September 1999

Monday 6th September 1999

Last Sunday I met a workmate from England at Tokyo Station and we travelled a few hours north to Morioka. The weather in Morioka was a pleasant surprise. It was cloudy and fairly cool! Our business hosts treated us to Teppanyaki, a meal where your food is cooked in front of you on a big steel hotplate. It was delicious. The lobster was particularly tasty, despite having to listen to it crunch as it was sliced down its centre! This meal was of course followed by the inevitable karaoke (in a club opened on a Sunday especially for us). My workmate was almost falling asleep at dinner, but it would be impolite to refuse our host's hospitality. Amazing how a couple of whiskeys woke him up though!

After a very long day on Monday, most of it spent in a car travelling through what looked like Wales, we returned to Tokyo by bullet train. Unfortunately the usual non-fast food served at McDonalds meant we missed our intended train making it a very late night indeed.

Went to Kyoto on Tuesday afternoon. I've been there a few times now, but this is the first time I've really seen anything of the city. There is an area alongside the river where there are lots of very old, traditional style wooden shops and houses. Just a stone's throw away is the area where the bars and restaurants appear to be centred. It's not quite Tokyo, but has a unique atmosphere all of its own - a sort of scaled down Roppongi, but more quaint.

Friday night was farewell time for a couple of colleagues from the UK. We had a very good Yakitori meal (basically, Chicken, beef, prawns, vegetables etc. all cooked on wooden skewers). Afterwards, for the third time this week, it was karaoke! Karaoke is a very popular pastime in Japan, but even with the reverb and other enhancing electronics, there are some people who's singing is just too painful to bear more than once!

Saturday evening we went to a local Chinese ramen (noodle) cafe. I've often eaten here. The food is tasty, but I was put off a little when the waitress started picking at her feet in the restaurant! The man smoking in the kitchen didn't help either. I think I'll have to reconsider whether this place should remain on my list of approved eateries!

Went to Odaiba yesterday. There's quite a pleasant park there with a sort of man-made beach. It's a nice location in the shadow of the Rainbow Bridge. People can be seen here fishing from the rocks, windsurfing, and like us, just relaxing and taking things easy. In the evening I treated my girlfriend to the first meal I've cooked in Japan (Reminder: Must get a potato masher). It was no gourmet dish, especially considering my guest cooks for a living, but it was as near to English food as I've had in a long, long time!

Tuesday 14th September 1999

On Sunday my girlfriend and I visited the nearby city of Yokohama. Yokohama is only about a thirty minute train journey from Tokyo. It has the distinction of having the tallest lighthouse in the world, Marine Tower, up which we went to take a look at the view over the bay area. Yokohama Bay has quite an impressive suspension bridge if you like that sort of thing, which I do. The city also contains a Chinatown area which is the largest settlement of Chinese people in Japan. Generally, Japan has very few immigrants, in fact last year sixteen refugees were admitted, fifteen up on the previous year! Anyway, Chinatown was very atmospheric and we found a nice little second floor restaurant which served delicious Chinese food while overlooking a very vivid and exotic temple.

On Monday morning I felt my first earthquake. This one was quite something. Experiencing a quake in a simulator is quite different to being in your sixteenth floor apartment wondering if it is going to stop or intensify! It lasted about fifteen seconds - seemed like much longer. The whole place was shaking side-to-side. My doors were banging and my wind-chimes were going crazy. Fortunately there was no damage, neither to my apartment nor reported on the radio afterwards. It was apparently a number three on the Japanese scale, higher on the Richter scale. Its epicentre was about eighty miles away where it peaked at 5.1 on the Japanese scale. It was a very interesting experience indeed!

On Monday evening I joined a couple of Newcastle United fans at a football quiz in the 1066 British pub in Naka-Meguro, about fifteen minutes from home. Had a very good evening, it always helps to have a football journalist on your team in these situations! As you might guess, we won the quiz. I bought a signed "England 2006" photo of Sir Bobby Charlton in the charity auction, contributing towards the healthy 70,000 yen proceeds. I like Bobby Charlton, so much nicer than that blood-sporting brother of his! Oops, a bit of politics creeping in!

