Sons of Loki

Today is 文化の日, which means Culture Day, which means another day off school for our lazy asses.

I went to Yoyogi to try to find the Kinokuniya bookstore to get an English copy of this Japanese textbook, J301, but I wound up in a dead neighbourhood with no bookstore in sight (although I did find the curiously quiet site of the NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Building). So instead of wandering around there (it was cold and windy and I stupidly hadn’t brought a jacket) I made yet another trip to damn Akihabara to buy a camera.

It is a Sony A300 with a 18-70mm zoom lens. It is lovely.

(There was a fun exchange in the shop. There I was, actually using practical Japanese in my conversation with the clerk, and I heard a tourist behind me ask a flummoxed shop assistant, in English, if there was a toilet. The assistant seemed bamboozled, so I stepped in and, cool as a cucumber, translated. “There’s no toilet, I’m afraid,” I said, before going back to my purchase. Oh yeah.)

So what better place to try out my fancy new camera than the Tokyo Jidai Matsuri, a uniquely Japanese parade of history from Asakusa to nearby Tawaramachi? I met up with Fran and Ella, and after a quick Mos Burger we staked out a spot. Oh, the things what we saw!

So after that we caught the metro to Asakusa (pointlessly, as we found out – would have been easier to walk) and headed to Sensoji temple to meet our (now mutual) friend Satomi. Sensoji has a special place in my heart, being one of the final places I went to before leaving Tokyo forever last time. Fulla tourists, but that’s pretty much the course.

The temple gate. (The temple itself was covered up for refurbishment or something, probably.)

It was pretty dark inside, but the A300 was up to the task.

And then a wander through the little shopping alleys and into Asakusa proper, Tokyo’s 下町 – literally “downtown”, but more “Altstadt”.

Asakusa's famed "golden turd", atop the Asahi beer building.

On Sunday Chris and I went along, with a few other students, to a small cultural festival at a community centre just down the road from our uni. It wasn’t anything big – just a few performances by the kids from the local schools, an audience of their parents and old people – but it was a fascinating look at the side of Japan we don’t really see as young students, the world of kids and their grandparents and well-groomed old men in suits who happily give you free beer at the end. Ah, beer, the great connector.

We had to give a short self-introduction in front of a small crowd of Japanese grandmothers, which we found out about thirty seconds before we had to do it, but as I’ve done about a million self-introductions in the last month it rolled off the tongue. I even got a tiny bit of applause at my self-deprecating “日本語が上手じゃありませんけど、がんばります” (At Japanese I lack skill but I will persevere).

On Monday our JASSO came in – 160,000 delicious yen. Then, for a long time nothing happened.

At Ochanomizu, I caught this lovely sight of a middle-aged couple stopping to admire the view from a bridge over the Kanda. They remind me of Noguchi and Kazu from Mishima’s Utage no Ato, I write, pretentiously.

Yesterday I trawled Yodobashi Camera, giving the cameras a try in my long quest for Durrant’s Next Top Model (of Camera), snapping a few pictures on my SD card for later review. Verdict: Pentax K-m was so horribly bad with and lack of detail and JPEG mush that I wonder if the settings were screwed up. The Sony alpha series were nice, but it is not a camera made for human hands, as several people have pointed out. The Nikon D3000 is fine, but picking up the Canon Kiss X2 and trying it out seriously endeared me to it. It just felt right, and the photos are lovely. (Only problem is the expense. May just plump for the next model down.)

After that I met up with the guys for a meal with Ella’s friend Satomi. Had a wander through Shinjuku – will never get tired of that – and wound up at a very exclusive-seeming restaurant with private rooms, dark lighting, muted dark woods, trickling water features with fish in – the works.

We had shabu-shabu, a Japanese dish very similar to one I had in Korea all the time (and may be the same thing) – a pot of boiling water at the table with stock into which are dropped vegetables and bits of meat which are left to boil, and then plucked out and eaten. It was nice, but a tad unfilling.

We wound up at an arcade where the girls did purikura and the guys KILLED ZOMBIES WITH KEYBOARDS AND SHOT GUYS WITH GUNS AND PLAYED DRUMS

YEAH TAKE THAT DRUMS

EAT BULLETS!!!

TYPE YOU DAMN ZOMBIES, TYPE

bah how is this manly

Anyway, after spending too much on the UFO Catcher trying to win a foam pillow for some reason, we went home.

Friday we had the big ol’ welcome party #2, which was fun. Spoke a bunch of Japanese to a bunch of people, leant my speakers (possibly unwisely, although they survived in the end) for Tom to do some DJing (must learn Ableton), was ridiculously excited when he put some Shinichi Osawa on (apparently he’s gonna be appearing in Shibuya sometime next month, which is a must-see) and was going to go to that holy-of-holies WOMB Shibuya until I realised that the increasing fatigue would not see me through ’til 5am. So I went to bed, which was probably the more sensible option.

In the morning I watched a game of American football from my balcony, which was actually rather fun to see. I don’t know why I harbour a secret love for gridiron – the action and aggression, the intricate chess-like strategies, the relative unpopularity of it in the UK, or the whole homoerotic machismo thing of it all – but I wandered down on my way to the supermarket and got a few action shots.

Later, after making a tuna pasta salad thing (is tuna expensive or what?) I decided, what with a free afternoon, to head to my old haunt of Akihabara and check out the prices on second-hand DSLRs. I’m realising that after two years of loyal service and one river dunking, my trusty S3 IS just isn’t as good as it was, and given how much I enjoy photography, it only makes sense to upgrade to a proper SLR. Judging by the cameras in the second-hand stores, I can get some nice kit for a reasonable price – currently I’m torn between the Sony a300 for 37,000 yen, or a real bargain: the Olympus E-510 for 26000 yen (which will probably be gone soon). Or I can head upwards to the mid-low-range SLRs, like the Canon EOS Kiss F (EOS 1000D in the West) for 44,000 yen – a little expensive but I do trust Canon for good cameras.

It was raining yesterday. Tokyo’s always best in the rain.



(blergggh, ISO noise)

I was in Yodobashi Camera when Rob gave me a ring, saying that they was hoping to head down to Odaiba to visit this onsen (Japanese bathhouse) with Kazuhisa (whom we know from Leeds last year), so I made a miserable journey in the rain down to Shimbashi station and caught the train with them across the Rainbow Bridge (upon which it was pretty bright tonight*) to Odaiba, the weird artificial island/waterfront district.
The onsen was pretty cool, though obviously more commercial than the little traditional ones. You got a choice of yukata and, like my beloved Seoul jjimjilbang, they had a communal area with restaurants and shops and amusements and such. (Not as good as the Dragon Hill Spa, but then what is?) The baths were extremely pleasant. We chilled/boiled in the outside bath, our bottom halves at a scorching ~40 degrees, our top halves pelted by the rain – consequently, we were quite comfortable overall. I took a plunge in the 20 degree pool (I can stand cold much more than hot, apparently) and then wound up with five minutes in the nicest bath of all, the one that was … just right.

Then ice cream. A lovely trip (even if it did bankrupt me).

* Belle & Sebastian, “Wrapped Up In Books”