Sons of Loki

It’s weird to think that my room’s still there.

Still the notches I cut in the fridge when slicing carrots. Still the ugly smudge on the window. Still the indentations in the lino from the fridge, right now, as I write these words.

It’s 8:39am in Tokyo right now, so the sun will very firmly be up and the light of dawn will be coming through the left-open curtains.

Packing seemed impossible, but somehow we halved the amount of crap left in the room, then halved it again, then halved it again until it was all either in the bin or in our bags. At some point it went from “stuff everywhere” to “a few things on the desk”. I moved the furniture back to where it had begun, then we scrubbed the floors.

We went to Musashi-sakai to cancel my phone. To my surprise, it was all very simple: three seconds on the computer, my credit card charged with my remaining bill, and I even got to keep my phone, no questions asked. We hunted for lunch and wound up at the nice little gyoza and ramen place. Seems strange that Chinese food has been my consistent favourite throughout the year, but Japanese food is sometimes just too fiddly when all you want is to fill up.

The last thing I packed was my speakers. I wonder if they’re still in the box where I left them downstairs? After a greatest hits package when we were packing, the final song I played – before bundling the speakers into their box and wheeling out the cases – was “Black Out Fall Out”, as hoped. I turned it up. I opened the windows and let the heady beats of youth flood the sports field where a few people were playing baseball. It sounded amazing.

音がない
なきやまない
ずっともうCRY OUT!
I know I know la la la la
もう止まらない!

And for some stupid reason we went the cheap way to Narita, which entailed lugging bags and bags and bags on a Chuo Line train, then a Sobu Line train, then a Keisei Line Local Train, then a Keisei Line Express, then another Express… Hot and sweaty it was, but luckily, it was a quiet Sunday night so the trains were pretty clear. I saw the beautiful towers of Shinjuku under a purple sky for the last time. We crossed the solemn river and left Tokyo for Chiba Prefecture; and the train kept going, and going, and – man, it took forever. I can’t believe how long it seemed to take to get to Narita Airport, but finally we got there … left the terminal and went to the bus stop for the hotel bus. I briefly panicked that we’d missed the last bus, but then it turned out I was reading the chart wrong. We waited as the big coaches for the Hyatt and Toyoko left … and then our titchy little Narita Skycourt Hotel minibus arrived. We squeezed on board and took the ten minute trip to our hotel.

The hotel was pretty cool. It was nothing special, but they had cup noodles and a funny shower and a machine that sold ready meals that you heated up by pulling a drawstring to activate a chemical reaction. We were thinking about staying up all night so that we’d sleep on the plane better, but after a few hours of snapping my Evangelion kit together (oh what a nerd am I) I was getting pretty sleepy, so in the end I got about six hours of sleep.

We had breakfast in the morning. I struggled with the Asahi newspaper. With little to no fanfare, we got the bus to the airport, entered Terminal 2, and checked our bags – despite all the anguish over weight limits and how many bags I could bring on no one, it seemed, gave a damn. (My checked luggage was 32kg, a full 12kg over the JAL limits.)

The others disappeared – Jade and I wandered around for a bit and then found Rob, who had brought his entourage along. Together we checked his bags and paid the date change fee (that’s 15,000 yen I’ll never see again). Jade had to go return her rental phone.


Our group sat around for a bit, not wanting to say our goodbyes quite yet. Rob led people individually away for a final chat – well, that’s Rob for you. I think it was easier for us going home than the others staying – well, as Michael Stipe sang, it’s easier to leave than to be left behind. I played mandolin. We chatted.

Security wasn’t too hard. I got my liquids through, which I was glad about. Our friends waited for us as we queued, and as we went through, and as we reassembled ourselves afterwards, and as long as it took for us to be out of sight entirely, and then that was the end.

Jade and I loaded up on souvenirs, coming back with a huge bag of matcha Kit Kats and assorted booze. They called our rows. We lined up, presented our passports, and with a “Hello” and a “Thank you” we were suddenly on the jetway and in the Triple-Seven and sticking our bags in the overhead storage compartments. I was next to Rob and our friend James (Jade had, somehow, been bumped up to Premium Economy) with a pretty decent window seat.

It occurred to me how my fear of flying was pretty much completely gone now, after fourteen-odd flights. No longer did I quiver when presenting my passport or going through customs. I laughed in the face of turbulence. I sensibly had brought some eye drops and nasal spray on, so desiccating wasn’t a problem even in the dry cabin air. I watched the Wire (aargh like crack it is), Darling wa Gaikokujin (the film adaptation of the popular manga series about a woman whose boyfriend is – shock horror! – a foreigner (is there any country in the world where this is still an issue, except for Japan?) which was sort of funny and sweet and had some nice views of gaijin culture, but was entirely predictable – Jonathan Sherr was great, though – actually let me just take offence at the English character who says how Japanese girls are all easy, and who thinks manga is just for kids, and is really rude to Saori – obviously those people exist in Japan (I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet them) but the character in the film is made out to be an ex-pat, fluent in Japanese, and let me tell you, no real Japan ex-pat could have such disdain and such a rude attitude towards Japan and still be tolerated by his fellows) and kept up the eyedrops and oh shit

It’s Monday. I’m flying back to England, so I get in at 4pm on Monday. Not the next day.

Booked my tickets back from London for Tuesday, didn’t I.

Ah well. Nothing I could do on the plane but catch a little sleep, watch Green Zone (dull, stopped watching it) and Toy Story 2 in Japanese. And take photos.

Brrckkk! We land! We disembark! And fuck, are Brits grumpy. All the Japanese JAL staff smiling and waving and thanking us, and then some grumpy-faced fuck in a florescent jacket looking like he wants to die and like he wants us to die too. No “hello” or “welcome to England” or even a smile, mate. God, I hate London.