Thursday 16th September 1999

Yesterday was a national holiday. Went to the pictures to see "Notting Hill". It was an easy going, but very entertaining film. Almost as entertaining is the bizarre way Japanese cinemas operate. Advance tickets are available, but at a hefty premium. If you choose to just go along on the day, that's where the fun really starts. You buy your tickets for the "free seating" area (most of the theatre in this case). You have to get there about an hour early as the cinema is popular in Japan. You then stand in a queue by the theatre door, we were asked to stand four abreast, although everybody ignored this request! Eventually the doors are opened and everyone rushes in and stakes their claim for seats. If you're at the back of the queue you stand little chance of finding a seat, let alone two together! This however is fine, you can always stand at the back, or down the sides! I don't know if this happens elsewhere in the world, but I'll certainly be paying over the odds next time to get reserved seating. One more consequence of this system is that just when you're really engrossed in the movie, you start hearing people at the door chatting away, chomping at the bit for the next show! All this having been said, you must take these things in your stride. Remember, it is you that is the foreigner. If you don't like it, well....

I'm now on the subway returning to my office from a short business visit to the Itabashi area of Tokyo. The Tokyo subway is similar to the London Underground with a few notable exceptions: All the seats on the Tokyo subway are bench type with ones back to the window. Whenever there is a seat vacated at the end of a row people shuffle along to fill it. This makes perfect sense as it means you will not have to be sandwiched between two other passengers, nice as they may be. In England however I'm sure this would be considered rude as it inevitably means sliding away from someone else who may take it personally. When there are no seats available, naturally you have to stand. Unlike in the UK, it is very common here for somebody in a relatively clear carriage to stand right in front of your seat facing you, their feet virtually touching yours. This would possibly be read as intimidation back home!

People very often appear to be sleeping on the subway trains. I guess some of them are actually asleep, but most of them, I think, are either counting the stops or telepathic! In Japan, due to the low crime rate, it's relatively safe to sleep on a train with your valuables about you.

There are also some odd jobs available on the subway, which leads me nicely on to....

Miscellaneous Observation No. 2

Jobs By The Window

Traditionally in Japan people left university or school and got themselves a job. That was the last time they would ever get a job because the company would become a part of their life and their life would become a part of the company. In the UK a seat by the window is considered a prize. The light is usually better and you get to see life outside and maybe even overlook some nice natural space. I know from personal experience that it helps to know the person drawing up the office layout! In Japan however, there is an entirely different perception. The reason for being awarded this "privileged" position is because you are less useful to the company. To avoid having to go through a very difficult dismissal process a person would be moved to a desk nearer the window, eventually sitting next to the window. As you got closer to the world outside you could spend more and more of your time gazing at it and less time doing unproductive damage to the company!

Things have changed a little since those days. Now jobs are no longer secure and competition fierce. The recent and now reducing crisis in the Japanese (and most of Asia?s) economy has made quite an impact.

Job security may now not be what it was, but there still seems to be a whole army of people employed to do the most fascinating jobs:

Telling The Subway Train Where To Park

I'm sure there is another explanation for this man's work, but what he appears to be doing is pointing out the length of the platform. With a long meaningful swing of his arm, finger outstretched, he looks just like he's directing the train to a parking spot (which fortunately always seems to be available)!

Preventing Accidents On Subway Stairways

This job involves being alert at all times to prevent (or at least witness) the collision of people travelling in opposite directions on the same stairway. On some occasions these people even put themselves at risk and brave the dangerous world of "human railing". They encourage people in one direction to go behind them and the other to go in front. This also usually involves a detailed knowledge of geometry in order to accurately receive and direct people around corners (usually ninety degrees)!

