Making friends

I came to Tokyo not knowing anyone in this town really. A couple of friends in Yokohama and one very welcoming family in the Hommas aside, slim pickings. It's been fun putting things together, scratching out a life, pursuing old hobbies in a new environment and looking at new things. Here are a few people I've met so far.

Fumie was a small ad of 20 or 30 words in the classified section of Metropolis, a free, weekly English language magazine. She wanted to speak English, I wanted to speak Japanese, we came to an agreement and went for a coffee. Next we visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum for sphinx torsoes in an art deco setting. Although she's working as some kind of legal scribe right now, she recently found work designing and painting prosthetic limbs and she was very enthusiastic about this new venture. She wouldn't have to deal with the daily crush on the trains, so tight she can't make space to indulge in one of her passions, reading books. Our next language exchange will be in Hibiya Koen, which is where I met

Bryan, an American from Southern California. I was in the Marunouchi area on a cow hunt (there is a Cow Parade) and decided that since the weather was so clement and my legs fresh, I'd take a stroll through the park. I'm thinking about writing a piece about fixed gear/single speed bicycles for Japan-i, a portal-style travel website I've gotten involved with. There was Bryan with a fixed gear bicycle with very fetching purple and white wheel rims- one purple, one white. He told me all about putting his bike together and we swapped e-mail addresses. Just after we parted I saw a marriage reach the confetti mark and a lady walking a boar on a leash. It could have been a pig. I think it was connecting with one of the charity booths put up for a Global Fest.

The Little Professor is a kid at the kindergarten I work at. The Little Professor stands 3ft something tall and likes to draw circles in the air, on table tops, walls, anywhere he can whenever his mind takes that turn. He was very excited with last week's geography topic and the chance to actually draw a typhoon in circles and circles and circles of colour. When it comes to putting them on or taking them off, he fumbles with his shoes a lot. The head teacher once saw him standing on the platform with his mum, doing nothing more than watching trains. The Little Professor also likes to stick with his routine and the old routine of taking five minutes to look out from the window of our 8th floor kindergarten at the bustle beneath. He flaps a little when the routine changes and so I'm being especially careful to try and befriend the Little Professor gradually. New faces are sometimes a problem for kids with Asperger Syndrome.

All sorts beside. Rebekha, with whom together we vowed to make a company upon her return to the states for some event management at a Soapbox Derby. Martin, the Austrian pilot I met at frisbee by Tamagawa River and who had flown in the previous day, was set to fly out the following day and had decided to use his time in Tokyo indulging in some exercise. Garth, the landlord in a pub at which I've ended up doing one night a week, recently hospitalized for some alcohol-related operation, off the booze and on the pills but still sorely tempted to ensure the London Pride wasn't off when a Japanese customer claimed it was a little sour. Turns out the customer didn't know what he was talking about.