You know, only if it had been raining could our reintroduction to Britain have been worse. No one came to pick me and Jade up from the airport, so we haul our baggage through dirty British corridors onto cramped, dirty British trains built in 1976 (christ, JR have been through about six different train classes since then). There’s a train stuck at Piccadilly Circus, please just stick with us for a few minutes. Oh, now there’s another train stuck, seems like someone pulled the emergency brake, we shouldn’t be here long. It’s weird not to hear a Japanese voice with an English translation. It’s weird that it’s just English on all the signs, no Japanese. I am worried about the train tickets and if I can change the date. Well, it shouldn’t be too hard, should it?

“Um, I booked the wrong date and is it possible to maybe change them?” (I know this is my fault, but maybe you could help me out?)
“How much did you pay for your tickets?”
“Um… about eight quid?” (Something like that.)
“Eight quid?”
“Yeah.”
“How much did you pay for your tickets?” (You stupid customer, you no-good pointless waste of my time, give me a straight answer!)
“About eight quid.”
“Well, there’s no point then. I’d have to charge you the cost of today’s tickets minus the price you paid plus a ten pounds admin fee.” (What a fool you are, not knowing this!)
“Oh. Thanks.” (Thanks for nothing, you miserable fuck.)

I walk outside and tell Jade and curse this motherfucking country and its stupid fucking monopoly train lines and tight-assed customer services and I know that if this was Japan the problem would be fucking sorted with a smile and an apology. But what can you fucking do? It’s London. Shit piles up so fast you need wings to stay above it. I go to the ticket machine and deposit sixty quid in National Express East Anglia’s coffers and buy two off-peak singles to Norwich.

Fuck you, National Express East Anglia.

What an awful country, I tap on my iPod. What a load of shit.

Well, we go for burger and chips in Burger King and finally escape awful London. The Gherkin recedes in the window. It’s eight-o-clock and it’s still so bright outside! I listen to music and can’t quite shake the feeling that I’ve finished the novel and now I’m just flipping through the blank pages at the end.

What do I feel? Nothing much. My rage recedes; the oddness of England dampens. Do I miss Japan? I don’t think so. I’ve already forgotten everything I learned there. I have so much to do. Just loads of things to do.

And money. I have no money. I owe a lot of money.

Last time in my exciting tales, I was on a bus coming in to park outside the Subaru Building in West Shinjuku. Will I survive to catch my plane on Monday? Can I finish all the odd jobs I have left to do? Will the mysteries of the Nagano Sword be finally revealed? HERE I TELL ALL

We got back earlier than expected, so Jade and I got back to my room pretty early. She caught some kip; I caught up with the latest happenings on the interwebs and fretted about the impending rent payment and tried to work out how I was going to put the contents of an entire room and ten months of life into one suitcase and two bags.

We took a run to Musashi-sakai for gyoza and ramen with our friend Hime, who was sadly headed back to Korea that day, a few days before we headed home. After goodbyes we headed back to TUFS where I managed to get my rent shit sorted

Sort of. I mean, no one really seemed that bothered that I’d been given a day to pay £500, but I guess I was lucky not to have to pay it there and then. I’ll have to make an international payment which will cost me £7.50 out of me own pocket and christ, I don’t know.

Anyway, I asked myself: if I had one last free night in Tokyo – which I did – where would I go? The answer was, of course, the New York Bar at the Park Hyatt.

Haha! Who would believe that a penniless student loser like myself would sort of become a regular at the New York Bar? Some English tourists asked me for directions, and I was like – oh, it’s just up here, and you take a lift to the sky lobby … It must have been my fifth time, actually, and screw it if a martini costs £12 because there’s no bar more incredible, with that amazing view of Shinjuku and beyond out the window.

I came in shorts. There was a dress code. They sent a man to get me some black trousers to change into. Only in Japan.

Anyway, we had a drink and because we aren’t ridiculously rich (yet) we got out of there and rolled on down to Hanbey in Kichijoij, which is sort of the polar opposite of the New York Bar – noisy, cheap, and completely out of date. We managed to drag Katy out too, had a few beers and yakitori and a frog leg, which I’d actually got used to. And that was it. Last Friday night in Japan.

The next day, I finished off my year abroad report for Leeds. 2,000 words is actually quite a lot, although if Leeds hadn’t asked me to do it I probably would have written a blog post to the same effect anyway. Long story short: had some ups, had some downs, came away with a better understanding of myself. And a better understanding of how I study, too. Jade went out into town for a final wander, but I had no such luxury: after feeling strangely emotional listening to Marisa Stole The Precious Thing I caught the train to Fuchu. Technically I live in Fuchu City, but it’s a lot easier to get to Koganei City from TUFS, and so I’d only been to Fuchu twice: once at the start of the year for administrative procedures, and once in December to go see Avatar.

I was there to cancel my phone and return my health insurance card, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to cancel my phone the next day. So I headed down to City Hall for to settle my national health fees and return the card, as is required.

City Hall.

On a Saturday.

It’s only open weekdays.

So continued the miserable story of my attempt to leave the country.

Thus foiled, I gave up and went for curry one last time, then wandered down to the Fuchu shrine we visited all those months ago. I washed my hands at the trough, wandered inside. It was quiet. Went up to the shrine, tossed a few coins in, awakened the spirits. Asked for a safe trip home. Bowed, turned around, headed back to the modern world.

BOOM! KAPOW! We stumbled out of Asakusa station into a warzone; police marshalling traffic, explosions in the sky, the distant sound of mortars firing, the street streaming with refugees. Except it was the Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival, and we were dressed like this:


You can’t see the bow I tied in Jade’s obi. I was proud of that. It looked pretty bad, but it was the first time I’d even tried tying an obi, and the instructions were all in Japanese, and it may not have looked exactly proper but it was damn good for a first try, I reckon.

