tokyo

Tokyo – Part Ni

Standard

After my fairly quick tour of the north part of Japan, I headed back to Tokyo. Mainly so that I could spend my birthday with the friends I had made over my time in Japan who were largely based in Tokyo.

Had opted for a novelty option for my birthday dinner in the fishing restaurant where you can fish for your dinner. The main restaurant is a big wooden boat surrounded by a moat like tank.

fishing restaurant

Fishing rods where a simple stick with a small hook where depending on what fish you are trying to catch you either put a little bait on or just get the fish to bite on the hook. I have to say I was pretty hopeless and no birthday boy special treatment from the fish to have a nibble on my line. Luckily Shane managed to catch quite a nice bass and we ordered a la carte for the rest of our evenings sustenance.

ImageImageImageImage
ImageImageImage

The suitcase had been a bit of a pain on the previous leg of my journey as it barely fitted on the overhead space in the trains and train station lockers and was cumbersome to wheel around. Time to get reacquainted with my backpack which I hadn’t used in earnest for 10 years. Repacking into this bad boy meant I was more conscious about travelling light. Still amazed how functionally well thought through this bag is. Great investment. Must try to use it more!

IMG_0613

Onward to Hakone….

Tokyo Life – learning Nihongo (Japanese)

Standard

So I’ve been living to Tokyo now for the past 3 weeks and it has truly been a blast. The people are kind, the food is amazing and it is as exciting and crazy as you want it to be. (will write a separate post with other activities).

Given I’m here for a while I thought I’d make the effort to try and learn some language basics. Language not being my strongest asset, as my BBC (British born Chinese) friends will attest my Cantonese sucks big time. But the main reason for learning is mainly out of courtesy to the locals. As Brits I feel we tend to fall into the trap of speaking English to foreign visitors and try and get by with broken English when abroad. I’ve always tried to pick things up when abroad for basic conversational politeness, but Japanese was always going to be something different. One they don’t commonly use Romanised characters and I’m conscious its a culture that has even more formality and traditions than the Chinese ones I’m partially aware of.

I’ve signed myself up for 3 weeks intensive course which consist of 3 hours of lessons a day. The hope is it will give me an opportunity to explore and experience Tokyo, whilst developing some language basics.

nihongo fun and easy

Lessons so far have been pretty tough. Sentence structure seems alien and lots of different particle words which join other words and seems to vary for every sentence type I learn. Its a bit Yoda-esk so I’m keen to watch Star Wars in Japanese to see if he speak with an English word order. A quick google search later and seems its not just me that thinks so:

japanese yoda

Numbers too are challenging. They have a unit for 10,000s with a handful of exception variations for some units which augment the base number. Then they have a different number set for dates, counting objects (like ordering stuff), floors in a building.
Lots of augmentations for words for negatives, past tense and negative past tense depending on the ending letter and the direction the wind is blowing at the time.

Then I’m also trying the learn the Hirigana character set which is like the basic alphabet that typically a vowel ending sounds.

hiragana-chart-image

Not even going to try and learn the kanji set which I’m told I need to know 2000-3000 characters to read a newspaper. With it’s inheritance from from the Chinese character set I do recognise a few that helps me determined if I want a big or small flush of the water closet.

japan toilet flusher

My class is comprised of two french body builders who work out all week and party all weekend. They are good fun, but lewd connotations toward the unaware staff start to get tiresome after two weeks. Feel they aren’t here for the same culture experience as I, but try to make the most of the interaction for conversations.

Lessons continue to be tough but Ben helps me daily, correcting my incorrect pronunciation and I practice some phrases with some very kind Japanese friends I’ve made, as well as some unfortunate staff at various Japanese shops.

A couple more lessons to go and feel I’ve got some basic formalities under my belt, but need a fair bit of practice before daring to engage in any real conversation. Working on a few conversational sentence for the back pocket standard conversations with a lot of help from my friends, but I’m in hope that will be enough to show the locals I’m making an effort with their language and culture.

Tokyo Gaijin – Nozawa Onsen

Standard

So I learn Gaijin is anyone who is not native Japanese and the group we are joining will be mainly Gaijin who live/work out of Tokyo. Should be a good opportunity meet some people and expand the social circle.

