Having lain dormant for decades, a terrible creature is about to awaken and threaten the peace of Tokyo city once more. Mutated to an extraordinary size by vast quantities of lager and gin and possessing unfathomable destructive power, Genghis Kong has already been sighted within the Tokyo Bay area. This is his story...
As many of you will know, I gave up smoking roughly four months ago.
I found quitting really surprisingly easy - I used no patches, gum or any other kind of nicotine accessory and just stopped smoking overnight. I made no grand running-my-fags-under-the-tap last gesture, I didn't tell any of my friends "whatever you do, don't let me smoke", and in general didn't make a big deal of it. And it was easy. I never really liked smoking in the first place - it was just a habit. Just something I did. Friends of mine would go on about how they loved smoking and could never quit. I never loved smoking, and always thought quitting - when I finally felt like I should - would be easy.
And it was.
But I hadn't counted on the 4 month itch. I should have prepared for it though - the one previous time that i stopped smoking I stopped for just over 3 months without any difficulty. Then after 3-4 months I made the (seemingly) logical (at the time) decision that actually I preferred being a smoker to being a non-smoker, so I started smoking again.
And I smoked very happily. I smoked heavily and contentedly through first year. I was good at smoking - people even complimented me on how nice my bedroom smelt, even though i was smoking around 15-20 a day in my room.
I was very happy to continue to smoke through second year as well. Ours was party house, the floor was covered in cigarette butts, I'm sure several of them were mine. But of all the silly things I did during second year, smoking never really bothered me.
In fact, although I never really relished smoking and always hoped to quit, I specifically planned not to quit smoking while I was in Japan. This is why:
Fags are amazingly cheap here. 300yen for a pack of Lucky's (just about £2), and they are nowhere near the cheapest
You are allowed to smoke indoors. In fact, you are actively discouraged from smoking outdoors, so bars, clubs and restaurants are considered the most acceptable places to have a smoke
So it would seem unfair to expect me to stop smoking in the face of these two very compelling reasons not to quit.
But quit I did. And it was easy.
Incidentally, one of the reasons I stopped smoking was that I massively fancied an Australian girl, who had a very low opinion of smoking.
But now - just as it did the last time I stopped smoking for several months - the 4 month itch has kicked in. And it has kicked in hard.
No one ever tells you that quitting smoking is not the hard part - it's surviving the 4 month itch.
Right now every part of my subconscious is just saying "go on - have a fag", "just roll one up and have one" (for the record I never threw out my baccy - I reckon a real man can quit smoking with a full pack of baccy, skins and filters in his drawer and doesn't need to wash them down the sink in order to quit), and until just recently it's not been a problem at all. I have genuinely had no desire to smoke whatsoever.
Except since about 3 weeks ago, since when the desire to smoke has been growing and growing, and my reasons for not smoking have been becoming blurrier and blurrier. I know one thing for certain: my main number 1 reason for stopping smoking has just gone back to Australia, so why am I continuing to punish myself?
Because once you pass about 3 months of not smoking, your thinking begins to change: it goes from "Wow - I've been 3 months without smoking" to "good god - I've been 3 months without smoking - how long do I have to go before I can smoke again?". I know it sounds retarded, especially having not smoked for 4 months, but right now I can't imagine my future life without smoking. In my head I'm still a smoker, almost as much as I reckon I'll always be a drinker (barring unforeseen circumstances).
I want to smoke, but I don't want to fail at not smoking, although I still consider myself a smoker, even though I don't smoke any more and don't really intend to ever again...
And that's my stance: I'ma smoker who doesn't smoke, and proabably never will.
But seriously - how long do I have to go without a cigarette to prove that I'm not addicted so I can have a smoke again without feeling bad about it?
I don't know, but I'm at least 95% sure that I'm not about to crack and start smoking again, even though I really, really want to more than anything right now and I have all the makings of a fag in my desk drawer. I'm not going to. I don't know why, but I think I might be stronger than that.
I did my shopping at about 6am this morning, having been to all-night all-you-can-drink karaoke and I woke up this afternoon to discover that I had bought the wrong bloody coffee. By "wrong" I mean the kind of coffee that requires some kind of coffee apparatus to convert it from powder format into a stimulating morning beverage. I do not own any manner of coffee apparatus, and so my morning beverage is proving significantly less than stimulating.
