Transform to Tokyo

Sorry, this is a post I wrote last month but forgot to post it….sorry! Hopefully do another one soon. Work has just started up again and it`s kind of thrown me off the blog course, but don`t worry I am on my way back onto it. This blogging business sure is tough! Anyway, here is the post I wrote:

Hello! Today is yet another national holiday in Japan, so we have the day off work. Today is in fact the coming of age festival, which I don`t really understand a lot about, but we have seen a lot of girls walking around in Kimonos, presumably on their way to a shrine of some description. Anyway, I thought now I had some spare time I would do a blog post to explain what happened between our Hokkaido visit to the present day. Here I go:

Niseko Snowboarding: When we arrived in Hokkaido, after a rather painful journey (sleep deprivation and high altitude…what a mix) we got the bus straight out of Chitose airport to Niseko, a small ski/snowboard mountain town in the west of Hokkaido. Here, after lunch and a bit of confusion over the phone, we met up with the Hokkaido volunteers after so many months and we also met Tom`s parents. We decided not to waste any time and hit the mountain straight away (well, after a changing session out of the back of Tom`s parent`s rental car. The snowboarding during the day was great, but at night it got even better. Quite a decent portion of the mountain stays open for night skiing, and luckily for us a lot of people went home after 5pm, so Tom and I were free to go as fast as we wished. Craig and Mike had to wait for one of Craig`s friends to deliver some of the gear that Tom and Craig left behind in Toya, so they missed out, but luckily for them there would be lots more chances to go night skiing. Tom`s parents (who were unbelievably generous to us throughout the time we were there) had rented an apartment for all of us to stay in, which was in a really good location near the slopes, so the next two days we could start snowboarding really early and finish really late. The most exciting run me and Tom found (and no doubt, Tom will`ve written about in his binding breaking in his blog) was a tree run on one of the other sides of the mountain, which was called Blueberry Fields. Just thinking about it makes me want to ride it again. We managed to visit three different onsens (hot spring baths) in Niseko, which was great after a hard day snowboarding and was just generally fun. Our stay in Niseko ended the day after as we had half a day of riding, mainly due to the wind and rain which had caused a lot of the mountain to close down, not to mention the ridiculous queue lengths for a mediocre blue run, which was pretty much all that was open. After this we went and got changed and then got a lift to Toya with some of Tom and Craig`s friends, as Tom`s parents took the rental car on their journey to Sapporo.

Toya: When we arrived in Toya it was quiet. Almost too quiet. Mike and I were shocked at the Toya volunteer’s massive house and beastly heater which kept the room nice and warm while we watched movies and played on the Xbox 360. Even though we only stayed in Toya for about three nights, it is quite obvious that Toya has a really strong community spirit, which the volunteers have been able to settle nicely into. The first night we were invited to a small party in the next town (Abuta, also known as Toyakocho, I think). We went to one of their evening class member`s houses and ate and drank before hitting the local (tiny) karaoke bar. We were much liked by the locals for trying some famous Japanese karaoke classics (such as DJ Ozma`s `Age Age (ah gei, ah gei) every night` and B`z classic `Lady Navigation`). In most karaoke places I had been to before this one, you get a separate box to yourself to sing in with your friends, but in this one it was just one machine in the whole bar, where each table could add songs to the list, but there were only two microphones. It was still pretty fun though and it was nice to all spend time together. All of the other nights we stayed in Toya, we were visited by locals who bore the gifts of food. When I say food, I don`t just mean a bag of crisps or something, I mean an entire meal. It was amazing. We had to visit a man in Toya to watch some videos of his (well, the television program about Tom and Craig, and Tom and Craig doing Yasakoi dancing) which quite quickly became a mammoth five hour video watching session, which was quite tiring, but he was a really nice man and us spending time with him obviously meant something to him. Toya is completely different to Oji in so many ways. The one thing I thought we really missed out on was a trip to the legendary `Guten Tag`, as it was shut.