The first destination we are heading to is a Hot Spring (Onsen) town where we will be joining the tour 2 days late. Just the thought of a nice hot soak after a long hard day’s boarding has got me excited. Can’t f-king wait!

Still 100% dependent on Ben getting us there we need to some how get to the Tokyo JR Station which is on the mainline rail network. We can either drag our now reduced luggage through the metro network or try find a cab that will fit our snowboards.

We head out to look for a cab, but everything that drives by seems the same jazz as at the airport: inadequate to cope with the sizeable boardbags.

IMG_8799

We test our luck and flag one of them down. The same trial and error protocol is executed with the driver first trying to fit the board bags across the back seats. Ben and I look at each other as if to say “where the hell are we going to sit?”. Ben tries to suggest dropping the seats down, but the taxi seems to be LPG and has a jock off tank between the trunk and the back seat. He tries to angle one of the bags into his trunk and to be fair wasn’t far off. Then as if by magic he whips out a random length of strap and proceeds to tie his boot lid down. 

IMG_9019I acknowledge Ben’s comment from earlier about just letting them get on with it. I was pretty amazed at the lengths this guy went to just to ensure he was able to service our needs whilst in the middle of the main road (taxis seem to pull in anywhere!). The first of many experiences where the Japanese will go to any lengths to try and accommodate you.

IMG_8816The taxi drops us off right outside Tokyo JR station and we buy tickets for Nagano from there a bus transfer to Nozawa Onsen. We miss the next train by literally minutes, but doesn’t seem so bad as the next one is in 30 minutes. At Nagano we realise that we’ve just missed a bus by 15 minutes and the next one isn’t for another hour and a half!

We are in no real rush so Ben manages to locate a tiny little restaurant that specialises in Unagi a short walk from the station.

We drag our bags over and the proprietors move mountains so we can be seated and our cumbersome luggage accommodated. I try to sit down on the tables which appear lower than normal western standards and struggle to fit my thigh between the top of the chair seat and the underside of the table top. A nod of acknowledgement from Ben from the other side of the table that he is having the same issue puts a smile on my faces and I make myself as comfortable as possible. The owner brings over a menu of which there appears to be 2 options, regular or large. Ben orders us 2 large and they proceed to bring over the standard, hot flannel, tea and little dishes of pickled vegetables.IMG_8823

The main dish arrives and its first of many amazing eateries Ben takes me to. Never had such soft, flavour packed and plentiful Unagi. The side dish of softly poached sweet apple pieces balance out the flavours really well.

IMG_8824

We head to the coach stop a little early to queue for seats and Ben assures me the coach will leave on schedule. The coach driver got on the bus after loading everything with 30 seconds to spare. With 10 seconds to go he pokes his head out the door to see if there are any passengers running for the bus and pulls off smack on time. Amazing. Though I will always wonder if we would have still left on time if someone had been running for the coach with 10 pieces of luggage.

Managed to sleep most of the journey so didn’t take any photos, but what I did see, as I drifted in and out, was a crisp sun lit flat landscape with a mountain range in the distance, all of which was covered in snow. We arrive in Nozawa Onsen and located our lodge and sleeping quarters. Was fairly surprised that it was basically a room with tatami mats laid out with futons and blankets by the people who were already staying there. 

We are soon joined by our roomies: Mai-Chan the crazy, but adorable Swiss educated Japanese girl, Xue the German Chinese with a very British education and Shane the Ozzie snowboard extraordinaire.

I get to hear their adventures from the days riding which get me excited for tomorrow. I get the call of nature so venture to the gents and get more than I bargain for in my first J toilet experience. The actually facilities in the lodge seemed fairly basic with the cold mountain air coming in through an open window. Thought this was going to be primitive. But when I sat down and was greeted by a nice warm seat. I definitely need me one of these!

IMG_8829When I was finished I couldn’t find the flusher, but did notice a Knight Rider like console to my right. I surveyed my options and though the icon with the flowing water might be my best bet. A warm jet of water then proceeded to clean my poo poo hole. Genius really! I continued to sit there thinking this may come to a predetermined end when the water started to get cold and thought I better do something here. I then hit the button with the person’s head (don’t ask the logic behind this decision, because I have no idea). As another jet of water then proceeded to target my testicles it dawned on me that the image on the button was that of a women and this feature was to clean women’s bits. I sort myself out and head back to the room to share my water closet adventure with my room mates who are in stitches.