What a week

MI6HQ, Slogan for now, Christmas Lights

Googling cheery thoughts

What did the buffalo say to his boy when he was going to school? Bison!

http://www.lolcats.com/view/9953

What a shit few days

G and T and Shaun the Sheep to the rescue.

When a date is not actually a date

Part of what I do now is all about expectation management. I call up people and I say TV and ears prick up. Mention money and heads spin. There's a skill to talking to people and getting permission to film, or just logging their interest without causing undue over-excitement.

You'd have thought, then, that I could manage my own expectations well. Before this job, I learned the lesson again and again in Japan: things were never as I expected they'd be and sometimes I was disappointed, sometimes surprised to the good.

But now I work managing expectation every day, so I should be better at it. I should.

6 years separate me and the latest ex I met up with, Danielle, who wore short skirts to sell magazines at Edinburgh Festival while I lost the job because I didn't sell any.

One dinner turned to a second dinner and I got excited. Japanese, and then Chinese in Soho a few weeks later, around the corner from Carnaby Street and a line of pink reindeer helium inflatables strung up. I didn't want to think it might a proper date second time round, but I did anyway.

We talked and talked and then we talked about ex-boyfriends and girlfriends who couldn't deal with meeting up just as friends. By this point it had become clear what kind of a meeting ours was.

Meeting an old flame to just check they're doing ok, because you were once close with them, doesn't seem to be such an altruistic thing to do any more, in spite of what me and Danielle agreed last night. It seems almost a little self-serving, like you want to satisfy an inclination without thinking about what effect it has in the end. I realized I'd done exactly the same thing to another old girlfriend, a month or two ago, but with a more dramatic end to the night. Which makes me feel like a big fat hypocrite really.

So I woke up today and thought, 'I knew this was going to happen and now it has, what do I do?'

Being heartbroken by the same girl twice seems beyond cliche, so it's time to get on, again.

I ran in the rain and mud, and hoovered.

Maths

Numeracy tests and data interpretation. All the rage these days with online applications.
I've never really been one for maths.

So I've been trying to put maths into my everyday life. Chiefly, this means keeping a running total in my head around the supermarket.

I get to the checkout, hand over my basket and watch as the checkout lady scans the barcodes, one-by-one.

Then she says, 'That's 7 pounds 38 then please love' and a tiny voice at the back of my head says

'I know!'

Cheat

The makers of the Guardian G2 crossword, take note.

You have reduced me to cheating.

No more will I be frustrated by clues pertaining to Oscar winners in the year of my birth, or before. Never again will I fumble for synonyms to words which I don't know in the first place. You won't catch me out with any more obscure legal terms neither.

No no. I've got the internet now.

Behold -

Spoon boy:

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/04/04/spoon-boy-breaks-world-record-by-balancing-16-spoons-on-his-face/

A-mo-zing

I became a Mo-man on the 1st November.

The premise of Movember (the month formerly known as November) is simple; the execution, dangerouly open to interpretation and the results until last night, miserly (I am of course speaking personally - I am certain there are far better Mo Men out there than I).

So, the premise. Shave at the start of Movember and grow a moustache in aid of men's charities, in particular prostate cancer charities.

And the results... until last night my wispy toffee-apple tickler had barely attracted the attention of my flatmates. In fact, it hadn't at all. After 10 days there was some semblance of a shadow of a Mo developing that I then carefully sculpted into what I like to call a 'lip-winger', reaching all the way down to my chin line. Except it didn't reach all the way and had bits missing in between.

So I scrapped that plan and had another go with the razor, redesigning my lip-winger into a cute, fledgling 'che' (after the famous Cuban revolutionary and celebrated Mo man). Last night I met a friend and two of his friends, one of whom commented without any prompt,

"Is that for Movember or what?"

My Mo, finally given the recognition it deserves, after 12 days of semi-existence.

Now I'm a proud Mo-man.

Year of the Ex-

We had a bridge we called ours back then, when I briefly went out with Mareike the German while living in Amsterdam for a year. It was one of those bridges that collapses fifty times a day to allow canal boats through.

Last night we walked to a Sam Smith's pub an American friend Sebastian knew and I didn't. I've got a lot to learn about the city of my birth. Sebastian led me and Mareike and a stranger wolf-whistled. Her hair is dyed bright blond, shorn on one side and chin length on the other and I guess she's always attracted attention. She bumped into people and we three talked as we drank bad beer Sebastian had swiped from work - a posh bar-restaurant by St. Paul's. Later Mareike said she's sleeping with an Irishman or a Frenchman. Nothing seems to have changed.

I'm ploughing back through a past I thought I'd left a distance behind. One friend once said he returned to England from Japan and the most overwhelming feeling he had was relief. But sometimes I find myself wanting to tug at my hair and scream out in frustration at having landed right back where I worked hard to move on from.

London recently

I stepped up onto surface from the underground on the other day and looked around Oxford Circus and the first thing that came to my mind was, 'Is that it?' I remembered the buildings being so much taller. It had such a provincial feel to it. Maybe I just got used to all those skyscrapers in Shibuya and Shinjuku. That said, even in Yamagata they built up, and they had all the perspective of the mountains from the basin to fight with there.

I'm on Queenstown Road, near Battersea Park, after a relatively brief period as itinerant floor space occupant in Stoke Newington (North) and Vauxhall (South). I can see the overland train rattle past from the 2F kitchen window. 10 years ago I stayed on this road a few doors down, in my sister's place. I walked to Harrods and back every day for a month for a summer job. One day it rained hard on the way back so I waited out the wet under a railway bridge. Now I ride the train over that bridge to work.

Streets here have precious few convenience stores, or electric stores, or jidohanbaiki vending machines. Rows of residential even right in the centre of town. I met an old friend in the pub on last Saturday and we took a walk later on across the bridge sandwiched in between the Eye and the houses of Parliament. I don't know the names of the bridges yet.

