May 2000

Tuesday 2nd May 2000

Yuki and I started looking for somewhere to get married on Sunday (we started looking on Sunday, we're not getting married on Sunday - although it could perhaps end up being on a Sunday, just not an imminent one. Glad that's sorted out). We looked at a hotel in Ebisu, one of Tokyo's best. Getting married in Tokyo is not cheap! The hotels do have everything well catered for though. There are many "wedding plans" available, in effect, package weddings.

Hotel weddings are by far the most popular in Japan. Far fewer people get married at real shrines. British people are not often very religious, but they usually like to get married in a church or whatever the equivalent is for their claimed faith. Japanese people generally don't even pay lip service to a faith. Maybe that's more honest than our convenience religions. That is until it comes to getting married. They will get married in which ever style best suits their taste, normally Christian or Shinto style. Shinto is a Japanese religion which dates back well beyond Christianity. The Japanese, or at least the younger ones, don't see any moral conflict or hypocrisy in this use of religion merely for it's aesthetic values.

As I am in Japan I too will adopt this attitude. We are planing on a Shinto wedding. I am in fact a Christian, but again, like many Brits, not a strongly religious one. By pure luck yesterday, and with eerie timing, I happened to witness my first Shinto wedding. I was taking a short-cut through the grounds of a temple, having scoured the local hotels for wedding information, when there in front of me was a wedding in progress. It was very interesting so I loitered to watch it to it's conclusion (it is a public place and I was not the only spectator). The guests were predominantly dressed in black. This is due to the solemness of the occasion. The music, being played and sung and the ceremonial dances were extremely "Japanese". For the first time, after almost a year, I was seeing the Japan of my imagination. I don't expect our wedding to be quite so elaborate, but I must say I'm really looking forward to it. It's just a pity I didn't have my camera with me.

This week in Japan is called Golden Week. Golden Week contains a three day public holiday (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday), but many people take the whole week off. Tokyo is significantly quieter right now, and from tomorrow I think it'll be like a ghost town. We're off to Nikko for the Day on Thursday with some friends. Hopefully, we'll make better use of the rest of the holiday than just sitting on our backsides! I've come to the realisation that I'm not seeing enough of Japan, or even Tokyo. It's a bit like living in the UK and not bothering to discover our own beautiful country. There always seems to be plenty of time later to do these things. Well, coming up to the anniversary of my arrival, I'm taking a bit of stock and trying to put that right.

Saturday 6th May 2000

On Wednesday Yuki and I went to the Meijijingu Shrine for a spring festival. On the way, and near to Harajuku Station, we came across a group of gothic looking girls. They were there last time too. I don't know if they are part of some theatre group or just hanging out. I must be getting really old to think they could be part of some act! We didn't see much of the festival apart from a man and woman playing and singing some traditional Japanese music with some ancient lute type instruments. It was interesting for a while, but to be honest, we both found it a little boring after about twenty minutes.

It seems Shinto weddings are taking the place of fish as the main ingredient of this journal right now. While at the festival we saw two wedding parties take their places in front of the shrine for their photo's. They weren't part of the show, but definitely drew more attention.

On Thursday seven of us set off in a hire car to Nikko. Nikko is an ancient city about three hours north of Tokyo. Baring in mind it's Golden Week, the traffic wasn't too bad. When we left the motorway (which is entered through toll gates), the traffic got worse. In fact, it got horrendous! We avoided most of it by going down the least busy routes. We did quite well, spotting some monkeys living in the mountains, taking a speed boat trip on Lake Chuzenji, stopping to see a couple of waterfalls, and for me the highlight - visiting an onsen. An onsen is a type of Jacuzzi. It is to the Japanese, what a sauna is to the Finns. As in this case, onsens are usually sex segregated. The best onsens are also fed by natural hot springs. This was no exception, it was heaven at the end of what was a pretty cold and windy day. It had indoor and outdoor pools and the outdoor one in particular, had a very strong odour of sulphur (it reminded me of stink bombs let off at school)!

Next time we visit Nikko we'll have to do it when it's less busy. That way I'll be able to bring back memories of old Japan, not the smell of old eggs!

Yesterday we went to Futago Tamagawaen to go boating. It's a pity the boat hire stopped long ago, but it was fun all the same. There were hundreds of people enjoying barbecues along the riverside in the spring sunshine.

I'm running out of ready cash at the moment. I should have been prepared, as it is Golden Week, but my mind still has trouble accepting the antiquated opening hours of Japanese ATM machines. Even a machine which was open and accepted Visa, was no good, as it didn't accept foreign credit cards!

Monday 8th May 2000

On Saturday afternoon we decided on a hotel for our wedding. We reserved a nice hotel, not far from my home. We chose the 14th April 2001, as it is Easter weekend in the Christian world, and hence, people visiting from overseas are already on holiday.

Saturday night was time to take a trip to Roppongi. Roppongi is a great place to spend a night out. The bars are really buzzing every night and they absolutely heave at the weekend (although some still fail to attract). Roppongi is my spiritual home in Japan. This is probably true of many gaijin in Tokyo, but especially for me as my office used to be in Roppongi, and hence, I often "popped in for a quick one" (drink!) on the way home.