The place was packed, and we weren’t even at the actual site. And we were late (due to obi complications). And we were trying to meet up with Satomi, but it dawned that in the streets heaving with people in a neighbourhood neither of us knew, with the phone service overloaded in some parts and impossible to talk on due to GIANT BOOMS, meeting up wouldn’t be possible.

I got quite flustered, but then I realised – hey, しょうがない, and then tried to enjoy what was left of the fireworks. I mean, we couldn’t actually see anything because of the buildings, but I seen fireworks before. What was more exciting was the atmosphere.


There were a lot of girls wearing yukata – the only guys in them were boyfriends and a handful of gaijin like us, dressing up for the night. An old man turned to us and gave us a kind 「かわいい。」, which was sweet. Frenzied street sellers sold takoyaki, screaming 「サンビャク！さんびゃくえん！！」 at festivalgoers. I bought some cus – well, it’s what you do at festivals, right? – and it was delicious. We managed to avoid the crush of people leaving by walking down to JR Asakusabashi station – buying some highballs on the way – and got the train to Ogikubo to see Risako and Rob. What with it being our final night in Tokyo, we decided to go to McDonalds.

The next day, we left. And that’s a story for another day.

So on Monday, I had my final exam, the one that I got a crappy mark on last time and led me to retake the module. I’d done a bit of revision, and I was feeling pretty confident after we finished the paper. As we went to take the oral test on the PCs there seemed to be a technical problem; after a few minutes our teacher just decided to dismiss us all, and with a cheer and a round of applause Integrated Japanese 300 was over.

To the beach! Jade really wanted to hit the beach in Japan, and I sort of did too, what with the beautiful weather we’d been having. No one else was around to come along, unfortunately, so it was just the two of us getting on the Yokosuka line down to Kamakura. We got there about 3:30pm, so I assumed the beach would be full, but thankfully it wasn’t too bad; a smattering of youths and worryingly tattooed fellows, plus surfers. Lots of surfers.

The tourists come to Kamakura for the temples and giant Buddha, as what I have previously writ, but the surfers come for the waves generated by the cove. So it’s not really a beach to go paddle in.

So we bought loads of food and found a spot and got sand everywhere and in our valuable electronics (hence the lack of photos, not willing to get my camera covered in sand – luckily I wasn’t stupid enough to bring my laptop), then rented an inflatable alligator and hit the waves. Big, big waves. Bobbed around, had a swim, dodged surfers, tried forward rolls as the waves rushed towards us. Great fun. We bought watermelons (which the big ass ravens devoured happily when we were in the water). A guy got buried and a dog sniffed at him. A group of young people played that game where you blindfold someone and hit a watermelon (something like that, it’s a Japanese tradition). As the sun went down, I dug a trench and stared up at the sky. Bliss.

The next day, we got our results. I passed with 80/90 or something, having made some silly mistakes, and my grade for the year came to a B, which …
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really care. I realised very soon during my year abroad that I wouldn’t be learning anything of value from classroom work, so I don’t know what that mark means. It was my second time round, so I probably should have done better. But I feel like for the amount of work I put in, it was a pretty good mark. In the end, all I really care about is actual language ability, not marks.

So, that was the end. We went out in the afternoon to Nakano Broadway, where I picked up a few souvenirs and presents, then went out that night to Shinjuku with Rob and a few friends for monjayaki, where I astonished all with my amazing monjayaki skills (having done it, um, once before).

That night we would be taking a night bus to Osaka, so we had an hour to kill. I fancied a bit of final karaoke (it did turn out to be the last karaoke I went to in Japan) so we went to the cool-looking Karaoke-Kan on the corner near the Shinjuku Center Building and sang a bit of Kimura Kaela and Utada Hikaru, before stocking up for the journey and catching the Willer Travel coach.

The journey was a little hellish. I’d gone for the Standard coach, whereas before I think I’d splashed out on the slightly nicer one with better seats, so sleeping was pretty much impossible. I tried listening to Brian Eno’s Apollo and remember thinking something about how ambient music soaks up the mood and feeling of whatever situation you’ve listened to it in. Something like that.

Jade was a little worse for wear from the trip, and when we arrived in Osaka at oh-dark-hundred I wasn’t feeling fantastic either. Luckily, shortly before either of us crumbled and died we found the one damn cafe open at 8:30am and got some coffee, and after that we felt more up to tackling the day.

For some reason or other we decided to go hit Kobe, so off we went to get the Hankyu line, which comes in ornate varnished mahogany.

Kobe was nice. The last time I went it was pissing it down, so it was nice to explore the old foreigners’ district of Kitano in the sunshine.



Then we took a wander down to the port. I really wanted to visit the Maritime Museum one more time, but time was not on our side, alas.

For lunch, what else but…

Kobe beef?
We found a little restaurant above a butchers that did sukiyaki and something else (a kind of shabu shabu?) for 1,500 yen, which is well cheap for Kobe beef. Suspiciously cheap, actually, but it looked like a classy place.

After that we got back to Osaka and visited the lovely castle and environs. At the nearby stadium crowds of fans waited for some talentless boy band, waving those damn fans. Man, I’d hate to be a girl in Japan.

I fancied heading back to the Osaka Aquarium I’d been to in 2007. I was slightly worried about how long we’d have, but seeing as it was summer it was open until 8pm, and we also lucked out with the After 5 Pair Ticket which meant it was only 1,700 yen each, not 2,000.

It’s a really good aquarium, with some fascinating creatures and habitats there.