As we walked along, my friend said to me, 'People spend a lot of money to come here. And here we are'.

Today

I saw a dog running towards Hampstead Heath with his own lead in his mouth.

View from the yard

A hard day's work

'Last year, one trip back home from Japan I found myself hurtling towards the centre of London on the Piccadilly Line.'

I'd love to say that without smirking. Instead,

'Last year, one trip back home from Japan I found myself on the Piccadilly Line, lurching towards the centre of London one pitiful, long-forgotten tube stop at a time.'

That's a little more truthful.

Way out near Heathrow airport, the Piccadilly Line gets grim. Last year when I came back, it was a drizzly, overcast day and I remember being squashed on the train with luggage and weary commuters, watching the rain dribble in diagonals across the windows.

This year I came back for good, for now. I fell into a job virtually instantly and it looks like they might want to keep me on beyond the initial trial period.

However. In a cruel twist of fate, a 'welcome back to england and fuck you!', a miserable deal, the job is way out west on the Piccadilly Line and I have become one of those weary commuters.

'Northfields?'

'Yeah Northfields.'

'OK, North-Fields?'

'That's it. Northfields'

(Almost a whisper:) 'Huh. Northfields.'

Every morning I now find myself backtracking nearly as far as the airport, and every evening I repeat that desolate journey into the centre of London that I swore I'd never again attempt. I wish that once (it would only take once), I could forget Northfields and just judder and grind on, one tube stop at a time beyond Northfields, save myself the commuter sigh, that plosive burst, the steady, lip-flubbering exhalation, save myself that and a day at a desk in front of a computer screen and the walk to the bathroom the most exercise I'd get all day, save all that for my memories of somewhere and someplace I almost ended up for good and shudder on as far as Heathrow, and get on a plane, and hop, skip, shoot out of Blighty again.

Not sure that'll be happening any time soon though.

Oi!

Smallawei you bastard, whoever you are, will you please kindly please stop spamming my old posts with freeking Chinese blurb!

A kind of home

Now all the brouhaha and excitement has died down after Helene and Matt got married and I've been back a week and a half or so, I felt like taking stock.

It feels strange to be back. No, that's not true, that's not exactly it. It feels strange knowing that I won't be going back to Japan.

Some things have changed around here. You can now self-scan and pay for sundry goods at Tesco, eliminating the need for any human contact in your grocery shopping. Around the house, new coffee mugs and serviettes, the odd painting I don't recognize, or a space where one I once did once lived. Boris, deaf as one of those new mugs.

Some things haven't changed. Mum, the horse and that little squit of a pony can't even barely poke his head out above the box he's so short. I'm still no better in Dad's garden than his shadow with a stick, ready to hit anything or poke any dead-tree stump that might well be a wasps' nest for all the wasps flying in and out of it.

Some things have been glorious to rediscover - the smell of greengages mashed into the dirt by hoof or boot off the Cole Green Way; crisp autumn evenings with their own peculiar, clean smell; white-spotted brown apples fermenting in copses. The taste of water that comes out of the tap here. Match of the Day.

Houses fit me ill. I surprised Beverley jumped right out of her skin not expecting me there by the computer in her study as she walked through from the kitchen. I slipped down the stairs, not having walked on carpet in a long time and certainly not having walked on carpet in socks in a long time and nor will I again for a long time.

Some things I've only realised about my life in Japan in retrospect. Almost every one of the friends I made works in a creative capacity, either as writer, photographer, designer, architect... I should stp short there or else the rose-tint will skew my eyes forever.

Hels and Matt get hitched

American Numbers

Number of states visited: 16

Number of pictures taken: 1,211

Number of pairs of underwear packed from Japan for 45 days of traveling: 6

Miles driven: 8,300 some

Number of times Champ infracted upon the in-car fart ban (ICFB): 2

Distance from final destination (NYC) to final final destination (LDN): 3,471

Number of road-side dialogues with officers of the law of the United States of America: 3

Number of burgers, burritos, pizzas consumed between July 28th and September 10th: countless

Number of north american grizzly bear, brown bear, polar bear, teddy bear spotted in all national parks visited: 0

Number of tickets administered us by officers of the law for infractions of the automobile speed limit: 1

Number of home-cooked meals consumed between July 28th and September 10th: 4

Number of outstanding tickets administered us for infractions of the automobile speed limit: 1

Number of occasions commando dress worn when aforementioned underwear supply had been exhausted and not yet laundered: undisclosed

Approximate number of legumes consumed between July 28th and September 10th [not including garnishings of aforementioned burgers, potatoes prepared in the French manner nor tomatoes pureed according to the recipe of Mr Heinz]: under 14

NYC

New York was all too brief for Champ, a day and a half in one of the biggest cities in the world and one of those places that tops those lists compiled by Timeout or Lonely Planet or those kind of people. Work awaited back in London. For me, it was a lot longer than anywhere else we’d stayed in the States and because of that and the sheer variety and depth to the city, it felt like a holiday within a holiday, a little greedy even.

We stayed with Nat in Lower Manhatten and toasted the sunset and the skyline from his rooftop and ate oblong pizza the width of the table.

Then I stayed with Laci and Zooey from the Bronx with her big ole ears prick up something batlike for a dog in hipster Williamsburg, where alternative has become a norm in itself like when the avant garde becomes the accepted and is begging to be undone by the post-avant garde, but just for a night there.

