Climbing Fuji.

"Now approaching Mt Fuji' fifth station". As the bus heaves itself up the long mountain road, I snooze, my head gently banging against the window. Having slept less than a handful of hours the night before, I desperately  try to force precious minutes of sleep in an attempt to keep my biological clock ticking-it's not working. Resigning myself to a sleep deprived ascent of Fuji, I sit up, blinking as the bus pulls in. We stagger off and gaze up at the mountain lying before us. From the fifth station, what's left of Mt Fuji doesn't look that intimidating. Volcanic; yes, steep; yes, but not that high. It's easy to forget, especially if you're asleep for most of it, that the bus takes you several thousand feet of the way up Fuji. As we take our first steps up the mountain trail, leaving the tacky tourist shops and greasy restaurants behind, I can't help but quietly hum the theme song from "The Lord of the Rings".

The 5th station of Mt Fuji; where the trail begins.

The fresh air and exercise give us a boost of energy and I soon feel the tiredness and desire to stab my girlfriend both recede...perhaps the two are intrinsically linked. Both of us are somewhat surprised that we're actually going through with the climb but pleased nonetheless.

Step by step, meter by meter the trail becomes steeper, the crowd thicker and the air colder with the darkening of the sky to follow. At the start, the path is wide and open but the higher we get, the narrower it becomes. What little was left of the vegetation now begins to thin out and soon the only visible living thing on the mountainside is the long winding trail of people leading up to the summit. A few inches to the either side of the path, mercilessly steep hills of scree threaten a rock slide, regardless of this though I feel remarkably safe on such a well worn path. Our only concern, as we observe our fellow climbers, is our seeming lack of equipment. Rough looking climbers with faces harder than stone sport heavy duty jackets, lights strapped to their heads and pocket sized oxygen tanks. As I gaze at these seemingly seasoned veterans and then back to my own tracksuit-t-shirt-hoodie combination I feel somewhat haphazardly prepared.

Trail on Fuji.

As the sun begins to sink closer to the horizon we begin to feel signs of fatigue. Our once frantic scampering has slowed to a careless stumble. On either side of the path are haggard men, woman and children slumped like rag dolls; defeated, if only temporarily, by the mountain. Our mountain hut is located just beyond the eighth station and is the last on the trail before the summit. Soon we are some of the only climbers on the path and the sickeningly thin air begins to take it's effect. A dull, glazed over feeling seeps into my head as if I have been helping myself to vodka shots along the way. This is not the level of concentration one should have while climbing a mountain. Fortunately we soon happen upon our hut and fall in the door, spluttering our names and reservations to the man greeting us.

A typical scene in a mountain hut.

As we reluctantly choke down our mountain hut gourmet, we gaze around our spartan living conditions to see other weary travelers murmuring to each other, whilst huddled around fires and hot drinks. It's a small shack, perched on the side of the mountain, little more than a kitchen and two large rooms, one of which is filled with communal bunk beds. Soon I find myself sandwiched between my girlfriend and a middle aged Japanese man, whom I am squashed so firmly against I can feel him breathe. Despite the unfavourable conditions I soon drift off.

Communal bunk beds.

We awake to shuffling and hushed whispers as other mountaineers pull on their jackets and slip out out the doors. Alice, my girlfriend is feeling wretched, and a fear that she will not be able to complete the climb begins to fester deep in my stomach. Stepping out into the cool night air we see one of the most spectacular things I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing; a snaking pattern of twinkling lights stretching all the way up the mountain into the darkness. Red, blue, green and white shine below and above us like an elongated Christmas tree. As our gaze rises we are greeted by a pantheon of stars mirroring the lights below us spreading all the way to the horizon where the curvature of the earth can be seen.

The Mountain Trail at night.

The fresh air and views lift our spirits as we  approach the summit. Tiredness and altitude sickness are now secondary factors pushed to the back of our minds, we are finishing this mountain. As we pass under a red Shinto arch we drag ourselves up the last few steps to the summit. Elation and triumph are soon quenched by the stinging realization that we are forty minutes early and horrendously unprepared for the cold. Cosying up with a bowl of noodles we sit eagerly waiting for the sunrise and more importantly the heat that comes with it. After many minutes of waiting, it happens. The first few beams of light creep above the horizon hinting to a sunrise that will cleave it in two. As joy begins to fill our tired bodies everything else begins to fade away until one-almighty-heave...the man standing next to me starts uncontrollably vomiting. The moment hilariously shattered by the reality of altitude sickness we breathed in our own sense of triumph and began the journey home.

Me and Alice.

Maid Cafes

Capsule Hotels, horse sorbet, and crazy pornography are some of the weirder things I have encountered whilst living in Japan. However there is still a glaring gap in my chronicling of the oddities in this country; maid cafes. I had heard bits and pieces of information from several people and from what I could gather these cafes were Japan's answer to "Hooters"; a place where you could go and chill out with cheap food, whilst ogling provocatively dressed women. However, this being Japan, I guessed there would be an emphasis on the eccentricity of it all which would leave my jaw ajar and surely enough I was right. After some initial hesitance on my part, my roommate, who is well on his way to earning a gold membership, convinced me to come along.    