I also have a headache and I'm extremely hungry.
Yesterday I learnt that dancing vigorously to your own iPod in the street is considered strange behaviour in Japan. To be honest, it would be considered strange just about anywhere, I think, but it somehow seemed appropriate at the time. Dubstep just has that effect on me (when I'm drunk).
And one last thing - when am I allowed to start smoking again? It's been 4 months since I quit, so I've succeeded, right? I've definitely, definitely quit, proven that I'm not addicted and that I'm a better man and don't need to smoke etc etc, so can I smoke again now please? Grumble grumble I'm gonna keep on not-smoking, of course, but just recently cigarettes have started looking and smelling really appealing. Not to mention fucking cool.
I mean, it's just not fair! Who would be so cruel as to make something so detrimental to your health so fucking cool-looking? If smokers didn't look so awesome all the time I would not be having this crisis of will, I'm sure.
Anyway I'm hungry, so I'm going to count how much cash I have left from last night, weep a little, and then decide whether to go out for noodles or stay in and eat pasta based on which remnants of a 10,000yen note I find in my pocket.
Loves, Genghis Kang
PS. Short post, written with a hangover about nothing in particular. Would you, Dear Reader, prefer lots of little posts like this one, or continue with the weekly/fortnightly/monthly epics? Please let me know.
Yes: here indeed, and certainly in no other place, am I. Returned from my great adventure up a mountain and safely sequestered back in my little apartment, I am finally getting round to penning another (long overdue) blog update.
The month since my last post has been characterised by brief but frenzied industry, followed by an extended period of inactivity and finally 3 days of sport- and action-filled adventure and excitement. All of this has, of course, been peppered with those little ups and downs, daily victories and hardships, small pleasures and tedious chores that we call (without a hint of irony) life.
When last I wrote, I believe I had just arrived back in Tokyo after Christmas (it seems an awfully long time ago now). Not long after that, I started my final exams, such as they were. I had 5 exams, one in each of the 5 main disciplines of language study: grammar, writing, reading, listening and speaking. It turned out that I was worrying for nothing with regards to these exams. Although most of them were scheduled for an hour and a half, not one of them took me more than 40 minutes. They were, to be honest, almost disappointingly easy and have left me with nothing but contempt for the Japanese education system. Well, perhaps i should wait and see what my results are before I declare the exams a walkover. I'm sure there's still time for me to come up short.
So my last exam was on January 15th, and I have been on Spring Break since then. My Spring Break, in fact, lasts until roughly April making a total of about 10 weeks with literally nothing to do. Woohoo! Am I not just the luckiest/laziest man you know right now?
Well, possibly not quite as lucky as all that. I don't mean to whinge, but having absolutely nothing to do can get rather boring (especially when you live on your own), and doing anything fun in Tokyo has a habit of ending up being incredibly expensive (£40-50 for a night at the pub, £80-150 for a night clubbing, £15 for a bowl of noodles and couple of beers). Two obvious remedies for my predicament of having nothing to do would be to study a lot or to get a job (which would also help with the costliness issue), but so far I've not quite managed either of these. What I have been doing to keep myself busy, which is at least somewhat productive, is going to the gym. Me and my mate Kaleb have been going down the Uni gym roughly every day since term ended. Factoring in Sundays, hangovers and laziness, 'almost every day' still translates to fairly impressive 4-5 times a week. It turns out that working out can be quite fun, especially when the alternative is sitting in your room on your own watching TV or Youtube.
We take it none too seriously though - none of that shouting encouragement at each other in a testosterone-fuelled homoerotic rage: "Come on, buddy! Push those goddamn weights! Work those legs! You can do it! Gimme 3 more! I wanna see 3 more! Go on dude! We fuckin' OWN this fuckin' gym! Grrrrr! Arrrgh!" You know the kind of stuff. No, our motivational gym talk goes more along the lines of "Ugh. The gym's full of Japanese people. And they're all much stronger than me. This is shit. Why do we even come here? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Can I go home now? Wait - it's totally happy hour at the pub. Let's go."
So that is pretty much how I have spent my first few weeks of Spring Break: going to the gym, getting some food every now and then, and getting drunk from time to time (trying to cut down on that one though). I went to see Richie Hawtin at Womb with my buddy Scott (from Sheffield) about 2 Saturdays ago. Richie Hawtin was quality, but as is always the case when me and Scott get together the evening as a whole was a fairly disgraceful exhibition in excess and debauchery, ending, as usual, with the two of us on different trains going in opposite directions around noon the next day.
