1. Jiggering your leg up and down in a distracted way is considered rather rude in Japan
Especially if you're eating, apparently. To put it in the words of the lady who told me "it means you have NO MANNERS!!"
2. If you have bags trailing behind you when you go through a subway barrier, it thinks someone's trying to sneak through without paying the fare, and the barrier slams shut
unintentionally tried and tested twice. TWICE.
3. Burma is also called Myanmar
Is this an international thing? Or just in Japan? I've never had cause to pay much attention it before.
4. There are some bloody massive spiders in Japan
Honestly, they could take your head off with one swing of their mighty spider-legs. Probably.
Tuesday 25 September 2007
Thursday 20 September 2007
Mount Fuji....
There are two sayings in Japan about climbing Mount Fuji. One says, "you're a fool if you don't climb Fuji, but you're a fool if you climb it more than once". The other says "Fuji is for looking, not for climbing". Combine this with the numerous Japanese people that looked at me as if I was mad when I told then I was going to climb up Japan's biggest mound of dirt, and the numerous articles written by previous climbers who said what a miserable, miserable experience it was and frankly I was feeling a little jittery about making the run. But climbing season was coming to and end, my friends from England were here and raring to go, so basically it was unavoidable.
Mount Fuji has 10 climbing stations, with 1 at the bottom and 10 at the top. Usually you start from station 5 halfway up, and climb from there. Me, Jackie, Jen, and Sinead arrived there at around 4pm on Thursday after a fun cab ride with a very jolly guy who could speak no English. I think he was giving me lots of interesting information and tips about the climb, but really for most of the time I was just nodding my head and say "so so so so". We began out ascent full of cheer and laughter, and it wasn't long before we got to the 6th station, where we had a quick drink, then we carried on up. At this point we started to notice that no one else seemed to be going UP, just down. Then a few of the people descending started asking us what we planned do to when we got near the top. We said that we were going to stay in one of the huts up there, and then head off to the top to catch sunrise. First problem: all the huts were shut! When the first person told us, we shrugged them off, but then a couple more people said the same thing, and finally a very concerned looking guy bounded up the mountain to tell us that everything was DEFINITELY shut. So, slightly deflated we went back down to the 6th station, and decided to try and sleep till midnight and set off then.
Sleeping proved very difficult, mainly because it was about 8pm, but also because we all kept giggling. I haven't been to a sleepover for a while, but it made me want to have one again - if we'd had a video player and a copy of Mannequin it would have been my childhood all over again.
So at midnight, we set off AGAIN. Trudging up the mountain was fairly tiring, but not too debilitating, and the night view as we looked back at Fujinomiya was pretty breathtaking (although it defied any attempts to photograph it - damn scenery). Altitude sickness if one of things that stops most people from getting to the top, so we took our time and went fairly slowly. Weatherwise, we were pretty lucky - although it was cold, it wasn't unbearable and climbing kept us nice and warm.
Things started to get a little more tricky when we got to around the 7th or 8th station. Although we were all tired, Jackie seemed to be getting noticeably more fatigued than the rest of us, and when I offered her a Snickers bar to reengergise her and she seemed to tired to put it in her mouth, alarm bells started to ring. We tried to press on up to the summit, but it became obvious after a while that she's got a nasty case of altitude sickness and that she wasn't going to make it to the top. So in the end she and I stayed at 9th station while Jen and Sinead pressed on to meet the sunrise at 5:30am. I went on afterwards to check out the summit too - it's not too exciting once the sun's risen to be honest! There was fog everywhere, so you couldn't see much, and it was pretty windy and chilly. But we were all chuffed that we'd made it, and the view as we looked down, although cloudy, was pretty cool.
Then we started out descent which was MUCH more tiring and painful than I expected. My knees were groaning as we neared the bottom, and Jen and I also had to deal with a soul-sapping error: we though we were coming to the 6th station (and were thus almost home), but then realised it was actually the 7th (and that home was another hour away). But by this time we felt like veterans, and pressed on, showing true British pluck :)
Once we got back to the 5th station, we hauled ourselves into the cab (the same driver - he seemed very amused by the whole thing) and headed for home, absolutely exhausted. It may make me a fool, but I'd certainly like to climb it again, although not in the next couple of years. Since getting back, I've suddenly been inundated with useful information about the climb (where was this BEFORE we went?!): which routes are best to go up and down etc. Furthermore, I think going slap bang in the middle of climbing season when all the huts are open so you can rest for a few hours would be a good idea - going up and down without stopping (a 10 hour hike basically) was knackering. But I'm glad I did it, and can happily tick it off my list of things to do in Japan. Next........pufferfish sashimi!