A maid cafe very similar to the one I attended.

Upon walking into my roommates favourite cafe, we were greeted by several petite women dressed up in what can only be described as maid costumes from some 1980's acid freak's fantasy. The excessively elaborate nature of these dresses with ribbons the size of small children made it difficult not to stare, but in hindsight starring is half the reason one goes into a maid cafe. The women at the door bowed low and in squeakingly high voices piped "welcome my master!". As I've previously mentioned; being called "Mister" is still somewhat of a novelty to me, so as you can imagine, being called master, albeit in Japanese, was quite bemusing. While my friend was welcomed back with open arms and celebration, me being the fledgling novice that I am, was promptly processed and issued with a shiny, new members card. We selected a maid from a menu card and were promptly shown to our seats.

A typical maid making the "Moe" sign with her hands.

Immediately after I sat down I scanned the room quickly to see what kind of patrons a maid cafe attracted. While I expected social lepers and sexual fiends the results were far more mixed than my initial guesses. Groups of young men, couples on dates, families of confused foreigners and of course the outright weird were sitting around enjoying themselves, whilst giggling maids frantically teetered to and fro, hurrying to do their masters bidding. It was all so surreal. I briefly made eye contact with another disorientated foreigner and we gave each other the unspoken look of mutual confusion that only outsiders in Japan can understand.

My facial expression for most of the trip.

Soon enough our maid arrived. It was a young women brimming with such intense sweetness I'm surprised she had a tooth left in her head. She humoured us; feigning interest in our personal lives whilst showing us the options on the menu. In addition to the food and drinks one could get things drawn on them with sauce. I of course got the latte with the caramel rabbit. After our food and drinks arrived I was informed that we would have to bless them first with the power of "Moe!". As far as I can tell "moe" roughly translates to all things sweet, cute and innocent. So under the diligent instruction of our maid, we made heart shapes with our hands and proceeded to bless the sugary treats in three places forming a triangle; "Moe! Moe! Kyun!". It was all so sickeningly sweet I almost vomited.

This what came up when I googled "Moe! Moe! Kyun!"...uhm...yea...

James, my roommate, explained that for an additional fee you could also play games with the maids. Whilst I didn't find the offer in the slightest bit tempting, I did look around to see if any of my peers were engaging in such indulgencies. I locked eyes on a hilaiously serious looking businessman playing "hungry hungry hippos" with his maid. Whilst his worn down, sullen features never moved accept for an occasional, monotone grunt, fortunately his adversary had enough emotions for the two of them. With squeaking groans and exaggerated gestures she fell back on her chair covering her eyes in disbelief at her masters innate skill at "hungry hungry hippos". I decided that I would have to settle for the sick twist of fate that meant my maid would never know of my hidden talent at kindergarten board games.

A Japanese "Salaryman" similar to the one I saw rocking out on "hungry hungry hippos".

Soon enough we finished our food and after a brief dancing performance by the maids and a rock, paper, scissors tournament (which my roommate won) we got ready to go. I took one last look at my surroundings. At the time I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all and I still don't know. On one hand it seems like a sad form of emotional prostitution where you go in and pay good looking girls in costume to treat you like a god, whilst at the same time it seems like a harmless novelty. It's not quite a fair comparison but I've been in strip clubs before and felt infinitely more comfortable. Every guy likes tits and ass and where you're in a strip club that's what you're there to see; tits and ass. There's no lying or feigned interest (at least not quite to the same extent) and everyone knows exactly where they stand. However when you're in a maid cafe, rather than paying girls to expose themselves to you, you're paying them to be nice to you, which I find much more sad. Don't get me wrong I'm not a fan of either but I guess I can just wrap my head around the idea of strip club much easier than I can a maid cafe. Regardless of this however, I certainly don't think there is anything inherently wrong or sinister about these cafes but let's just say, I doubt I'll be achieving my gold membership anytime soon.

I couldn't leave without getting a picture, but there was no way I was going to take it seriously.

Kendo

Having in my last post talked about Yosakoi now is probably a good time to talk about one of the other ways in which I have been spending my free time; Kendo. For the lost, Kendo is Japans answer to fencing. Much like how fencing is a distant, defanged descendant of European style duelling with rapiers, Kendo is a sporting version of Ken-jutsu, the art of using the Katana; more commonly known as "Samurai sword". As in fencing the weapons are heavily modified to reduce their lethality and all participants wear armour, because even if you take the edge off a sword it still bloody hurts to be hit with one.

How Kendo is supposed to look.

