Monday 4th February 2002

I'm back in the office in Tokyo today. Had a successful trip to Europe (excluding the double par nine holes of golf I played on Saturday)! I survived minus twenty five degrees Celsius in Finland, the rain in Denmark and the wind in England, made a far too short visit to my family, and downed a few beers with my friends.

I am struggling to sort out my situation when I return to the UK. I am planning to move house when I go back, but I have come to the conclusion that selling my flat before I return will not be very practical. To sell it without tidying it up will probably not yield maximum cash. I have decided (I think) that we will go back to England, rent a flat (keeping our furniture from Japan in storage), decorate and sell my flat (having removed my current resident), then look for and buy a permanent home. This is not ideal, as I would really like to move straight into a new house immediately as we arrive in the UK, but it is probably the best compromise. If anyone has a better idea, I'd love to hear it!

Tuesday 5th February 2002

Fantastic news! I checked the FIFA web page on Tuesday and found my application for Ecuador World Cup tickets has been successful! I am soooooo happy! The three first round games are in Japan then the three games up to and including the semi-final will be in Korea. That means I need ten days off work in total, so I wouldn't mind swapping at least some of the Korean tickets for Japanese ones.

Friday 8th February 2002

So much for my plans! It turns out, my tenant is planning on vacating my flat in England this month. What makes it worse is he's about three months behind on rent and the agency has only one month as a deposit. This may force a slight rethink. Hmmmm.

Saturday 9th February 2002

Went to karaoke last night with some pals from Mad Mulligan's. I really think there'd be a market for the "karaoke box" style places in the UK (if they already exist, there's a market for more). In addition to opening up a Japanese curry rice shop and a UK branch of Tokyu Hands, I think that should just about keep me occupied!

It's a beautiful day today, and the first of another three day weekend. It's National Foundation Day on Monday.

Tuesday 12th February 2002

After a lazy day on Saturday (something I can ill-afford if I'm to make the most of my remaining time in Japan), I took a trip to the "Electric City", Akihabara. I was on a mission to get a multi-system (PAL and NTSC), dual voltage (100 and 240V) DVD player and a laptop PC.

The laptop was for my parents-in-law. We are going to set them up and teach them to use e-mail and maybe the internet so they can correspond with us when we go to England. We want to get things up and running soon, allowing us to iron out any problems before we go. In my search I discovered an area of Akihabara completely unknown to me, with lots of small shops selling used equipment - real "geek heaven". I managed to get a four year old notebook PC for 30,000 yen (about 160 pounds at today's rate). It only has a Pentium processor, but with its built-in modem and CD ROM drive, it's way over spec. for its intended use. I wonder how many people out there are buying the latest high speed top-notch PCs for just the same reasons we need this one? I suspect there are many.

I think I did quite well with the DVD player. For the same price as the PC, I not only managed to pick up a multi-system, dual voltage player, I got one that's region free too. That means it will play DVDs from anywhere in the world. Incidentally, Japan and the UK are both region 2. I think there are two ways of looking at purchases made here, I either buy the cheapest domestic model that does the job, or I pay a little more and look at it as a long term purchase that I'll take home.

Yuki and I went to the cinema in Shibuya yesterday. We wanted to watch "Ocean's Eleven", but the queue to buy tickets was long, and hence the waiting time at the theatre door would also be long ensure we would get a seat. We opted for "Harry Potter" instead, especially as the usher by the ticket counter said the film was just finishing and we could almost go straight in. After buying the tickets and walking toward the theatre, it became obvious that "straight in" meant queue for thirty minutes with a couple of hundred other people, then go straight in! The film itself was not up to all the hype, but worth seeing anyway.

It's now a quarter to ten and I'm on my lunch break. Either that, or this Tag Heuer I bought on my trip to Malaysia was not genuine!

