Vince's 19th Birthday

Hi everyone!

So, last Saturday was Vince's 19th Birthday. To celebrate, we all went out to 2 hours of all-you-can-drink karaoke and then spent the rest of the night in an 80's nightclub called Castillo's, in Roppongi. It was a great night - I was more drunk than ever! Unfortunately Vince's camera broke half way through the night so all we get to see are some pictures of karaoke. Nevertheless, here they are, commemorated on this blog forever. Enjoy!


Before karaoke. Takako, Me, Jose's friend Takashi and Jose.



The group at karaoke.



Me, Takako, Jose and Takashi again. I think I am singing Eternal Flame.



The group again. We had a huge karaoke room!



Takako, Me and Vince's Canadian friend Keith, getting a bit friendly!



After karaoke!



After karaoke, again! That's Vince with the big pink turd on his head.

Vince's prank on Jose

1. Lay plastic door-frame pieces against Jose's door.
2. Open some umbrellas, place accordingly.
3. Move air filter, fire extinguisher and chair into somewhat annoying positions.
4. Wait until Jose wakes up.
5. Wet pants.

OMFG!

Man, here's a movie I can't WAIT to see!

Eating the forbidden fish...

I managed to find an izakaya today that served whale sashimi! Honestly though, it didn't taste any different to other kinds of sashimi, except maybe it was a little oilier. And I guess it's a bit darker. What a rip off though - 5 slices for 900 yen! I mean come on whales are HUGE!

Engrish

I have it on good authority that girls actually like tasty "nuts"...

Word of the day

pimpnicity, as in:

The key to being a pimp, is knowing that you are a pimp. When you question your pimpnicity, others will too.

My Brother's Pussy

Everyone, meet Calypso.

Some Purikura and stuff

Went out last night with Jose and two girls, Satomi and Kahori. We went bowling and Satomi DESTROYED us all with a score of 160. Christ!

Anyway we took Purikura and the machine had an option to send them to mobile phones. So, here they are!

Also we went to an Izakaya for a delicious dinner, and then to karaoke!

Also, Happy Mother's day, everyone.

Thoughts on women

In my job I encounter a lot of women: mothers, in particular. While their husbands are off slaving away (and yes, this is Japan so I literally mean slaving) at the office, these mothers have the arguably unenviable task of looking after their little sprogs. And it is through repeated meetings with these women that I come to this conclusion: Women (particularly Japanese women) over 30 quite literally turn into baby-making factories.

I know it sounds obvious but oh my god! It seems every week one of them has a new one. They come in carrying their expressionless offspring bundled up in some kind of baby-carrying sling around their shoulders, mopping up their dribble and telling them to stop screaming. It`s kind of funny I guess, maybe it`s from coming from Australia, but the penchant for literally giving up work for a good 6-8 years to raise children seems to be rife here. Women just turn into housewives and stay that way for what seems like bloody ages. Then they get a part time job, or something.

No wonder Japan`s population is so god damn large. It`s because seemingly every woman can just drop everything and queef out a couple of babies. Not only can they, but when they get to 30, they feel socially compelled to! Amazing.

Anyway I`ve ranted enough.. This wasn`t nearly as interesting as I thought it was going to be. Sorry, sports fans.

This cat loves you...

Meow!

Atami!

It being Golden Week, today Jose, one of Jose's friends named Sebastian (half-swiss half-japanese) and I made a day-trip to Atami. Atami is a beautiful little seaside town on the Izu Peninsula, about 2 hours south of Tokyo. It is famous for its hot springs and its picturesque beach scenery.

So, we left at about 9am, caught the normal express train from Shinjuku to Odawara, which took about 100 minutes or so. Then, we caught the Shinkansen for just ONE stop from Odawara to Atami. You are probably thinking "Why would you take it for just one stop!??". Well, it is a 10 minute ride and costs 1240 yen one way, so it's not ludicrously expensive. A local train would take much longer and Jose and Sebastian had never had the Shinkansen experience...

So we got there and headed for the hot spring. It was great! It was on the roof of a hotel; it had an outdoor pool that was about 58 degrees C, a sauna, a spa, a cold pool, and it all overlooked the ocean, as you will see in the photos I will post below. Very nice atmos, and it was only 1000 yen for all the sauna and spa'ing you could handle.

After that we went into town and found ourselves something to eat. It was ramen, and I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to eat raw fish (Atami being a seaside town after all) but Jose and Sebastian were too concerned about spending heaps of money (admittedly, the restaurants were tourist traps and quite expensive).

Next we caught a bus down to the beach, where we went on the sand (it's really dark here in Japan) and found a beach volleyball court! Next to it, 4 random girls were just chilling out, sort of half-heartedly throwing a volleyball to each other. So I wandered over and asked them if they wanted to play with us on the court. They said yes, and we had a fun time!

After that, we heard some drums and wandered over to the source, only to find ourselves in the middle of some kind of festival, with people dressed up dancing and drumming and what not. Very Japanese!

Finally, we bought some beers, sat out on the sort of jetty-type thing and drank them, and caught the train back. It was such a long day but now my skin feels all nice from the sauna and hot spring, the volleyball was pretty strenous (and my pants are now full of sand), but all round it was a fun fun day. Enjoy the pics!