I do have to give Scott some kudos, however, as he had been out at bars in Tokyo the previous night without going home or sleeping at all in between. He and I had made plans (while drunk) to go out that night about a week earlier, and I had mostly forgotten about them. I was reminded of them, however, when I received a text from Scott at 8.30 in the morning saying "It's all gone tits up. I'm in tears. Fancy a pint?"
Unfortunately I was in no fit state (being fairly hungover myself) to respond to or attempt to cope with an uncontrollably drunk and sleep-deprive Scott at that time of the morning, so I returned blearily to sleep. I was awakened again around 11.30 by a phone from Scott who told me he was really drunk and was somewhere in Shibuya, he thinks. Shibuya is roughly where he should have been - it's where he had been out the day before and it's not far from where I live, so it made sense. I told him I'd need a couple of hours to wash, dress and feed myself, and he said he'd call me back later.
I called him around 1 to make sure he was still awake and still planning to go out that night, and he told me he was really drunk and somewhere in Akihabara. Akihabara is about a 40 minute train ride away from Shibuya. I asked him why he had gone to Akihabara and he told me he had walked there. I'm pretty sure it would take any ordinary person about 5 hours to make that walk, so Scott was either mistaken or has acquired some superhuman sprinting powers which can only be activated when he's so drunk he can't see.
He called me again half an hour later to let me know he was really drunk, had no idea where he was, had been walking for ages but couldn't find a train station.
We eventually met up around 3, and went for pizza all-you-can-eat washed down with a jug of beer. It was all downhill from there. We spent the next 9 hours or so staggering around Ikebukuro getting increasingly drunk (mostly at the English pubs), before heading to Shibuya to find the club. Although, of course, before we could try and find the cllub we decided to grab a couple of extra-strong chu-hai (basically 500ml cans of 8% Bacardi Breezer) each and drink them near the station. I persuaded Scott to pose for a photo with the inexplicably famous statue of Hachiko at Shibuya station .
I believe my directions for this pose were "Look awesome. No, more awesome. No, no, more awesome!"
I'm very pleased with how it came out.
So, we wandered around for a while trying to decipher a very unhelpful map with our booze-befuddled brains, until we eventually found some young and trendy looking Japanese who we thought would probably know the whereabouts of a young and trendy nightspot such as Womb. They kindly led us there, and we both realised that had no money, so while they went in we quietly ditched them and went off to find a cash hole (and another Strong Chu-Hai while we were at it).
We eventually made it inside, at which point I realised that I had actually been there before on another hideous drunken adventure. Womb is very like Tokyo: massive, so crowded you can barely move, really fucking expensive and funny-smelling, but unlike the rest of Tokyo the sound system is really good and Richie Hawtin was playing.
I think me and Scott must have lost contact within about 15 minutes of getting inside. It was too massively crowded and we were too drunk and disoriented to ever find anything in there, so we just sort of went off about our respective businesses. My business mostly consisted of buying a can of beer at the bar, squeezing my way very very slowly towards the front, dancing for about 3 minutes when I finally made it somewhere near the front, then realising I had run out of beer and so starting my epic journey back to the bar again. I would imagine that this whole process took me about an hour, and I probably managed to complete it 4 times or so, which would take me up to about 5 am when the club kicked out.
I got home in one go this time, without taking a wrong turn anywhere. I picked up an enormous tray of sushi and another can of beer on my way back to my house (about 7am by this time) and sat about stuffing my face and wondering where Scott had got to. Eventually I gave up and went to bed. When I woke up around 3 and checked my phone I noticed I had a couple of missed calls from him and 2 messages. The first, sent around 6am, said something like "Nah. what the fuck? I think i'm being robbed up." The second, around 11am, said just "lol. i think i'm on a train".
So, by our usual standards, a completely successful night out in Tokyo. Well done me and Scott - we really can be a truly disgraceful pair of human beings when we put our minds to it.
This whole debauched spectacle cost me around £140. Did I mention Tokyo's really expensive and I need a job? I can't wait to get back to England where you can do the same thing for about £50 and still have change for a cab home.