We had heard that several of the volunteers who came before us had trained in Kendo and had enjoyed it very much so we figured we would try it. Very fortunately for us a man called Matsubara-San (or as we refer to him Matsubara-Sensei) had recently enough moved to Toya. If you are somewhat well acquainted with Japan then you may have guessed by his title that yes, he is a Kendo teacher but more than that he is a 7th Dan instructor which suffice it to say is extremely high up (although technically 10th Dan is the highest possible grade the best practitioners alive today are all 8th Dan). In addition to having an extremely well qualified instructor we we're fortunate enough to be some of the only people in the area interested in training, so we received private tuition at a heavily discounted price, so heavily discounted in fact that it for all intensive purposes it could be considered free.

James learns about the importance of a head guard.

So with free, private tuition from a highly regarded teacher you'd think I'd be some sort of Kendo prodigy by now juggling Katanas and hunting down ninjas, or whatever it is that talented Kendo practitioners do. Well as it turns out, Kendo is incredibly difficult. My roommate James had also started training in Kendo and took to it a lot better than I did. Oftentimes while he would be breezing through the exercises receiving praise from the teacher I would be left  stumbling through them leaving my body in pain and the teacher with a look of bemusement. I have to concede that on several occasions I was left with a bitter feeling of jealousy and frustration at my inability to do what others made look so easy. Now you'll have to take my word that I am not normally a jealous person but in this case private tuition began to have some drawbacks that I had not foreseen. In a group class you work with a range of abilities spanning from gracefully talented to the outright spastic, leaving most of us somewhere in the middle to make our own way up the ladder. However in a private/semi private class it's only you and the other person and whether or not you intend it to be that way you are constantly being compared to each other. As well as in a group class you can hide away in the crowd and slowly practice and perfect your craft in a relaxed setting with your peers before you bring it to the teacher. In a private lesson though, you don't have this option and you are constantly under the watchful scrutiny of the teacher before you've had any time at all to become acquainted with your craft let alone perfect it. Despite these drawbacks though, I overcame these challenges and slowly but surely the gap in between myself and James began to close.

How I felt for the first several months of practice.

Finally here are a few things I have noticed about practicing martial arts in Japan. Unlike some of the western dojo's I have practiced Karate and Judo in, the Japanese don't seem to be as obsessed about grading and examinations at least for what they view to be the lower grades. From what I can discern they view them as being unimportant and have no problem with letting you skip them to get straight to the grades that actually matter. In addition to this I've noticed a slightly more relaxed attitude to the tradition behind the martial art. While in western Dojo's there may be a big emphasis on how you speak and carry yourself you don't find the same tenseness in a Japanese Dojo. While the traditions and customs are observed it feels much more natural. This is probably because in Japan the customs which may seem so alien and unusual to a foreigner are just the done thing for the Japanese and therefore they dont have to make any effort to adhere to the rules. Although there are many differences these were just the two that stuck out to me the most.

Practice

Yosakoi

Firstly I must apologise once again for my terrible consistency with this blog, however this time I have a half decent excuse. About a fortnight ago something happened that I had been expecting for a long time, the possibility of which had been gnawing at me from the back of my mind. Unexpectedly one evening, my laptop drew its final breath, and as the last bit of shrivelled up life force that it had been desperately clinging to was unceremoniously belched out, it slithered miserably off the mortal coil. In layman's terms; my laptop's fucked and as such I've had to resort to borrowing my roommate's P.C for all my I.T requirements.

Somewhat similar to how I looked after this calamity.

Now, onto Yosakoi and the festival. I'm going to go on ahead and assume that absolutely no one who reads this will have ever heard of Yosakoi, so I'll give you a brief run down. Yosakoi is a contemporary style of dance that started sometime in 1950s Japan. The costumes are bright and flamboyant while the dance movements themselves often involve swinging, dynamic movements with the limbs sometimes using props such as cloth, flags, drums and clackers. These movements usually represent the four classical elements; earth, water, wind and fire. The music itself is energetic, rousing and at times epic in its tonality. On an interesting side note all the Yosakoi dance songs are inspired from an old Japanese sea shanty (a song for sailors and fisherman to work to) and as such all contain small excerpts from the original tune, although heavily remixed.

What you can expect from an average Yosakoi performance

Now, what does all of this have to do with me? And how the hell did I wind up on stage, wearing a headband, dancing and chanting to lyrics whose meanings I am still completely ignorant to. Well for the past eight years all the volunteers who have come to the Toya project have joined the local Yosakoi troupe and have performed alongside the locals at the Yosakoi Soran (festival) in Sapporo. It has been so popular with the volunteers it has become somewhat of an unofficial tradition so shortly after I arrived I soon found myself in full garb desperately flailing about trying to keep up with the other dancers. My initial impressions towards Yosakoi were somewhat mixed but largely positive. The most prevalent thought that occupied my mind at the time was "thank god my friends at home can't see me now". This was largely because the I'm pretty sure the song we conduct warm up exercises to is used in Zumba, something I associate with menopausal women and not gap year adventures. These feelings of discomfort soon left me however and I found myself enjoying Yosakoi for what it was which is a bloody good hobby and a great way to spend your time and if that made me a puff then so be it, I would become the champion of all gaylords.

