 'kawaii'.Lisa says she wants the ears back.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
No.
The bag of Yen came free with a bottle of tea I bought. Well, the bag came free. I had to provide the Yen, unfortunately. A bottle of tea had a strange small item attached to it, so I bought it out of curiosity. The small soft 'free gift' turned out to be a tiny (about 3" square), see-through yellow drawstring bag with a picture of Rilakkuma (Relax Bear. Rilakkusu means relax, kuma means bear. Rilakkusu + Kuma = Rilakkuma. Genius) on it. How utterly pointless, I thought at first, but then I realised that my pockets, desk and floor were overflowing with another achingly pointless item: 1 Yen coins. So I put my 1 Yen coins in the bag. Problem solved.
Minnie and Micky shot glass. Another souvenir from DisneySea. For those dark, dark times, when the only thing that can cheer me up is shots of gin and a picture of Mickey Mouse.
Finally there's the singing employment mouse. I can't quite remember where I got him, but if you squeeze his belly he tells you to go get a job.
Well, not exactly, but it sounds better if I tell it that way. If you squeeze his belly he sings a little jingle which goes "If you're looking for part-time work, go to Baitoru.com". It's very irritating, and mind-numbingly catchy, and just thinking about it has got it stuck in my head again. Oh... God... Make... It... Stop...
So those are the new contestants in the international Tat parade. I'd like to make a brief mention of Gachapin though. Gachapin, if you remember, is the one who says that giggling is good for your balls. It turns out he's some kind of Tom Cruise-esque action man super hero. And he has a friend who is a red yeti called Mukku. Here's proof.
How fucking cool/ridiculous is that? I particularly enjoyed the bit at the end where he's burying a corpse... and then the freaky magnet people?
*sigh* Somehow I can't help feeling that I'm more of a Mukku than a Gachapin...
So what kind of fun stuff have I been doing for the last few weeks? Well, briefly (because I've been at this post for about 2 hours now), Simon (coursemate from Sheffield) came up to Tokyo for the weekend, which we used as an excuse for a larger Sheff-crew gathering. All told Me, Simon, Jimmy, Morrell, Lisa, Rachel, Katherine, Evie, Ildze, Morito and a couple of Catherine's friends whose names I sadly can't remember met up (apologies if I missed anyone out there). Food and booze was had with much merriment. There was also Karaoke and a Curry, I can't quite remember in what order these events occurred.
Simon stayed with me the first night, and we had a day of doing some low-paced sightseeing which was nice. We had Okonomiyaki for lunch.
The one on the right is the one I made. The one on the left was Simon's...In his defence, mine was an okonomiyaki, ans his was a monjayaki, so we were working from rather different recipes, but I'm still not entirely convinced monjayaki is supposed to look like that...
We then went up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building,
Which offers a very fine view of Tokyo,
Although it was a little too hazy to see Mt. Fuji.Then there was DisneySea. A really fun day out, but the rides were all rather tame (well, it is for kids after all) and it was pretty expensive. There are tons of photos of it, but I can't quite be bothered to upload them here. If you've ever been to a Disney resort before it looked just like that. If you've never been to a Disney resort before, just imagine a 3D Disney film with me in it. The photos should make it on to Facebook eventually.
At some stage later that week I went out to the English Pub. The Fish and Chips are pretty rubbish and the beer is very expensive, but cocktails are cheap and it looks like a pub, so it makes me feel at home. This started out as a pretty low-key, low-drunkenness event, just me and three Japanese girls (dudechickhotbang? Totally!), but more and more people turned up later on and I ended up in a fairly disgraceful state of inebriation. Happy hour is 4pm until 7pm, and all cocktails are half price. That makes it about £2 for a pint or so of G&T. Not good G&T (no ice, no slice), but a pint of it.
Here's me earlier on in the night (don't let the blurriness of the photo or the droopiness of my eyes fool you - I was pretty sober).
Then the other Gaijin turned up, and the Japanese people questioned my abililty to drink a litre of beer.
(Wilko, I drank this and thought of you)
Then I was quite drunk.
Then... well... I don't know to be honest. I like to think I was playing peek-a-boo with a child under the table. Or demonstrating the brace position for a plane crash. Hopefully not crying.
Actually, I think I might have just hit my head. That seems the most plausible explanation. That would also explain the headache I had the next day...Onwards and onwards and I've been at school, studying hard. I've started going to the Gym (I've lost about a stone, I think, which is nice). Yada yada yada.