Sapporo New Years Eve Trip: On New Year`s eve morning me made a trip out to Sapporo, as everyone wanted to celebrate New Year`s the British way together, but while we were there we decided that we might as well do some sight-seeing. We managed a small amount, but unfortunately a lot of things we closed in Sapporo and it often appeared to be a ghost town. Tom and Craig claim that Sapporo is usually a bustling city almost as busy as Tokyo, but I am really not sure I can believe them. We `played` (sat at a machine dumbstruck) a bit of pachinko, went on a Ferris wheel that was on top of a building and wandered far out of town to try and get to the Beer factory, that was shut when we arrived. Also all of the buffet/ all you can eat and drink for two hours places that Tom and Craig knew we also shut. Luckily we found an all you can drink place which also did quite good food (and had a video of Japanese music TV on, so I was happy to see Dragon Ash and X Japan), so we spent a few hours in there before heading out to a club they knew which was tastefully named `Booty`. If you`re someone who knows me well, you will know I am not one who enjoys clubs…at all, so this part of the night was kind of boring for me (and sometimes even annoying) but after the countdown I was able to talk to my mother, which was nice, even if it did completely drain my phone`s battery. After having to basically carry Craig out of the club, Tom and I (and Craig) made our way over to a bar, where we spent literally a few minutes before returning to the manga kissaten (kee sah ten, maybe this spelling is wrong) we had bought members cards for earlier in the day. Allow me to explain about one of these places, though, forgive me if I am wrong, this was my first and so far only time to stay in one of these manga kissatens. Basically, manga kissatens are giant otaku libraries, containing many mangas (Japanese comic books), animes (Japanese cartoons), computer games and probably (I wouldn`t be surprised) pornography. You go into the kissaten (café, basically) and choose what kind of place you want to stay in (eg, chair, bed, etc) and then you are given a booth and a ticket. You pay pretty much by the hour, so you have to make sure you go and pay off the ticket within the time you want to stay for (in our case, 7 hours between 5am and 12pm) I got to my bed and literally went straight to sleep, got up in the morning and left, without even reading, watching or playing anything. These manga kissatens, for a lot of people are just the cheapest places to stay and I imagine quite a lot of people who were in there that night had no intention what so ever of reading any manga., but just booked in for a cheap bed and to be honest, that`s exactly what we were did too. Anyway, it was fun to spend time all together, even if I did have to spend New Year in a club…

29 hour trip back to Tokyo: A few days later, we had to make the monster trip all the way back to Tokyo. This time we would travel by train, taxi, car, foot and ferry. We left the other volunteer`s house in Toya at 1pm on January the 3rd and arrived back in Oji (our house) at 6pm on January the 4th. There sure was a lot of travelling, and waiting and we even managed a nice public bath trip (it was even hotter than some of the onsen I`ve been in, I swear, it was unbearable almost) on the ferry. Our ferry room was also rather spacious…not. A room of about 70 other men all packed together tighter than sardines on futons that were not even as wide as our shoulders and with pillows harder than a bag of rocks. In the morning (after sleeping on and off every 20 minutes) I really did wish that I had slept in the infinitely lounge area. When the ferry finally got in, we had to wait for a bus, which we didn’t manage to get on, so we took a taxi to the train station, where we were able to ride in the world`s hottest train (with no space to take our jackets off). All in all, it was a terrifically pleasant and smooth journey…

Mike`s Birthday Meal in Shibuya: On the 7th of January we went to Shibuya to have Okonomiyaki for Mike`s birthday. The plan was to have the meal (nomihoudai of course. Nomihoudai is all you can drink in Japanese…I think) and then go to karaoke and then drop the Hokkaido volunteers off at a club somewhere. Unfortunately due to last trains karaoke didn`t work as the meal took a long time or we started it really late, one of the two and it was a Monday night, so we looked around the clubs but none of them seemed good for Tom and Craig, so we just went home. On Friday we tried for clubs again but this time instead of not being busy enough, they were all asking for ID, of which Tom did not have any way since he lost his wallet in Sapporo (which has luckily been found) and even if he did have ID, they are not old enough to get into clubs anyhow. Sorry Tom and Craig!

Our Yokohama Trip: Tom, Craig and I visited Yokohama and saw the sights! Similar trip to when Mike and I went together all those months ago.

Start of Work: Work started again on January 9th (well, on January 7th I attended a promotions session as well) and so did the Wednesday class. The Wednesday lunchtime class started on the 16th, but the Monday evening class doesn`t start until the 21st (tomorrow…). We have also visited the nursery twice and the bakery once since the New Year. Everything is starting off again and I need another holiday…

Stylish wave ILLUSION`08 Vol1-2: Two concerts in two nights. It was great fun! I won the tickets online, so I had really good seats, though I did have to write a live report for the website. Saw loads of good bands too!

That`s about it for now, sorry I am so far behind again, I seem to always be about a month behind. Anyway, I have good news; we have some time off coming up! There are some random days throughout January and February and I think we are finishing school earlier than expected in March, so we should have quite a nice block to travel in there (though the only problem may be booking things, as we have found out far too late). January 22nd we have off and have decided to go to Yunessun Onsen in Hakone. Yunessun is a mixed onsen spa resort (yeah, you have to wear a costume) in which there are lots of different strange coloured and smelling types of onsen. For example, a wine bath, a green tea bath, a beer bath, (mike says that there`s) a chocolate bath, a coffee bath and I believe there is more too. Here is the English website address: http://www.yunessun.com/english/yunessun.html. Also, we have next Friday, January the 25th off too and as some of you may know that is my birthday. I still want to visit the Ed museum as it has an exhibition of Hokusai, a famous (and one of my favourite) ukiyo-e (woodblock printing) artists. Also, `Sweeney Todd` the film has just come out here, so maybe we can go and see that with a few friends and then go out drink afterwards. I hope to also do some day trips to other places in our other random days off, or maybe just take a rest at some point. I hope you all had really good Christmases and New years (sorry, forgot it last post) and I look forward to any comments you have on my blog! Thanks for reading!