(Pretty pictures of the whole endeavour can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54966&l=e726f&id=697195509 )
Mount Fuji has 10 climbing stations, with 1 at the bottom and 10 at the top. Usually you start from station 5 halfway up, and climb from there. Me, Jackie, Jen, and Sinead arrived there at around 4pm on Thursday after a fun cab ride with a very jolly guy who could speak no English. I think he was giving me lots of interesting information and tips about the climb, but really for most of the time I was just nodding my head and say "so so so so". We began out ascent full of cheer and laughter, and it wasn't long before we got to the 6th station, where we had a quick drink, then we carried on up. At this point we started to notice that no one else seemed to be going UP, just down. Then a few of the people descending started asking us what we planned do to when we got near the top. We said that we were going to stay in one of the huts up there, and then head off to the top to catch sunrise. First problem: all the huts were shut! When the first person told us, we shrugged them off, but then a couple more people said the same thing, and finally a very concerned looking guy bounded up the mountain to tell us that everything was DEFINITELY shut. So, slightly deflated we went back down to the 6th station, and decided to try and sleep till midnight and set off then.
Sleeping proved very difficult, mainly because it was about 8pm, but also because we all kept giggling. I haven't been to a sleepover for a while, but it made me want to have one again - if we'd had a video player and a copy of Mannequin it would have been my childhood all over again.
So at midnight, we set off AGAIN. Trudging up the mountain was fairly tiring, but not too debilitating, and the night view as we looked back at Fujinomiya was pretty breathtaking (although it defied any attempts to photograph it - damn scenery). Altitude sickness if one of things that stops most people from getting to the top, so we took our time and went fairly slowly. Weatherwise, we were pretty lucky - although it was cold, it wasn't unbearable and climbing kept us nice and warm.
Things started to get a little more tricky when we got to around the 7th or 8th station. Although we were all tired, Jackie seemed to be getting noticeably more fatigued than the rest of us, and when I offered her a Snickers bar to reengergise her and she seemed to tired to put it in her mouth, alarm bells started to ring. We tried to press on up to the summit, but it became obvious after a while that she's got a nasty case of altitude sickness and that she wasn't going to make it to the top. So in the end she and I stayed at 9th station while Jen and Sinead pressed on to meet the sunrise at 5:30am. I went on afterwards to check out the summit too - it's not too exciting once the sun's risen to be honest! There was fog everywhere, so you couldn't see much, and it was pretty windy and chilly. But we were all chuffed that we'd made it, and the view as we looked down, although cloudy, was pretty cool.
Then we started out descent which was MUCH more tiring and painful than I expected. My knees were groaning as we neared the bottom, and Jen and I also had to deal with a soul-sapping error: we though we were coming to the 6th station (and were thus almost home), but then realised it was actually the 7th (and that home was another hour away). But by this time we felt like veterans, and pressed on, showing true British pluck :)
Once we got back to the 5th station, we hauled ourselves into the cab (the same driver - he seemed very amused by the whole thing) and headed for home, absolutely exhausted. It may make me a fool, but I'd certainly like to climb it again, although not in the next couple of years. Since getting back, I've suddenly been inundated with useful information about the climb (where was this BEFORE we went?!): which routes are best to go up and down etc. Furthermore, I think going slap bang in the middle of climbing season when all the huts are open so you can rest for a few hours would be a good idea - going up and down without stopping (a 10 hour hike basically) was knackering. But I'm glad I did it, and can happily tick it off my list of things to do in Japan. Next........pufferfish sashimi!
(Pretty pictures of the whole endeavour can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54966&l=e726f&id=697195509 )
Monday 10 September 2007
Funky Japanese arcade...
In the news recently there were reports than an arm wrestling game in some Japanese arcades had broken three people's arms (that's three separate people -not one person with three arms). So when Thom said he'd found a similar machine in a nearby arcade, OF COURSE we had to go and try it out.
Here's the machine, looking innocent:
And here's me, choosing my opponent. On the screen you can see the selection of racial and sexual stereotypes than comprise the potential foes you can battle. My favourite was the black guy with the enormous red lips - I think it might be where Herge got his ideas for Tin-Tin.
Despite bracing myself to hear a snap in my humerus, the machine was actually pretty weak - me and Thom both completed it with little strain. So what I suspect actually happened was a Japanese salaryman fell over whilst peeping into a girls' purikura photo both, but needed a better excuse to give his wife when he rang her from casualty.
Sally (Thom's girlfriend) also had a go on this train simulator:
It's difficult to gauge her success - on the one hand, her punctuality was second to none; however, this was mainly because she didn't stop at any stations and just powered through while the little simulated Japanese commuters shook their tiny fists. Still better than Virgin Trains though (satire).
Thom also had a go on this boxing game where as well as smacking the hell out of your opponents, you also sometimes had to dodge. Sadly, the menacing looking thing at head height didn't shoot out and smack you if you didn't, your character onscreen just got a punching.
Here's the machine, looking innocent:
And here's me, choosing my opponent. On the screen you can see the selection of racial and sexual stereotypes than comprise the potential foes you can battle. My favourite was the black guy with the enormous red lips - I think it might be where Herge got his ideas for Tin-Tin.
Despite bracing myself to hear a snap in my humerus, the machine was actually pretty weak - me and Thom both completed it with little strain. So what I suspect actually happened was a Japanese salaryman fell over whilst peeping into a girls' purikura photo both, but needed a better excuse to give his wife when he rang her from casualty.
