I've met many foreigners in Japan who insert Japanese articles of speech into their fluent, everyday English. 'Ne' is probably the most common, an emphasizer. Then there's 'yo', another emphasizer, 'hai', yes that too and 'ja', a precursor to some kind of decisive statement. I'm guilty of it myself, finding no suitable alternative to a quick 'otsukare' at the end of a day's work or a tedious job performed with someone else you went through it all with together.
Garth, the proud landlord of the Meguro Tavern London Pub for may years, is the first and only person I've met to reverse the process and insert English into fluent Japanese.
Sure, enough people try to pass off English words as Japanese, a bit like the average Englishman in France, who, having come unstuck will persist with English words pronounced in a French accent and a loud voice when all else fails. Thank the Japanese penchant of borrowing words and adopting them wholeheartedly, if differently from their original meaning in their original tongue, for this. A little cross-pollination for you.
Garth will be recounting a story (he has lots) to one or other of the Japanese regulars and just to make sure they're still with him, he'll say a quick, 'right?'. It's really quite strange to hear a stream of Japanese followed by an earnest, English 'right?', usually just before the punchline or the climax.
One Monday night recently, soon after I'd told Garth I'm going to quit my little Monday night arbeito job with him, a customer handed me a bottle of Corona with a lime wedge wedged in the bottle neck asking for it to be poked down. I duly did so, with a straw, upon which Garth turned to me and said, 'There you go, that's what you studied and went to University for!' and I heard a loud sharp bang of a nail being struck firmly on the head.
Saturday 28 February 2009
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Dainoji
Saturday night I met up with a friend and some friends for a night in a place called Club Que in Shimokitazawa. We thought we knew what we were in for (UK ROCK) but we didn't really know the truth of it.
The first thing that seemed a bit amiss...was that the club was filled with women. Sudden excitement followed by creeping suspicions. Wait a second... Had we chanced upon some kind of lesbian bar? ..Would they get hostile to us? ..Would they all turn into vampires past midnight?
Sure enough, the DJ soon quits the decks and the stage and shortly after we'd paid a hefty 2,800 yen entrance fee and stowed our jackets bags things in a big bag, Dainoji appeared.
I didn't know who he was, but surely he was the reason for the lesbian vampires. The crowd went apoplectic. If we were going to get eaten, it was now.
Wearing what I'd later discover is a trademark, tiger-print sweatshirt he strutted onto the stage with an awkward swagger that didn't fit him as well as the sweatshirt. He wandered from side to side of the narrow stage with little hip bobs, head nods and apparently exaggerated, mimed acknowledgement of calls from the audience (who were to busy hopping and throwing themselves around for much else). The dancers appeared, they all made some tight little formation as a unit and the music started.
It soon transpired that Dainoji is no ordinary performer. Rather than performer maybe pretend performer is a better description. For I later found out that he is a household name in Japan as the ex-double world Air Guitar champion. He showed us his moves on Saturday night, alongside the carefully coordinated troupe of dancers. Once, he scissor-kicked his way off the two and a half foot stage and dashed towards us. For 30 seconds or so, we were given the privelege of watching Dainoji in action, miming guitar frets and neck rattles, up close between the bar and the exit.
The end for us came soon after my friend Ian's failed attempt at escape. Staggering with disbelief and tripping over vampire lesbian feet in his eagerness, desperation to get out he came to the same position Dainoji had recently occupied, between the bar and the exit. From there you could not see the stage but from my position, I had a view of the stage and Ian. With a wonderful synchrony, just as Ian was shouting over the din 'I cannot believe this', unbeknownst to him his friend Sam was being dragged onto the stage to attempt a succession of coordinated dance moves (for public ridicule). Ian heard a whole load of Japanese and the word gaikokujin! (foreigner!) and guessed it with a dumbfounded look to his face.
Shortly after this, we left and laughed about it and drank til the first trains were running out of Shimokitazawa.
Tuesday 17 February 2009
Niseko 2008, 2009
Last year I went to Hokkaido, to Sapporo and had one of the best weekends of my year gazing at giant snow sculptures and rows of snow candles lining a pretty canal lined the other side with a row of warehouses-come-restaurants, bars, microbrewery and shivering a little with the frigid air that cut right through the bone much more than the Yamagata wind to which I had grown accustomed.
We shot off to Niseko for a day of skiing too and I plodded up to the peak and rocketed down in knee-deep powder snow that glistened and threw through the air with a fua-fua sound, an onomatopoeic word Japanese reserve for the finest, lightest, the best snow for skiing.
This year I went again and it was a different story.
I seemed to have picked the one bum weekend all season, although it hasn't been great this year. Rain on Friday and rivers running down the road at the base of the mountain. High winds on Saturday and Sunday so no trip to the peak. Most of the lifts were closed. Not a great ski trip. But a great trip nonetheless.
I was amazed to see carpets, central heating and bedrooms bigger than our classroom at school in my mate Alastair's place in Niseko. Leaving Kutchan station to catch the bus in, I left Japan too. A waitress in an izakaye looked at me with a frown when I ordered something in Japanese, even though she was, er, Japanese. Niseko is a mini-Australia. There's a popular bus service running directly from the airport to the resort so there need be no cross-pollination of skiiers and boarders with Japan.