A shot of me and James performing with our team on the main stage. I managed to mess up a movement involving a jacket change so I had to finish the song without my fabulous orange attire. 

As the festival approached I slowly became more and more nervous about performing a dance that I had grown to find second nature. The Japanese reassured me though that mistakes are okay and that as long as I smiled and went for it that was all that mattered. "Gambatte" was the phrase that was used repeatedly which roughly translates to "just go for it" or "give it your all" which really embodies the Japanese spirit quite well. So as we said our final "Gambatte"s and ran onto stage for the first of our performances, I stopped worrying, I stopped thinking and just went for it. Many of the letters and messages I've read that have been left over by previous volunteers have said that the Yosakoi Soran is one of the most memorable nights of the year and although I admit I was slightly sceptical at first they were all so right. The rush that the performances gives and the unimaginably climactic explosion of tension is truly exhilarating and it leaves you with the stupidest grin on your face dying for more.

See bellow: Stupid Grin.

So basically what I'm trying to say is if you get the chance or are ever in Japan for an extended period of time try Yosakoi. It's not about skill or technicality or looking cool, it's about going for it and having a great time and I can't I think of a better reason to do anything.

Spring Vacation: A Trip to Tokyo and Kyoto.

About two weeks ago myself and James were loosed from our obligations at the Toya branch office and given two weeks to do whatever we wanted. Since arriving in Japan we had set aside Spring for visiting Kyoto mainly because Spring is the best time to visit Japan as it’s when the cherry blossoms come into full bloom and Kyoto is quintessential Japan. With a fresh four foot of snow having fallen on Toya the night before we eagerly packed our bags and thought “Hah! Fuck that!” as we left the Sub-Arctic temperatures and mountains of snow behind.

Our last day in Toya before the break

I soon found myself boarding a plane and initiating the time old tradition of convincing myself I was going to die by reliving every episode of “Air Crash Investigations” in my mind, constantly imagining what would happen if the floor of the plane just disappeared beneath my feet and telling myself that the overweight man sitting next to me would probably be squishy enough to break my hypothetical, five thousand foot fall. Despite my twisted fantasies though all was well and we soon disembarked in Osaka airport and made our way to Kyoto. The first thing that struck us was the lack of snow and the mild temperature. Although it was only about 10-15 degrees Celsius we had just come from a place where in the space of time it would take you to take off your gloves, take out your I-Pod, change the song, and put your gloves back on, your hands would have gone painfully numb. So as you can imagine, we felt like we had landed in a tropical paradise. After meeting up with the Kyoto volunteers and checking into our Ryokan (Japanese style hostel) we hashed out our plans for the week. Now normally I’m not a hyper tourist maniac that goes around to all the sights. I usually go into holidays hoping for a strong social aspect with a lot of things to do such as hiking, trekking, skiing, boating and general exploring whilst getting to meet a lot of locals along the way. However this was different. Myself and James had drawn up a list of places that we were going to see and sweet Jesus we were going to complete it.

       Top left: Outside of Ryokan
       Bottom left: The hallway
       Top right: One of the rooms
       Bottom right: My bed










Since writing about temple after temple after temple, with a few rock gardens thrown in there is not the most nail biting, eye brow singing read you’ll ever experience; I’ll be mercifully brief with words and use pictures to get the message across.

1 Ryoan-ji; Rock Gardens! Fuck Yea!

2 Kinkaku-ji; Golden Buildings, because why the fuck not!?

3 Ginkaku-ji; Silver Buildings!…That don’t actually contain any silver…

4 Arashiyama; Fucking Monkeys!

5 Kiyomizudera;…..Meh!

6 Fushimi Inari; Shinto Arches…Shinto Arches everywhere…

 So as you can see from the pictures a thoroughly touristy time was had by all. Although Kyoto is stunningly beautiful and a damn sight nicer than Tokyo (in my humblest of opinions) the main downside is that in Spring it is utterly heaving with tourists. You can’t swing a cat without hitting other westerners and I know being a western foreigner complaining about other western foreigners sounds somewhat hypocritical of me but I actually live and work in the country, so I like to consider myself a cut or two above the standard tourist.

Not Me

So after we completed the drinking the socializing, and lets not forget the sightseeing, in Kyoto we made our way to Tokyo. Once more due to the sheer lack of cash we decided to get creative with our plans. Rather than catching a plane or a Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo we decided to get something called the Seshun Juhachi Kippu which roughly translates as “The Youthful Eighteen Pass”. Essentially this is a train ticket that costs about 8000 yen with five tags on it. Whenever you activate a tag you get unlimited rail travel for the day but only on local trains. So that immediately excludes Shinkansens and inter city trains. Also you can share this ticket by using one tag per person. So after some careful planning, myself and James bought a ticket between us and proceeded to spend nine hours catching six trains between Kyoto and Tokyo. Despite some apprehension beforehand it was actually really cool. Because we got on and off most trains at their terminals we were almost always able to get seats and the regular changes between trains gave us time to stretch our legs, get some fresh air and a bit of food. So if your ever looking to get around Japan on the cheap (and I mean the dirt cheap) use the Seshun Juhachi Kippu. It may not be fast but it’s cost effective and actually quite enjoyable.

