Tokyo
TOKYO
I’m in TOKYO
how did this happen
Here’s what I wrote on’t plane:
It’s 10 past 6 and the meal service has just finished. My vegetarian dish was tofu and assorted veg – edible, but mostly what you’d expect from airline food.
Said my goodbyes at the station, bought fancy-pants magazine Monocle for its special City Report on Tokyo, which is rather nice to flick through. Heading to London passed without incident. I got through most of this book I started reading yesterday called The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR – not my usual reading fare, but genuinely fascinating in its thesis – advertising means zilch in terms of sales because no one trusts it, but it’s the PR business that has real effect on what people do and buy.
I had an idea for a magazine based around this. Companies would pay me to write articles about them, but it wouldn’t be straight ad copy – it would be objective and non-biased. So say Apple pay me a zillion bucks to write about the new iPhone, I’d print the reality – if it was good, I’d say it was good, if it was shit, I’d say it was shit. And Apple would obviously say “Hey, we’re not paying you to diss our products.” But then I’d say “Aha, but what you are buying is credulity. The public will know I print the truth, so if your product really is good, they’ll be more likely to buy it than standard ad copy.” And there’s a million reasons why that idea would never work. But still – there’s no money in advertising these days.
I turned up to meet Fran and Ella at Heathrow just as Dan appeared, and we milled around a bit waiting for Hattie. So her parents very kindly bought us lunch at Pret, and we sat around having a chat and generally bonding in a way necessary for people you’re about to spend ten months with.
Through to airside, and a spot of shopping as we all realised we needed to buy gifts for our tutors in Japan. I also got some Tanqueray, given that it was £12 and gin is lovely. And with barely time to think about leaving England for ten months we boarded the plane and within seconds of finding our seats squealed with delight. We are right at the front of economy, which means we get all the legroom we want and we aren’t stuck with having to push past people to get to the overhead lockers or use the loo or whatever, and we get little foldy-out TV screens, and JAL postcards, and the cabin crew are so very polite! and it’s incredible to hear the language you have been studying for a year suddenly allI said a simple “Arigato gozaimashita” to one of them and got a “Nihongo ga jozu desu ne!” (no doubt the first of many) and modestly replied “Iie, iie” and it was that glorious spark of “Hey, I can really do this!” which we were all missing, because the grim reality is that after a summer of fallow brains none of us is really prepared for immersion back into Japanese.
And I just got handed a can of Kirin. Delish.
22:56, or 6:56am JT: Aargh can this torment be never ending? We’re just over half way through and I’ve finished a book and watched Star Trek and tried to sleep three times but failed miserably and now I have no option but to wait for the inevitable wake-up at 8am and breakfast and hello jet lag. And hello sore nose. Why does the air have to be so dry and unpleasant? Sleep is impossible, with having to swallow every ten seconds to stop the dry throat from choking you, and when you blow your nose the tissue is black with ducted engine fumes. Oh, and thanks to poor lighting conditions this morning, my already ridiculous sideburns aren’t even even. And you just know it’s going to be hideously light outside, the blazing sun mocking your tired, red eyes. Why can’t flying be more pleasant?
And then we got there and we went through immigration without a hitch and got our baggage and none of us had slept very well, but we came out into the Narita arrivals lounge to meet the contigent of student tutors from TUFS. There was some awkward conversation at first, but then something very strange happened: we started to speak Japanese. Not a lot. Only simple stuff, really. But nevertheless, we were there, in Japan, having conversations with these friendly people in Japanese. That alleviated a lot of my initial worry, i.e. I don’t know enough of the language to hold a conversation with a … Japanese gnat.
We passed through Tokyo in a sleep-deprived haze.
None of it sunk in. I saw the rivers, I saw the concrete mansions, I heard the station jingles and the announcers and all the things I associate with Tokyo, and none of it hit me. “Oh, I stepped off a plane and now I’m in Japan. Hasn’t it always been this way?”
We came to the university, where a light drizzle gloomed over everything. I met my personal tutor Akie, and our group wandered down to the International Halls, which look a bit like this:
We met this Czech fellow called Jan entirely by accident – he’s a big fan of British comedy, which is awesome. And this French guy called Christian pointed us towards the gym, which is a little rusty but usuable – intend to pound the treadmill there on a regular basis. Attracted by music to a performance hall in the same building as the gym, we stood, gawping, at some tremendous ballroom dancing. This place is exciting.
So finally, after impromptu eats and milk I managed to unpack and stick up some posters, and woo, the place feels good. Checken it out.
The entrance hall, decorated with Edward Hopper's classic Nighthawks.
The cosy kitchen nook.
The place where I keep the umbrella I stole. Took.
The hub of the operation.
Bed, with stolen duvet.
Tiny balcony, badly shot.
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