They had interactive audio guides supplied in the form of downloadable DS software, which meant just switching on your DS and connecting to the aquarium’s wi-fi. Neat.

As the aquarium closed we were politely chased out. Consequently, we headed down to Dotonbori, the big canal that runs through downtown Osaka (and gives the place a very different feel to Tokyo). I wanted to get some photos for my visual novel Yoshida, it being set partly in the section of the canal where the infamous events of one night in 1985 took place.

After getting photos of the amazing Glico man (and being tutted at by some snotty-nosed local!) we found some little eatery for curry rice and wound up back at the Capsule Hotel Asahiplaza for a well-deserved sleep. I had a nice soak in the baths, struggled through a few pages of Kacho Shima Kosaku, then retired to my capsule for the night.

The next day, we hit Kyoto! Ah, Kyoto … First time I visited, in 2007 I spent several hours straight off the shinkansen lugging all my worldly goods around for the best part of an evening, searching for a hotel and eventually winding up in a capsule somewhere. The key lesson being, of course, book your accommodation in advance. Anyway, while I love Tokyo, and sort of like Osaka, Kyoto’s always been a bit more complicated.

My main goal was to visit the famous Kinkakuji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but first we went to Daitokuji. Well, I think we did. It was pouring down with rain that cold morning, and I was about to turn back in wet misery when we found the tiny entrance to a group of five Zen gardens. The woman on the door was very kind, bringing us towels to dry our wet feet. Well, kind, or just not interested in having wet foreigners drip over everything, which is certainly understandable.

So, Zen.

I like Zen. As a school of philosophy, it really seems to hit the nail on the head.

It occurred to me that with these rock gardens, the monks had captured the uncapturable, from a ripple in a pond to a rolling landscape – all frozen in moss and rock and gravel.

I was really looking forward to Kinkakuji. Since I read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (and seen part of Mishima) I wanted to see the beauty that obsessed Mishima and drove one young monk to burn the place down in 1950 because true art, as everyone knows, should burn down at least once.

I dunno, it was sort of a letdown.

It’s just a gold box. A tacky gold box. Surrounded by tourists.

We went for matcha and cake, though, which was nice. I’ve never had proper matcha before, and it was delicious. Hot and bittersweet and frothy.

Then Fushima Inari, again, and the beautiful little outlook over Kyoto, again… No cat this time, though.

Back to downtown Kyoto, and we stop for a coffee. I get a phone call asking me to pay 70,800 yen by tomorrow. It appears that TUFS have failed to take my rent out of my account for the past four months. Or I’ve failed to pay them for four months but they haven’t told me. Either way, I have a day to pay. This is ridiculous. This is straight-up bullshit. They’ve been nothing but helpful for ten months and then they totally screw me over.

I swallow my rage and we go in search of old Gion.

I don’t know if we found it or not, but we had a fun wander around Kyoto, hitting Book Off and dodging past the dodgier places. Rain fell, occasionally. No geisha, but we did find some of the old timey wooden houses, which was nice. And so once again I left Kyoto, sort of forgiving it for screwing us over in the morning. We went to the train station, found the one cafe left open for a quick coffee (feeling like an inconvenience on the staff the entire time), drank lots of water and sat waiting for the bus with all the young peeps and backpackers. It made me smile to realise that while the rich and the old ride the shinkansen, the young and the poor get the nightbus. Solidarity of the youth, innit.

Some asshole was sleeping in our reserved seats. The old me would have sat somewhere else, but the new me was very angry with TUFS, and slightly angry at this man. I talked to the driver. The driver talked to the 邪魔. He moved. We sat down, and I swear he glared at me for ten minutes, but I was probably imagining it. The trip back to Shinjuku was a lot more comfortable, that time.

The weekend before last – christ, the weekend before last! – Jade and I took a trip out to Hakone, one of my favourite little destinations easily reached from Tokyo.

I’d been ill most of the week before, and I prayed it wouldn’t spread into the next week, my final week in Japan. For some reason we went out on Friday night and slept outside the Nomura building and then, when a guard moved us on, outside Shinjuku Keio station waiting for the last train (always a fun experience), so we only got to Hakone at 4pm-ish, leaving no time for sightseeing. Still, we had a wander about Hakone in the beautiful late afternoon/early evening.

Down by the river we joined a few other sightseeings in dipping our feet in the water and watching fish flutter past. It was a very peaceful scene.

Back to the ever-excellent Fuji-Hakone Guesthouse where I met up with Yuuka, one of the staff who I knew from last time. I guess I’m sort of getting to be a regular there now, this being my fourth time back there.

Down to the Susuki Fields, just up the road, where they filmed a few scenes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. (I kid, but this particular field was the inspiration for the place where Kensuke and Shinji camp out in an early episode.)

Then ramen and gyoza at China House, this reasonably-priced restaurant just down the road, and back to the guesthouse for those unsurpassable Hakone hot spring onsen. The heat! The calm! The aroma of the volcanic waters! I realised it would be the last time I visited an onsen for a long time.

After a great night’s sleep on the guesthouse’s futons, Jade and I had breakfast, said our goodbyes to Yuuka and the staff (promising to come back when we were able), and set off for a day in beautiful Hakone.

I wanted to find the point in that episode of Evangelion where Misato and Shinji look out from the heights of Mt Kintoki, but the closest the bus got us was a golf course, and in the heat of the day I didn’t really feel like going for a hike.


So we got the bus back to Togendai, boat across the lake to Moto-Hakone. All very familiar, but still fun. Seeing as it was summer and I wasn’t on my own, it seemed like I finally had the chance to do something I always enjoy doing: get a boat.

“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”


It was fun, though a pedalo can’t exactly hit a great speed, and there were a few hairy moments where we got caught up in the wake of one of the big tourist boats and wobbled precariously with several hundred pounds worth of camera equipment around our necks. Nevertheless, somehow we survived and got back to dry land, heading up to the lakeside torii and the nearby shrine.