So now that I’m doing licking the balls of the JR rail company I can tell you what I got up to in Tokyo…well the truth is not a lot. We did some more sightseeing (I’ll put some pictures down below) but I spent most of the week lounging around with my girlfriend in her apartment (I wont put those pictures down below as this is a high brow website). So yea, in conclusion a great Spring holiday.

My Experience with Capsule Hotels

As I mentioned in my previous post both myself and James had pretty much reached our limits with Hotel Neo and decided to spend our last night in Tokyo in a capsule hotel called “Hotel Dandy”.  I’d heard about capsule hotels before and seen them on documentaries but I had no idea what to expect. To be honest though, at this point, spending a night in a Turkish prison for sex offenders seemed more appealing than sleeping in Hotel Neo. My reasoning for this was that I had already been so thoroughly raped by that abominable institution that anything that could be done to me in Turkish prison would ultimately be a step down and therefore not as bad. It brings me great pleasure therefore to tell you that “Hotel Dandy” was not nearly as bad as Turkish prison, in fact I can almost certainly say it was entirely rape free, which at this point was a bonus that could only be matched by free Wi-Fi…which they had!

What you can expect in a capsule hotel.

As I exited the lift on the sixth floor of a tall, narrow building in the buzzing district of Ueno I was greeted by a rather pleasant scene. Clean carpets and marble floors that stretched to a reception behind which were several clean cut employees wearing waistcoats and bow ties. Men could be seen casually ambling to and from the bar/lounge area in these Japanese style bathrobes called Yukatas. Music was playing gently in the background and there was just a really warm and pleasant atmosphere about the place. I approached the counter nervously, aware of the fact that apart from James who had checked in the day before I was the only foreigner in the place and that people had been refused admission in the past for not speaking enough Japanese. I recited my carefully rehearsed lines and with only a small bit of help from another man in the que I received the key to my locker and the number of my capsule.

Hotel Dandy from the outside

In the lift up to the eighth floor where my capsule was located I was accompanied by a man who can only be described as being fantastically overweight. He was casually wearing his Yukata undone exposing, with pride I might add, his massive hairy stomach to the world or at least the only other person in the lift…me. I should probably mention at this point that this was a men only capsule hotel and as such had a very casual, “gentlemens club” feel to it and although I was very far out of my element I found it extremely enjoyable. I soon found James who was staying in the capsule next to mine.  He gave me a brief run down of what it was like before I climbed the small ladder to enter my capsule.

I must say at this point that my capsule was exactly how I had imagined it. Very small but comfortable and quite well equipped…well more than I expected from what is essentially a glorified coffin. There was a T.V, a radio alarm clock, a blind that I could pull down to give myself some privacy and enough room to sit up which was all I needed. Near my head on the wall was a poster advertising pornographic movies that I presume could be viewed on the television. The fact that each capsule was separated from the corridor by only a blind and the fact that I could already hear other guests snorring became apparent. It also occurred to me that if I could hear snorring then it was more than likely I could hear other unpleasant sounds, the onomatopoeic description of which I shall spare you. Finally as my eyes moved from the pornographic advertisement to my surroundings and then back again it occurred to me that they obviously clean the linen after each guest but I began to wonder how often did they wash the plastic walls. I quickly adjusted myself to ensure that none of my possessions or any parts of my body were in contact with these parts of the capsule.

Deciding it was too early to go to sleep, I made my way down to the seventh floor where the onsen (Japanese style spa) was located.  As I made my way through the Thai style massage parlour I lazily scanned the menus briefly wondering to myself what the Japanese for “Happy Ending” was. I casually glanced over the divider to see a dainty looking Japanese woman (I highly doubt they were actually Thai) driving her elbows into a heavy-set mans pudgey back. Groans and slaps of pleasure were in the air, not all of which I fully recognised nor did I want to recognise. I quickly moved on trying to ignore all the stares I was attracting by being one of only two Caucasian people in the place. I disrobed and entered the onsen. I went through the standard practise of washing and cleaning myself before climbing in o the piping hot bath in between one frail looking “salary man” and another larger sized gentleman both of which gave me slightly perplexed looks. This was an outdoor bath that was located on the roof of the building and as the pleasurably cool breeze blew across my face whipping up steam from the water I gazed out over the glittering Tokyo skyline and felt that wonderfully calm sense of zen that can only be achieved in an onsen wash over me.