Believe it or not Ive been writing this thing for about 3 hours now, so you'll forgive me if my patience is starting to run out.
I've also written an article for Article (my friend Dunmore's magazine that he prints in Sheffield). Keep your eyes peeled for it in paper format if you live in the Steel City, otherwise there will be an online edition at some stage too.
I have to go now - my vision is starting to blur and I'm starting to suffer from typist's headache, not to mention diarist's ear and blogger's ballbag - but before I do, I would like to leave you with a few more words from Gachapin. In fact, a whole song from Gachapin. It's called Tabechauzo (Eat it up!), and I find there's something amazingly creepy about it.
Lyrics in Japanese:
たべちゃうぞたべちゃうぞ いたずらする子はたべちゃうぞ
バターたっぷりぬりつけて お砂糖ぱらぱらふりかけて
大きな大きな口あけて 食べる子どの子 どの子にしようか
じゃんけんぽんよ勝ったら食べろ 負けたら逃げろ
たべちゃうぞたべちゃうぞ おなべにゆでてたべちゃうぞ
頭の方からなげこんで まだまだぐらぐらぐつぐつ
おいしいスープのできあがり 食べる子どの子 どの子にしようか
じゃんけんぽんよ勝ったら食べろ 負けたら逃げろ
たべちゃうぞたべちゃうぞ 眠ってる間にたべちゃうぞ
おもちゃ大事にしない子は 壊れた自動車汽車怪獣
仕返しやってくる夢の中 食べる子どの子 どの子にしようか
じゃんけんぽんよ勝ったら食べろ 負けたら逃げろ
じゃんけんぽんよ勝ったら食べろ 負けたら逃げろ
Lyrics in English (I can only be bothered to translate the first verse):Eat it up! Eat it up! Naughty children eat it up!
With butter spread thickly on it and sugar sprinkled on top,
Open your big big mouth - which child will eat it, which will it be?
We'll rock, paper, scissors for it: if you win, you eat, if you lose, run away!
God that was creepy.
I've got some other stuff I might like to write, but I can't be bothered right now, so hopefully you won't have to wait quite so long for the next post.
Let's making happy! You are number one biggest friend and always filling your love!
Genghis xxx
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Genghis Kong vs. Barack Obama
As some of you may have heard, Barack Obama just won the US presidential elections.
I felt I ought to do something to mark the occasion, so I am writing this brief congratulatory message. To properly convey my jubilation at this moment, I am enlisting the help of the Anyone Brothers Band and their recent song Obama is Beautiful World, recorded especially for these elections.
I hope you will enjoy the beautiful music, high production values, excellent use of correct English grammar and well-choreographed dance routines which can be seen in this truly breathtaking music video.
Peace, love and Yes We Can,
Jeng xxx
I felt I ought to do something to mark the occasion, so I am writing this brief congratulatory message. To properly convey my jubilation at this moment, I am enlisting the help of the Anyone Brothers Band and their recent song Obama is Beautiful World, recorded especially for these elections.
I hope you will enjoy the beautiful music, high production values, excellent use of correct English grammar and well-choreographed dance routines which can be seen in this truly breathtaking music video.
Peace, love and Yes We Can,
Jeng xxx
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Genghis Kong vs. Jimmy Van Halen
Japanese television is, without exception, utterly crap. Every aspect of Japanese TV production is indescribably woeful in every possible way. However, sometimes it manages to be such utter, utter crap that it accidentally becomes genius.
Terebi dorama (Television drama) are extremely popular in Japan. These are more-or-less like soap operas, except that they're utterly farcical. None of the actors have a shred of talent, the plots are retarded, the production values are low and everything is so over-acted, over-dramatised and generally overdone that it becomes laughable. In fact, they can become hilarious.
