Jun 2008

The two most precious possessions for a traveller are time and money. Both are terrible to run out of.

Having spent an hour in transit, I end up 120 seconds late for my first shift. Much worse than it sounds, being in a culture of impeccible punctuality. Luckily, this work place is quite possibly the most casual in all of Japan, and they let it slide. My mentor, who is known as "Doctor" for some reason, strolls around the place pointing out the various quirks of the shop. We have 19 different varieties of english beer (including "Harry Porter") served in pints and half-pints, fish and chips, salt outside the doors to ward away demons, and a sign writer with a sense of humour. The toilets are split not into the usual "male" and `female", but instead into "happy" and "lonely". If you want two people in the toilet, you have to pay by the minute. Rather than happy hour there is "unhappy hour", whereby 10 dashes of tabasco sauce are added to every drink after 2am. We also have music - 6000 records, CDs and LPs to be exact (what is an LP anyway?).

I pour my first ever pint of beer. I say "omataseishimashita" (sorry to keep you waiting) to customers. Doctor tells me to help myself to lemonade from the tap and leftover bread, and any beer that is not going to be drunk is up for grabs too. Life is sweet! Of course, my time is spent in the much less glamorous end of the bar, the kitchen. I fulfill the classic stereotype of the poor british lad by peeling a few potatoes for making mash potatoes. In Japan, Fish and chips, bangers and mash and chilli con carne are exotic fare indeed, and the Japanese customers indulge in the atmosphere by communicating with gestures and broken English, no matter how many times we assure them we can speak Japanese.

Midnight comes along, and it is time to leave Britian for Japan once more. I rush down to the train station, smiling at the sight of the businessmen and trendy young people milling around the street in a drunken stupor on a Wednesday night. Little do I know that I am about to join them...I misread the train timetable, the last train left one minute ago. Oh the power that the smallest quantity of time can hold...one minute means the different between sleeping on my futon and milling on the street with the drunks of Shibuya, penniless. I have only enough money to get home, and no more, as I did not plan to be spending a night out in Shibuya! Eventually I return to the pub and explain my situation, to which Doctor immediately tries to give me a wad of cash big enough to stay at any luxury hotel. I end up borrowing 2000 yen ($20), which gives me enough left over to grab something to eat as well. I figure my money should be right now, I have enough for a night at the manga cafe, a train home and breakfast if I need it.

My love affair with manga cafes intensifies this night, as I find quite possibly the best manga cafe in Japan. Ordinary manga cafes have high-speed internet, comfortable leather seats and a range of soft drinks and premium coffees. Here I have all that, a collection of DVDs, flavoured milks, a playstation 2 and soft serve ice cream in genuine ice cream cones! The last thing I want to do here is sleep. But sleep I do, breathing in second-hand smoke (I am in the smoking section for some reason), and listening to very un-sleepy Jazz music played over the speakers. A manga cafe is a little bit like a casino - a strange twilight zone where you forget whether it is day or night amid the constant lighting and buzz of activity around you. I wake up in this twilight zone and check my phone...its 4am, back to sleep. I have an alarm set for 6:50am, enough time for me to help myself to a cappuccino, some orange juice and cornflakes before my time expires at 7. I wake up again and check my phone...just a cute little animation with the word `late!`. Huh? 9am?! But...but....but...my alarm?! I resist the temptation to step on my phone, and rush past the cappuccinos and fruit juice to the front counter.

But it is too late, the damage has been done. The value packs at manga cafes are very cheap, but the overtime is not. The first 6 hours cost $12, but for the last two I am up for $8. Normally, this would be cause for a minor grumble. However, with my scant funds, it is much more problematic. I dump my coins on the table and say `here is $4`. He looks at me. I look at him. `and umm....I dont have any more money actually`. Fortunately, they have a deadbeat form for people like me, where you can write out an IOU and run to the bank and back. After writing down my name, address, phone number (They check by ringing it), I feel they are very trusting to allow me out the door without paying. Then they throw in `oh, and if you dont come back soon, we will report you to the police`. Ah, I see...

I dont carry my main ATM card for security reasons, but I do have a backup emergency cash fund for times like these. I feel very clever! Until I go to enter my PIN number...what?! Ok, it must be...What?! I know my third try will be my last, and spend about twenty minutes pacing back and forth in the cold, early morning rain trying to make the number appear in my head. I try one last time...DAMN! The machine does not eat my card fortunately, but refuses to let me try again. I go back to the train station, sell a few old train tickets I never used back to the station (they will give you refunds for anything here), and head back to the manga cafe, defeated. While walking, I interrogate my phone, the source of all my troubles...turns out it was set to `manner mode`. It decided it would not be very good manners to make an alarm noise, and so it emitted a feeble vibration instead.