All got me thinking about possibly putting in a season this winter.
Can i get a whoop whoop
Found out yesterday I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 2. Back of the net.
Wednesday 11 February 2009
Tuesday 10 February 2009
Picking up where the friends resolution left off
At the start of the year I made a flimsy resolution. A friend a day. Looking back on how January went, that didn't happen. However, I did make some new friends and renew some old friendships. I learnt a few things about finding friends in such an impossibly large city. I got out more, took a few more chances and learnt a lot about attitude to life. And such.
The first thing I discovered on my January friend-finding adventures is that you meet a lot of people in Tokyo. Recording each day and the people I encountered I found out that they amount to a lot, but I never thought about them as friends or possible friends before, just people I happened to share the same room with for a while before we set off on our own paths again. There's no reason they shouldn't be friends. There's no reason anyone I see or have any contact with shouldn't be friends. I learnt to be more open-minded when meeting people I initially thought didn't share many interests with me and so couldn't become a close friend. Sometimes just spending time together is enough.
I learnt my schedule better too, something I didn't think I had. I do have a routine and it's pretty firmly set from week to week. I work in a pre-school. I work in a pub. I play frisbee. I meet conversation class students. I write for this or that. I try and get out at the weekends and invite people for dinner during the week. You're so much better prepared for efficient time-management when you have your day, week, month recorded. The next decision, I guess, is whether or not to break the routine and find different things to do to meet more people or just change things around. Quit the pub and start working a little in an izakaye (Japanese pub) instead. Start playing football instead of frisbee. Quit the day job, buy some more shirts and maybe a pair of cufflinks for the fancy days and find a job in recruitment. Leave Japan. Or stay and stick to the same weekly routine.
Also, it was good to learn a little about planning ahead and saving moneys for this or that, which I'm usually pretty crap at. I can't afford to go out every night and my pay-check sometimes limits friend-finding opportunities. That in turn meant I had to make the most of any occasion I did find myself out after dark.
It also means I have to think of other ways to make friends and meet people. I had to shed pre-conceived opinions about things I'd normally not think about doing. Using the classifieds sections a lot more. Speed-Dating in the pleasure district of yesteryear, Roppongi, which I plan to do with friends in a week or two if only just for some fun. Going out with people I don't really know too well, or even suggesting going out with people I don't know too well.
Finally, the friends resolution has brought me closer to my blog. I used to write a lot, the first year I spent in Japan. The second year I feel like I was doing more things than writing about them. But then things slacked off for no reason. It's been good to have to think a little, just a little mind, about writing, and specifically about writing people. A kind of social catalogue of everyone I encounter.
From here, I continue. Maybe not a friend a day, but definitely not losing some of the things I've learnt.
The first thing I discovered on my January friend-finding adventures is that you meet a lot of people in Tokyo. Recording each day and the people I encountered I found out that they amount to a lot, but I never thought about them as friends or possible friends before, just people I happened to share the same room with for a while before we set off on our own paths again. There's no reason they shouldn't be friends. There's no reason anyone I see or have any contact with shouldn't be friends. I learnt to be more open-minded when meeting people I initially thought didn't share many interests with me and so couldn't become a close friend. Sometimes just spending time together is enough.
I learnt my schedule better too, something I didn't think I had. I do have a routine and it's pretty firmly set from week to week. I work in a pre-school. I work in a pub. I play frisbee. I meet conversation class students. I write for this or that. I try and get out at the weekends and invite people for dinner during the week. You're so much better prepared for efficient time-management when you have your day, week, month recorded. The next decision, I guess, is whether or not to break the routine and find different things to do to meet more people or just change things around. Quit the pub and start working a little in an izakaye (Japanese pub) instead. Start playing football instead of frisbee. Quit the day job, buy some more shirts and maybe a pair of cufflinks for the fancy days and find a job in recruitment. Leave Japan. Or stay and stick to the same weekly routine.
Also, it was good to learn a little about planning ahead and saving moneys for this or that, which I'm usually pretty crap at. I can't afford to go out every night and my pay-check sometimes limits friend-finding opportunities. That in turn meant I had to make the most of any occasion I did find myself out after dark.
It also means I have to think of other ways to make friends and meet people. I had to shed pre-conceived opinions about things I'd normally not think about doing. Using the classifieds sections a lot more. Speed-Dating in the pleasure district of yesteryear, Roppongi, which I plan to do with friends in a week or two if only just for some fun. Going out with people I don't really know too well, or even suggesting going out with people I don't know too well.
Finally, the friends resolution has brought me closer to my blog. I used to write a lot, the first year I spent in Japan. The second year I feel like I was doing more things than writing about them. But then things slacked off for no reason. It's been good to have to think a little, just a little mind, about writing, and specifically about writing people. A kind of social catalogue of everyone I encounter.
From here, I continue. Maybe not a friend a day, but definitely not losing some of the things I've learnt.
Wednesday 4 February 2009
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.
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.
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