There was also a little farewell party for the people who have been living in my dorm but staying for only 1 semester. Scott (a different one - this one is Hawai'ian and lives in my dorm) cooked loads of food and a bunch of people came round and it was all fun and nice.
Sadly, I didn't really realise quite how immediate of a farewell party it was, so I didn't do any proper saying of goodbyes to anyone, and then they all left. Of all the people in this photo I think only 2 of them are still in my dorm. Most of the others disappeared like thieves in the night without even knocking on my door to say 'so long'. The shits.
Oh well. It's not like I gave a crap about most of them anyway.
So that general pattern of things brings me all the way to Wednesday, which is when I left for my totally awesome and exciting snowboarding trip.
Our bus departed at the miserable hour of 11.30pm from Ikebukuro station and spent about 7 hours chuntering out of Tokyo and then meandering nauseatingly up winding mountain roads to the resort. The resort, bearing the embarrassingly gay name of Cupid's Valley, is located in the mountains in the middle of Japan, Northwest of Tokyo in Niigata Prefecture. The trip started in classic Japanese style with us arriving 2 hours before the ski rental shop opened, giving us plenty of time to sit around doing nothing and getting grumpy. This is a common feature of any event organised with or by Japanese people - I know, they are the most punctual people in the world, but for someone reason they seem to schedule in extra time for standing around waiting for things and then walking incredibly slowly from place to place and taking half an hour to make simple decisions.
Eventually we all managed to find kit which more-or-less fit, work out how to put it all on and then find our way to the mountain to slide.
Here's a view from the bottom of the mountain up the slope. Now, seeing as 4 out of 5 of our little group had never snowboarded before, this little slope looked a little intimidating. It seemed fairly steep, fairly high, and rather full of people going fairly fast. So, seeing as this was our first time, we decided to take the Gondola up to the "Beginner's Course". This turned out to be one of the most misleading names for a ski route I can possibly imagine.
25 minutes later, we reached the top of the Gondola, several miles away from the resort, many hundreds of metres higher up the mountain, with absolutely no idea how to get down again. The course was genuinely several miles long. I will concede that there were several quite flat sections to it, but there were also very steep sections, lots of very narrow and twisty sections, and sheer drops down the mountain on either side of the piste. Progress was slow.
Did I mention that most of us had never snowboarded before?
Well, my snowboarding experience started exactly as I had expected: I sucked. I was utterly, utterly incapable of even standing up from the floor, let alone staying stood up as I careered wildly into snowbanks. Fortunately Kaleb, who is pretty good at snowboarding, was extremely patient with all of us. Gradually everyone else started to get the hang of it, at least a little, but I was still sitting on the floor completely baffled as to how to stand up on the damn thing. It sounds retarded, but I genuinely couldn't stand up. I don't know whether my board was the wrong size, or my knees don't work properly or I'm just too heavy, too weak or too useless, but every time I moved my weight forward over the board the damn thing would just slide away from me and I would fall on my arse again. I fell on my arse a lot.
Eventually I worked out the technique of rolling over onto to my belly like a retarded walrus stuck upside-down on an iceflow (not very easy with a 5' long plank of plastic strapped to your feet) and then getting up onto my knees and hoppin up onto my feet. By this point we had been on the mountain about an hour and a half and I had progessed about 500 yards (some of that on foot, some on my arse, very little on my snowboard).
Armed with my new (if inelegant) technique for standing up, I was able to actually stay on my board just long enough to go a bit fast and then fall over hard. Standing up by rolling over and then geting up on your knees may be easier for ungainly men such as myself, but it has the added complication that you always stand up facing up the hill, sliding backwards, so before you can even go anywhere you have to turn around backwards. This caused me some significant hardships early on, considering I couldn't even go in a straight line facing forward (although actually, going straight is one of the hardest and most terrifying things to do, because going straight you go incredibly fast. If you can go sideways then you go nice and slowly all the way).
However, gradually I began to get the hang of it. First, I worked out turning round and falling over. Then turning round, going down the hill a bit and falling over. Then turning around, going across the hill a bit, turning round again and falling over. Eventually I had my technique pretty well sussed - stand up, turn around, go across the hill, turn around, go back across the hill, turn around and so on and so on until (eventually) you reach the bottom of the hill.