I've just been watching a wonderful dorama entitled Yamaonna, Kabeonna (mountain woman, wall woman), in which a flat-chested saleswoman (wall woman) gets a new employee on her salesteam who has enormous breasts (mountain woman). Wall Woman is envious of mountain woman's rack, and hilarity ensues. In todays episode the department chief of the department store where they work didn't feel like eating his potato croquettes, so Mountain Woman had some. Unfortunately, Department Chief suffers from erectile dysfunction so his wife had laced his croquettes with some kind of drug to encourage his libido (I didn't quite catch what it was that she put in the croquettes, but it sounded like "spong", so I'm going to go with that). Mountain Woman reacted strangely to the spong, going into a super-hard-working frenzy of smiles, enthusiasm and efficiency, and was so impressed with them that she shared them with her section chief. He also went into a berserk spong-fury, and at the end of the day he charged off to some classy hostess bar with his colleagues to exercise his love muscle. There he bumped into limp-dicked Department Chief (his boss) with much embarassment but they end up sitting together with their girls for a while. Later on, who should appear on the stage dressed as Elvis but their company president (!) to much embarassment/amusement all round.
Meanwhile, Wall Woman has been invited to Mountain Woman's house for dinner, and Wall Woman is trying to work out how to make her boobs bigger. She is surprised to discover that Mountain Woman's mother has tiny breasts, so she decides that it must be something dietary. Mountain Woman eats a lot of pickles, so Wall Woman starts gorging on mama's special pickles in an effort to grow her breasts. Later on, Mountain Woman's grandmother comes home. Grandmother also has enormous great big boobs, and when she sits down to eat with them she has to lift her breasts up and rest them on the table. Cue slow-motion soft-focus close up of old lady boobs as Wall Woman gazes transfixed by them.
Wall woman offers Gran some pickles, but Gran declines, saying she never eats them. Damn, thinks Wall Woman, if its not the pickles, then what is it? I transpires that Mother (flat-chest) never drinks, but Wall Woman and Granny both drink like fish, so Wall Woman decides that the only way for her to get bigger boobs is to get amazingly drunk.
Oh, and at some point Mountain Woman was hospitalised by falling objects. I don't quite know how that fits in with the rest of it.
I can't quite tell whether the show ended there or whether I got bored and changed the channel, but that's about as far as I got.
Here's a little picture (that's Wall Woman and the left, Mountain Woman on the right):
And if you found my plot synopsis a little confusing, here's a handy chart to explain things more easily:
Does that make it a little clearer? Good.
I'll try and watch it regularly and keep you all up-to-date with the fascinating goings-on. I'm sure you're all desperate to find out what happens next.
Guess who I met last night?
JIMMY VAN HALEN! There he is, looking sexy. What a god. He's like a walking chunk of sex. He's like a little fleck of sex wee stuck to the bedhead in a love hotel. He is the worlds tallest sperm and the most fertile man in all of Asia.
For those of you who don't already know him, this is my friend Jimmy. We lived together last year and throughout first year we terrorised many karaoke events. We're karaoke terrorists. We turn up and we blow everyone away, but most of the time we also get killed in the blast.
Unfortunately, there were too many of us last night to all fit in one karaoke room, and we decided that it was only fair that we share the love evenly, so Jimmy was in one room and I was in the other. I was in this room:
That's right. All-you-can-drink karaoke with women dressed as Pikachu. Isn't Japan an awesome country? I don't even know who these women are, but I think one of them was called Ashley. Perhaps. (The chick in the middle was cute. Dude, I totally should have banged her.)
So me and Jimmy were in separate rooms, but we were able to get together for an absolutely storming, foot-stamping, screaming shouting rendition of that Karaoke classic, Dschinghis Khan (by Dschinghis Khan), to rapturous applause and wide-eyed terror. I'm also pretty chuffed with myself because I totally out-karaokeed a Japanese host guy at a Japanese song. Hosts (like a hostess, but a man) are pretty much trained to be good at karaoke. It's part of their job. And yet I Karaoke Blasted him right out of the water, even singing in Japanese.
Incidentally, the hosts that were there last night were off-duty. They weren't getting paid to hang out with us, they wanted to hang out with us because we're cool. Actually, they wanted to hang out with Lisa because they think she's cool, and I just happened to be in the same place at the same time.
We also met up with Rachel and Lisa from Sheffield so it was almost like a mini-reunion. Tomorrow, though, I think we're having a much larger-scale Sheffo get-together, possibly in fancy dress ('tis Hallowe'en, after all), which should be jolly.
Last weekend I went to 'camp'. I don't know whether I've already mentioned the IFL, but I feel I ought to. The International Friendly Lunch is a very camply-named club at Rikkyo University which aims to befriend and make welcome foreign exchange students, and they organise loads of stuff (mostly drinking parties). They also organised a camp for us, which involved booking a lodge near a river and then doing a barbecue and drinking party. They picked a very beautiful spot out in Saitama, about an hour and a half away from where I live:
You can just see the first hints of Autumn on the leaves. You can also see that there's a river.