I'm in Citibank in Shibuya, the so-called foreigner-friendly bank. I am trying to get a banker's draft to send some money to a friend in the USA. Because I want to pay cash, I need ID. Credit cards, my Citibank card, my work ID, etc. are not good enough, they need both my parents and the eldest child of my country's sovereign to be present! Actually, they require my alien registration card, which luckily I have with me (you should carry it by law). Then they tell me it has expired! That's despite the fact that it states on it that it needs renewing in 2004, and that I use it regularly at the airport to get in and out of Japan. Their explanation is that the card needs periodical updating prior to its expiry. If that is correct, why have I not been notified? And even if it is right, why can't the bank accept it as ID? It has my picture on it, and obviously proves I used to be me! Even more puzzling is that I can buy the draft using funds from my account, and not using cash. I can even deposit the money into my account, then immediately use it to buy the draft. Surely fraud has a lot more rewards using account numbers than cash, after all, cash is cash! Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous, having to identify yourself before your cash is acceptable? The eventual solution was to use money from within my account, so all is well - except my raised blood pressure and the pathetic, bureaucratic Japanese banking system!

Friday 15th February 2002

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and as usual, time for girls to give their men some chocolate (nothing anonymous as in the UK). The guys have it good here, because on March 14th they're already know who to target with White Day presents! Yuki gave me a chocolate gorilla, apparently I am a lot more hirsute than your average Japanese!

For those of you are waiting to hear whether I passed my level three Japanese language exam, I have to thank you for having faith in me when even I didn't. However, your faith was misplaced, as I'd expected, I failed, not miserably, but a fail nonetheless. I scored fifty-one percent, but I prefer to think of it as eighty-five percent of the required pass mark!

Sunday 17th February 2002!

It's six thirty in the evening and Yuki and I are aboard a coach bound for Tokyo. We've been skiing for the weekend. We went to a place called Madarao, in the Nagano prefecture, about an eight hour bus ride from home. The outward journey was overnight and it was important to try to get some sleep. We started skiing at about ten on Saturday morning. The trip was quite cheap at twenty-two thousand yen per person, and I think one of the places where the money was saved was the food at the hotel. Dinner and breakfast were included, but the whole experience was more like a hostel than a hotel. That said, the main reason for going was the skiing, and with hire charges and ski lift passes all part of the deal, we can't really complain. Our room was Japanese style with futons and tatami mats. The TV was not quite black and white, but not quite colour, anything that wasn't red was fairly okay. The room made me wonder what visitors to the World Cup are going to think if they too, walk into a room without a bed!

Slowboards seem to have risen in popularity dramatically, with skiers probably accounting for only ten percent of the people on the slopes. This morning I decided to give this slowboring thing another try. After my very enjoyable day hacking down the mountain yesterday, today was in total contrast. I struggled to stand up, then I struggled to stay up (giving my wrists and backside far too many collisions with the snow), and when I finally managed to stay balanced for more than a second, I had no idea how to stop or steer the thing. After a few lessons and a few days' practice I could probably be as good as the others trying to slowboard, I'd be able to sit or kneel in the snow like the best of them, for long periods interspersed with sliding slowly, long edge first, down the slope. Admittedly snowboarding looks very cool when you watch the one in a hundred that have mastered it, but this very coolness has probably been responsible for many youngsters never having attempted to ski - something they may actually be able to do.

Wednesday 20th February 2002

I'm on the subway en-route to the dentist for a check-up. Before I left the office one of my colleagues very kindly told me he knew of a source of England World Cup tickets! They are from a friend of his working for one of the tournament's main sponsors. I quickly ran around and asked a couple of English guys who I knew hadn't got any tickets so far, and they of course were also interested. The tickets are 35,000 yen each, that's more than the regular tickets, but for all I know they may be some of the best seats in the ground. Either way, it's worth it to see England. One of the games is against Argentina in Sapporo - possibly the best tie of the first round, the other is Sweden in Saitama, not far from Tokyo. These "too good to be true" things have a habit of not working out, but maybe we'll be lucky this time.

The trip to the dentist, an American doctor, resulted in quite a list of small maintenance operations. My company has to approve the quotation before I decide to go ahead. There is an annual limit to the cover provided by their insurance scheme. I will have to think seriously if they don't cover it all, it's not cheap!

