JAPANEXILE

The Third and final part of out Tokyo Induction Course begins. Monday morning we were up bright and early at 10am. Ben and Mike were off to Oji in the afternoon so we went for a farewell lunch in Shibuya together. (Irrelevant Thought: I was most impressed by the toilet in the cafe, even had a drying function!) It was a sad day for the JPK, we were being split up and forced to go our separate ways. But alas it had to be done. After a suitably emotional goodbye Craig and I decided to make the most of our time and head off to Odaiba.

Odaiba I was told is built entirely upon reclaimed land. It forms the left side (if looking out to see) of the mouth of Tokyo bay. The journey over there requires you to get a 20minute Monorail ride over Rainbow bridge. The views from the monorail are incredible, looking out over the bay and then onto Odaiba. Couldn’t help but me impressed by the engineering works of the Rainbow bridge as well, it has this incredible array of roads curling around it at each end hanging over the road. The monorail spirals up a ramp to get up to the bridge and it feels like you flying up to it. Or maybe I was imagining that last part but it was impressive nonetheless. From a distance (and up close for that matter) Odiaba has some very impressive buildings, my favourite being the one with a giant sphere in the middle! Craig and I were heading for JOYPOLIS, basically Sega World. The Ultimate Arcade.

OMG. This place rocks! My first reaction as the doors slide open. Its more like a high tech indoor fairground than an arcade. Thought we’d be adventurous and try a very Japanese ‘ride’ first. Basically you watch a creepy video after which you go into a dark room which has a very life like little girl sitting covered in blood at one end. And it talks, moves, and just generally looks extremely creepy. You’re told to sit down around the table in the centre and put the headphones on. Everything then goes black, and the headphones come on. These headphones are incredible, some very fancy 3D sound effects going on. The story continues, and it honestly feels like she is right behind you talking in your ear. I kept waving around just to reassure myself. There’s air vents in the chair to simulate her breath and something comes out the table which scared the crap out of me. It was genuinely frightening and I didn’t even understand what was going on. So next up wanted to do something slightly more ‘fun’. Snowboarding it is. This one was more of fairground ride with a queue to match. You are strapped into the board which is on a pendulum. Idea is to stamp your feet at the right time to get yourself to turn. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately Craig and lost, which was a bit depressing. Clearly I’m not as good at snowboarding as I’d thought. After thatwe stuck to traditional arcade stuff. Tobogganing, House of the Dead, that sort of thing. Both special enhanced versions which were great. it cost 3500Yen for a Passport which allows you to use all the rides as you wish, we did our best to make the most of it but unfortunately we didn’t have much time as I had arranged to meet Ayaka at Shibuya at 4pm.

I met Ayaka when she came to my school on an exchange trip, tho I unfortunately missed the reciprocating trip. Craig was exhausted so I went to meet Ayaka by myself. I was worried she might have left already as I was 20mins late. Whoops. Thankfully she hadn’t as I managed to find her after only 10mins of wandering around one of the many exits of Shibuya station. For some reason I lost all confidence in my Japanese with her so we spoke English the whole time. Thankfully she is pretty good! Went for some ramen, ate some ice cream. My first ramen in Japan was…weird, order what you want from a Vending machine, then you’re let inside, sit down in an individual booth with a curtain infront, hand your ticket in, then your food appears. Was all a strange experience, not exactly the most sociable of meals. After that went shopping for a mobile phone and translator. So glad she was there, took me long enough to explain to her what I wanted, never mind the sales assistant in Sofbank! (Which was to just use a Japanese simcard in my UK phone) Had a really good time overall. She had to get home quite early tho, she lived an hour away by train which I felt really bad about. She’s also in the middle of studying for her exams at the moment.

Was a nightmare trying to get back to the Hotel, couldn’t remember which tube station. Wandered around for 30mins outside the wrong stop until I worked out how to use my phone to call Yuki. Craig had had an even worse time trying to get back tho so I couldn’t complain too much. We headed out for some dinner nearby. Had great difficulty ordering food, couldn’t read any of it. The place knew no English. Eventually we managed to communicate enough to tell the waitor to give us whatever he felt like. Some Yakitori appeared so I was happy enough. After that it was back to th Hotel for sleep, absolutely dead after the past few days and we had to be up early for our flight to Sapporo.

Overall my thought on Tokyo? What an incredible city just had this incredible energy to it the whole time. Definitely the city which never sleeps. I can’t wait to come back and I left feeling very jealous of Mike and Ben. Click here for a link to the photo album for the day.

And finally part two comes, been having too much fun lately to do an update, but just back from the nursery and am exhausted after all that running around so seemed like a good moment to do something productive.