Our first run down the hill took 3 hours. While I will say that "Beginner's Course" is an unforgivable misnomer for that course, I have to admit that had it been a shorter course I probably would have given up after about an hour and gone in to find a bar, but because I had no choice but to continue I was forced to find some way to get on my damn snowboard, stay on my damn snowboard and get the damn snowboard down the damn mountain with me still on it.
After completing this gruelling initiation into snowboarding I had to call it a day. My calves were in excrutiating pain where I had had my boots fastened too tight, my lower back was burning from where i had falling hard in some very packed snow and got a friction burn of some kind, and my thigh muscles were aching from going so slowly down the hill, braking all the way (going fast takes no effort but is terrifying and difficult; going slowly is safe and easy, but incredibly hard work for the legs). It was my boots being too tight on the first day which caused this quite impressive damage to my leg. It's just a collection of funky bruises, to be honest, although it stained my socks red so it must have broken the skin somehow and the shapes of the bruises are quite interesting. It almost looks like a bit of a St. George's Cross or something.
That night I went to the local Onsen - natural hot spring public bath. Usually I find Japanese baths just too damn hot - usually it's a grim room tiled in school-changing-room not-quite-white, so full of steam that you can't breathe, let alone see anything, and within 3 minutes of entering the bath I get dizzy and lightheaded from the heat and have to leave. This one, however, was really really nice because it was an outdoor Bath, and at an outdoor bath in the snow-covered mountains the air is cold and the steam can dissipate, so it's not so unbearable. Also, the snow on the roof was melting and dripping through slats so a very fine rain of ice-cold water was falling on my head as I soaked in the fiendishly hot bath of slightly sulphurous water.
It really was nice, and helped, albeit only slightly, to soothe away the crippling pain in every part of my body.
First thing on Day 2, we made an snowman. Tessa, an Australian friend of mine, insisted on it. She said that the only snowman she had ever made before was about 12" high and I told her that at best that was a snow pixie, maybe a snow imp, but certainly not a real snowman. Understandably as there's not much snow in Australia, she seemed incredulous when I told her that we were going to make a snowman bigger than her. Lacking a carrot, any coal, or any appropriate clothing for the snowman, we made do as best we could with whatever materials we had to hand - specifically snow.
It was an epic success. Not only taller than Tessa, but also fuckin' awesome looking. I rolled the head and then sculpted the face - and I didn't do too badly at either, I hope you'll agree.
Having completed the snowman challenge, we went immediately back up the Gondola to the Beginner's Course again. This time it took us just over an hour. Then we did it again, this time in 55 minutes.
After lunch I discovered that apart from the Beginner's Course, there was also a training slope and a practice slope. I went up and down the practice slope a few times, before being dragged up the damn Gondola again.
By this stage, I was beginning to feel fairly confident with my very limited snowboarding ability. I wasn't falling over very often, and usually when I did fall over it was mostly deliberate (sometimes it's just the easiest way to stop), although I did manage some extremely heavy falls right square on my arse which hurt like hell. Usually when you fall down snowboarding you kind of skid along a bit which takes most of the force out of the fall - you get a cold wet bum and you bump your knees and elbows a bit, but it's not too bad. When you fall down hard on packed snow straight on your coccyx though, that hurts like a motherbitch.
Also, I was still going incredibly slowly down the mountain, so my thighs by now were exploding with pain from braking braking braking all the way down the course. You may well say "well, if it hurt so much why didn't you just go faster?", but it's not as easy as that. Going slowly might hurt my thighs from being tensed all the time, but going fast was likely to hurt my everything by going out of control and slamming into a tree or an infant or just going of the edge of the mountain. Going faster is also a lot more technically difficult. Going slowly like a n00b you go the whole way with your weight behind the board, standing on your heels, just adjusting your weight left to right to control which direction you go, how fast you go and when you turn. You look like a bit of an idiot because it's very stop-go stop-go as you swing slowly from side to side, almost coming to a complete stop each time as you turn around to go back the other way.
Going properly down a hill requires you to alternate between having your weight behind the board, standing on your heels and then having your weight in front of the board, standing on your toes as you "carve" quickly down the hill. This is much more difficult, and leads to much falling over.
So that was my project for the final day - learn how to ride on my toes and "carve", like a real snowboarder. I received the top tip that the place to practice was not, in fact, the Beginner's Course, nor the practice slope, nor the training slope, but in fact the Snow Park. Obviously. What a fool I was to go as a beginner to the beginner's course, or to try and practice on the practice slope. I should have gone straight to the Snow Park - the place with all the jumps and kickers and rails and boxes where adrenaline junkies like to injure themselves - it stands to reason it would be the best place for a beginner.