Friday 22nd February 2002

I had a call from my mother on Wednesday night. My World Cup ticket invoice had turned up. It was time to fork out the cash! Problem was I had less than two weeks to get my payment to FIFA. With Japanese banks being so inefficient and international airmail so unpredictable, I needed to act quickly. After a few calls my mate Sammy (a newly qualified London cab driver) agreed to go to my mum's house, pick up the paperwork and deliver it to my letting agent. He said I could pay the fare next time I'm home! From there Miriam kindly faxed it to my office.

Then came the tricky bit, I had to go back to Citibank! This time I was ready. I didn't like the system, but I knew it. I glided in, did my business and glided back out, without ruffling even one of my feathers against the barbed wire surrounding the customer service desk! I went to the post office, picking up a free cash deposit envelope from an ATM on the way, and then sent my draft and invoice copy registered post to FIFA. Now I can relax. Well you'd think so, wouldn't you? One small concern has arisen with the England tickets, as I'd feared it would. It's only a possible hitch, but the upshot of it is, we won't know one hundred percent if the deal's on until May. Still looks good though.

I've kick-started my UK accommodation plans into action. My friends Keith and Justine are going to get the keys from my agent and take a look at my flat. They will tell me what sort of state it's been left in, and recommend what should be done to bring the place to good decorative order. It doesn't make sense to sell it without first tidying it up. A few quid spent now could pull in a lot more when it's sold. I've also contacted the building society (bank) to discuss the procedure with them and start talking about my next mortgage. Then there's the fun bit. I've started surfing the net looking at properties in my price range in St Albans. Apart from spending a lot of my social time there, and it being a really nice city, it makes sense to move those few miles from Radlett. You see, Radlett is a quaint trouble-free town, but it's a bit too small and has few facilities. St Albans is a bigger city with a good shopping centre, reasonable transport links (especially to London), and luckily for me, lots of pubs! The culture shock of transferring from Japan to England is going to be enough, moving from the centre of The Tokyo metropolis to Sleepy Hollow would be too much! I'm not just referring to a culture shock for Yuki, I too have noticed how unexciting England seems on my trips home. I'm sure we will both adapt, after all, that is one of the attractions of England, its beautiful green landscape and quiet suburban life.

Sunday 24th February 2002

On Friday after work I went to a double birthday celebration with some colleagues. The party was at Anna Miller's, a cake shop/restaurant. Although they do sell beer, it was a strange place for a Friday night party. In fact the party poopers wouldn't even let us use our party poppers. Each of the birthday boys was presented with a cake with his name on it... Except me. It's my birthday on Tuesday, the same day as one of the other guys, but nobody knew when they were planning the party. As a consolation, I was excused from chipping in for the bill!

After spending all day at home while new air conditioning was installed, last night we went to another birthday party. Again, it was not mine. It was George's twenty-fourth. It was at his house, a huge place provided to his family by the Cameroon embassy, where his dad works. There was a really interesting mix of people at the party from many different countries. I used the opportunity to speak Cameroon, something I learned in high school, during my French lessons. One of the odder things at this party was George getting his ears pulled by the number of years of his birthday! I guess it probably looks pretty strange when UK people give their friends "the bumps". One of the guests was a man who regularly appears on Japanese TV in a show where Japanese argue various issues (in Japanese) with people from around the world. The guy at the party is one of the more vociferous participants, and has achieved quite a celebrity status. The party was great, the best I've been to in ages.

Today I have mostly been doing nothing.

Thursday 28th February 2002

On Monday Yuki made me a delicious birthday dinner. My birthday was on Tuesday, but Yuki has her English lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I also opened my cards and birthday present from my family, which I'd been given on my last trip home.

Tuesday evening I had a small birthday party with a few friends in The Black Lion/Little Euro. It was a surprise party, but having been to so many birthdays lately, I was sort of expecting it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a conceited little g1t, I just saw straight through Marlon's poorly executed set-up plan. Actually, to be fair to Marlon, Yuki had asked me what was my schedule with Marlon that evening. How did she know Marlon was going to invite me for a beer? It was nice anyway for Timo, Kikuno, Marlon and Mahoko to take time for little ol' me.