Friends: week 4

Sunday 25th -
The week starts off well. Another one-day weekend this time I'm in Tsurumi, a small district somewhere in Tokyo working for ECC giving more kids interviews. Each event I get on the train, make the connections and find myself in a new place with no sense of relation to where I started. Canadian Leah is also giving interviews at Tsurumi Kindergarten. The chairs are knee high. The kids are all sizes, but mostly smaller than the chairs. We snatch conversation in between hourly blocks, go for lunch and it transpires Leah is a hard-core clubber. She disdains my favourite club, preferring one up the street from me I haven't been to before. Mail address swapped, done deal. Friend. We plan to meet up at the club.

Monday 26th -
Every time I find myself on the wrong side of the bar in the Meguro Tavern every Monday night I find myself thinking, 'Surely four years of University education amounts to more than this?!' I could make money equivalent to a month of Mondays in the pub (roughly 30 hours) in a quarter of the time teaching my house-mate/land-lords daughter how to read. One of these days I'll throw the apron in. Tonight I meet Jez and Donna, English and American, unemployed and fearing for her job, chipper and bubbly, friends I'd like to have. They sat at the bar and talked openly. From the get-go I knew they were good people and game for it, so I assured them the food was fantastic when one asked the other whether they'd eat or not. Keen to back to writing, I finally found a Tokyo writers group, e-mail the organiser and almost immediately receive a reply. That's writers for you. Hopefully some new friends there.

Tuesday 27th -
Frisbee under the lights, I meet Henry and Andre, both of whom will be on the 'Kuru' team I'll be playing with in a tournament in Fuji City in late March.

Wednesday 28th -
I mailed the editor of Japan-i, Chris, to establish some kind of connection possibly leading to friendship. I also tried to revive a friendship with Mark, sumo writer for the Japan Times, who I last saw last autumn. Back on board with Japan-i travel paper/website after quitting in November, I was interested to hear how he was doing.

Thursday 29th -
Bobby the Hip-Hop dancer finally got axed from school after consistently arriving late and pole-axing the entire schedule for the day for several months. The hunt is on for a new Thursday afternoon dance teacher. Today I meet Aya, ballet teacher. It also happened to be little Shunnosuke's last day at Mini Max international school. A penchant for fondling ear-lobes and slouching about the room looking for attention, Shuunosuke is one in a million. He didn't make Aya's debut too easy. I thought about mailing Misako, my Christmas Eve date who spent her formative years training to be a ballerina in Russia, America before landing a job with a prestigious ballet group in Cannda, but I don't. Im not sure what it that stops me.

Friday 30th -
I arrived in a chain English-themed pub called 'Hub' in Kita Senju to find Mark arguing the toss with a member of staff over seating. Soon after we are seated. Chris, co-founder of a sumo website with Mark and another keen writer, arrives too. You could look around any Hub pub and be fooled into thinking it just like a pub back home, but it's not. Summer 2007 I was back in Blighty in a pub just on the roundabout in Highbury to meet a mate. I'd just arrived back. There was bill spilled all ver the bar. ou couldn't really tell where one group ended and another began. The bartender looked an unlikely bartender but threw together drinks with a well-rehearsed flourish, and chatted to me. There was a general feeling of chaos to the entire place so absent in Japan, but it worked. And it felt great to be there. The Hub works to a pre-ordained seating plan and that says about all you need to know about the Hub 'pubs'. Four pints later I'm on the train home.

Saturday 31st -
The culmination of the month.

Saturday was a great friends day. It was the kind of day I had envisaged when I hatched this crazy friend-a-day plan. I worked at one extremity of Tokyo interviewing some more kids with Melissa, Judy, Mary and marking the interviews were Yuusuke, Mana and a couple others in the adjacent room.

Following work, I spent 7 hours or so travelling from the end of one train line to the other end several times, napping en route to preserve a little energy for what I knew would be an all-night affair and mailing people to figure out my route. Kita Senju in far north-east Tokyo/Saitama prefecture to Kichijoji in far west Tokyo, The Peppermint Cafe, Martine's farewell. The place is bursting with colour and there's already several people draped around one table even though it's only just kicked off. Rain did for the boat trip earlier in the day. I met Cat, Darren and their boy Jake who spends an hour or two wearing one of his Dad's oversized shoes, walking in slow circles chasing a balloon and totally killing the clientele with his burbly charm. I caught up with Christian, soon to return to native Australia after toiling away trying to drum up funds and support for Tokyo English Life Line (TELL). I can trace where I live, the writing I'm doing for Japan-i, a lot of my current situation in Tokyo right now back to a short meeting with Christian last summer about voluntary work and the contacts he gave me.

I left when things were just hitting full swing, hopped on a train and speeded back hoe to Nakameguro. Changed, I got on another train all the way to the other end of the line to Motomachi for another friend's farewell, Geoff, also known as Porno Geoff (there are 2 GeoffJeffs) of the frisbee team. The smell of the sea in the air and wider spaces with fewer people, Yokohama has a lot going for it. Bennys Place, finally a plate of the legendary buffalo wings, darts, a few suds and back to Shibuya with my frisbee team. I meet Yoriko, Geoff's old flatmate and Diana, wife to Henry from the team. Also I meet Yoko, language exchange partner for Geoff and marathon runner. I'd glad I came all the way down.

Shibuya and the last leg of an epic night! I met DJ, employed by the American Intelligence forces and Kuru frisbee team-mate. We go to Womb, a rather splendid club. Inside I met Stefan from Germany, bump into my mate Champ from Uni's mate Sam who I first met with Champ last summer, and Sachie and Masumi, who I met in Womb a while ago and who I see from time to time, there's some drinks and some dancing and some more drinks and loitering in the spiral stairwell alongside some other perfect strangers who could be my friends. DJ dashes off mid-through the post club bowl of ramen noodles and I crawl to bed in Nakameguro.