Then the boat back across Ashinoko up to Togendai, at the north end of the lake.

君が代は
千代に八千代に
さざれ石の
いわおとなりて
こけの生すまで

At Owakudani, we bought the famous black eggs that add five years to your life, and I scoffled a few down, having eaten enough there to give me a few hundred years of extra living (if the cholesterol doesn’t get me first). Fuji was invisible, regrettably.

I bought a folding screen of the cover of Pinkerton Hiroshige’s Night Snow at Kambara. As we went to get the ropeway back down to Gora, the tannoy thanked us for our continued patronage. And that’s when I realised: four times, I’ve been there. Hakone’s not the prettiest place in the world, but somehow it just feels right. It’s far enough from Tokyo to be out of the smog and the bustle, but close enough to be convenient; there’s always something different each time you go, whether it’s ice and rain or sun and clear skies. I really like it there. I hope to head back there soon enough.

A sweet man just came by from Tokyo Electric for me to pay my bill (only 1,200 yen, which is nice). Packing went a lot easier when I saw that I can take my mandolin as carry-on luggage. I’ve thrown loads of stuff out, though it still seems to be all here. I’m moving out.

I’d be lying if I said I felt desperately sad. It bothers me that I’m not bothered by leaving, because the truth is that after about three days back at home the truth is going to sink in and I will be a miserable wreck. I’m just looking forward to the confusing and complex task of “leaving Japan” being over, from a practical standpoint. It’s really complicated! There are forms! Stuff to return! I have to take photos and say goodbye to people! I haven’t had a second of downtime (except when I got stuck on Awkward Family Photos) and writing long blog posts or uploading photos seems out of the question.

But I couldn’t go without putting a little thing up. It seems weird that I will never, ever see this room again. It’s been my home for ten months. Not much of any interest happened here, but I’ll miss the nasty yellow curtains, the odd humidity of the toilet room, the lovely green forest of moss and little plants that has grown in the run-off from the air-con and over my discarded sock.

I plan to make the last song I play in my room “Black Out Fall Out” (the later compilation album edition which is a magnitude more epic). I remember when Polysics ended their live show with it. It was beautiful.

Technically, I leave Tokyo today (Narita is in Chiba-ken). This is sad. If there’s one thing I’ve confirmed from this year, it’s that this city…

this city is the best in the world.

I’ve decided I’ll have plenty of time to blog when I get home, and I have plenty of stuff to be getting on with right now, so I’m gonna hold off on reporting on Hakone, Kamakura, and Kansai (blimey, we have been around) until I get home.

Home. Christ. Today, tomorrow, Sunday, and then home.

I don’t want to leave, but I do want this long, drawn-out procedure of leaving to be done with.

So the student admin office called. They say I haven’t been paying rent for the past four months and have decided to wait until I have four days left in the country and a shitload of things to do and a mountain of fees and bills to pay to tell me that I owe them 60,000 yen or so. And they give me a day’s notice.

So I guess I might squeeze in a blog post over the weekend. You know, I want to enjoy my last few days here, but more than anything I want to chillax for a bit.

but it’s non-stop until Tuesday evening.

The Wire. Hell, what can I say about The Wire which hasn’t already been said a thousand times on a thousand blogs? It was always one of those series which I meant to watch until I actually got around to watching it… and that was it, had no choice but to burn through the first series in a week. It’s worse than crack, but it’s undoubtedly the best television series ever made. No question.

So apart from spending my last few days in Japan (Day 294/307 – 12 days left) watching a series I can watch anywhere, what have I been up to since climbing that monster-ass Fuji?

The day after we got back, I said goodbye to my dear friend and renowned jazz trumpeter Miles Davies, who is even as I write far away in gloomy Brum serving up creamy desserts to Cadbury’s World patrons, or whatever it is he does.

Then I’m not sure what I did next. Like McNulty and co., I am reduced to sifting through photographs, old text messages, and Facebook updates to try to undercover the story of what happened.

The Sunday after, we visited Harajuku … or we tried to. Yeah, been here ten months, and I still forget that Harajuku is north of Shibuya up Meiji-dori, not south. So we walked for a long time, wound up in Ebisu tired and confused, and eventually just got the Yamanote Line to Harajuku, which we should have done in the first place. We found a cool little shop called Chicago that sells all kinds of second-hand clothing, including cheap kimonos. I agonised for about ten seconds before setting 7,000 yen down on a supremely manly brown silk kimono, juban (undershirt), obi (belt) and happi (overcoat used for festivals). Now I have one, I obviously need to hit a few summer matsuri to show the thing off. I’m hoping the Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival – on the very final Saturday before we fly out on Monday – will be a beautiful experience.

On Wednesday, I packed Jade off to a wicked little guesthouse/hotel in Koenji- dirt cheap and got everything you need. There’s even a Tesco’s nearby, which proves that Tesco have got stores everywhere. (Seriously, never seen one in Japan before.)

We had a wander around the cosy little district around there, which is a world away from the dispassionate bulk of Shinjuku or the straight-laced streets of Fuchu. Koenji is sort of old and dirty, but vibrant and beautiful at the same time. We headed a little way down the line to find the Asagaya Art College.

We also did some good planning for the final few weeks here. It will be hard to cram everything in, but I want to try. I’m going to attempt a jaunt to Osaka/Kyoto in the final week via night bus and capsule hotel, which should be a lark.

I had a big old clear out in preparation for leaving, dumping all these old receipts and worksheets I had no use for. Felt good.