But it is - as long as you can control the board enough to go around the jumps, the Snow Park is mostly quite shallow gradients with no real difficult bits. So I set off to the Snow Park to try and learn how to carve. I was having some success - I certainly managed to do it, a bit, although I can't really claim that I was in full control of my board the whole time and I did fall over. A lot. Of course, by this stage I was confident enough to go fast enough that when I fell over it really hurt. I was also thoroughly bruised from the previous 2 days snowboarding. Also, when you are trying to learn how to turn on your toes, you fall straight onto you knees a lot, which hurts a hell of a lot more than just falling on your bum.
Sadly though, we only had half a day of snowboarding on Day 3 as our bus left at 2pm. So unfortunately I had to leave Cupid's Valley (snigger) still not quite able to do it properly, which is a little unsatisfying.
So I've decided to go snowboarding again. Sometime. As soon as possible. Apparently a day trip can be done pretty cheaply - travel, rental, skiing and lift pass for about £40 - so I'm gonna try and do that before all the snow melts.
Okay; so you've had a brief summary of what I've been doing, an amusing anecdote of me getting smashed, some interesting tales of adventurous exploits - now on to the bit you've all been waiting for:
The shelf of tat!
There it in all its glory, with a few new items for you. On the far left you will see a can of Final Fantasy Potion. It restores 100hp when you drink it. Just to the right of that is a little gay snowman - this is a souvenir from my snowboarding trip both to commemorate the awesome snowman I made, and because the Onsen I went to was called Yukidaruma Onsen, which means Snowman Springs. The snowman is clutching a special Christmas Baileys swizzle stick, which came free with my Christmas bottle of Baileys (note that there is another one in the Mickey Mouse shot glass). On the far right you will see a box of backwards chocolate. Dars is a popular chocolate brand here, but it is usually printed forward, not in mirror-image. This is a special promotional pack for Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day works differently here, although I'm not entirely sure the details, but I think it's usual for girls to give chocolate to their boyfriends. Backwards chocolate, therefore, is special chocolate that men are allowed to give to women on Valentine's Day. I know - they do it backwards here to begin with, they're crazy.
Finally, front-and-centre, in pride of place is a patch I bought commemorating Pearl Harbor. I shit you not - in Japan you can buy Pearl Harbor patches. In case you were wondering; yes, the USS Arizona BB39 was sunk by Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor in 1941. What tickled me even more was that on the shelf next to this patch was another one with 'kamikaze' written on it. Hmmm... Ever heard of tact? No. Didn't think so.
So once again, good work Japan! Way to come to terms with you war history! Keep up the good work my bandy-kneed friends.
What else now... Oh yes - a brief note about my ongoing non-romance with Australian girl (Tessa). It remains a non-romance, although it is no longer ongoing. She went back to Australia halfway through the ski trip (no, I didn't scare her off or anything. She was always planning to leave halfway through).
If I ever had a chance I guess I missed it. If I never had a chance anyway then I guess there's nothing to feel bad about. I'm sad to see her leave because not only did I fancy her but she was also a really close friend, but that's just how it goes. Now I just need a new woman to direct myself at. If anyone knows any cool, single English-speaking women living in Tokyo, please send them in my direction. Thanks. I'm afraid I really have no interest in getting with a Jap, to be brutally honest.
So that's news dealt with, I think. Now time for future news.
In 10 days or so my brother Oli is coming to Tokyo to party with me. We're going to look at Tokyo a bit, travel round Japan a bit, and then 2 weeks later my parents are coming too for about 3 weeks. I'm really looking forward to it - it'll be nice to go sightseeing again and break the humdrum tedium of regular life in Tokyo. After the first month or two the novelty really wore off, and I haven't been pursuing any cultural endeavours really since then, so it's going to be fun to put on my tourist hat again (although I think I'm largely going to be wearing my tour guide's hat).