On Sunday afternoon we decided on a hotel for our wedding. We reserved a very nice hotel, not far from my office. We chose the 15th April 2001. If you think you've read this before, you're almost right! We changed the hotel, because we found a much smarter place. We changed the day from Saturday to Sunday because the Saturday was much more expensive (and believe me, a wedding in Tokyo is expensive)! The reason the Saturday cost more was not because it was a Saturday, but because it was a "lucky" day! More important than getting married on a lucky (Tai-an) day, is to not get married on an "unlucky" (Butsumetsu) day. Butsumetsu weddings are a bit cheaper to encourage people to give the hotels business on these days. I am not strongly superstitious, but a Butsumetsu wedding is out of the question!

I'd also planned to watch Nagoya Grampus 8 (the only team the English have ever heard of in Japan) play some other team at football (that's with a round ball for you Americans out there). Unfortunately we British have our failings too, and I'd got the day wrong, the game was on Saturday. Never mind, the Giants were playing the Swallows on Sunday night (that's baseball - Japan's most popular sport - also played with a round ball, but much smaller)! We went to see that at the Tokyo Dome. The Tokyo Dome is an indoor sports stadium. Its roof is held up by the increased air pressure inside and the stadium is known affectionately as "The Big Egg". We bought relatively cheap tickets (compared to UK Premier League football anyway) at only 1,200 yen (seven pounds) each. These tickets entitle you to a seat, but only if you get there early enough (a bit like the cinema, ballet, and probably many other events in Japan)! We had to stand. We were lucky enough to find a space where we could at least see the game, but after standing through to the sixth inning we went home. When we left the score was 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, and true to sod's law, shortly afterwards, the Giants scored the winning four runs in one innings (are they called runs? In England we'd probably call them "rounders")!

Friday 12th May 2000

I went to Shibuya on Wednesday evening. In front of the railway station I saw a crowd of people, mostly young girls, watching a four piece harmony group singing. They were quite impressive a bit like a Japanese version of Boys to men. In fact I enjoyed it so much, I bought the CD! The group's name was "Luv and Soul". Unfortunately for them, I'm sure they'll never be heard of in the west. It was a great picture, all these girls stood still staring at these boys, I was so disappointed not to have my camera with me. I think they're doing the same thing on Saturday, so maybe I'll get a second chance.

I'm off to Kyoto again today. The two hour, forty minute journey is becoming routine for me now. Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan, but I must confess to having seen almost none of it!

I'm now on the Nozumi Superexpress bound for Kyoto. This train is much more like the bullet trains I'd expected. I remember seeing pictures of a white shinkansen with a bullet shaped nose displaying a big red dot, presumably representing the Japanese flag. Maybe that one's now obsolete or been repainted, as I've not yet seen it. This Nozumi cuts 22 minutes off the journey time. Looking out of the window, it's noticeably faster than the train I usually take to Kyoto, and yet it is still such a smooth ride. I didn't have time to buy any food or drink before boarding the train, so if the trolley doesn't come soon, I'm going to have to hunt it down or visit the "Service Corner". The word "corner" is used a lot in Japan to describe a small place, rather than necessarily an actual corner. At the front of this carriage, there is an advert on the wall. It shows Leonardo DeCaprio proudly slipping his "Orico gold MasterCard" back into his pocket! Hooray, I now have a cup of hotto cohee (hot coffee) and aisucreemu (work it out)! The Japanese use many "loan" words, imported mostly from English. Anyway, getting back to Leo. Western film and pop stars often appear in Japanese commercials and for products that would probably not endorse in their own back yard. For example Cameron Diaz appears in a printed ad for an English school. The school is called AEON, making Cameron the ideal ambassador because they can highlight the name of the company within her name (cAmErON)! Some others I've seen selling their souls to the mighty yen are Meg Ryan, Mariah Carey and of course, not to be out-Mariahed, Whitney Houston.

Getting back to the loan words, there are hundreds, if not thousands of foreign words used in Japanese. There is even a special set of characters, called katakana, used to write these words. Many of these words have been distorted by the limitations of the sounds in Japanese. Some of the sounds the Japanese language doesn't have are the following: "Th" as in "thing" and as in "this" are represented by "S" and "Z" sounds respectively, "L" and "R" are similar to a Japanese sound which falls between the two, "V" is represented by a "B" in Japan, "S" as in "seat" is pronounced "sh" as in "sheat", except it would be "sheato", because only "M", "N" and vowel sounds can end a word, and lastly "F" as in "food" and "H" as in "hook" are represented by a hybrid of the two, the sort of sound you might make if you were saying "phew". This all adds up to make these imported words very tricky to understand, despite normally having an English origin. Another oddity of the language is that many words have been adopted for which there are perfectly good Japanese words already. Words like "minimum" and "black" come to mind. I think a classic example is "Golden Week". This holiday only occurs in Japan and there is a Japanese name for it, yet the majority of people still call it "Golden weeku"!