Friday I met Rob, Hime, and Rob’s デカイ Russian friend Alex for lunch at this funky Russian restaurant in Kichijoji. Funnily enough, it’s the second Russian restaurant I’ve been to, but the first time I’ve had Russian cuisine.

Ah, it was so good. Beetroot soup, sweet and warming; a Cornish pasty-like side, and a kind of salmon omelette. Really tasty. After that, karaoke with a few more friends, and finally pizza at Shakey’s, a few beers, and MANLY CONVERSATION.

Saturday we’d planned to visit the Oedo Onsen Monogatari, but lack of persons postponed that to Sunday. Instead, Jade and I visited Tokyo Dome City to try and find where these cosplayers be at. Unfortunately, garishly-dressed fans were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the place was packed with air-headed KAT-TUN fans, killing time until his (edit: oh wait its a band lol) big concert at the Dome that night, taking photos and waving fans (the kind you cool yourself down with, not people) with pictures of them pretty-boys on them. I felt sorry for the handful of boyfriends dragged along.

It was kinda cool to be back in that area. My first destination in Tokyo way back in 2007 was Jimbocho – I have a strong memory of going for a walk on my first night and ending up at the Dome late at night, playing Taiko no Tatsujin alone. So long ago. Plus, I got to see the big LaQua roller coaster I rode all that time ago, in my last week in Tokyo.

Almost bought a Hanshin Tigers jersey at the baseball store. (I have a secret love for the Tigers because they never, ever win. Funnily enough, a few days later I sat next to a Tigers fan decked out in every bit of merchandise imaginable on the Metro.)


Later we met up with our old friend Yudai for a few drinks in an izakaya – Jade’s introduction to these wonderful little places. After Rob and I had downed a few massive pitchers of beer, we met up with Risako and hit a brand-new Karaoke-Kan for a few songs. They had a great selection of songs, including – a first! – Pizzicato Five’s Twiggy-Twiggy, my first introduction to j-pop years and years ago. Shame we only had an hour there.

On Sunday, we took the train out to Odaiba over the Rainbow Bridge (again!) to visit the old Oedo Onsen, a kind of theme-park-hot-baths complex near the Telecom Center. We met up with Yudai and Kaz, ate some chicken at the Miraikan Lotteria, then met Risako and Rob to hit the onsen.
We went before in October, so it’s nice to bookend our trip there. Hit the hot baths – hit the sauna – hit the cold, cold bath. Ate ramen. I got ice cream. It’s a really nice place, and if you go after 6pm, it’s only 1,600 yen. Plus you get a faux-Edo period street full of people clattering about in yukata, which is cheesy fun.

Odaiba’s further than I thought. I’d missed the last train on the Seibu Line, so Jade and I walked from Higashi-Koganei, through the empty streets of Koganei back to Tama station. (Can you imagine walking through the dark streets of a British city at 1am and not running into something? Eh, maybe I’m just paranoid.) It was strangely beautiful, getting somewhat lost and then running across the enormous metal pylons of the Seibu Tamagawa Line, like disturbing Cold War brainwashing antennas in the middle of a entirely dead suburb of Tokyo.

Can you tell I am beginning to tire of this blog post? I need another fix of the Wire, but I don’t want to start the season 2 shit straight off … gotta space that shit out, bro.

Yesterday was Umi no Hi (Sea Day), another wonderful public holiday in Japan where everyone goes to the beach. Or goes to Harajuku to hit the sales (I roughly estimate a third of pedestrians were carrying a bag from Laforet – no lie).

It was a beautifully clear day, and we wanted to hit a few of the art galleries around the Omotesando area.

Sadly, one was closed for the holiday, and another was 1,000 yen for entry, so we saved our money and went to see exhibition of Hokusai’s famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei (富嶽三十六景)) at the Oota woodcut gallery. Hard to believe a gallery of such classically Japanese art is squirreled away behind a Softbank in ultra-hip Harajuku, but there’s that mix of ancient-and-modern that lazy travel journalists like to claim Japan is uniquely comprised of every single time they do a piece on Japan. (Unique my ass. Go to any British city and see a branch of Tescos next to a centuries-old cathedral, or a similar thing in any country in the world.)

Anyway, as a guy who owns a (very beat-up) jumbo A1-size poster of the famous Great Wave of Kanagawa, it was strange to see the real thing – a tiny square of thin paper with that incredible curve, the sprawling tentacles of foam, the crescent of the fishermen’s boat.

Ah, but is it the “real thing” at all? It’s a woodblock print, and thousands were made. There’s probably some point in there about what constitutes art, but it’s getting late and I think the point here is obvious.

As always, there’s the one everybody thinks of, but some of the less seen prints are more splendid. The thing about the woodblock printing technique is that the paper becomes 3D – gradients are infinitely smooth, characters pop out, fabrics are decorated with actually embossed patterns. They’re nothing short of breathtaking.

It occurred to me a nice little place I could show Jade – the Harajuku Chamamo Cat Cafe – so we went up to the little room on the fifth floor I visited some months ago and bothered the cats for an hour. It’s so relaxing, just watching them curled up. I had a chat with the owner in pretty decent Japanese, which was fun.

A long walk getting lost in Yoyogi Park in the still-hot twilight led me to feeling a tad heat-struck. I was feeling dog-tired by the time I stumbled back to my room, and I still don’t feel great.

It’s got to the point where I really don’t have any time left to do anything. I want to hit a festival this weekend (after we visit Hakone), and go to the beach, and see Osaka, and say goodbye to people, and pack, and finish this translation I’m doing, and post things home, and I’m still not sure if I can do it all in a measly twelve days. But … I guess I must persevere.

So, until next time, here’s what we all came to see: beautiful puddycats.