The Rooftop Outdoor Onsen in Hotel Dandy

  Although both me and James agreed there was an ever so slightly odd air about the place that was not quite Yakuza but not fully legitimate, we both enjoyed “Hotel Dandy” immensely. The capsule hotel is one of those things that is so odd that I can’t imagine it existing anywhere else but Japan but somehow, like many of Japans other weird creations, it just works. If you ever find yourself in Ueno in need of a reasonably priced place to stay I recommend “Hotel Dandy” if only for the experience which I’m sure would be a pleasurable one.

My Time in Tokyo Part Three and Why I Hate Hotel Neo

Right, I prefaced this blog with the statement that I’d try to prevent it from turning into a collection of rants and although I feel I’ve only kept to that somewhat I’m going to completely abandon all discourse and just go for it with this post.

To cut sharply to the chase, we we’re sent down to Tokyo for a conference on volunteering overseas as well as to meet with our in-country representative (essentially our supreme baby sitter while we are abroad). The purpose of this is to mark the half way point of our time in Japan and make sure none of us are on the verge of having some sort breakdown. All was lovely and joyous until after the conference. Myself and James, using our unparalleled negotiating skills (we basically just asked), managed to secure an extra few days in Tokyo for catching up with the other volunteers and other such merriments. Afterwards however we would have to find new accommodation. Due to our infinitely impressive short sightedness and our infinitely tight budget (well…my infinitely tight budget rather) we decided to stay in Hotel Neo, the cheapest accommodation we could find. I had previously prided myself on my viewpoint of “as long as it’s dry and has a shower, I don’t care about the accommodation”.  This was my line of thinking at the time, please note the key words in that sentence; “AT-THE-TIME”.

James' Cell in Hotel Neo

We disembarked from our train in the district of Minami-Senju where the hotel was located.  Immediately we noticed that the area was different from most of the places we had been in Tokyo so far. It was smaller, more quaint and frankly a bit dirty. It had a grim, dusty train yard feel about it but we pressed onwards knowing that our bargain of a Hotel would make it worth while…how wrong we were. The first warning bells began ringing in my head when we bought our tickets to stay there from a vending machine located at the reception area. I found it strange but told myself to think nothing of it. Vending machines are popular in Japan and they use them for all sorts of weird and not so wonderful things (more on that later). We handed the man behind the glass our tickets and proceeded to our rooms.  Upon opening the door to my room I was greeted by what could only be described as a prison cell. It was a room approximately one third the size of a matchbox (in reality about the size of your average bathroom), that was furnished with nothing other than a bed a small table and a T.V. It had a small window and blank white walls rising up to a blank white ceiling. As the steel door clunked shut behind me I found myself struck for words. My thoughts began to drift to our friends staying together in the Tokyo volunteers apartment and how warm and friendly and how casual their stay would be. I envisioned them sitting around laughing, joking and catching up while I dropped onto the side of the bed and starred blankly at the dull white wall. With these unpleasant thoughts swirling around in my head I decided to investigate the facilities of the hotel or rather lack thereof. Wondering how I was going to bathe in the morning I meandered my way down to the second floor where the bathing facilities were located. I’ve stayed in youth hostels with shared bathrooms before and largely its completely fine but this time I happened upon one single, gritty, pay as you go, coin operated shower that served the hotel. As I starred at it, my jaw slightly ajar a man who genuinely looked homeless shuffled passed me to use some of the coin operated washing machines located next to the shower…and I stress THE shower…singular…one…for everyone. Upon returning to our rooms I encountered James chuckling at the depressing absurdity  of the situation. I managed to force a smile but was feeling quite miserable.

Hotel Neo rocking the Dull White and Sea foam Green cobination.

 Now although I am sure there are volunteers in Africa who have to stay in mud huts and glorified card board boxes for accommodation while travelling but for me it wasn’t the terrible quality of the hotel that got to me, it was the sense of separation and isolation. The sense that every night me and James would have the leave the other volunteers and trek halfway across Tokyo to our dingy white cells in dusty Minami-Senju while they would still be out having fun. Perhaps it’s an illogical hatred or perhaps I’m just pinning the unpleasantness of the situation on an easy target either way both me and James ended up reviling the hotel so much that we decided to spend our last two nights in Tokyo in a capsule hotel despite this being of considerable extra expense to the both of us. This however, was a fantastic decision and it considerably altered both our moods for the better. So in summation, while cheap accommodation can be tolerable never underestimate the values of convenience, cleanliness and atmosphere because otherwise you could very easily end up staying in what essentially feels like a prison and believe me when I say Hotel Neo certainly was one.

1/2

Yesterday was the half way point of my time in Japan. Despite how cliché it sounds it really has gone faster than I expected. I’ve found myself in similar situations before, being faced with a task which at the beginning seems enormous and undoable but progressively becomes less daunting as time goes on. I said it to myself when I started secondary school; “there will come a point after all the endless hours of study and stress where everything else falls away and at the climax it will be just me and an exam and I’ll be staring back at the better part of a decade that has just flown by, wondering how time could have gone so fast and yet so slow”. I may not have said it in as refined a way as I was twelve but the thought was definitely in my mind. This warped perception of time however often leaves me looking back and thinking that it all went so fast. I said it when I finished school, I’ll say it when this year is over and more than likely I’ll say it on my death bed.