Next, further south Brooklyn in Prospect Heights with Mike and his touchstone, the zeitgeist, and dependability to pick the places that are justifiably most popular. Though we didn’t go, he knew the pizza place run by a grumpy old salt who handled each base dough himself where the smoke thickens the room and seeps into the pores of a 2 hour queue for a taste of all the fuss. He knew the restaurant burger restaurant and where the best karaoke deal was at, where the best coffee was and the second best at Second Stop where he knew the $10,000 Clover coffee machine, written off than no better than by his own fair hand with an Aeropress.

After that I stayed with Julia who is on food stamps working rough neighbourhoods flyering doing community organisation, and who met Michelle Obama the day I left. We talked old and new news and mollycoddled Momo-chan the cat sick with cold and ear infection. Why is it cats get sick so rarely?

Finally, I left NYC. I was more than ready to come back home and cut my teeth on something to matter to me for a long time, to plunge into London and see what I can surface clutching or whether I’ll sink ankles shackled to shuffle never run down amongst the nearest town to my own.

DC

For the first time in a few weeks we found ourselves in a city with conspicuous bustle and activity, the capital, DC. It was reassuring, it expunged that feeling that there is a heart somewhere out there that we hadn't found yet, as was the case in other cities. DC felt broad and important, bristling with hard talk and brilliant in the crisp sunshine.

It's been easy to tell which attractions around the US have most affected and compelled Champ. He asks for his picture to be taken rarely, but always in front of what are highlights for him. The Lincoln Memorial and the Mall were 2.

We met up with Geoff from Japan now in back in the States. Together we climbed the Washington Monument on a gloriously sunny day and had a taste of the Smithsonian Institute collection of museums. Inside, the original American Flag, C-3PO and an audio recording of 5 callers on NPR's 'Car Talk', in reverse order of just exactly how I liked them.

Later we wandered Georgetown University and saw many many young pretty things in skirts and money dripping off their wrists and necks with polo shirts and pastel colours and an on-campus bookstore full of Georgetown merchandise and mused about student life with rose-tinted glasses before remembering that pressing feeling that came at the end of college or university or whatever you want to call it, of getting out into the world and actually trying to prove yourself beyond the books and the tests and put some money in your pocket. Lately that feeling's been coming back.

New Orleans

Contrary to a lot of what we'd heard, the Big Easy was exactly that and no thieving were we subject to, except the Highway Robbery variety for parking Shasta the Nissan Sentra at the Hilton. The room itself, all twin queen, riverside view, big tv and nifty coffee maker and four walls of it came cheap, online and at the last minute. Apparently New Orleans isn't a popular destination for rich nor hoi polloi in late August.

One of our first experiences after parking up was Bourbon Street on Friday night. Filthy smells hung in the air and bits of boa feather stuck on the street. Everybody seemed to be wearing beads. And everybody seemed to be taking advantage of the lax open container regulations that permit street-drinking.

We got a little drunk, saw some great live music, an older gent playing trumpet complimented me on my roadside garage $20 hat and I got all excited when the house band in one joint took a breather and I got a chance to ask the drummer if she was Japanese. I fluffed my lines in a torrid muddle of Japanese and English, she seemed about as interested in me as the dogs the stinking grey puddles here there on Bourbon Street and I got a taste of things to come. In spite of any amount of enthusiasm, perhaps proportionately, not every Japanese person I approach will want to talk to me. Just like I didn't want to talk to every Japanese person approaching me in Japan to practice their English.

We took a look around the grand maisons of the Garden District and pavements laid waste to by tree roots bursting through the concrete, before Champ was overcome by the heat and swooned, spending much of the remainder of the day recovering at the Hilton. I indulged in beignets, gumbo, etouffee. We had a few hours out at a creole plantation. I hunted down a previous residence of William Faulkner, now a bookshop, and the place he wrote his debut novel, 'Soldier's Pay'. Earlier I'd stumbled upon a grand concert with military band in honour of what an incredibly talented singer/song-writer guitarist later described only as the 'unmentionable', the 4 year anniversary of Katrina's visit to New Orleans, instead (the bearded singer/song-writer guitarist) preferring to focus on the anniversary of Michael Jackson's birth and his drummer's 30th birthday.

We bid a hasty adieu to Shasta, some 8,300 miles, several scratches along the front near-side and an ink stain on the upholstery later and took an earl flight up to DC. The road trip, now over, the trip still with some legs.

Memphis

And so the finishing line drew closer, as we completed the most mammothonian of driving double legs, zipping from Denver down, round and up to Memphis.

Downtown was eerily quiet but Beale Street was alive with bars competing with each other for everyone casually strolling down the middle of the street. Blues rang out. Bike night, dozens of Harley's tore up any last remaining quiet corners, revving simply to rev, lined up along the street the riders sitting watching revving. Weird little midges look like ash flakes plagued the night. Cicadas here had a different cadence to their song than their Japanese cousins.

We had great barbeque in Memphis. We did the tourist route, visiting the Civil Rights Museum (and also sight of the slaying of Dr Martin Luther King), Sun Studio and Graceland, in that order. At the museum, we saw an English couple who'd sat near our table the night before at the (guidebook recommended) barbeque joint. The guide had said Memphis was a small place, chances are you'd see the same people around town.

A day or so in, calamity struck again. Champ realised he had misplaced his bank card somewhere, maybe in Denver. Frantic calls to Barclay's back home followed. Talk of emergency transfers of funds was soon put to bed as first a Tennessean bank, then larger and more banks refused the service. From here on out, it was all to be charged to the credit card(s) for Champ.

New Mexico, Texas

We left Denver and choking traffic and embarked on the longest and most ill-prepared leg of the journey. Unscheduled and shunted into our plans on a whim and a friend’s urge, we shot down to Albuquerque, then onto El Paso, over to Fort Worth and finally up to Memphis and back with our original plans.

