Nick's Worldwide Wanderings!

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!

Japan is now entering its rainy season, so I thought Id settle down in Tokyo rather than be caught hitchhiking in the pouring rain everyday. Naturally, ever since I made this decision, the weather has been beautiful and sunny. So here I am, in the worlds greatest metropolis, staying with one of my previous host families.

Settling down has allowed me to check the bad habits that grew whilst I travelled. For example, my standards of hygiene have improved greatly since having access to a shower every day, and a reasonable sized towel. When travelling, I only take a Japanese sized towel which is absolutely tiny, and the thought of standing in a shower cubicle padding myself with a damp towel for half an hour is often enough to turn me away from the shower; instead, I would resolve to not stand very close to anyone for the rest of the day.

I have also finally found a way to keep my snacking habits under control. The habit started in Eihei-ji, where the reverence for food and half hour long pre-eating rituals made me lust for certain snack foods, especially anything with the taste of chocolate or sugar, which did not feature very much in the temple food. Upon leaving, I subsequently found myself eating snacks very regularly, wherever I went. My greatest achilles heel was soft serve ice cream - It costs around 300 yen ($3), does nothing at all to fill you up, and tastes absolutely fantastic. In Takayama, they helpfully put out a gigantic plastic replica of soft serve ice cream at every store that sold out - Come on, even smokers dont have to put up with gigantic replica cigarettes when they walk down the street! The Takayama `free samples` didnt do much to help either, and very quickly my snacking habits had a depressing effect on my budget. Now, at my host families house, I have found the perfect solution - free snacks! There are plenty of potato chips, chocolate, ice cream, and also healthy Japanese snacks such as the delicious Inari-Zushi (I might go and eat some now in fact), so I barely spend anything on snacks anymore!

Most importantly though, it is here in Tokyo that I can try to earn some money! Money is a very important nutrient for travellers, and Money Deficiency Syndrome (MDS) can create serious problems. Symptoms include eating the same microwave curry every night for a week, refusing to drink at pubs, standing outside tourist attraction gates looking indecisive, trying to sell off their shoelaces for the best possible price, and general depression.

If there is a job to be found in Japan, Tokyo is the place to find it. And if there is a job to be found in Tokyo, Roppongi Hills is the place to find it. Roppongi Hills is meant to represent Beverly Hills - it is very trendy, very expensive, and crowded with the young, rich and stupid alike.

I do not have any time to waste looking for a job in the traditional way, picking one career path and following it. Rather, I attempt to follow four career paths at once, and see which one ends up working out the best - English teaching, Japanese teaching, Modelling for Fashion/TV, and working in cafes. I wander the trendy streets of Roppongi, spending half my time bowing to restaurant managers, and the other half of my time striking poses for modelling registrations (feeling like a twit, but loving it). I indulge in plentiful snacks on the way in lieu of lunch. The Japanese onomatapoeia for someone eating chips is `Kari Kari`- Yes, they do have a noise for everything!

Settling down also means a chance to enjoy Japanese culture. Tokyo is everything it is cracked up to be - the future here in the present, the quintessence of urbanity, a towering, gleaming megapolis which perfectly defines what life in a city means.

Nobody sleeps; my host mum goes to bed sometime past midnight (I fall asleep around then, I am yet to ever actually see her go to bed!). Everybody works; at one of my modelling interviews, the guy interviewing me is a perfect stereotype for the ridiculously busy Japanese person, and he literally phone hopped from one phone to the other, apologizing to me in between. The climax of this was when the doorbell rang - the next appointment was here, and the interviewer skilfully managed to conduct two interviews at once, at the same time as answering calls on his mobile, landline, and making sure the computer was behaving itself.

Perhaps this sort of lifestyle awaits me in the future; will I end up running down the streets of Tokyo trying to remove my `Outback Cafe`apron so I can be on time for my appointment to smile next to a Coca-Cola bottle? Or (more likely), will I end up sitting around watching Japanese soap-operas on my host families gigantic TV, flipping through classic Manga and haunting the local library? Only time will tell...

In order to leave Takayama, I first have to walk out of town to a good spot for hitchhiking (having blown so much money on sweets and tourist traps in Takayama, I refuse to fork out for the bus), which is a good half an hour away. At first I felt lucky that the weather was so good, but soon the friendly sun becomes a mortal enemy as it rises higher and higher in the sky. It does indeed feel good walking through the countryside though, past thatched roofs and rice paddies...already I am experiencing travelling, and I havent even got my first ride! My first ride coems within about 30 seconds, a young man and woman with a baby, and we drive through the alps to the sound of `Finding Nemo` (the babys favourite movie, without which she becomes very agitated). I get dropped of at Hirayu onsen, near the ropeway, and the scenery is spectacular as I wait with my thumb out on a road where not a single car comes. I wander around town for about 2 hours (in the midday sun with a gigantic pack, not a good idea) looking for a better spot, and naturally I end up going back to exactly the same place in the end. My next lift is a 68 year old removalist coming back from Takayama to his home town of Matsumoto, in Nagano district. At one point I realize that his age means he would have been a child at the conclusion of world war 2, and grew up in the postwar chaos, and I marvel at his kindness in helping out a foreigner in spite of this (many of his age still have a serious grudge against all foreigners). Hitchhiking truly is the greatest form of travel - we soar over turqouise lakes and on the top of giant hydrolectric dams; if only I could have got a photo of the mountain canyons.

When we arrive I am stuck once more, but this time a little closer to my destination. I feel that there is no better way to truly appreciate ones location than by being stuck there, alone and on foot. Here I circumnavigate the city for another half an hour, eating convenience store sushi (one of the best meals I have ever eaten), until I find a perfect place for hitchhiking. A thousand cars a minute going onto a major expressway, I am clearly visible and there are plenty of places to stop - it is the perfect place, except for the fact that not a single car stops. I wait for an hour, with the sun gradually getting lower as I do. I do not think I am asking too much, my sign says `anywhere in the direction of Tokyo`. Eventually a young couple stops, and are going all the way to Tokyo! They are 21 years old (it is the girls 21st birthday, but it is not such a big deal in Japan), and are both studying psychology at university. We talk animatedly for the several hour trip (my duty as a hitchhiker is to keep the driver awake with interesting conversation - after a full day of hitch-hiking it becomes a bit difficult!), and about halfway there Mt.Fuji greets me in the distance. I never, ever get used to the sight of Fuji, sitting so majestically above the cities.

Finally, I arrive at the bustling megapolis that is Shinjuku station. I laugh a very satisfied laugh - I made it!
By the grace of a family, a removalist, and two university students I traversed the mountains and arrived at my destination, and the challenge of getting there has made arriving all the sweeter. I cannot believe just how far I have come in a day:

In the morning I was walking past rice fields in sleepy Takayama.


At noon I was looking over the the Japanese Alps.


In the evening I was standing next to a highway in Nagano district.


As the twilight fades, I am looking over the neon jungle of Shinjuku.