I’ve learned many things from my time here so far but perhaps two that resonate especially strongly with me are that the world is not as big a place as one thinks it is and that time will slip by you if you do not make the conscious effort to do something with it.  Far too many Sunday evenings in the past I’ve found myself  drifting into conscious thought as I stared longingly out a window thinking “Why didn’t I do something worthwhile with my time or try something new or do something meaningful even if it was just as simple as acknowledging a homeless mans existence with a brief nod and a two Euro coin in his cup”. In the past it was my weekends that we’re my free time, where I wasn’t constrained by obligations or tasks that were a means to an end. Now however as I’m becoming older and gaining more control over my own life I see that freedom that was once restricted to my weekends extending into the rest of my time. It’s dawned on me that being white and middle class means that I have more opportunities and potential than many less fortunate people around the globe could ever hope for and with so much opportunity laying before me I cannot and I will not let myself slip quietly into the Sunday evening of my life whilst starring back at the time gone by and asking myself the same questions that I would on any other Sunday.

The Northernmost Point

Several months ago myself and James journeyed to the northernmost part in Japan. It all started one evening when we we're sitting around bored and the Hokkaido winter was beginning to take hold. I was looking at random places on Google maps when I thought I'd see where the northernmost tip of Japan was. I vaguely remember my reasoning behind this being that even in a place as stunningly beautiful as Toya, the sub Arctic winter was beginning to make things look a little grim and that things could only get more intense further up north. Sure enough when I found it there was a small town by the name of Soyamisaki dotted on the map. I went into "street view" and honestly it looked bleaker than starring down the barrel of a gun. Me and James spent a good five minutes laughing about how despicably horrible the place looked and wondering why anyone would dare to try and scratch out an existence in such a God forsaken part of the world. There was a long pause before James looked at me and said "Do you actually want to go and see it?". And sure enough I couldn't turn down an idea as mind blowingly stupid as that one.

Just another lovely day in Wakkanai

Soon enough we found ourselves booking train tickets and hotels. The general reaction of any locals we told was to laugh and go "Samui!!" which directly translates as cold but what I think they really meant was "You fucking idiots why would you want to do that!?". Nevertheless though we managed to shrug these warnings off and were soon on a train. Although the Snow had only just started falling in Toya the further north we went the deeper and deeper it got. As well as this things started to look less and less like Japan and more and more like 1950's Siberia. As the train ripped through air that was so sharp with the cold it could have probably cut skin, I shuddered to think of what the temperature was outside. Endlessly white, flat plains surrounded us that were occasionally broken by stiff pines or mountains that look like pieces of the earth that had tried to break away, but had become frozen solid before they could separate. It was certainly a far cry from the gently sloping green hills I was used to at home.

For all it's flaws Northern Hokkaido is still amazingly beautiful

After a total of eight hours on trains me and James arrived at Wakkanai, the northernmost city where we would spent the night before pressing onto Soyamisaki in the morning.  As I stepped out of the well heated train station into the dark night I was hit with a disorientation like none I had ever known. The first thing that hit me was the cold. To say it was cold is an understatement. Coldness implies discomfort, this went beyond discomfort. Basically my body was screaming at me to get out of the cold immediately or it would start shutting down. There weren't too many street lights lining the streets and all the signs were in either Japanese or Russian. English speakers have little or no presence in this part of the world but with the region being remarkably close to both Russia and disputed territories between Japan and Russia there must be a significant Russian community. This was quite a strange feeling for me as now I was in a weird spliced community of two cultures one of which I knew little about, the other I knew absolutely nothing about, at night, lost and cold, hundreds of miles away from my house and thousands away from my home. I don't think I had ever felt so alone in my entire life. Fortunately James appeared at my side hastily pulling a printed off map from his pocket and explaining to me through clattering teeth where the hotel was.

A sign detailing all the lovely places that are not Soyamisaki

I soon found myself in the merciful warmth of the hotel in which we were spending the night and quickly drifted off to sleep. In the morning we grabbed a light breakfast and decided to brave the conditions outside. Hastily finding a bus to Soyamisaki we clambered on board and sat at the back basically straddling the radiators. As the bus chugged on out of town it was battered mercilessly by howling winds and icy temperatures. I found myself wondering how any living thing could survive here and tried to imagine the prehistoric Ainu people who were the first to settle here. We stopped outside an elementary school that looked more like a bunker to let on some school children. As it turned out the door had been frozen shut so the driver had to get out via another door in the bus so he could pour anti freeze on the door and let the young children on board. I found myself laughing at the how tragic the whole affair seemed to me. Soon we reached the small town of Soyamisaki and disembarked. As we stepped out into cold midday sun we were greeted by a triangular monument with the words "The Northernmost Point in Japan" carved into it. Without hesitation we ran up a proceeded to get some cheesy tourist photos with the monument. James standing just behind it attempted to make some calls professing with disproportionate pleasure to anyone he could get through to "I AM THE NORTHERNMOST MAN IN JAPAN!" partly because of excitement and partly because of the deafening wind. 