I empty the entire contents of my wallet out on the counter, down to the last 1 yen coin. He counts it out...You owe us 380 yen, and you have 320 yen. You are still 60 yen short. 60 yen?! Thats 60 cents! 7 minutes of overtime! Once again however, it is the smallest deficit of time, the smallest deficit of money that makes all the difference, and so I remain on the deadbeat register. I could have walked out a free man if I had just not bought that bag of chips yesterday, or if I had woken up 10 minutes earlier...At least the guy sees the humour in the situation, and tries to stop himself laughing as he follows the company line - `If you do not come here by 6 o clock tommorow, we will report you to the...ok, well, there is a possibility that we might report you to the police`.

I walk home with 3 yen in my pocket, huddling in my jacket as rain patters down around me. I want food, I want a drink, and I want a shower. But more importantly, I want to take my entire life savings with me the next time I go anywhere.

I have decided to wait out the rainy season in Tokyo, until August 18th. There are several reasons for the decision; Firstly, rain is wet, and wet travel is depressing (wet hitchhiking even more so). Secondly, travel is expensive, and expensive things make your wallet lighter. My trips around Japan are coming to an end - there are indeed many beautiful locations I have yet to so, but bankbook reality has to intervene at some point. Thirdly, I want to get to know a city, I want to taste more than one gets by just passing through. So, here in Tokyo, I decide to build a new life from scratch.

By the end of the first week I soon realize that work is one of the most important ingredients of a happy life. Though we may loath work and long for the free life, I soon find the free life boring and insubstantial. Without a purpose to work towards, days fly by meaninglessly. Strange though it may seem, I begin to yearn for a job.

How far am I willing to go to get one though? I resolve to present my case as honestly as possible, without covering up the blemishes in my employability. I dont want to give the Gods of Irony any more reason to smite me, and am also concious of my role as a representation of every person outside of Japan. Moreover though, I want my new life to be a simple one, and I do not like the thought of working a job by means of lies, half-truths and hidden facts. I trawl the city, with all its shiny lights, being simple - `Hi my name is Nick, and I am looking. I can speak english, I can speak Japanese, I can wipe tables and benches, and I leave Tokyo on August 18th.`

`Simple` also has the meaning of `Stupid`. My job prospects would be so much better if I changed it to `December 18th`, and many businesses told me this outright. `We would employ you, if you were here longer`. Perhaps I should just not mention it at all, but that would just delay the shock - judging by the colour of my skin I do not live here, and will be going back to my white little home country at some stage, and an employer would be very foolish not to ask when. Job searching is as frustrating as it is anywhere else in the world, with my enquiries resulting in all sorts of responses, from being outright laughed at (one manager actually went and hid in his office for some reason!), to the more promising people who listened intently and said `hmm...well give you a call and see, ok?`, to the people who actually do call back to arrange interviews. For two weeks, I get further and further along the path, give up my job search and sit back and wait for them to call me back, only to hit a dead end and be right back where I started. The Japanese have an onomatapoeia for frustration - `Ira Ira`. Ira Ira Ira Ira Ira Ira Ira.

Ira ir---what?! A job? Hurrah! I am sitting on a comfortable couch in a very well-designed house, teaching English to Vanessa. Vanessa is 5 years old, half-Indian half-Japanese, and likes making stories. The only hard part is getting the stories to end, as she quickly finds any conceivable loophole for some further catastrophe to occur. The king and queen kept having their castle smashed by dragons, and didnt have enough money to buy new furniture, so I tried to help them by having them build a new castle in space. But then, according to Vanessa, `the hugest dinosaur there ever was came and smashed it!`...damn, I should have made it a space-dinosaur proof castle...

Nothing ever comes when you expect it to, and job opportunities wait around a corner to attack me when I am not looking. Now that I am happy to devote all my attention to teaching, I land another job after several unexpected job interviews, and am working at a British-Style pub in Shibuya starting tommorow. My new life in Tokyo has begun!

Made friends. Drank pineapple juice in front of a giant spider. Was served cocktails by a Russian in a suit. Sung songs I didnt know the words to at the top of my voice. Ate kebabs (or kabobs?). Found the cheapest accomodation in Tokyo. Attracted attention in a crowded train station. Stripped in a park. Get ready for the weirdest, craziest, most ridiculous blog entry so far, seperated in two so you dont overdose on all the adventures contained within.