A statue in Odawara


The hot spring, on the roof of a building overlooking the sea!


The view in one direction...


And in another...


And in another!


The Atami Beach...


The Atami Beach again...


Some traditional Japanese dancers (what's this called, can anyone help me? awa odori or something?)


A big taiko drum


The scene of the festival


A dead shark doing it with a dead manta ray...

Japanese kindness

Today a nice thing happened! While eating all alone at the ramen shop near my house, feeling sorry for myself because I have a cold and am tired and irritable, the kind (read: drunk) old man sitting next to me stood up, payed for his meal, then insisted that he pay for mine as well!

I politely asked why, and he said "no no don't worry! your japanese is very good! keep it up!!"

"uh... sure!" i said, and continued eating. He just wandered off.

Free dinner! Thanks, Japan!

Jose's fifteen stitches

Poor Jose! Yesterday while apparently giving a piggy back to a rich, thin Korean girl with big boobs, he fell flat on his face, whereby the glass broke and cut his face.

He is lucky! That is damn close to his eye!

Another job!

Well, as well as my job teaching English to little kids, now I am also teaching piano to a 5 year old Korean girl named Min.

She's adorably cute - really affectionate! Every time she sees me she just runs up and hugs my leg - today she was kissing my hand! hahaha

Best part is, it's mega easy and her mother is paying me 2500 yen per 30 min class, once a week! Awesome!

Monja street

Went to a place called Tsukishima today, a place famous for its Monja-yaki (which is like okonomiyaki but not so much pancake, more like stirfry vegetables i guess) with Jose, and some Taiwanese friends of his from his school. It was OK and mega el cheapo! Only 1300 yen for enough food to fill me + a big jockey of beer!

It was pretty fun I guess. Anyway the real purpose of this blog entry is just so I can deposit these photos here.

So, enjoy, and excuse my weird looking hair.

久しぶり！

Met up with my long-time friend Shiori tonight! This is the girl that I have known longest and still keep in contact with. 9 years! I met her when I was 15!

We (me, her, her friend Asuka and Asuka's friend Mr Endo) went to Shinjuku to eat Okinawan food, which, I soon discovered, is basically anything as long as it's topped with copious amounts of ゴーヤー (go-ya-), a.k.a. "bitter melon". It was OK, I guess.

Anyway it's always funny hanging out with Shiori because it seems that no matter where I go in the world, she comes there within a year or so of my arriving there. First I meet her in 1998 in Okayama, then when I lived in Nara in 2001, she was at uni in Kyoto. Then I go back to Canberra and sure enough, she gets a job at the Japanese embassy in Canberra in 2005. Now I am in Tokyo and she's applying for jobs in Tokyo! I told her that she should stop following me and she smirked and punched me in the arm.

Anyhow, it was a fun day!

Babel

Watched this movie the other night. Pretty good! Lots of drama, and a real fly-on-the-wall feel about it.

Then again, that may have just been me. When I watched it, I didn't realise at the time but there were supposed to be subtitles. Half of the movie is set in the Moroccan desert, and I thought that the point was that you DIDN'T understand what they were saying, thus giving it that "watching people" kind of feel. The rest of the movie was in Japanese and English, and I had no trouble understanding that. I thought it was quite a stroke of genius - make the words unintelligible so one has to actually think about what one is seeing in order to make sense of the movie, instead of just reading what they're saying. This, combined with the story of the deaf Japanese girl all seemed to make sense...

Or so I thought! Thinking it was just a bit suspiscious, after watching in sans subtitles in Quicktime I thought I'd have a quick look at running it in VLC and sure enough, SUBTITLES. And I missed them all.

Still, I guess it at least somewhat demonstrates that it was a good movie by the fact that even though I had no clue what these Moroccan sand monkeys were talking about, I still understood what the hell was going on.

My rating: 7/10

Complaint??

This morning I was phoned up by my boss, who told me that one of the students' mother's had complained about my teaching style. She said that I was "skipping over" exercises, using the teacher's guide during the class (apparently I should have memorised it? News to me.), and not encouraging enough speaking. Riiiiight.

I really don't understand this! In each of my classes we progress through the textbook and activity book - it is usually listening, reading, speaking and writing. Because of the number of classes we have and the number of pages in the textbook, we can make sufficient progress just by doing one double-page spread per class. The rest of the class I fill with English related games - Hangman, English Karuta, Bingo etc.

So here's what I have to say to whichever mother complained:

FUCK YOU BITCH, you got something to say? Say it to my mothafuckin' face.

i-Unit!

Look what I got to see in real life today at the Ikebukuro Toyota Building!

the i-Unit!



Almost makes up for not going to the Aichi World Expo...

Pictures of my place

By request, I took some photos of the place I'm living in...

Looking from the front door - to the left you can see a little of the doorway to the common room (i.e. it has a table, the Wii etc.)


The kitchen. A bit messy. Note the bins - you have at least two in Japan - one for combustibles, one for non-combustibles.


The hallway for all our rooms - it's a bit of a Chinese laundry up the back there.


My totally awesome machine and new speakers!