Mount Fuji (富士山) is a 3,776m stratovolcano, the highest point in Japan. On Thursday, we climbed it.
Download my Fuji .kmz for Google Earth

Jade and I awoke at 3:45am, after hardly any sleep, and cycled to Rob’s house bright and early to meet him and Kanako. Jade had borrowed Ella’s bike, and halfway there I was struck by the terrifying thought of being stopped by a cop and having to explain ourselves and missing the train and not getting to climb Fuji and everything going horribly wrong. Luckily, it didn’t happen. One of the TUFS security guards greeted us with a “good morning! It’s pretty early.”
“Yup,” I said. “We’re climbing Fuji today.”
“Ah. Take care.”


At Musashi-Koganei station, we met Tatsuya on a Takao-bound Chuo-line train. At Tachikawa we met Rei and Risako, and the Fellowship was duly assembled.

From left to right: Rob, Kanako, Risako, Tatsuya, Rei, Jade.

As the almost-empty train sped through the countryside to Otsuki, beautiful sunlight streamed through the windows. At Otsuki we changed to the Fujikyu express line, which was charmingly old-fashioned: you had to buy a ticket from an actual conductor on board the train! No IC cards out here.

Everyone else slept, but I found I couldn’t. The train drifted higher, until the land hit the sky and clouds started to stream around the mountains. I felt the anticipation when I spotted the summit of Fuji appear from a veil of clouds.

At Kawaguchiko, we changed to a bus headed for Kawaguchiko 5th Station, the trailhead for the Yoshida Trail and the beginning of our ascent…
Read more…

It’s been a busy few weeks.

Before I write about the epic struggle of climbing Mt Fuji, I feel like I need to keep up with the stuff I’ve been doing in the last month. This will mostly be an dispassionate list of events, but the Fuji post will hopefully be a doozy.

So … On Tuesday 29th, back in June, I went to Sweets Paradise – a Japan staple, an all-you-can-eat cake bar. I mean, loads of cake. And ice cream. As if filling up on cake wasn’t bad enough, the following day we – Hime, Katy, Fran, Ella, Miles and I – went to Yokohama to visit Chinatown.

Yokohama is part of the enormous Chiba-Tokyo-Yokohama-Kawasaki conurbation, about 30 minutes south of Shinjuku by the Shonan-Shinjuku Line, and it’s quite famous for its Chinatown. It was a pretty surreal experience – it felt like London’s Chinatown, so in the end the overall feeling was something like having left Japan to visit London to visit Soho to visit Chinatown. Except, it was … a more real Chinatown?

We ate Chinese food – of course, there they just call it food – and it was pretty tasty, but … In all honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Chinese Chinese food. The tastes are a little too weird. I much prefer British Chinese food, as MSG- and fat-laden as it is. Still, the spring rolls and chicken soup was delish.

Then we took a walk down to the harbour, which was beautiful.

And then finally, a cup of “Relax Blend” tea in a charming little cafe. One of those tea/coffee houses that Japan does so well.

The day after that, I went on a ROAD TRIP. Rob’s been teaching English to this cool old dude called Abeshima-san, and he took us (Rob, Kanako and me) off to Fuji go-ko (Fuji Five Lakes), a popular tourist area to the north of Fuji, about two hours west of Tokyo. It was, as expected, very pretty, very picturesque.

We ate zaru soba, the dish of cold noodles served on a bamboo tray with a pot of sauce. I’d never eaten it before because it looked a bit … like cold, tasteless noodles, but my word, was it tasty! You pick up the noodles and dip them in the thin sauce, and they go down a treat. Later, we tried grass mochi, which were surprisingly nice.

We went to a few tourist-trappy places, like an expensive art museum (admittedly with some beautiful kimono dyed by a man called Itchiku Kubota) and the museum of – uh – music boxes.

But the coolest bit was the Bat Cave, a small cave in the infamous forest of Aokigahara (reputedly haunted, and sadly a top spot for suicides).

I love caves, but I’ve only been to a handful – the best being the famous Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. I’d really like to get into it properly – there’s something about clambering around in the pristine atmosphere of a rocky hollow somewhere deep underground.

OH SHIT WHAT IS THAT

Finally, we skipped stones down by the smallest of the lakes (the name of which escapes me).

The day after that (told you I was busy!) Rob, Kaz and I went to a little ramen shop called Ramen Jiro in Koganei to try out what I was told was a big, big bowl of ramen. I was pretty hungry, so I thought I’d get 大 (big) size rather than 小 (small), but Kaz warned me that “small” didn’t mean “small” here.

There was a big queue for such a tiny little ramen shop, but then ramen shops are serious business in Japan. After a while, we got seats and I got my bowl of ramen.

It was … Picture a big bowl of ramen. Then add the contents of another two bowls on top, until you have a massive tower of beansprouts, cabbage, and the juiciest, most tender pork you’ve ever tasted, layered on top of noodles and broth and – oh god, it was huge. I ate, and ate, and ate, and after thirty minutes I had a bowl of ramen that was still as big as the biggest portion you’d get anywhere else. So I ate some more. And I finished it – but only just.

After that, we went to the park with some drinks to just chill out. We chatted shit. Some cops stopped us because they thought we two big gaijin were menacing poor Kaz, but then we had a nice chat and everything was alright. (Ahaha, cops are so racist.) Our friend Risako turned out, and we stayed out in the park until dawn, just chatting and drinking. (Try doing that in England without getting stabbed or mugged.)

The day after, I went to Narita to pick up Jade, my old friend from Japanese class in Norwich. It’s her second trip to Japan after a week on an exchange trip to an art university in Asagaya, and she’s hoping to pick up a few contacts here for exhibitions and such. We went for delicious okonomiyaki at this little place near Tobitakyu station (seriously, what is it with Japan and tiny little restaurants that make the best food?). Sunday, we hit up my old hometown, Uguisudani (which hadn’t changed a bit since November) and walked through Ueno and the Ameyoko street market down to Akihabara, the place I will one day die in misery.

