Sons of Loki

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.