River + Drunkeness =
Male nudity! Yay!
I, unfortunately, was not on top form for this event. I had exhausted myself from getting excessively wasted the night before and having spent the night telling a racist to stop being so racist at great length, I had slept very little. Thus I was sleepy and hungover and grumpy, so I wimped out and went to bed around midnight, although I believe the party continued until the very weeest and smalles of the wee small hours.
It was this episode - where I somehow managed to fuck up getting drunk at a drinking party by drinking - that caused me to pause and reconsider my lifestyle, and ultimately to decide to "detox".
On the subject of the detox, I am not doing too badly. My not-drinking lasted precisely as long as I thought it would (3 days), but I have been out drinking twice, surrounded by smoking people and still have not smoked, which I guess is a good thing. I have also not drunk any coffee, although I have had one or two cups of green tea. So I'm still a drunk, but I don't seem to be a smoker any more, which is strange. Strange in a good way, I suppose, but definitely strange.
To follow up on another point from my last post: I asked her out. She said no.
D'oh!
(Notice the new picture at the top of the blog)
I've got a week's holiday now - no school until Thursday next, although I believe I have mid-term exams on Thursday, which sucks a bit. A lot of people have gone off travelling to exciting places, but I decided to stay around and not do a great deal. This way I can conserve money, study lots and I've also got a chance to meet up with the Sheffield crew which is nice. On Tuesday I'm going to Disneysea, too, which should be fun.
I'm going to leave you with this delicious song by MGMT, because I think its awesome and I've slightly fallen in love with the weird face-painty girl in the video.
Hugzzzz
Genghis xx
Terebi dorama (Television drama) are extremely popular in Japan. These are more-or-less like soap operas, except that they're utterly farcical. None of the actors have a shred of talent, the plots are retarded, the production values are low and everything is so over-acted, over-dramatised and generally overdone that it becomes laughable. In fact, they can become hilarious.
I've just been watching a wonderful dorama entitled Yamaonna, Kabeonna (mountain woman, wall woman), in which a flat-chested saleswoman (wall woman) gets a new employee on her salesteam who has enormous breasts (mountain woman). Wall Woman is envious of mountain woman's rack, and hilarity ensues. In todays episode the department chief of the department store where they work didn't feel like eating his potato croquettes, so Mountain Woman had some. Unfortunately, Department Chief suffers from erectile dysfunction so his wife had laced his croquettes with some kind of drug to encourage his libido (I didn't quite catch what it was that she put in the croquettes, but it sounded like "spong", so I'm going to go with that). Mountain Woman reacted strangely to the spong, going into a super-hard-working frenzy of smiles, enthusiasm and efficiency, and was so impressed with them that she shared them with her section chief. He also went into a berserk spong-fury, and at the end of the day he charged off to some classy hostess bar with his colleagues to exercise his love muscle. There he bumped into limp-dicked Department Chief (his boss) with much embarassment but they end up sitting together with their girls for a while. Later on, who should appear on the stage dressed as Elvis but their company president (!) to much embarassment/amusement all round.
Meanwhile, Wall Woman has been invited to Mountain Woman's house for dinner, and Wall Woman is trying to work out how to make her boobs bigger. She is surprised to discover that Mountain Woman's mother has tiny breasts, so she decides that it must be something dietary. Mountain Woman eats a lot of pickles, so Wall Woman starts gorging on mama's special pickles in an effort to grow her breasts. Later on, Mountain Woman's grandmother comes home. Grandmother also has enormous great big boobs, and when she sits down to eat with them she has to lift her breasts up and rest them on the table. Cue slow-motion soft-focus close up of old lady boobs as Wall Woman gazes transfixed by them.
Wall woman offers Gran some pickles, but Gran declines, saying she never eats them. Damn, thinks Wall Woman, if its not the pickles, then what is it? I transpires that Mother (flat-chest) never drinks, but Wall Woman and Granny both drink like fish, so Wall Woman decides that the only way for her to get bigger boobs is to get amazingly drunk.
Oh, and at some point Mountain Woman was hospitalised by falling objects. I don't quite know how that fits in with the rest of it.
I can't quite tell whether the show ended there or whether I got bored and changed the channel, but that's about as far as I got.