Like most fun adventures, it hid around the corner and jumped out at the last minute to grab me. Soh was touring around town with two American girls from his High School, and they wanted to spend a night out in Roppongi... That may sound very innocent, but in Japan that basically means `lets drink until we cant feel feelings anymore`. Roppongi is not for the reserved or cautious - it is the place to go for a wild night you wont forgot. Lonely Planet writes:

`Roppongi is not part of Japan - it`s a multinational twilight zone that feels like Mardi Gras blew over on a hurricane from New Orleans, where gaijin (foreigners) get together with adventurous locals to boozily schmooze until the first trains at dawn`.

We start the night at 7pm at Geronimo, a shot bar so American and grungy you would swear you were in hillbilly country. Not intent on getting drunk just yet, we pretty much walk in, say`Geronimo!`, down a shot and walk straight back out. Then we get Chinese food. This would have been an ordinary meal, if not for the owners choice of decor - in between the usual fans and paper lanterns there are several sets of genitalia and breasts adorning the walls. The theme has no connection to the food or service whatsoever, and the staff walk around as though they can`t see them. We eat our fried rice and gyouza with a view of the centrepeice, a gong with a gigantic, golden hammer of a peculiar shape (use your imagination), lit up like a christmas tree. The drinking begins afterwards at Roppongi Hills, in front of the rather evil-looking spider sculpture. Having a fair bit of experience behind them, the people I am with know to avoid Roppongis notoriously high priced drinks, and we have a delicious mixture of pineapple juice and rum instead.

The night moves on, and before I know it drinking convenience store liquor on a park bench turns into being served cocktails from a Russian guy in a suit, in a very classy setting indeed. You could mistake it for a high-price restaurant if not for the smoking plastic pipe we are passing around, or the psychedelic looking machine it is connected to. It is called Hooka, basically a giant wad of flavoured tobacco filtered and smoked through a pipe. You don`t actually breathe it into your lungs (I did, it hurt), you just swirl it around in your mouth and enjoy the flavour. We dont pay any extra for our high-class surroundings either - The VIP section is free due to Salsa classes in the regular section.

Having been to America, China and Russia all in the one night, we finally head back to Japan for some good old fashioned Karaoke. Karaoke is not a public affair in Japan, it is conducted in private booths, with are also the perfect place to share a bottle of convenience store vodka around. We drink copious quantities of vodka-juice combo, which slips down your throat like a thief in the night - predictably, with consequences later, but in the calm before the storm we are all having a wonderful time. We bellow out songs together in pub style, and having the lyrics printed on the screen means I can hout out tunes I have never even heard before. We dance standing on the karaoke seats, and for a time that little booth is the best bar in town.

By 1am we are completely spent, and it is time to sort out the difficult matter of accomodation. The last trains left at midnight, my house is a little too far to walk (would probably take a day or so), and we have no plans of repeating our last all-nighter. It is time for one of the quintessential Tokyo experiences - sleeping in a manga cafe! For a mere 1200 yen ($12) I buy a night pack which takes me through till morning, and pass out on a comfy leather seat.

Where am I? I feel terrible. I see a computer screen and a black leather couch. I feel terrible. I need water. Where am I? Ah...manga cafe. The other mid-week clubbers look decidedly more composed than I do in their high heels and clothes that glitter, helping themselves to cappucinnos from the free drink machines. Upon venturing outside, I realize that I am no longer in Roppongi, but have landed back in Shibuya! It seems like fabulous luck though - There is a brand new train line that just opened last week, running all the way from Shibuya to my local station. Nothing complicated, no transfers or line changes, just hop on a train and be whisked home. Nothing could go wrong with that right? Be careful Nick, the Gods of Irony are watching...

Feeling a bit under the weather, I am glad that I am travelling away from Tokyo, rather than towards it. It is 8:30am on a weekday, and the thought of commuter rush-hour is definitely not appealing at the moment. At the train station, I have to wade across what are literally rivers of commuters; if you get caught in one, you have no choice but to move in the same direction they are, and sometimes it becomes physically impossible to get to the other side of a platform until the commuter current subsides. Once I am on my train though, my plan works perfectly - it is almost completely empty, and I can nap blissfully all the way to my station.

Well, not exactly my station...More precisely, some other station I didnt know the name of. It turns out that some trains on the new line dont follow it to the end, but run away onto one of the other branch lines which go directly to the middle of nowhere. After about 5 different stations I had never heard of, I finally decided to get off the train and investigate. After thoroughly cursing the train, the operators of the train, the designers of the train, and anyone else remotely associated with the train company, I try to come up with a way to get home. There is only one way however - backtrack by catching a train in the direction of Tokyo.