We stopped at White Sands deep in southern New Mexico, a couple hundred square kilometres of gypsum dunes next to a missile testing site. Signs for trails warned of dehydration and unexploded ballistics parts. Thanks to a terrific storm that squatted over the mountains nearby we were saved the glare of the sun kicking up too much from the sand so white it looked to be snow at first. When it did finally emerge, the sun blasted down and from beneath, reflecting from the sand so that I did not know whether to shield my eyes or cup them with the backs of my hands.

Every single creature that scuttles, slithers or darts across the soft white sand dunes seems to have blanched to an albino strain to fit the white, white blanket beneath. Yucca grow up and up to escape the piles of sand that gather as dunes shift and threaten to engulf the plants wholesale. As the dunes move on, the plants is too tall to support itself and wilts, bends and dies after all the fight.

That evening we stopped in The Most Wretched City on Earth, also known as El Paso. Straddling the borders of New Mexico, Texas and Mexico, helicopters fly over a ghost town downtown in pairs by night, searchlights ready. We walked 7 blocks or so to find someplace to eat, retired to an old hotel that breathed with giant air con gills clutching the ceilings and got a ticket for speeding the fuck out of there early the next morning.

Across Texas, oil pumps bobbed like mechanical birds pecking the ground and toothpicks lay in gas station restroom sink swill...we ate great steak too. That’s about it for Texas.

Denver

We stayed with Chippy near the university. He seemed as harmonious with the tall buildings and craft beers of Denver as he did last time I checked in on him in tiny Atsumi Onsen, perched on a hill overlooking a pile of tetrapods and the Sea of Japan.

We went to a ball game, a completely different experience to the games I went to see in Tokyo Dome. Out another night, Champ and I met a charmingly drunk guy out celebrating his birthday who called a big guy called Jr from Oklahoma on the other side of us a douche-bag. Jr didn't see him so charmingly drunk - cue fireworks. Chippy later informed us it's usually at this point you yell, 'Hit'm!'. I ate a 2lb burrito that sold itself as, 'As big as as your head!' and another evening we shared the most ginormous pizza I have ever beholded and devoured.

We also added one more to the list of National Parks visited and went to the Rockies. It was just as breath-taking and grand in scale as Glacier. Huge swathes of forest lie before roadside vantage points, here and there a solitary dun coloured tree amongst the green and every now and then, a corner turned, an entire hillside of these sick trees or worse, dead, gray trees. Pine beetle is the villain. Refreshingly, the park literature stresses the power of nature and explains their policy of damage limitation and proper forest management (better spacing between trees apparently helps) in the face of something beyond the control of man.

How my geta finally bit it

Sometime just before Las Vegas on the road, my geta bit it. They're wooden sandals, summer festival garb for people in Japan but I wore them a lot, mostly because I like the clip clop clip sound they make as you walk.

The soles wore down from a chunky 1 and a half inch to slivers at the heel, cutting me down to my rightful size at the same time. Back to being a sub-six-footer again.

I clashed the toe against rocks and curbs here and there and towards the end, this removed great thick pieces. In fact wherever I went the soles shed splinters, once the flimsy thin rubber soling had flaked off.

All the way from Japan, up the Californian coast, across to Montana and down to Las Vegas there are coarse carpets, sidewalks and rugs, floor-mats and door-mats and old creaky wood floors bearing the sign of my passage, a scattering of splinters. Now if I can just make it back to Vegas, there's a splinter trail all the way back to Japan..

Vegas

Hot machines and cold drinks, ice cold, ice cold water for a dollar hawked on corners and under shade by cryptobiotic beggars and hotel staff with voucher coupons for buffet meals. Vegas was noticeably hotter than anywhere previously, mercifully, a dry heat.

A lot of people seemed to have come from a lot of different places. Everyone gambles, or had gambled once. Inside the casinos there is no glamour. Past the promenade-side bikini girls on blackjack tables, the lure gulped, croupiers have a drawn, jaded look to them. They speak to you without looking directly at you, referring to ‘them upstairs’. They’re fallible too, something I didn’t expect- occasionally they knock something over, a pile of chips or the glass marker set on the winning roulette number. The most cheerful we met was the man in charge at a cheap poker tournament Champ entered at the Tuscany. When Champ lost at the show with pocket aces one hand, the guy remarked at how remarkable it was.

The gamblers are no better. An old-timer tubed-in to an oxygen tank. Great big people on tiny stools. Bellies hanging over the craps table and all magpie eyes follow down to the table. Beyond the Strip, bail bonds shops hablamos espagnol and wedding chapels display the winners and woes of Vegas, baby.

We stayed in a giant loft downtown with a 17th floor rooftop pool overlooking sin city. Penelope the Chi-wa-waaaaa never did stop barking at us with her inimitable throat-croak bark although the three-wheeler Pappy was friendly enough. Our best hook-up yet, I don’t think we’ll stay anywhere nicer in the States than at Erin’s place. Thanks Erin and Thanks Ian!

3 weeks off my life

French toast stuffed with cream cheese, topped with cinnamon apples

Utah

Rich green vegetation petered out to the desert, deep rose rocks and white streaked red boulders, stunted sagebrush and dust in the air.

We stopped off in Park City, picking up friend from Uni Laci en route and then headed further south to Moab. Arches National Park was spectacular, pocket-size compared with Glacier or Yellowstone and filled with signs advising adequate water intake and warning not to stray from the path and tread on 'cryptobiotic crust' - a substance used to kill superheroes, or seal coffins. Not really. Lichen, fungi and bacteria that really soak up the heat and take years and years to grow and develop into a tiny cluster of black dots. We looked hard but couldn't see any.

Day 2 in Moab and I took myself off to conquer a bike trail called Slickrock. The day was not without it's triumphs and tragedies. In a word, it was grueling. In another word (because one word is never enough, unless you're a poet and have an excellent sense for timing [I'm not, I don't]), it was punishing. To put them together, it was grueling and punishing.

