Yokohama

This week Junten is holding its midterm exams, so that can mean only one thing, we get 3 days off work (YAY!), yesterday we decided to travel to Yokohama, to see one of the best Chinatowns in Japan.


Yokohama is only an hour by train from our flat, it`s a city that has been "absorbed" by Tokyo to create a massive metropolis, it is famous for having the tallest building and fastest elevator in Japan.

We arrived in Yokohama at about 11am, stumbling through the crowds of business men to get to the massive "Cosmo clock", a huge Ferris wheel with a clock on it. We wanted to get on the clock to get a good overview of Yokohama and see what it looked like from the sky, and well it looked urban, buildings as far as the eye could see, with landmarks like the "Landmark Tower" standing out.

We then journeyed to a nearby shopping centre to have a look around, I bought a cool Sponge Bob t-shirt and a mechanical pencil (for all my teaching needs ). After our strenuous shopping excursion it was nearly lunchtime, so we headed off to the famous Yokohama Chinatown.

Yokohama was a major centre for the Chinese immigrants coming into Japan, so it is no wonder that you can find one of the biggest Chinatowns around here, and not to mention Chinese temples (check out my pictures for many more impressive pics of Chinatown).
There were so many places to eat it was hard to decided just where we wanted lunch, we finally settled on a restaurant and we had a ten course (well ten different things anyway) lunch for only 2000円(about £9) you can`t argue with value like that!

Yokohama is famous for being one of Japans major shipping ports, so we wanted to check out the port, and luckily there is a nice park alongside the port so we could have a relaxing walk whilst seeing what all the fuss was about.

We saw the ひかわまる（hikawamaru）a Japanese ship used in the war as a hospital ship, remarkable in the fact it wasn`t destroyed at the end of the war.

We then caught the ferry back over towards the landmark tower, we were ready to journey to the top of the tallest building in Japan.

Landmark tower is 295 metres tall and has the worlds second fastest elevetor that travels at an ear popping 750m/min, but the view from the top is the most impressive thing, on a clear day you can see Mt.Fuji, sadly we couldn`t quite see it, well if you squint hard at the picture you can almost see it,



We had an amazing day out, I know I will definatly return to Yokohama one day.

For more pictures click here

So hungry i could eat a horse.....................and I DID!

My little delicious pony!
Despite the rights and wrongs of the matter, horse meat is available in Japan, mainly as sashimi (basashi) but also ice cream!

Many people would hear "horse" and run a mile, but when I came to Japan I said I would try EVERYTHING once, so here I am eating black beauty. What a beauty she was, horse meat is nice and chewy and has a subtle but lovely flavour, my advice? try it you may like it, I know I did.

J-Pop....

Ok in light of the fact I have nothing really interesting enough to post on the blog (other than my futon being harder than a solid steel boxer) I have decided to write a post about the strange phenomenon that is J-pop.

Pop in the UK is normally acceptable and at the very worst annoying but stick a J infront of it and you have an entirely different monster.

J-pop consists of high-pitched attractive young ladys and lovable male "idols" but everyonce in a while some tracks come along which are either A) Wierd or B) Annoyingly addictive and slightly cool, and the latest sensation DJ Ozma seems to be a mixture of the two.

We first heard of Dj Ozma at a kareoke event at school, one of the teachers sang it and the kids went mental, suffice to say we had to find out what this song was. When we finally found it, after much internet trawling, and well we were treated to an audio feast of madness, samples and misunderstanding. The song starts with what seems like a sample of "Daddy Cool", and well you may at first think WTF but trust me this song will be in your head.



well I doth my cap to you Dj Ozma, you are a legendary figure!

Whoop whoop its the sound of da police!

Well thought I would write a post because I havent updated in a while and I have some free time.

This weekend was more of a chilled out one than the past few, which was nice. We started on friday night woth a night out in Shibuya, basically just looking round the shops and going for a meal. By the time Yuki and Mai had met up with us it was about 11pm so we headed off to TGIfridays for a meal. It was pretty nice and was good to catch up with Mai and Yuki.

By the time the meal had ended it was like 12:40 so we had already missed our last train, so Yuki suggested we stayed at hers, It was only a 15min train ride away, her apartment was literllay one room but I was so tired after last week I just collapsed in a pile on the floor, not the most comfortable night but a fun one none the less.