There is no blissful napping here, just a train full of commuters. The morning hangover is truly kicking in now, with an occasional stab of pain from a pair of midgets with chainsaws residing in my brain. Being hungover also gives me a superhuman sense of smell - I sense with a whole new depth the oily smell of the engines, the dirty smell of the pigeons on platform, and the sweaty smell of a train full of commuters. It is at this point that my stomach quietly pipes up with `I dont feel so good`. `Be quiet stomach! I drank plenty of water and havent eaten anything for the last 13 hours. There are no remnants of food or alchohol left in you, you should have nothing to complain about!`

I have never been good at resolving disputes with my body parts, and my stomach wins in the end. My heart pounds and my palms turn sweaty as I try to hold on a little longer; there is not a single window or bucket on the train, and the express train I am on doesnt stop very frequently. Finally I land at a station, and hope I might be able to make it down to the toilets about 30m away.

My hopes are in vain, and my stomach finally wins the battle with my brain before I am even halfway there. Covering my mouth works for the first few steps, but quickly becomes futile. At a complete loss for what to do, I simply try not to make a scene...which is pretty much impossible. It would have been the most hilarious thing to watch, a guy walking at an ordinary pace with his hand over his mouth, not even breaking step while lurching all over his clothes. I make it to the bathroom 15 seconds later, but it might as well have been 15 minutes with all the mess I have made. It seems I made a mistake when tallying up the contents of my stomach; I have only a faint memory of eating the doner kebab whose remnants I am now wearing. I try washing it off with water, which turns my clothes from dirty and smelly to wet, dirty and smelly. I wonder whether I could just stay in this bathroom forever, deriving sustainance from the hand soap, but eventually have to face the music - I still have to spend another half an hour on trains and ten minutes walking in order to get back home.

The sheer bizareness of the situation helped somewhat. It seemed so unreal, so impossible that I just floated from one station to the next, ignoring the confused looks of passerbys. From a distance they probably thought it was coffee, but those close enough to smell me probably knew better. After finally making it home, I realize that I cannot exactly enter my host family`s house in this condition. After failing miserably to wash my clothes with mineral water (which is very cold, as I discovered) I am hit with a brilliant idea. Why not just wear my clothes inside out? I check...the reverse side of the fabric is indeed still clean. However, turning ones pants inside out requires you to remove them from your body, and this is a little difficult in the middle of the street. Instead, I go to the local park next door to my house, and hide in the bushes looking like the most suspicious individual in the world while I implement my plan. Later when walking down the street, a shop assistant comes up to me and tells me `your shirt is on inside out`. Inside out? Not `covered in vomit`? It worked!!! Now if only I thought of this BEFORE I paraded in front of half of Tokyo...

I arrive home and wash my clothes and body off in the shower (both are still far from clean). Exhausted, I finally have the opportunity to look back on the events of the night/morning, and I laugh heartily at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

Yep, Roppongi delivers what it promises. An experience you will never forget.

4 am, Monday morning, and the sky is just starting to turn grey. I should be at home sleeping on a futon, but instead I am on the streets of Shibuya...with a microphone in hand...singing Simon & Garfunkle...

Several hours earlier, I had been sitting at home feeling rather bored. Having not done any really stupid for a long long time (no point hitchhiking around Tokyo, the trains are too cheap!), I was itching for another adventure. Luckily, I get in contact with another itchy traveller in Tokyo (Soh, aged 19 from America, who I had met at Takayama) and he proposed a very crazy idea indeed. Without a second thought, I was on the train to Shibuya to meet him.

Nobody told Shibuya it was a Sunday night. The moment I leave the station I am completely overwhelmed as the giant screens attack me from every angle, flashing and glittering with all their heart.

Everything is covered in trendyness, even the weather report on the TV has rap music accompanying it! The famous Shibuya crossing is an amazing sight; crowds gradually build up behind the traffic lights until they are suddenly released, and then suddenly hordes of people start marching towards you, like a huge human wave. The wave is anything but homogenous though - Japanese people and foreign people, goths and cheerleaders, people with blue hair and people with blonde hair, gangsters wearing Wu-Tang and businessmen wearing suits, they all congregate together in a sea of humanity.