So, day two of our Tokyo induction course begins! We were scheduled to meet Mai at Shibuya at 12.30pm who was then going to take us to the Bonzai-kan, aka the Earthquake centre. So show to our initiative we thought we make a brief visit to Akihabara - Electric City. It was a 40minute train journey away but totally worth it. Every shop, every stall is selling electronic gadgets of some sort, some of you may know I’m a bit of computer geek so this place was like a wet dream for me. Unfortunately with so little money I couldn’t indulge my addiction s instead we headed to the SEGA Game centre, a 4 Story high arcade! All of us had an absolute blast here, playing some obscure Mortal Combat type game none of us could understand, I was rather proud to have made it to the seventh round and only losing by indescribably small amount. In the end what mattered was that I had bested Ben, who was knocked out by a Japanese player on the other side of the room…After getting rather hot playing this drumming game with Craig we had to head out to meet Mai. Despite the short time there was so glad we went, perfect way to spend a morning!

Mai first took us to Yuki’s office for the actual induction part of the course, wasn’t too strenuous, brief explanation of the rules, the plan for the day, then finished by giving us 10,000Yen to take care of ourselves for the days we were there. So not too bad for 30mins of my time! After that we met with Satomi and headed for the Earthquake centre!

Seems this place is designed to teach yo what to you should “The Big One” strike anytime soon. Let’s hope it doesn’t as its likely we’d all perish in the flames of burning gas lines - not being able to understand a word which was being said. First task was using a fire extinguisher on a video of a video on the wall. Despite our initial confusion we made up for out lack of understanding with enthusiasm, easily besting the firefighting skills of the Japanese people there.

Now the highlight of the day, the Earthquake simulator! All go into a room which is made up as a traditional Japanese kitchen. Then…the earthquake strikes! As instructed I dove under the table to protect myself from falling objects with speed any athlete would have been proud of. After the initial shock wave we were to turn off the gas and open the door to ensure our escape route was clear, then brace for the after shocks! After all the excitement I then videoed a Japanese family in the simulator, unfortunately in my haste I forgot to press save - rather annoying as I went to great trouble asking permission from everyone to make it in the first place! We then had a series of long talks about earthquake safety. As before, probably would have been more interesting if I had understood it. One interesting fact I did pick up tho, over 1000 Earthquakes a year hit Japan! Next up was escaping from a Smoky corridor, I volunteered to lead our group through this ordeal. It wasn’t that hard, the guy running the day gives you directions…

After our afternoon at the Earthquake centre it was time for some tourist behaviour. Apparently Sunday is the day to Harajuku, for one reason only. Its when for reasons unknown people come out and behave rather strangely. People dressed as video game characters. Check. Men wearing School girl uniform. Check. Man with fishbowls hanging from his ears complete with fish. Check. Needless to say it was a great time for photos. Also got a great video of me dancing with some random guy on the bridge. Didn’t have the stamina to match him tho as he kept going for hours. Harajuku is apparently the Knightsbridge of Tokyo with designer shops and expensive restaurants on every corner. And rather out of place was the shop Condomania. Selling an impressive selection of novelty condoms and other such items. All of us were starting to get a little fatigued by this point so went to have some ice-cream for lunch/tea. After that it was off to meet Yuki for dinner.

Shabu Shabu! Thats what we went for for. And with that I had found my new favourite food. In the middle of each table is a pot of boiling hot oil (two types) You get given a nice selection of beef and pork pieces, some vegetables for good measure. Dip until until cooked, sprinkle with sesame (or bitter orange…) and enjoy!

But of course the night was not yet over. To the Arcade! Some Half Life 2 for good measure, then did purica again Just because we can. Only a brief stay there before doing some late night shopping in…well I’m not really sure what type of shop it was. Seemed to have everything that you immediately want when you see but in reality will just throw in a drawer as soon as you get home. One thing I couldn’t help but laugh at was ‘Billy’s Bootcamp’ Workout video by some American I guess. Looked ridiculous. Besides, Japanese people don’t get fat…

And the finale for the evening was the classic, Karaoke. Karaoke here is a very serious business. The place we went to had 7 floors, each packed with individual rooms for your party. You order drinks using a phone in the room, which is a great system, and resulted in us going through several pitchers of beer and a bottle of Sake. After 11pm you pay for a room for 6hours, not a typo. Apparently that’s how long people stay. We of course thought “How ridiculous, we’ll only need an hour” How wrong we were. Without realising it we spent all night there. Its just “One More” each time, then you think of a classic song to do and can’t help but add it to the playlist. Mike and Craig did a stunning rendition of ‘Barbie Girl’ to start us off. Followed by my solo of ‘Livin’ la vida loca’! And so it went on, had a great night. Hoarse and exhausted by 5am we got a Taxi back to the Hotel. Part 3 coming up. Click here for a link to the photo album for the day.

Welcome to Japan!?I’m going to call this my first official post in Japan. I don’t think that rant about the journey should really count. So as my first post in Japan a suitably impressive introduction was necessary. Unfortunately I immediately was set upon by writers block so decided just to write whatever came to me straight away.