Sunday 14th May 2000

Yesterday afternoon I returned to Shibuya to get that picture of Luv and Soul singing live to a crowd of Japanese teenagers. Either their schedule was changed or my reading of Japanese is worse than I suspected! I stayed for a few hours anyway. Shibuya is a great, young, lively place. I love just browsing the shops and people-watching, it's a perfect place to get a taste of pop culture in Japan. I did manage to see what was probably another pop group. Some girls being interviewed in a radio studio with a window to the street. Just after taking a picture of this interview I was brutally beaten up by a huge Japanese guy who then half destroyed my camera. Well, okay, I was asked politely not to take pictures, but he was nearly as big as me and he did have a slightly menacing squint!

Last night was the annual Crusaders Ball at a hotel in Hiroo. It was actually more of a dinner than a ball, but it was very amusing. One speaker in particular was so funny, very rude and insulting, but just so funny!

Today we took a look at yet another hotel as a potential venue for the wedding. We have to go over the costs yet, but it was the nicest setting we've seen. It has a beautiful Japanese garden, including the ever-present pond full of huge koi-carp. It'd be fantastic for the photo's and it's also overlooked by the room for the meal.

Friday 19th May 2000

Right now I'm in an internet cafe in Singapore. I came to Singapore on Monday for a training exercise. On Monday night I went to a couple of local bars. It was quite amusing to watch the ugly old men dancing around with their young Singaporean escorts! Before you even think it, don't!

On Tuesday evening I took a walk down the famous Orchard Road. This is the high class shopping street in Singapore. I was lucky enough to see a Buddhist dance theatre performing in public to celebrate Buddha's birthday. I then continued my walk as far as Raffles Hotel. This is a nineteenth century hotel, frequented by the rich and famous. It was very sophisticated and the building reflected the island's British colonial history. I went to the Long Bar to relax with a "Singapore Sling". This was a little disappointing. The bar was nice and the cocktail was very refreshing (mainly gin, cherry brandy, cointreau and fruit juice), but the place was full of tourists like myself, almost all drinking Singapore Slings! Anybody with any real class would probably steer well clear of this particular bar! Lastly it was off to Boat Quay, a strip of bars and restaurants alongside the Singapore River. There I had a very nice Indian meal (Singapore's population is made up largely of Indian, Malaysian and Chinese people). After my meal I finished up in Harry's Bar, now famous for the fact that Nick Leeson bared his backside at the river outside it! If you don't know, Nick Leeson is the Englishman credited with single-handedly bringing down Barings (a trading bank) a few years back.

On Wednesday night my colleagues and I took a trip to Sentosa, an even smaller island to the south of the island of Singapore. We crossed the intervening strait by cable car. Very high and not good for someone who's not too good with heights. I couldn't let go of the idea that the cable might break! Sentosa is a resort island, named after a merlion, a half lion, half fish mythical creature.

So far today I've been looking around Sim Lim Square in Little India. Sim Lim Square is a big complex full of shops selling electronic goods and heaps of pirate software. If you want the latest version of a program, but don't have a few hundred pounds to buy it, get it here, it'll only cost you about three or four pounds! I've done my shopping and it's time to go to China Town to see a Hindu temple. Yes, that's right, the best Hindu temple in Singapore is smack in the middle of China Town!

Monday 29th May 2000

Last Sunday I met Yuki's family. In Japan this is an important event. Boyfriends and girlfriends don't meet their partner's parents casually as we do in the west. This meeting usually only takes place once the relationship has got very serious. Anyway, I think it went well. They are very nice people, and even though they speak very little English, and my Japanese is certainly not fluent, we managed to have a very nice dinner together. I look forward to seeing them again.

On Friday a bunch of us from work went out for the evening. We visited a new Irish pub in Akasaka, then went to Ginza. At Ginza we drank at an outside bar/cafe situated among many others under a railway viaduct. This was a very rough and ready place where we were even asked to pour our own beer from the tap. The proprietor was a lady trying single-handedly to cook the food and serve the drinks - very enjoyable! It was then off to karaoke, but as I had been drinking since six o'clock, I left at about one in the morning. The others, having missed their last train home, sang their way through to five thirty!

Having left the karaoke at a reasonable time, I managed to recover just enough to play in a five-a-side football tournament on Saturday evening. It rained for most of the two hours, but it was fun anyway. This was followed by the inevitable drink in a little traditional Japanese bar. Fortunately the "inevitable drink" was beer. Also on offer in this bar were some very expensive alternatives, which basically consisted of as many dead reptiles and sea creatures as could be squeezed into a tall glass jar and still leave room for some alcohol. These looked absolutely disgusting, and no amount of acclimatisation will get me to taste these delicacies!

Yesterday we went back to the hotel we've selected for our wedding. It's right in the middle of Tokyo. We went through the details a bit more thoroughly, and I have to cough up the deposit today. After the hotel we relaxed for a while in a row boat on a very large and not very scenic pond nearby. Lastly we went to Shibuya to buy a sit-up bench. I had one in England, but it was a bit big to bring with me. I needed to get another one because with my good living in Tokyo, I don't exactly have a washboard stomach nowadays - more like a washing machine!!!