I meet up with Soh, and we quickly realize that neither of us knows where a bar is, and neither of us brought a guidebook either. Dont worry, help is at hand! In Japan, nothing ever closes, and this includes bookshops. I feel like a bit of a tool leaving the party-goers on the street to visit the bookshop, until I go inside to find the afforementioned sea of humanity is in there too. What the hell are they doing in a bookshop?! Every aisle has people in it, even the ones selling books on Economics and Political Affairs.

We find the Lonely Planet, find a good bar in Shibuya, and leave the bookshop. Then we realize that neither of us actually thought to check where it was on a map. Damn! So we wander the streets instead, and eventually findourselves a deal that sounds too good to be true. All...you...can...drink? As in, I can drink however much I like?! Of any drink I like?! What about beer? What about sake? What about cocktails? The answer to these questions is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and when they ask if we want to go in, the answer is YES!

It cost 1500 yen ($15) per person for 2 hours. Fortunately for them, we are both sensible people and drink in moderation compared with the people around us. The whole idea of having unlimited free drinks is very, very dangerous. You want a bottle of warm sake? Here you go. You want three beers? Here you go. Part of the deal is that you have to buy some of their very overpriced and very salty food, which is fair enough, and we still walk out a good deal drunker than we would have been anywhere else for that price.

Now, we must wander to find a new location. On the way though, we find a pair of street performers playing on the street, and stop for a chat. The music sounds absolutely beautiful (I think it was actually good music, and not just our warm drunkenness), and naturally we request just about every song we know. Completely forgetting about other bars, we spend the rest of the night here, and some of the morning too!

While we sit on the stone benches watching the sports cars and drunk-ferrying taxis slide past, Soh asks me stupid questions - `Do you like Cat Stevens?`, `Do you like Peter, Paul and Mary?`, and even `Do you like Simon & Garfunkle?`. After swaying on the street for a very very long time listening to the Beatles and generally having the time of our life, me and Soh gradually sneak in on the instruments until we have stolen both the guitar and the microphone. Now it is our turn! His guitar playing is quite good considering the amount that we drank. My singing however, which isnt great even in the soberest of times, leaves a lot to be desired. It reminds me of climbing a wall, when you drag yourself over that last little lip in a messy, unnatural and completely unelegant way.

Having done several renditions of Cat Stevens, and Jeff Buckley`s `Hallelujah`, we finally find our niche with Simon & Garfunkles `Sound of Silence`. At last the original performers reclaim their instruments, and perform a few mellow songs standing in the middle of the footpath, as the grey light of dawn grows and grows.

By 5am it is well and truly morning, and it is time to put our master plan into action. We are off...To Tsukiji!
Tsukiji is a major tourist attraction of Tokyo, the largest fish market in the world. The tuna auctions here are world famous, and plenty of tourist rise at impossible hours to watch them unfold at five thirty in the morning. Neither of us particularly like getting up that early, and so we decided that it would be far easier to just stay up until then!

It is indeed worth the effort. The tuna fish are gigantic, some frozen, some fresh, and they go under the hammer for ridiculous prices; the record so far is $200,000 for a single fish. After being bidded for, they are taken immediately to the work benches to be turned into Japans most illustrious seafood - sashimi (certain cuts of tuna which are eaten raw either by itself or as sushi). Here men work with giant swords and mechanized saws to skillfully cut up fish weighing up to 200kg, which are then passed on as quickly as possible to the wholesalers to be used in restaurants. Tsukiji is the largest wholesale seafood maket in the world, handling on average 2000 tonnes a day, and there are around 400 varieties of seafood sold here; basically, if it lives in the ocean, you can buy it here.

The goal is to get it to the table as fast as possible, and to achieve this, workmen race around in the most annoying, dangerous vehicles known to man. Basically its a standing platform with wheels, and it has the ability to accelerate very quickly, turn very sharply in any direction, and suddenly reverse without notice. There are thousands of them hooning around the market, and as hungover tourists, they are the absolute bane of our existence. After spending an hour or so wandering around the markets being chased by these contraptions, we settle down in a sushi restaurant to see what all the fuss is about. The prices are absolutely ridiculous, but the flavour is indeed completely different. This sashimi has never been frozen or refrigerated, but has simply come out of the ocean, gone under the hammer, been processed and served on my plate all within a few hours. The very apex of the Japanese obsession with freshness, it does indeed taste rather nice.

By the train home we are completely exhausted, and miss our stop by falling asleep in the carriage. By the time I finally make it to the other side of Tokyo, I am sharing the train carriage with businessmen on their way to work. I smile as I review the events in my mind; All you can drink, busking at dawn, tuna auctions and fresh sushi - a very unique adventure indeed!