Sally (Thom's girlfriend) also had a go on this train simulator:
It's difficult to gauge her success - on the one hand, her punctuality was second to none; however, this was mainly because she didn't stop at any stations and just powered through while the little simulated Japanese commuters shook their tiny fists. Still better than Virgin Trains though (satire).Thom also had a go on this boxing game where as well as smacking the hell out of your opponents, you also sometimes had to dodge. Sadly, the menacing looking thing at head height didn't shoot out and smack you if you didn't, your character onscreen just got a punching.
Birthday!!
On September the 5th, I celebrated my 28th Birthday - cue everyone under 28 saying "wow, you're really old now" and everyone over 28 saying "ah, but you're not 30 yet at least". On my actually Birthday, I was working so I celebrated properly the following night with some food and karaoke (of course).
The local karaoke place charges a single fee if you go after 11, however long you stay up until 6am, so that's the one we normally go for. This only includes one drink though, and as ordering drinks via telephone can be a little hit and miss in these places, not to mention s-l-o-w, we always take in our own from the local convenience store. I think technically you're not meant to do this, but they don't seem to enforce this rule to rigidly. In fact, at one point late in the night one of the staff came in to check how many people were left and there were cans and bottle all over the place. I was going to try and surreptitiously cover some of them up, but with the amount of drinking debris on show this would just have patronised the guy's intelligence - it looked like a recycling plant. He didn't say anything about it anyway (or if he did, it was in Japanese an thus I could safely plead ignorance).
Gradually the numbers thinned out until the just a hardcore four of us were left at 5am - we stopped in the end because our tracheas were starting to close up and making our renditions even more torturous than normal. I finally got to bed at 6:30, after some food at a nearby 24 hour place. Not bad for an old guy :)
Some photos of the night can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53219&l=ed5d5&id=697195509
Also, thanks very much to everyone who wished me happy Birthday, it was very much appreciated! It always feels a bit funny to be away from home for special occasions, and nothings more special than my bloody Birthday so little messages from people back home always give me a warm and fuzzy :)
The local karaoke place charges a single fee if you go after 11, however long you stay up until 6am, so that's the one we normally go for. This only includes one drink though, and as ordering drinks via telephone can be a little hit and miss in these places, not to mention s-l-o-w, we always take in our own from the local convenience store. I think technically you're not meant to do this, but they don't seem to enforce this rule to rigidly. In fact, at one point late in the night one of the staff came in to check how many people were left and there were cans and bottle all over the place. I was going to try and surreptitiously cover some of them up, but with the amount of drinking debris on show this would just have patronised the guy's intelligence - it looked like a recycling plant. He didn't say anything about it anyway (or if he did, it was in Japanese an thus I could safely plead ignorance).
Gradually the numbers thinned out until the just a hardcore four of us were left at 5am - we stopped in the end because our tracheas were starting to close up and making our renditions even more torturous than normal. I finally got to bed at 6:30, after some food at a nearby 24 hour place. Not bad for an old guy :)
Some photos of the night can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53219&l=ed5d5&id=697195509
Also, thanks very much to everyone who wished me happy Birthday, it was very much appreciated! It always feels a bit funny to be away from home for special occasions, and nothings more special than my bloody Birthday so little messages from people back home always give me a warm and fuzzy :)
Monday 3 September 2007
Japanese lessons the hard way...
The Japanese language - being completely different to our European, Latin based languages and thus not resembling English in the slightest - is fraught with surprises and pitfalls to screw over the unwary foreigner. For example, if you at the suffix -so to the end of an adjective in Japanese, it means "it appears" or "it looks" whatever. Oishii = delicious; oishii-so = it looks delicious. Muzukashii = difficult; muzukashi-so = it looks difficult etc. Now, due to its ubiquity, "kawaii" is one of the first words you learn in Japanese. It basically translates as"cute" and if you go one day without hearing it said about something.....well, I don't know, because that's never happened to me.
Based on these two premises, you can construct the phrase "kawaii-so" = it looks cute. Seems obvious right? And indeed I've said that many times over the last few months since I've been getting to grips with Japanese, including to students when they got new clothes or dyed their hair. And now - AND NOW - I find out that kawaiso is in fact a word completely in itself and means pitiful. SO I'VE BEEN TELLING PEOPLE THEIR NEW HAIRCUTS LOOK PITIFUL!! And no-one though to point this out to me?! Gah!!
Based on these two premises, you can construct the phrase "kawaii-so" = it looks cute. Seems obvious right? And indeed I've said that many times over the last few months since I've been getting to grips with Japanese, including to students when they got new clothes or dyed their hair. And now - AND NOW - I find out that kawaiso is in fact a word completely in itself and means pitiful. SO I'VE BEEN TELLING PEOPLE THEIR NEW HAIRCUTS LOOK PITIFUL!! And no-one though to point this out to me?! Gah!!
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