This post will pick up straight after the previous one, with the JPK standing outside Narita Airport waiting for the the 10.50am limousine bus to take us into central Tokyo to meet Yuki-san. We had been instructed to call Yuki and tell her what time the bus was leaving the airport so she could meet us on time. First challenge then was to figure out how to use a phone, not as simple as you might think, none of us could remember the Japan calling code, so couldn’t use my mobile. Pay phone was the only option, took us a good 20minutes of trying until we realised we had to put a ‘0′ in front of the number before calling. Wish someone had told us that.

We caught the limousine bus without issue. The bus comes along a highway from the East of Tokyo, giving you quite a good view of the city and harbour as it does, passing by Disney Land, and going over Rainbow bridge before reaching its destination. Yuki-san met us at the Hotel and told me to my great disappointment we weren’t staying there, so then we quickly went to get our bags off of the porter and had very obediently taken them up to reception. Before going to the Hotel we were taken to lunch in Carrot Tower. It was on this journey I was further cursing Air France, as wearing thick black jeans whilst carrying to heavy bags was not nice in 30C heat. A lot of the Japanese on the train have clothes specifically to wipe the sweat off their brows, decided at that point I needed to get one. Carrot Tower is a large orange (surprise) building in central Tokyo, with a restaurant on the top floor. We gave the honour of ordering to Yuki, mainly because we couldn’t read anything on the menu. Lunch was great, trying so many new foods was a lot of fun, Yuki definitely enjoyed watching us! We were joined later in the meal by Satomi-chan and Jack-chan, who as far as I am aware help Yuki out at work for one reason or another. I don’t really know. (note: Jack obviously isn’t his real name, we called him this later in the day just to simplify things, he seemed to like it) Things were a bit difficult at first, Yuki left us, Satomi and Jack knew very little English, us very little Japanese. Slowly but surely though we all got a bit more confident and struggled through a conversation.

Satomi and Jack took us over to the Hotel after lunch, and after a quick hours sleep and much needed shower we were off to Shibuya! Shibuya is famous for having the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. And it truly is an impressive sight to behold, moment the little blue man shows thousands off people move off! Its quite daunting in all honesty, quite disorientating, I was very glad to have a few Japanese guides with us. First stop was purica. Purica is something you can’t help but think, “this is so Japanese” But without a doubt its one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in a long time, you all cram into a large photo booth, choose a silly colourful sparkly background, then make equally silly faces and poses together. After that you go behind a big curtain and mess with the photos, put cartoon ice creams on peoples heads, make their eyes really big, that sort of thing. At the end you can have the photos emailed to your phone (I’ll do a separate post on Japanese phones later) and print out the photos to take with you. I finally have a reason to own a wallet with compartments for pictures. After this we wondered around for a bit taking in the sights and sounds of Shibuya before heading to dinner. A well hidden place on the 5th floor of a large building.

Yuki and Mai-chan joined us for dinner later on, and ordered an onslaught of food for us all to try. So throwing our idea of having a light dinner out the window we indulged. Think the strangest thing I ate had to the fried Chicken elbows. I mean, seriously, who thinks to fry the elbow (just the elbow mind you) of a chicken and eat it? Wasn’t bad either, bit crunchy/chewy. Put me off a bit when they told me what it was tho. Didn’t particularly enjoy the okonomeyaki either, basically its a Japanese omelette, complete with squid and dried fish flakes as a topping. Yummy. Craig and myself then went to find an internet cafe. Cafe is most certainly the wrong word for them. Hundreds of computers, each in their own private booth, complete with leather comfy chair, headphones, joystick, intercom to call for drinks. Was awesome! Unfortunately I didn’t really achieve much, the keyboard was set to Japanese which made writing rather difficult! All for part one. Check back soon! Click here for a link to the photo album for the day.

So I’ll be leaving at 08:45 on September 7th, arriving Tokyo 06:55 September 8th.

I need to give a quick introduction to our desk officer Amy Lee. Amy went to Sri Lanka with Project Trust, before spending a year in Japan with the JET program. She has been a great source of information for all of us Japan volunteers answering all our questions whilst we were on training. Whilst we are away it is Amy who looks after any serious matters.

So after that introduction an actual update. Received an email detailing what to do on arrival in Tokyo. Seems we are getting a 4 day stay over in Tokyo for an induction course on arrival, which is exactly what I was hoping for. We’ll be staying in the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel, which according to its website, has great panoramic views of Tokyo…from the bathroom window, so I’m guessing the view from the balcony is going to be the backside of the neighboring bulding.

Packing has so far not happened, went and and bought a suitcase at least. Haven’t got much to fill it with, yet at the same time too much. Its really difficult trying to pack clothes for a year into 20Kg, especially when you have to pack for both hot and cold climates, as well all the electronics I of course have to bring with me.

I’ve been reading up extensively on my Japanese history, well 19th and 20th century stuff anyway, before that in all honesty doesn’t seem necessary for my to have much knowledge of. What I really should be doing is some Japanese language practice, despite my best intentions of doing 30mins a day every day of August not much has happened.

I’m guessing my next update will be when I’m over in Japan, where I imagine I’ll have enormous amounts to say!