Saturday was "advertising day" at Junten, basically Ben and I the token whites had to hand out prospectuses and give a sample lesson to future students, It was hardly thrilling but it is just something we have to do. We got home from advertising at about 5pm we were so tired we just made dinner then went to sleep, I think this weekend is one where we get all our missed sleep hours back!


Today we went on a shopping day, we were ment to be looking for halloween costumes but things soon drifted over to electric dictionarys and t-shirts. This leads me to the title of this post, when we arrived in Okachi Machi (near Ueno) we saw what seemed like the whole of Tokyos police division blocking off a sizeable area, turns out some gangster got shot, more details: http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/420072
After all that excitement I managed to calm down and buy a T-shirt or two, a good days shop.

All in a very good weekend for relaxing, I am tired now and trying to have a conference call with my parents and sister, good times.

Festival time!

Well it has been another busy weekend for us here in Tokyo.

We were invited to a festival to 'help out' yesterday; this consisted of us carrying chairs about and such. Due to the language gap we didn't seem able to help as much as we could of, but we gave it a good go.

Now on to the fun part, the festival was amazing, so many different stalls to see and foods to taste. There was a large stage on which to see a variety of acts from taiko drumming to cheerleading.

The festival is a yearly event organised by the local community to raise funds for a worthy cause, this year it was for the victims of an earthquake elsewhere in Japan. It is amazing to see the huge amount of community spirit that exists in Japan, sadly something I fear we have lost back in England.

The highlight of the festival for me was the ‘neko bus’ or cat bus, made famous by the anime ‘My neighbor Totoro’. The bus was a large wood/metal/paper construction that seated about 20 children and had wheels on the bottom so it could move. We were told to dress up in any silly costume that we saw fit and help the bus on its journey.

We started by pushing the bus out of the park then lifting it down some stairs to get to the main street (it was ridiculously heavy). Then we proceeded to push the bus through the main streets and watch as baffled shoppers and shopkeepers watched in amazement and bemusement. It was very tiring but really good fun. After we made it back to the park fireworks were strapped to the bus and set off. Here is a video:

Neko bus video

It was an amazing and memorable time, my first experience of a proper Japanese festival and I loved it.

As always you can see more pictures by clicking the Photos link at the top of the page.

Little kids and sign language.

Ok no picture this time, I’m lazy (also next post I will get the video of my "performance" up), Today was another hectic day, but one I have enjoyed immensely.

We started the day in the usual way, a 10 minute English lesson to the middle school children. This consists of me reading a page of English and getting them to chant it back in several different ways to improve their speaking ability. After the somewhat average lesson we headed off home to change clothes to visit the nursery for the first time.

The nursery is about a 30 minute walk from where we live, with it being such a sunny day we decided not to use the train but walk to make the most of the nice weather. We arrived at the nursery to a hail of “oh”, “he’s tall”, “wow” etc.

The kids were practicing for a sports day, now this is not a normal egg and spoon affair, oh no, this is full on Japanese human pyramid crazy gymnastics kinda sports day. We watched the practice and were amazed by the skill and coordination of children as young as 3!

After the practice we got to sit down with the kids and watch “Power puff girls” with the kids while lunch was being prepared, as soon as we sat down we were swarmed by children itching to sit on us. It was great fun. I tried to have some basic conversation with them in Japanese “do you like Disney?” “Do you like pokemon?” etc. they seemed to understand me which was nice.

We sat down at ridiculously small tables to eat our lunch, another chance to talk to the kids, it was just general chit chat, but I had a great time. That was our time over with the children so we returned to Junten.

This evening we were invited to a Japanese sign language class by Nishimura-san, one of our night class members. He is one of the teachers at the JSL club. I was apprehensive at first but this all disappeared when we were greeted by smiling faces as we entered the room.

Most Japanese are extremely shy with new people but these deaf people were so outgoing, it was great meeting with them and learning something from them. They all seemed amazed by how much we learnt in the one session, our name, age, family members, birthplace, times of day, numbers. You couldn’t wish to meet nicer people I am so glad I went and that we will see them again next week.