New York, New York........in Tokyo

Yesterday (Thursday) Ben and I had the day off, so we decided to have a day of sightseeing. We started by going to Ginza to see the Sony building, a huge showroom with all the latest Sony products. We saw everything from headphones to snazzy computers, all coupled with the shop attendants watching us with hawk like eyes just waiting to whip out a “you break you buy” policy.

After the Sony building we found that, Ginza is really just a place for the rich to shop, with huge department stores full of designer clothes, certainly not a place for cheapskates like us! So it was on to Odaiba, an island-like extension that pokes out into Tokyo bay. It is pretty much a tourist location, lots of shops, restaurants and amusements. We got a photo of the Japanese statue of liberty and browsed the shops until it was time to go to Joypolis.

Joypolis is a huge arcade/theme park, owned by Sega, that has rides such as “Speed bullet” and “Wild Jungle” which are actual, ‘sit in go somewhere’ rides but there are also ‘special edition’ arcade games to. Special edition means they have been beefed up to actually make them ride worthy, using real cars with huge screens and moving them about on racing games or adding sound, spinning chairs and air which shoots in your face to shooting games like ‘house of the dead’ for example.

We had an amazing day out and I think today we are going to have a rest day (for ourselves and our wallets)

Welcome to our flat!

Today was the "wrapping up day" of the school festival, so there were presentations and such alike, but nothing really standoutish so I thought it would be a good time to show you around our flat!

Our flat surprised me with its size after being told to expect miniscule rooms with it being Japan. Our flat comprises of an entrance hall, with space to place shoes, with a small bathroom and toilet one side, and the living room the other. The kitchen is a joint kitchen/diner with gas stove, microwave, mini oven and sink. Our bedrooms are pretty big, both with enough room for a bed/futon desk with a chair, wardrobe and still with space to spare.

Well I thought you might like to see where we live, to see more photos please click here-> http://picasaweb.google.com/mikeywarren89/Flat

School Festival フォ~~~~~~~

Yep that’s me alright, hammer in hand ready to dish out pain to the naughty 1-5 class!!
"Child abuse" I hear you say, nay it is but the Junten school festival.

Sunday and Monday (today) have been taken up with the school festival, basically every class holds some kind of money making event.
There were food stalls (yaki soba, tako yaki, yakitori and so on) events such as the haunted house where the kids scare the crap out of you! (Me and Ben found ourselves screaming at every turn much to the delight of the school kids) and "expos" where clubs show off their skills (baton twirling, kendo, shorinji kempo etc).

The school festival is a great way to really get to know all the pupils, with them dragging you around to their stalls and making you buy all their products, it was soo much fun, but oh so tiring.

Today the last day of the festival meant one thing and one thing only....... AFTER PARTY. This after party was the single most weirdest yet awesomist (whoop made up word) thing ever! At first you had the kids doing karaoke which was ok, but then it came to the teachers!

Isshi-sensei and Wada-sensei took to the mic, they belted out what can only be described as "a crazy Japanese song" and the kids went mental! Like catnip to well er cats they rushed the stage and danced about, this was about 60 or so people on a tiny stage, it was really a spectacle to be seen. The other thing that made this even more fantastic is that Wada-sensei and Isshi-sensei are two of the quietest guys at Junten but give them a stage, mic and crazy Japanese song and they are transformed into asian Elvises.

All in all its been a great weekend, all that is left is clean up day tomorrow :( well at least we get thursday-sunday off!

P.s did I forget to mention I sung "can’t hurry love" by the Supremes on stage in front of parents and alike? More to come on that later, with a VIDEO!

To see more photos click-> http://picasaweb.google.com/mikeywarren89

Out and about in Ueno

Last weekend we were invited to Ueno zoo by Mai. When we arrived we found Mai's friend Ritsuko and Her boyfriend Dave waiting for us in Ueno station. It was super hot but the zoo was interesting, the usual type of thing, monkeys, rhino, giraffe and so on.