Yay cheesy photos!

We spent the remaining two hours walking around looking for a cafe. However in this process we discovered a huge monument to an air crash disaster and a gift shop in which James bought some typical gift shop crap.In an effort to buy us some shelter until the bus came I bought some noodles in a seafood shack that looked like it hadn't seen business since the reign of the Tsar. We spent the remaining fifteen minutes in a bus shelter in which several visitors books had been left. Flicking through them we found a handful of English notes from several years ago. One that stood out to me was "The bus driver is a motherfucker!" and as I felt my limbs going numb and noticing that the bus was late I began to feel a certain sense of empathy with this random stranger. Very soon, however the bus arrived and we were back in Wakkanai before we knew it.

 The Air Crash Disaster Memorial and the supposed motherfucker bus driver

Although I give pretty much all of North Hokkaido a lot of abuse in this post I do want to say the place has a certain beauty to it. However the people there are clearly made of sterner stuff than I am because after a weekend of it I felt like bits of me were about to start dropping off so I was most certainly thankful to be going. All in all we got exactly what we expected from the trip and that was a really fucking weird weekend.

New Years

New Years was an interesting time for me as I was still feeling a little raw from Christmas yet thoroughly excited to go on holidays. It's an unwritten tradition that every Christmas all the volunteers in Japan go to Hokkaido, however it's also tradition for them to all go down to Tokyo afterwards for New Years. From my time in Tokyo so far, I've noticed that one of the biggest differences in between the Tokyo and other Japan projects is that, obviously enough, it's located in the middle of a huge city. This has positives like a vibrant social scene and fast pace of living but draw backs such as the fact that you are in a city so unbelievably condensed you feel like your drowning in concrete. Regardless of these things though, I was dying to get back to a big city and taste the delights of urban sophistication and/or arrogance.

I just realised that absolutely none of us have any pictures from New Years 

so I'm just going to use one from when we we're in Tokyo at the beginning of the year. 

If you look very closely you can see the fire in my eyes which is a tell tale sign of someone 

whose soul consists solely of hellfire, malevolence and marmite. 

Unfortunately, while the girls from Kyoto were allowed to stay in the Tokyo volunteers apartment, we being men, were not. This was primarily because we are not considered adults by law here (more on that later) and also because our superiors aren't the most liberal when it comes to things like this. However the people whom the Tokyo volunteers work for were kind enough to put us up in a Hotel...on the opposite fucking side of Tokyo, but free accommodation was not something I was prepared to turn down. So after a plane, a train and a lot of wandering around lost, we managed to get settled into our hotel and meet up with the girls. We soon found ourselves in an Izakaiya (Japanese style bar) with some of the Tokyo volunteers co-workers. One who stood out to me in particular was a man named Paul who for some strange reason struck me as being an odd half way point in between Gandalf and grounds keeper Willie. As you may have discerned from that statement, he is unimaginably Scottish. Soon after this we headed to a Irish/Scottish themed bar called "The Celt". Now normally I have nothing to do these kinds of places as me being Irish already, I go abroad to get away from Irish bars. Furthermore there is just something so nauseating about "ye olden Irish" themed pubs but on that night I wasn't aiming to be cultured, I was aiming to get rat faced and I achieved that goal magnificently. I do admit though, it was very decent place and there was just something so climatic about bursting through to doors to hear "8!..7!..6!" after having to run from the local train station in order to make the countdown.

Came across this while wandering around Tokyo 

and yet I'm not surprised in the slightest

One thing in particular that I remember from New Years was a discovery of one of my own preconceived snobberies. I am not what one would call a "club person". Generally speaking when I go out to clubs or bars I find my self surrounded by people with gelled up hair and extra tight t-shirts to highlight the fruits of their gym attendance having conversations about fucking lots of apparently "sexy bitches". Now this is not always the case, however it gets me into apathetic mind set where I often find myself thinking  "ugh, fucking idiots...".  This however was not the case for me on New Years. Anybody that I got talking to was like me a foreigner in the midst of their own traveling. Unlike me though they didn't all come from the English speaking world, they had become fluent in English during their childhood. Many more had not only become fluent in English but we're also speaking Japanese as well as a few other languages. I had just figured out that this random man I was talking to was quad lingual when it dawned on me "I may actually be the stupidest person in this bar", and that was a deliciously humbling experience. 

 One day James decided to take a walk in the most Yakuzza ridden part of Tokyo,

 Kabukicho...Doesn't seem to bad.

For the rest of our time in Tokyo we followed a pattern of shopping and sightseeing during the day and going out to Izakaiyas at night. This was great fun and it allowed me to witness some of the weirder aspects of Japan and believe me, there are many. But I will save these for another post.