Sons of Loki

Being a Japanese holiday yesterday, I resolved to take a trip to my old stomping grounds of Uguisudani, Taito-ku.
It seemed awfully like it used to. Had the ATOS pronunciation of Uguisudani on the train station announcement changed? Was that Doutor Coffee always there? Had those lockers been electronic for long?
I realised that for the first time in my life, I was returning to somewhere I used to live.

Old Sakura House Uguisudani-A remained, but I didn’t have much of a desire to see my old cockroach-ridden room, not that I’d even know if any of my old flatmates still lived there.

In a grim sign of the times, my beloved Shop 99 had ballooned to a Lawson 100. Nevertheless, I bought a few things for old times sake.
When I mention I used to live in Uguisudani to Tokyoites, they either nod in vague recognition or burst out laughing. I suspect it’s something to do with Uguisudani’s ridiculously large love hotel district, which went on for further than I remembered.

I stopped by a temple to light some incense. Louis Theroux was there, for some reason (or, uh, it may have just been a guy in glasses). The Ueno area is so peaceful.
I wandered down to Ueno station via the park, past Rodin:

and wandered down to a local Book Off, intending to see if I could get our kanji textbook, but instead I found a copy of Bar Lemon Hart, an obscure manga about the regulars at a Japanese bar and the sage-like barkeep.

Then a brief browse in Akihabara, where I was bemused to find that you can buy a Xbox 360 for the same price as a Wii, and that the PSP is cheaper than the DS.

Today, lessons began in earnest. Dan, Hattie and I started off in level 200, but it was reassuringly obvious that it wouldn’t be for us – we were studying stuff we’d covered back in January. So after the first period (a gruelling 90 minutes – have to get used to that) we upgraded to level 300, which was more challenging but definitely a good fit.
It’s good, because we now have an incentive to do well – having been given this opportunity, I’m determined not to show myself up, and I have to keep up with the others.
After lunch with my tutor, I wandered along to one of our ISEP modules (in these first couple of weeks, we can try out a few of the non-language modules before making a decision on which to take) – Topics of Contemporary Japan. The lecturer, Mir Monzurul Huq, stressed that the recent victory for the Democratic Party in the elections has meant he’s had to radically alter parts of the module, which sounded good – I’d rather learn cutting edge developments rather than stuff that’s out of date.
So, here it all begins. Hope it goes well.

Yesterday continued our breakneck pace of getting stuff done. I was all ready to buy a bike for 7000 yen (£50) when Dan said he was sure that we could rent some, and lo and behold there was a meeting and a handful of us international students got to rent some lightly-rusted-but-working bicycles for the entire year for a bargain 1000 yen (£7). Mine is currently nameless, but I invite suggestions.

Fran and I were going to bike to Tobitakyu station to catch the train into Akihabara to see Katy, but her bike had a puncture, so she walked/ran while I biked. In the rain. Should have brought umbrella. At Tobitakyu station a genial attendent in the underground bike car park (as big as, you know, a car car park … I have just realised I wrote “Bike car park” which is essentially meaningless ignore this) talked to us very quickly in Japanese, leaving me bemused, but luckily Fran understood barely enough for us to ascertain that he was telling us that it was 100 yen for 24 hours, so I paid and parked up.

So we rolled into Akihabara half an hour late and got lost at the exit and couldn’t find Katy and then found her, extremely relieved and wet from the rain and grovelled apologies and then spent an unashamedly geeky couple of hours in Akihabara.

Laox was as overpriced as I remember.

It had changed a lot, and yet it was exactly the same. Geeks, technology, cameras, PCs, manga, anime, games, and every type of perversion lined the streets. It’s a million miles from the ultra-hip Tokyo of Shibuya, or the financial Tokyo of Shinjuku, or the historic Tokyo of Ueno.

Uhh yeah

I eventually ended up buying some Logitech – scratch that, here it’s “Logicool” for some reason – 2.1 speakers, which sound great for a mere 3,500 yen or so. Then we went to karaoke and sung stupid anime songs and accidently keyed in some obscure (to us) Japanese stadium rock from the 70s/80s, which will possibly become an unofficial theme tune, and then wound up with Wuthering Heights. Oh, karaoke, I’ve missed you. Oh, and Katy informed us that JASSO is definitely back on, the freeze being a minor hiccup.

On the train back there was a gaijin fellow who looked suspiciously like an older Lee Tergesen frowning and scribbling in a notebook. I wondered if he was making notes when he flipped a page over, caught my eye, and I saw he’d done a pen sketch of the carriage on the other side. Cool.

Today we went to meet our teacher Mochizuki-sensei at her little English conversation cafe not far from TUFS, and were served up some delicious sushi and dumplings and ice cream. After that Dan and I cycled to the nearest supermarket to finally stock up on provisions. Oh, how delightful it is to cycle through the quiet-yet-busy backstreets of Fuchu-shi at night! I bought far too much stuff, but the basics like noodles and soy sauce and curry blocks should last me a while. No room for beer, sadly. Japanese supermarkets are a bizarre experience, because they’re almost just like English ones but slightly different. There’s bread, but it’s all weird! There’s a fish counter, but it takes up half the store! The fish comes in a billion varieties and it’s all extremely cheap. The vegetables are gigantic, so much so that it’s like you’re suddenly shrunk and walked into a salad. I bought a huge apple. And so, I cycled home.