After the zoo we went for something to eat, we ended up in a trditional Japanese restaurant, and like any Japanese restaurant you get LOTS of food. We had what seemed like a feast, sushi, tempura, tonkatsu (pork cutlet) and much more. We were well and truly stuffed.

Mai then took us to a pub with Gary (an American), Eric (American), Nobu, Hiruki (yopparai-san "Mr. drunk")and Yumi. You can see mr drunk there in the photo of me and Ben with a tramp :).

The night was great and ended like any good night with a bout of kareoke, it was nice meeting all the new people, people we will no doubt be seeing again as our Tokyo drinking buddies!

Me and my hose.....

Ok day two of the blog catch up medley.

On Sunday (one day after arriving) we went to the earthquake simulator building, where you can experience and find out what to do in an earthquake. We were taken there by Mai ans Satomi, two people we had been introduced to by Yuki (our Tokyo rep) they were really friendly and showed us round Tokyo for the first few days, pretty much babysitters :p.

Anyway back to what we did, we were talked at in Japanese for what seemed like hours before we were led into the simulation room, basically a mock japanese kitchen/dining room. We sat down at the table with conveniently placed pillows right infront of us, then we felt a little tremor that shook the room, at once we all jumped under tthe table pillows in tow and proceeded to cower under the table as what seemed like the biggest earthquake was going on around us.

After the excitement of the earthquake simulator we ventured out for a night on the town, which ended up with us at a kareoke superstore. In Japan the practice seems to be you book a room (basically a bench table and kareoke machine), pay a set rate after 11pm and just sing until 5am, when informed that we could spend 6 hours doing this we thought it to be an impossible task. Little did we know it is shockingly easy to sing for 6 hours, by the time 5am rolled around we still had lists and lists of potential songs which would have to wait till next time. (Luke if you`re reading just wait till you come it will be Michael Jackson heaven)

Going to bed at 5am seemed to do wonders for our jet lag and so we were fresh and ready to depart for Junten highschool the next day!

Laptop aquired blog mode go!

Ok so I have finally got a laptop, a blinder of one at that, I can now start blogging for real seeing as how I have been here a week without any real updates I thought I would gradually chronicle my events thus far.

The picture you see here was taken the morning of the flight Tom had just found out that you were only allowed one peice of handluggage, so he was frantically putting on 3 pairs of trousers a pair of shorts and god knows how many t-shirts. Despite a few odd looks I think the staff were more impressed than shocked, well that was until Tom "Bin Laden" Clayson passed through the security he was immediately stopped for a collection of cds (which I suppose look like a bomb?). the security guys took this super seriously and made him unpack it all and pass a magic bomb finding bog brush, or something, around his case.

Security issues aside the flight to Paris CDG was relativly uneventful and a little late. We are collectivly blaming the lateness of the plane on us missing our flight to Narita and not the fact we sat in the wrong place >.>

No matter we managed to get a flight only 1 hour later so no real loss. The flight was long and boring. I spent the whole time either talking to this German guy or watching films, I spose that wraps up this segment of the first couple of days, tune in next time for the exciting tale of gaijin in Shibuya.

I have arrived!!!!!!! (6 days ago......)

Ok so I may be a little late in updating this blog and for that I am sorry, but its just been so busy.
We arrived on saturday, 2 hours later than expected becuase we missed our scheduled flight from Paris CDG, but AirFrance sorted everything out and we caught another flight 2 hours later.
As a result our baggage wasnt present at the airport so they said they would send it on as soon as they got it . (luckily it was there when i got to Junten.)

We have been doing so many things that i Just dont have time to tell you all about at the moment, but on Sunday Ben and I plan to get our laptops so it will be much easier to blog, so expect muchos updates over the weekend, covering things such as allnight kareoke, screaming school girls and kawaii (cute) kindergarten kids.!

Well thats all for now,

Mata ne (laters)

Mike.