Monday we went for all-you-can-eat curry in Shinjuku (Tokyo seems to have as many curry houses as Britain, and the standard is generally pretty high) with Rob and a few friends, then stopped for coffee in Asagaya with Kanako and Risako as the rain battered the windows. Tuesday was my friend Miles’s leaving party – all-you-can-eat pizza (my stomach groans) and then karaoke. Man, I will miss karaoke.

Then Wednesday, Jade and I went with my friend Deky to see the Pokemon Store in Hamamatsucho. It was pretty cool, though largely just a standard merchandise store. No Nurse Joys or omnipresent Chanseys, though they did have the Pokemon Centre music. On. Continuous. Loop.


Then we went to the Miraikan, the MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE! in Odaiba. They had an exhibition of Doraemon and the real-life parallels in modern science. I love that kind of stuff.

One of the coolest exhibits was an actual honest-to-god Invisibility Cloak. It only worked from exactly the right angle (behind the projector that projected an image on to a cloak covered in retro-reflective material) but man, it looked cool.

Then we tackled another marvel of modern science, the Lotteria 10-story Tower Cheese Burger (タワーチーズバーガー). I saw this on a poster and thought it was just a photoshopped joke, but then I saw it on the menu, and knew I would try it one day.

It’s kind of disappointing.

It’s just a big, salty, cheesy burger with ten layers. We split it between us, and it was alright, I guess. Only 990 yen, too.

We saw the amazing razor-sharp edge of enormous ad agency Dentsu’s HQ (a clever optical illusion – the path leading up to it is precisely the angle of the (invisible) wall around the edge) in rainy Minato-ku.

Finally, we went down to Roppongi Hills (like, my fourth time?) to go up to their observation deck. I’ve been up the Tokyo Metropolitan Towers deck so often, it was nice to see a different perspective.


Man, I cannot get over this city.

The day after, we climbed Fuji.

I cycled along Route 14 on my way back from Kichijoji. I can’t remember what I was listening to, but it seemed apt. I passed glowing family restaurants in the dark, catching a vignette of a store manager standing, alone, keeping a midnight vigil over rows of empty tables. Brief traffic flashes past. The night air whips past, cool and refreshing. This is my city.

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.

The word of the day is “crash blossom“. On Nippon Housou 1242 AM Radio, they are debating the relative merits of YouTube and Nico Nico Douga.

The day after – or was it the same day? – I’m on the 48th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Actually, the 47th floor, where the toilets are. Away from the bright lights and monochrome carpets of the observation deck on the floor above, the oddly-lengthy corridor to the toilets is plain, a shade of industrial beige, unadorned. It seems impossible that this floor was once open to the elements, as big-muscled construction workers wearing blue bandanas hoisted great steel beams into place, laid cabling, built stairs up to a floor that had yet to exist. If you were one of those workers putting this floor up, twenty years ago, two-hundred and thirty metres above the ground, would you be able to imagine how it would look full of tourists and gift shops and with a grand piano? How’d they get that up there, anyway? The whole place seems impossible, a logical contradiction.

Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.

The next day – or it might have been today – Rob and I, sweltering from the heat, take a seat on a bench outside MUFJ in Kichijoji. We are killing time until the contact lenses we have ordered from the local opticians are ready, at 2pm. The lenses are made in Japan – it should be cheaper to bulk-buy them here and bring them back with us. I bought a collection of Otsuichi’s stories, Zoo 1, and the first The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya novel. I feel like we’re two old men, sitting on benches all day long.

Some time before, I’m at ICU for their end-of-term party thing. It’s a bright, sunny day. Someone hands out water pistols. I take a few photos, lie back on the grass, bask in the sun. It’s certainly summer.

Back in Shinjuku, we browse all seven floors of a branch of Marui, one filled with little boutiques for the stranger side of Tokyo fashion – gothic, lolita, punk, gothic lolita, steampunk, and various combinations of them all. Two middle-aged men dressed up like china dolls in pink frilly dresses and blonde curls stomp around on platform shoes. Victorian angels float through the merchandise. On the first floor, I buy a silkscreen print, which later covers my window.

Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him.

Close to midnight, I get on the wrong train and end up on the Hashimoto spur. Luckily, I can still get home before the trains stop running. I am at a station called Keio Tamagawa with about three or four other people on the platform, all of us waiting for the last train.

A lot earlier, in the book shop of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, I flick through glossy, enticing books on architecture. I ache with desire to become an architect and design sweeping facades of glass and pine, design for better living, live in Fallingwater and listen to jazz all day.

The simple fact is that if you are ever mentioned on page 1 of a Dan Brown novel you will be mentioned with an anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier and you will have died a painful and horrible death by page 2.

The night before ICU’s party, I’m in Koreatown with Kaz and Rob and Kanako and friends, feeling nostalgic at the PCbangs and noraebangs, mixing the egg into the bibimbap and wrapping up chunks of barbecued pork in leaves of lettuce with lashes of chilli sauce. This time a year previously, I must have been heading out to Seoul for a month. It seems like forever ago.

“”Every day I write the book”. Elvis Costello,” says the DJ on Nippon 1242.

Today, I’m back on Route 14, cycling back wearing my nice new climbing boots which I bought for scaling Mount Fuji in two weeks’ time. Everything is so perfect, so peaceful, and yet there’s an underlying current of discomfort. It can’t be summed up in words, that’s why. I’m overwhelmed by it all. The sheer beauty of nature, the overbearing unending joy of living, when everything’s going right – no one can quite write that down. It’s painful.