I had about a litre and a half of water and some of that high-power suncream you really have to knead into your pores before you stop looking like a panto ghost and before long I'd tied a white tenugui towel around my head too, to try and deflect the sunshine a little. It was f*ckin hot.

The trail itself undulated over Navajo sandstone with sharp descents pitching you against steep climbs, short and wicked and increasingly impossible to conquer. In the end, I pushed the bike on the up, handlebars up above my head it was so steep. On the down, the nature of the rock, all pocks and divets, curls and odd bobbles and ruts, meant that you had to keep a keen eye on what your tire ran over and far down the trail to see what was next and where to go.

After 4 miles or so the heat got to me and my energy levels started depleting in half-lives. I had to break as much as I cycled, each hill was a real challenge I steadied myself for and the water started running dry. Once I dropped the bottle and it bounced down the rock into a bush. Here I'd seen clumps of black dots that could have only been cryptobiotic crust. I hesitated. And then decided if it was going to be me or the cryptobiotic crust, I knew which I was going to save.

I eventually completed the 10 mile loop to find a sign sprayed on the rock I'd not seen at the beginning. It pointed to me, in the direction I had come from with the word 'EASIER'. It pointed with my direction of travel with the word, 'HARDER'. And I remembered an American I'd spoken briefly with (Me: Tough huh? [with manly frown] HIM: That part was [with deeper manly frown]) who had spread himself out just so, at this very point, and sent me on the harder route. Bastard.

One final triumph, I did manage to convince a pair of Frenchman I was French too with a simple 'Ca va', 'C'est difficle' and 'Mais oui', curtailing the conversation before the game was up with a haughty 'Bonne chance' and speeding off.

Yellowstone National Park

So far it's been roughly a drama a day. Run-ins with scary drunk bar flies in motel bars, cops, guns, sketchy areas and monstrous burritos that threaten to burst my stomach. And we haven't even got to 'Nawlins yet.

But on the way to Yellowstone, disaster struck.

I won't say who. But maybe you can figure it out since most of the traveling companions are in fact inanimate toys (two handmade felt frogs and, recently, a large bobcat puppet). One traveling companion forgot to screw the oil cap back on after we'd diligently topped up the engine greaser. Roughly 300 miles later we discovered this.

Bob the sales assistant in the Auto Parts shop was remarkably understanding when we told him we didn't know what model Nissan Sentra we'd been driving since California. Same situation in England, the guy would laugh in your face and still joke about you, in a supercilious way, for another week.

Yellowstone has an embarrassment of riches of natural freaks, volcano tableland, white scree like dusting of first snow with firs popping out, mud-pots and mud volcanoes, bubbling innocuously like brown rice left on the boil to soupy brown gruel, geysers puffing out water and shooting vapour clouds up tall as you can see from far, cool aquamarine pools and turquoise hot springs crusted orange round the edge by God or scientists know what minerals. And all of it, all of the good stuff was accessible by car.

The wildlife was a gimmee too - elk stroll the streets in tiny Mammoth at the northern end of the park. We saw an adolescent wolf cub picking it's way through the grass, oblivious or indifferent to the traffic that had jerked to a halt and a column up on top of the bank, binoculars and digi vidi cams brandished. Three times we passed bison by the road. Twice we watched rogue bison casually stroll down the road toward oncoming cars. There was some kind of funky swan-goose everywhere and rich vegetation held it all together in the park.

Another thing of note - I ate steak and freedom fries for the first time. Champ paced it all wrong and couldn't finish his, so I heaped shame and embarrassment on him by chomping through a small ice cream (it really wasn't small, portions are at least a size up here) for desert.

Glacier National Park

From Seattle, we drove into the future. It was the longest drive at 650 some miles and by the end of it patience was frayed, cutting words had been uttered, awkward punches thrown, throats clawed at and torn, blood all over the upholstery no deposit coming back now and Champ's limp, lifeless carcass stuffed into the trunk.

Not really. I've been reading Dave Eggers and he's been rubbing off on me. Print fingers and bits of text and paper scraps stuck all over me.

Just a long journey.

But we did drive into the future, over the Continental Divide and into Mountain Time.

Hold on.

...and into Mountain Time.

I like that. I wish everything ran on Mountain Time. It sounds better than Greenwich Mean Time. Champ repeatedly (he likes to tell his stories more than once), repeatedly taught me (his words) something he'd seen on the box, a programme with Stephen Fry where he poured water from a bottle on one side of the Continental Divide and said eventually that water would flow to the Atlantic and then poured it on the other side and said it would flow eventually to the Pacific. Every day's a school day with Champ in tow.

When we hit Montana, we ploughed through valleys hugged by big round boulder looking mountains that took an age to slip from the windscreen, down the chassis and into the wing and the rear view mirror. Houses lost in utter remoteness. More horses than I've seen outside of the Cotswolds. Big sky country.

We got stopped for speeding by a friendly ranger with a gun who allowed me to step down from the vehicle to search for my license in the trunk. Madcap, frantic, Champ was throwing his underwear and dirty shirts on the backseat everywhere and foraging in the glove box, in amongst apple cores wrapped in waste paper for the time being while I flung about maps and flyers and town guides in search of the rental agreement. We must've looked like a right pair of idiots. Then I popped the trunk to reveal even more mess and 2 dozen beer bottles, some empty some full and the ranger asked, Uh, have you boys been drinking this morning? Come on old chap, it's not even noon.