Until then, well, sadly the gym is closed this week, so I guess I'm going to be at home mostly. I'm going out for shabu-shabu and karaoke tomorrow though. (Shabu-shabu, in case you couldn't guess, is the noise a thinly-sliced piece of beef makes when it is moved around in a pot of hot broth. Karaoke, on the other hand, is the noise a well-pickled Me makes when shut in dark room with a microphone and a beer). I've also started studying again recently, which makes me feel a little bit better about the fact that I'm drunk right now, so I guess I've got a little while of staying at home, studying and maybe occassionally going for a run. At least until the gym opens again.
I am extremely tired, and my bum still hurts. My knees have both turned greyish-green, there's a large purple patch on my right buttock, my elbows, forearms and wrists are covered in dark little rings and there are some dark purple stripes down my left hip, so I'm going to bed.
After a long hiatus (almost a whole month!), Genghis Kong will be returning with the long-awaited next installment of his best-selling blog/philosophical memoir, Genghis Kong Vs. MegaTokyo.
The next thrilling episode will chart Genghis' progress through the gruelling ordeal of final exams at an elite Tokyo university, his subsequent adventures as a free-operating cool young thing in the world's coolest city and finally his epic ascent of the imposing Mt. Hishigaoka in Japan's remote Niigata Highlands.
You can look forward to:
Thrilling Suspense!
Incredible Extreme Sports Action!
Pseudo-Romance!
Unfathomable Gluttony!
Inadvisable Alcohol Consumption!
Health, Beauty and Weight-Loss Tips!
All this and more is waiting for you in the upcoming edition of Genghis Kong Vs. MegaTokyo (release date TBC).
And if all that isn't enough to entice you, here are some brand-new, never-before-seen EXPLICIT photographs of Genghis Kong on his adventures to whet your appetite even more! Read Genghis Kong vs. MegaTokyo to find out the REAL story behind these SHOCKING images!
Is Genghis about to be out-eaten by this mysterious fur-coated challenger?
A dancing drunkard and his pet bronze dog, but is this unlikely duo an ally to our hero, or a dangerous new menace?
Strange markings appear on his leg. Is this a message from some higher being? A tattoo of St. George's Cross gone horribly, horribly wrong? An extremely unusual pattern of bruising?
Find the answers to these and many more mysteries ONLY in Genghis Kong Vs. MegaTokyo.
COMING SOON!
[Editor's Note:
Hullo chums,
I just got back from Snowboarding this evening. I currently experiencing a very high level of physical pain in most parts of my body, but I don't seems to have come to any significant lasting harm. Within a few days the aching will have worn off and I'll be fit as a fiddle again - have no fear!
I have much to write about, but the hour grows late and I am weary from long days' travel and travail so I shall leave the bulk of my update until the morning. I just thought I would leave this little teaser-trailer up here to (hopefully) keep you all amused until then and maybe encourage you to come back and have a little look again tomorrow.
In brief: all is well, but I am tired. More on those stories tomorrow.
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
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
*Parents and family members: look away now*
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.
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)
Apart from that, natalatagwan to be honest. I've started doing some Christmas shopping. I've got some 'hilarious' (retarded) little nick-nacks to bring home for some of you lucky people. I've also just gone and bought myself my traditional Christmas bottle of Baileys. This has become something of a Christmas tradition of mine over the last few years, and it goes a little like this:
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
So far, my bottle of Baileys remains untouched in the fridge, so I'm actually quite looking forward to it, but I'm sure within a day or two I will be ruing the day I decided to buy it. At least it's not as expensive here as it is in England.
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)
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').
Age: unknown (estimates vary from 22 to 10,000 years) Height: 80 feet Weight: Estimated to be in excess of 400 tonnes Origin: Bath, UK Last sighted: Frome, Somerset, UK Weaknesses: Cheese and alcohol
Genghis Kong's Guide to Speaking Engrish (suggestions welcome)
Honey is Intense Fanny! (On a T-shirt. One day I will own that T-shirt... one day)
This is the most comfortable Note Book you have ever used. All times you'll feel pleasant with it (on the front of my notebook - it's enough to make me want to study!)
Poet your mind to the World... Free your mind to the DELI! Why don't you take a Rest? At the corner before your REAL!! (on the wall of News Deli - a cafe in Ikebukuro)
Blue colour dog is exceptional star - he has many special friends! (on a tracksuit I saw in a shop)
Charing Closs: Distance to the Kingdom (on the back of some fashionable girl's jumper)
The Original, Natural Way to Consume Vegetable (slogan for Subway in Japan a couple of years ago)
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