Shorts: Direction

I got a new watch for my birthday last year. Well, I say new. It was from a mate who later told me he got it from a mate whose girlfriend works in the liquidation business. She's comes into a lot of electrical products and freely distributes them for knock-off prices to her friends, although they're not always brand new. That and my last birthday was actually last December, so I suppose when you take the two together, it's not such a new ole' watch after all.

One of the kids was twisting my wrist or playing with my watch and when I looked down, I noticed he'd accessed some new screen I'd never seen before. I forgot to mention, it's a digital watch. The new screen showed a compass and displayed at any point which direction I was facing. Then it would fix that direction if you stayed still a second or two, and you'd have to enact a sequence of complex button pushes to return to a fresh compass.

Ever since I've been obsessed with it. I've been checking my direction everywhere. Which way I'm heading on the train. Which way my apartment faces, which way the school faces, which direction I'm headed as I walk along.

Shorts: Mices

I bought new mouse. The old one was slow and it took several swipes to drag the cursor to the other side of the screen. It moved in fits and lurches. I saved the old one for a day when I'm really angry at something. Then I'll take that mouse, and swing it by the cord, and crash it to a concrete ground somewhere (shouldn't be difficult to find a patch here) and smash it to eight zillion pieces.

But for now, I'm happy enough just using the new one. Except it's so damn quick I keep overshooting and getting the wrong thing. Like upgrading from an Astra to an Austin Martin. The power.

Fokyo Taker

Friends invited me to a design exhibition launch night and I arrived early. As it turned out, the venue, the Machihara Building, sits right beside the very river (the Meguro River) that I cycle along to work. In fact I cycle right past that Machihara Building every time I cycle to work.

I didn't know anyone there and instead of dawdling like a dork I went up to the reception desk to cough up admission fee. There was none. Instead they gave me a plastic cup, a piece of tape and a black marker pen, then told me to write my name and asked, Beer champagne or soft drink beer please thanks very much and free did you say? I went back for later.

At nearby tables there were platters of nibbles, all of which were white. I think that had some kind of significance. Soft-boiled cauliflower, marshmallows and mushrooms. Every now and then a gust of wind would lift and scatter the black plastic forks and napkins. The evening reached a zenith when I witnessed a man dressed particularly arty gesticulate in an exaggerated fashion with a fork, on the end of which was a piece of soft-boiled cauliflower.

My friends turned up and we perused the lights and tables and a strange leather loaf shaped container that bragged somesuch like, 'with use the grease from your fingers will darken the leather like a loaf being baked'. Some time later, I wandered out as freely as I wandered in.

mr favourite new place

is exactly where I thought it would be. Just up the street from me. In a splendid synergy of expectation and realization that tasted all the sweeter for it's rarity in a land devoid of logic, the little chop house at the top of my road came up good. One hell of a gem in Oimachi, Toyko.

Honma's place is the kind where you're not given a menu, merely asked how hungry you are. One that thrives on regulars, big enough as it is or maybe 9 people around around the counter and some more upstairs.

Apart from a few others up on the 2nd floor, I was the only patron that evening until a 'jyouren' (regular) arrived, rolling up sleeves and taking a set=at at the counter as I was gathering coat and brolly. The master called me 'wakadana' all night, which I guess would roughly translate to 'young man' and chided me for draping my coat across a chair, hanging it up instead. He joked about women and at first took me for a translator. I went in prepared to answer all the regular questions you get asked as a foreigner in Japan and while some of them came up, for the most part it was other chat.

And the food was bloody good. Grilled skirt steak on a stick with a dot of wholegrain mustard on the side is the big boast of Honma's place. Fat and juicy and fatty and juicy. He even produced several magazines touting his eaterie with a picture of the famous 'kushiyaki' (grilled on stick thing). Offal curry swimming in oil with toast. Fried egg and potato salad. I forget the name in Japanese but the sit-down dish was two thick slices of smoked pink duck breast and rolled egg omelette.

It was all bloody good. Shame I'm to move away from Oimachi. The cockroaches finally got to me and an offer to live with people (other people! social contact in the home!!) came up and I'm off to trendy Nakameguro, spitting distance from Shibuya. Bam.

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Lost things

I had a very sharp pang of loneliness this evening. It wasn't a particularly regular feeling. I think it might be the first time I've encountered this variety, like catching a cold with all kinds of different symptoms in minute ways.

I read in the annual old boy magazine from my old school of a friend's wedding. I couldn't quite believe it, but that's all back-story anyhow. Today I logged onto facebook and saw some photos of the big day itself. I hadn't known the date. There was my old mate, a guy I used to spend a lot of time with, dressed in Sunday best and beaming. A further root around profiles and photos albums and another good mate cropped up, the best man, another really good mate from whom I've drifted. Another shot, I could name all but one of the lads standing looking at a different camera to the one that took the picture I was scrutinizing.

I suddenly felt like going back to England and had a jolt. Not really homesickness, because I stopped trying to make homes anywhere a long time ago. I wondered who I'd pick as my best man if I got married and no-one came to mind.

Twinkle Nights at Tokyo City Keiba race track, Cow Parade in Marunouchi Nakadori, Fixed Gear bike

 
 
 

Two new bits of Japanese I've learnt lately

オッズ - O'Zu, 'Odds'

There's an odds machine at the Tokyo City Keiba horse race track that prints out the odds for the 'Twinkle Nights' evening races.

欲しい行こう - 'Hoshii ikou', literally 'I want to go'.

Some of the kids can't say bathroom yet. Sink or swim little fella, sink or swim.

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.