Here's a little picture (that's Wall Woman and the left, Mountain Woman on the right):
And if you found my plot synopsis a little confusing, here's a handy chart to explain things more easily:
Does that make it a little clearer? Good.I'll try and watch it regularly and keep you all up-to-date with the fascinating goings-on. I'm sure you're all desperate to find out what happens next.
Guess who I met last night?
JIMMY VAN HALEN! There he is, looking sexy. What a god. He's like a walking chunk of sex. He's like a little fleck of sex wee stuck to the bedhead in a love hotel. He is the worlds tallest sperm and the most fertile man in all of Asia.For those of you who don't already know him, this is my friend Jimmy. We lived together last year and throughout first year we terrorised many karaoke events. We're karaoke terrorists. We turn up and we blow everyone away, but most of the time we also get killed in the blast.
Unfortunately, there were too many of us last night to all fit in one karaoke room, and we decided that it was only fair that we share the love evenly, so Jimmy was in one room and I was in the other. I was in this room:
That's right. All-you-can-drink karaoke with women dressed as Pikachu. Isn't Japan an awesome country? I don't even know who these women are, but I think one of them was called Ashley. Perhaps. (The chick in the middle was cute. Dude, I totally should have banged her.)So me and Jimmy were in separate rooms, but we were able to get together for an absolutely storming, foot-stamping, screaming shouting rendition of that Karaoke classic, Dschinghis Khan (by Dschinghis Khan), to rapturous applause and wide-eyed terror. I'm also pretty chuffed with myself because I totally out-karaokeed a Japanese host guy at a Japanese song. Hosts (like a hostess, but a man) are pretty much trained to be good at karaoke. It's part of their job. And yet I Karaoke Blasted him right out of the water, even singing in Japanese.
Incidentally, the hosts that were there last night were off-duty. They weren't getting paid to hang out with us, they wanted to hang out with us because we're cool. Actually, they wanted to hang out with Lisa because they think she's cool, and I just happened to be in the same place at the same time.
We also met up with Rachel and Lisa from Sheffield so it was almost like a mini-reunion. Tomorrow, though, I think we're having a much larger-scale Sheffo get-together, possibly in fancy dress ('tis Hallowe'en, after all), which should be jolly.
Last weekend I went to 'camp'. I don't know whether I've already mentioned the IFL, but I feel I ought to. The International Friendly Lunch is a very camply-named club at Rikkyo University which aims to befriend and make welcome foreign exchange students, and they organise loads of stuff (mostly drinking parties). They also organised a camp for us, which involved booking a lodge near a river and then doing a barbecue and drinking party. They picked a very beautiful spot out in Saitama, about an hour and a half away from where I live:
You can just see the first hints of Autumn on the leaves. You can also see that there's a river.
River + Drunkeness =
Male nudity! Yay!I, unfortunately, was not on top form for this event. I had exhausted myself from getting excessively wasted the night before and having spent the night telling a racist to stop being so racist at great length, I had slept very little. Thus I was sleepy and hungover and grumpy, so I wimped out and went to bed around midnight, although I believe the party continued until the very weeest and smalles of the wee small hours.
It was this episode - where I somehow managed to fuck up getting drunk at a drinking party by drinking - that caused me to pause and reconsider my lifestyle, and ultimately to decide to "detox".
On the subject of the detox, I am not doing too badly. My not-drinking lasted precisely as long as I thought it would (3 days), but I have been out drinking twice, surrounded by smoking people and still have not smoked, which I guess is a good thing. I have also not drunk any coffee, although I have had one or two cups of green tea. So I'm still a drunk, but I don't seem to be a smoker any more, which is strange. Strange in a good way, I suppose, but definitely strange.
To follow up on another point from my last post: I asked her out. She said no.
D'oh!
(Notice the new picture at the top of the blog)
I've got a week's holiday now - no school until Thursday next, although I believe I have mid-term exams on Thursday, which sucks a bit. A lot of people have gone off travelling to exciting places, but I decided to stay around and not do a great deal. This way I can conserve money, study lots and I've also got a chance to meet up with the Sheffield crew which is nice. On Tuesday I'm going to Disneysea, too, which should be fun.
I'm going to leave you with this delicious song by MGMT, because I think its awesome and I've slightly fallen in love with the weird face-painty girl in the video.
Hugzzzz
Genghis xx
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