We took Going to the sun road through Glacier National Park. The scenery was vast. As much as I hate those expressions 'In other words' (weren't the first ones clear enough?) and 'Bigger than words' (what does that even mean?!), Glacier was pretty big and very otherly. Huge, expansive Lake McDonald and St. Mary Lake pinch the park around the belt. Along the banks wall-side and down the banks to the valley floor wildflower sprout, purple bunched fireweed and swathes of alpine daisies, Indian paintbrush and so many others of every colour like Eden or a Miyazaki Hayao landscape when put together with a bright blue sky and deep green grass.

Seattle

I get dry skin on my hands sometimes. By the time we reach Seattle, the fluctuations in climate from San Francisco up the coast have started to take their toll. Palm swirls and finger prints, knuckle creases all stand out a little whiter where the moisture has gone. Well, it’s either the climate changes or the diet. Coffee and a cream cheese bagel for breakfast again.

Apparently football isn’t popular in America. They call it soccer here and say things like ‘hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pick-up, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing’ (Tom Weir of USA Today). Now. Tom, I can’t speak about apple pie or pick-ups but I can tell you... we do plenty of Saturday afternoon channel surfing in England too.

Champ and I decided to conduct a mini-survey.

Our 2005 edition of the Lonely Planet Shoestring USA and Canada guide led us to a dead-end when we first arrived looking for our hostel. The hostel had moved. But we did find a queue of Barcelona FC fans outside a posh hotel and a big team bus sat waiting too. Turns out Barcelona had just been in town and demolished the Sounders, Seattle’s team, 4-0.

The Sounders pull the biggest football crowd in the States, at an average 30,204, just a fraction more than the Mariners’ average gate last year (28,761). They say Seattlites like their soccer, so we decided to put it to the test. We’d ask 5 people if they knew when we could catch the next Sounders game.

As it happened, the survey was put to bed with the first interviewee. We asked a valet attendant outside the Space Needle and he said he thought they were out of town let me check I think the next home game is on the 20th, and he confirmed with a piece of paper, the only piece of paper tacked to the wall of his cabin that read ‘Sounders Schedule’ in black marker.

Portland

The coastline was shrouded in mist, a white gloom studded here and there beside the road with pink mauve and purple wildflower. Sea and cliff gave way to a river chase, low banks and rickety jetties all the way. The trees looked rounder. We passed piles of logs and rows of stars and stripes flying in RV resorts.

We stayed in the Hawthorne district of Portland, bussing back and forth across the river to drink in microbreweries downtown and wander. We criss-crossed the suburbs of Hawthorne, all easy chairs on the front porch and lots of colour. Everyone in town seemed to be our age or roundabout and everyone seemed to have a tattoo, or a piercing or at least some kind of funky hair going on.

We bussed back the first night and a man with a waxed moustache that pointed like compass needles sat opposite. Champ was transfixed by the moustache while the man apparently stared at my sandals. He recognised they were from Japan, said he had a friend who had a similar pair and all the while I beamed like a fool for someone had recognised my sandals were from Japan.

Also, I beat Champ 4-1 at pool in Portland.

Redwoods

In many ways, the Redwoods seem like the dream American sight-see.

For one, it's an American experience- as much as the term 'American' can be invested with anything, 'big' seems about the right fit. The Redwoods are big, the biggest around, the biggest on Earth, the tallest living thing on Earth.

(That said, blue whales are pretty darn big too, and I'm not sure if you stood up a blue whale next to a redwood which would reach further into the sky.)

The trees are so tall you have to stretch out over the dash and crane your neck to the very edge of the field of vision of the windscreen, just to grasp the magnitude of their height.

For seconds, it's a car experience. Roads wind through groves thick with these trees, themselves ancient, sacred monuments for native American peoples that lived in the area. You needn't leave your car to enjoy the trees- you can drive to Jedediah Smith National Park, drive through, and drive back home. And here's the part that sealed it for me -
You can even even drive through a tree itelf

For $5, straight through a car-sized hole at base of the tree scored on the inside with technicolour stripes from close scrapes, straight through to the gift shop on the other side.

I took an early morning dip in the Pacific, 20 metres away from the door to our hostel. It was so cold my muscles ached and I didn't shiver when I came out not 3 minutes later, instead tingled all over.

That evening, as the light weakened over our black sand beach, I found myself in the water again. Champ and I played cards, drank beer and ate chips, and then suddenly saw two fins arc through the surf in front of us. They crept closer, dipping under and reappearing in another location, until it seemed they could get no closer. Trousers off, t-shirt soaked and waves towering over, I halved the distance between me and the dolphins before they didn't resurface, scared off to somewhere else. I got out once again, this time shivering.

The road - San Francisco to the Redwoods

The road trip didn't get off to the best of starts.

An early (ish) wake up undone by a 2 and half hour queue for the car was a bit of a buzz-kill. Champ and I tag-team queued, first he left me queuing to get out of the sun (he burns) and next I left Champ queuing to get out of the queue and pick up a coffee two blocks away.

Over the Golden Gate Bridge well into the afternoon and along the most dramatic, epic coastline I've ever seen. Steep cliffs and bluffs and wide open beaches with not even enough people on them to scratch together two teams for a kick-about or pick-up and more sea than I've ever been able to take in at one time.

Further along the road wound up and down and round and we could see eight corners away further down the coast as the landscape itself jutted into the sea just like the map-maker'd drawn it. Windswept trees doubled over away from the sea and crooked telephones poles, mist and fog and cloud cover for the rest of the day until we break through it not thirty minutes later.

San Francisco

In an exercise of Kerouacian fly off the pins and onto the page write-wise this next transmission will come unadulterated and straight up from all I've seen with these good-bye eyes in the fair, foggy city of San-Fran-Cisco.

Dressed in sandals and a scarf the cold hit me off guard, me not the cold dressed in sandals and a scarf and even that's a lie they're not even sandals. Sisters or cousins of sandals but no sandals. I digress.