Waving An Illuminated Red Stick

This is a employment opportunity available on almost every street in Tokyo. The job involves preventing people doing what anyone in their right mind wouldn't do (a sort of suicide prevention scheme). At every construction site, from the smallest pile of sand on the pavement, to the largest number of cones seen outside of the M25, there are men and women with short red light-sabres. These people stop complete morons and drunkards from walking straight through well lit, well marked road repair or path renewal sites! In fact anywhere that requires a redirection of eighteen inches or more is manned by at least one of these public servants.

I do of course, in all seriousness, understand the usefulness of these jobs. They are jobs. Is it better to employ somebody to tell you when the green man is green, or to pay him to sit at home and become depressed and demoralised?

Wednesday 22nd September 1999

On Sunday we went to a classical music concert by a number of young musicians. It was a very select event with an almost full house of about fifty people. It was my first experience of this small intimate type of auditorium. We sat at the front and so were very close to the performers. There were solos, duets and a trio. The standard was extraordinary. Among others there were pianists, flautists and a friend of ours playing the cello. The entertainment didn't stop there. We went on to a Nepalese restaurant for a delicious dinner in a very atmospheric glass pyramid. The waiters took an interest in this huge case we'd lugged up several flights of stairs, and very soon they and ourselves were treated an exclusive cello recital.

Wednesday 29th September 1999

Last Saturday we visited Tokyo Disneyland. It was my first trip to a Disney theme park. Tokyo Disneyland is situated about 45 minutes from my home by train (take the Keiyo line from Tokyo Station). It was a nice sunny day, so as you can imagine almost the whole train got off at Disneyland.

As we entered the park (about 5,000 yen each for a full day "passport"), we saw Mickey Mouse greeting people. This is what I'd expected, but to my surprise we didn't see any more cartoon characters wandering around. They were all there in the big choreographed parades, but I thought I'd see them everywhere. I must say, the big kid in me was a tad disappointed! The attractions had the expected queues though, more's the pity! I did get the impression that these queues are sometimes a lot longer and slower than we experienced. We did manage to get our picture taken with the Disney characters, through the magic of a green screen and a computer. Is it cynical to think that this explains the lack of characters loose in the park? Somehow I don't think so since the picture cost just short of ten UK pounds. Anyway, due to the unrealistically large appearance of my stomach, I also did a little computer trickery with this picture before posting it here!!!

All in all, it was a very good day out, and I would say very good value for money, especially in the evening when the "fantasillusion" parade took place after which the park emptied considerably and the queues reduced dramatically. There should have been a firework display which would have kept the crowds around a little later, but due to wind conditions (what wind?) it was cancelled. This wouldn't be another cost cutting exercise by Walt's successors would it? Surely not!

On Sunday I went to Akihabera in search of a new digital camera. I've spent a small fortune on film and processing since arriving in Japan, so It makes good sense to buy a high quality camera and a printer capable of near photographic reproduction. This will take a long time to pay for itself, but will give me more freedom to experiment and instant results. I bought a Nikon Coolpix 950, currently about the highest rated non-SLR digital camera available. The instructions are all in Japanese, but there's enough info on the almighty internet to overcome that problem, and the in-camera menus can be easily switched to English. I also got myself a good Hewlett Packard printer. It's intended for office use, so should be more than adequate for my needs. It's a good idea to buy computer peripherals which you believe to be available in the USA or Europe, because the chances are good that either on the bundled CD or on the net you'll find software (or at least a driver) to enable it to operate with English versions of Windows.

I'm now writing on yet another train, coming home from a couple of days in Kyoto. I left my mobile at the company I was visiting, which is very inconvenient as I rely on it much more here than I did in the UK.

My boss from back home is in Japan this week. It's funny, but he seems to have completely forgotten any plan for me to return home after two years! I personally am in no hurry to leave Japan, but having been here for only four and a half months, it's very early days. My trip home for Christmas is now booked along with a very short trip back in late November. I am really looking forward to catching up with everyone, and especially to going to St. Albans with my friends and having a drink or two... or three... or four...! Yuki is coming home with me for Christmas and New Year. I'm soooo looking forward to that. I once spent a Christmas away from home in Australia, but having experienced the lack of festive spirit there, I don't intend to do it again!