Autumn came early this summer for me and perpetually the season is in flux back to the verity of it all. 'This is it, This is all' sang a pack of modern day hippies in Washington Square park, themselves dressed in great coats and beanies and playing double bass and banjo and singing while dogs ran unfettered round them.

Every one is after a buck but every one seems to have a skit, from the beggars to the buskers and the bike rent people. I'll take change for verbal abuse said one beggar and another told me he'd tell me where I got my sandals (they're not sandals I thought) but he didn't he just told me they got onto my feet right there in front of me so I gave him a buck for being a wise-ass and bold too but I might have thought him just an ass if I wasn't in America and doing my darnedest to sprekkie the parlez of this place, which is manifold and many.

We've eaten in many places with names- Lori's Diner, Dave's Bar, Jack's Bar... We had burger, pizza, bagel and burrito in that order for our first 4 squares. There haven't been many green vegetables, nor any other colour vegetables.

Thanks be to Andy H and Greg- the burritos in the Mission were mind-blowing and gut-stuffing, and the Marin Headlands on a bike a highlight. Cheers Jarrett for a class night out at Rickshaw Stop, lots of fun. Thanks Ian, staying downtown was way better than it would have been out on Fisherman's Wharf.

Welcome

to America.

Signs and adverts here are a mixture of imperatives and real American colloquialisms, like a Security Council resolution drawn up by a wharf rat. FEDERAL LAW REQUIRES THESE SEATS BE MADE AVAILABLE TO SENIORS beneath the airport transfer boast-board, "BART...and you're there." Whythankyou, yes I am.

at Customs the Visa Waiver form I didn't have when I met the immigration lady demanded baldy, USE ENGLISH, in bold. There's really no fannying around here.

"I apologise" I said "It's ok" she said, "It pays to be polite" I thought when she said "Go and fill out the visa waiver form and join the front of the queue". I'd only have to wait one person more.

I came back. "Didn't I give you my pen? Go back and get my pen" she said. I lost my spot at the front of the queue to another entrant to the United States of America.

Mr Wang on the other side saw me, he said, sent back a couple times by her so decided to help me out. So I gave him the female immigration lady's pen, explaining I'd been instructed to return it post-haste. I also gave him the Bic pen I'd received from Vincent the Bic pen man a week or two back, as interest.

Customs weren't cleared yet though. Not having a print-off of my returning flight e-ticket, I was sent to Secondary, a small room over-spilling with exhausting-looking travellers and wise-cracking immigrations officials. I would have found it tedious and straining after roughly 25 hour of travel via Beijing, if I wasn't delighted to already be fulfilling an American stereotype- isn't it always tough to get into the USA in all the films and books?

40 minutes later, I picked my bags off a baggage trolley a bag-man was loading and moving, to make the last remaining bags more visible. Nick of time, I joked with him.

Endings

10 weeks ago I wrote a list of 10 things to do before I left Japan. I didn't actually have a 10th, but decided to make it 'Meet a yakuza'.

This is the story of how I fulfilled the 10th item on the list, and where it went bad.


Had you going for a sec, no?

I finished up in Japan but I don't want to write anything crass like, 'Every ending is a new beginning', because every ending is shit. I told friends I'd be back to visit, back in 2 or 3 years to stay longer, back for this or that, but really who knows what'll happen. More likely, I'll return to England and fly off on a completely different trajectory to the one plotted in Japan, like an errant firework.

Near the end I had to remind myself why I had written that list of 10 things, and it was purely for closure, so I could walk away with no second thoughts. As it turned out, a big trip to the States immediately after Japan has ensured that, as well as a few goodbyes that went as well as they could be expected to have gone.

Last Friday I said goodbye to many on my ex-frisbee team Iku.

Saturday was goodbye to Mika, Masumi and Sachie at the Sumida River fireworks show.

Sunday I went for dinner with my Yama-G-Shi home-dog Sean and Monday night was one last one with The Faculty, Juri and Ian, in my crib, Nakameguro. After that, I spent four hours at Ran's apartment talking until I had to run to pack to catch an early train to catch a 5.30 bus to the airport.

And here I am now in America.

Soba I'll never forget, Frogs by Mamigaseki River, Outside Family Mart on my last night in Yamagata

A post for Shun

I have met Shun once a week since last September. Recently we had our final meeting. He is my only conversation class student and after I moved from Oimachi to Nakameguro we agreed to meet in Shinagawa (where he works) and Meguro (where I work) alternately.

We're nearly the same age so it's interesting to compare my life and his. He has a good job working in patents at Sony. I had to look up 'patents' to understand what kind of job it is. I work with blocks, alphabet cards and sometimes paints. He has a strong old boy network from school and this April, no longer a junior at work, he received a promotion and became a leader for some new graduate recruits. I am in contact with 2 or 3 people from school. I'm returning to England to find my third job in 3 years and one day he will mature into a true Japanese company man.

Sometimes we talked about work. Sometimes we talked about friends. A lot of the time we talked about girls- Shun goes to 'gokon' match-making parties all the time since he and his girlfriend in his home-town Osaka split up. Slowly I discovered Shun has a very busy social life. Every weekend he goes somewhere or does something: ice-fishing in winter, motor-bike tours to Chiba, crab-fishing or firefly watching in summer.

I enjoyed talking with Shun a lot. Giving my thoughts voice, carefully considering what I wanted to say, ordering things in my mind before I uttered them, delving back into all the parts of language that fascinate me- the mutability and multiplicity of English, the range of expression and idiom- and purely keeping a conversation going for an hour with someone over a coffee really gave me a kick.

Fat men training

Six weeks down and 4 to go and I ticked off one of the last 10 things I want to do in Japan at a stroke.

One wet and anonymous morning last week before work I bustled over to the other side of Tokyo to the shitamachi neighbourhoods of Uguisudani, near Nippori and Ueno. I hadn't ever heard of Uguisudani before I went and had to double check it was on the circular Yamanote line.

The beya was buried in this neighbourhood and looked innocuous enough. I think I actually walked past it, stopped, checked the map and walked back and then noticed the large, dark wooden sliding doors and the name of the place, Musashigawa, in elaborate kanji on a sign beside the door.

Inside there was no mistake. I could hear slaps against thighs and as I crept along the corridor and peeked around a corner, a man mountain greeted me and gestured which way to go. I was the only visitor. Six junior sumo wrestlers were counting off and slapping their thighs, sucking and blowing, raising their legs and dropping them in unison, calling out, 'Ichhh...niiii...san..' One giant's brow was sunk so low his eyebrows had pinched up into twin arches. I realised this was the closest I would ever be to a wrestler in action, beating any tournament I had been to.

They did squats and push-ups and power exercises, shuffled around the ring together like a meat train and criss-crossed the ring swinging imaginary hands and twisting and yanking at thin air with their hands. After that, the bouts began and again and again three junior wrestlers went at each other. You never do hear them call out and grunt on tv, above the roar a full crowd, but here I missed nothing.

The trainers watched on and heckled any mistakes. A man with a thick cauliflower ear arrived to much ceremony and pious greetings from everyone, and sat on 2 zabuton ahead of me.

I had to leave for work at 8.30, just as 6 or 7 Japanese tourists arrived to watch.

Vincent

Tonight I met a man who works for Bic from Normandy and when I asked him what he did he pulled out a classic orange Bic biro and handed it to me! I told him the Bic 4 was my all time favourite pen but he look mystified and asked if it retails in Japan. I guess not.

More visitors

Eli came on a cheap flight for a week during the rainy season. Rain and recession-beating, Tokyo seemed like a whole new city to me as well as her as we got out and explored.

I took her to all the places I want to spend more time. We stared at rainwater gushing down sheer slopes of the Mori Building and ten spinning disco balls at eye level in a dark room in a room of an exhibition.

We found a place by the river I'd previously heard of but not found with a concrete bar and bare pipes wriggling across the ceiling above a wall floor-to-ceiling of eight shelves of books.

Whilst watching the dog pen in Yoyogi park, we talked about the occult and how an ex-boyfriend/magick practitioner adjusted her anahata (heart chakra) to align itself with her vishuddha (throat chakra) somewhere in California. Eli told me all about Amma, who I'd love to hug one day.

There was a night on top of the Tobu department store in a beer garden demolishing the 'moo' course (pictured) and help-yourself-beer and a night when Eli ate a whole, semi-defrosted sashimi tuna steak to herself.

Also, it was refreshing to hear her perspective on Japan and watch her rend apart a piece of sushi with chopstick chopstick like knife and fork and make a meal out of a mouthful.

A weekend in the country

The Run-in

With about 10 weeks left in Japan after nearly 3 years, I've decided to pick 10 things I'd like to do before I go. Here's the run-down, in no particular order:

-Get back into studying Japanese. It's been 4 or 5 months and I hate the feeling of losing something I worked so hard to gain.

-Cook more Japanese food, drink more sake.

-Learn how to make an oshibori cock. Oshibori are the wet towels you get before a meal in a restaurant. Someone I know made a penis out of his once. They even stand up!

-Go on a gokon- a kind of arranged, group date. Never been on one. Who knows, if it goes well it might be easy to...

-Go to a Love Hotel. Never been.

-Get back to Yamagata one more time to say goodbyes.

-Sort out my tax and pension stuff. Kind of dull that one, but there's about a grand a half of pension moneys from the JET programme just waiting for me beyond forms to be filled out hoops to be jumped through.

-Visit a sumo stable. Got a mate who writes about sumo for The Japan Times. Should be a shoe-in.

-Get a notebook and start using it again.

The shrewd amongst you will notice this list of 10 so far numbers 9. That's because I haven't thought of a tenth yet. Suggestions?

China in pictures

A few months back, I found a girl

I wanted to wine and dine and sleep with. I didn't know her surname but that didn't seem to matter. I still don't know it and it definitely doesn't matter now.

The sakura front swept through Japan, all the hats and scarves got put away, I went to Shanghai and came back and those few months passed. Finally I met this girl again last night, in a club in Shibuya I hadn't been to before, nor noticed.

She was with lots of friends and told me immediately she is to leave Japan this summer. Me too I replied. Next she pimped me off on her friend Ai. I think Ai was offended when I couldn't tell her she was pretty.

Earlier, my housemates had said over a can of beer that I am a shokubutsu danshi- that's 'vegetarian boy'. Don't go for the kill. Shy away. Miss the girl you like.

So I found myself asking myself, 'What would a carnivore do?' in that club last night when the girl I liked turned and melted into the crowd after I asked her if she wanted a drink.

A little later, I decided to get out of the club. When will I see you again? she asked and then answered herself, Let's do lunch sometime and patted my head three times, which I hated the more I thought about it. I cycled home in light rain and it felt good.

Dad came

Dad went, this time without a collection of serious facial injuries and punctured lung cartilage (last year there was a fall down a mountain in the dark).

The highlight was a weekend away, driving around the Izu peninsula as our fancy took us. The hills were spotted with orange groves and sakura spread in hybrid, pink and white blushes while the coastline bristled with matsu pine trees. Everyone was friendly, we ate piles and piles of ise ebi (crayfish) and sashimi for breakfast and dinner and we even found a cafe near a famous waterfall run by an avid golf-fan, to Dad's delight.

Izu orange grove, Megurogawa sakura, Room with a view (Shimoda)

Feed the cold and starve the fever

But I've got both!

Moving on from the Meguro Tavern

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.

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.