Ah yes, but ...

Rainy season has come and gone and I, like most other people in Tokyo, am suffering what the Japanese call 'natsu-bate' - summer weariness. It's 33-35 degrees, humid and hot. At night it still rests around 27 degrees, hotter than the daytime in England. However, one must get outside occasionally to the park:



Yes, thank you, that's all very well, but has does one actually get ON the bike? It appears that Japanese need instructions for everything.

Bloody hell

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8646236.stm

In Japan, I really did think this blood type stuff was a myth - but clearly it's not. Whilst many people in Britain believe there are only 12 different types of people (re: star signs), some Japanese believe there are only 4 types (type A, B, O or AB). I've never been asked personally, and to be honest I don't even know my blood type - my doctor said that I'd only find out if I needed a transfusion or had a major operation. I feel weirdly - and gratefully - immune to all this nonsense.

Off the scale campness

How did Japan get to be so camp? The boys have all become girls and so now the girls have to inhabit a place beyond that, into outright squeaky girliness. Harmless, I know, and rather fun too, but honestly?

Yes, yes, I know Japan's got 4 seasons...

Early April in Japan is a time of renewal, of their famous cherry blossom, but that also means it's a time of rains; it happens every year - it's almost as if nature is saying: ooh, look at all this lovely blossom, and then sending torrential downpours to sweep it all into the gutters.

I do get mildly irritated, though, when Japanese people say to me that Japan has 4 seasons - I feel like replying; and so do we, and I also have two buttocks but what of it? I suppose that this may be because so much of SE Asia has only two (hot + hot and wet) so it always comes as a surprise to them when I say, actually, you've got 5, and pretty much all of them are bloody awful. To be honest, I leave out the last part, but here are Tokyo's seasons in all their glory:

Winter; often bitterly cold with prolonged rains that last days without end, sporadic crisp sunny days
Spring; miserable, wet, cold then a brief mild sunny period
Rainy season; humid, fetid, wet, damp and miserable, insufferable rains that go on for what feels like forever
Summer; hot and stifling, rotten, wretched and sweaty
Autumn; typhoons, strong winds and rain, punctuated by some nice crisp autumn days

Let this be a lesson to me.

You lucky basta...

On the Tokyo train going to work a few days back, I saw a cool young guy pull out what I thought was an Apple iPad - it was a medium sized, thin looking device that he was clearly objectifying. Although it's been on sale in the US for a few weeks it isn't available here yet, though there are people who have managed to get their hands on them, through friends, desperate online auctions etc. so of course the first thing you'd do would be to take it on the train and use it as mock-nonchalantly as possible, right? If you were that kind of person. Lucky bastard, I thought, moving in closer for a peek - which is when I realised it was actually a mirror that he was using to preen himself in front of before putting it back in his bag.

In Japan people actually buy these ....

Living in Tokyo does often feel like a taste-free zone, a parallel universe where anything goes - and where anything often means shite.

So often in Japan, words aren't necessary...

Seen in a bowling hall in Kobe. Put me off my game, it did...

Nakata, so much to answer for...

Nakata, a supremely gifted footballer quit playing in his late 20s - he said he was going to travel the world and do good things for the planet. Recently however, you can't go anywhere in Tokyo without seeing his cute face advertising any old shite. Save the world my arse - just another celeb reaping the rewards of fame and prettiness. And Coke too? How low can you go? Pillock.

A bit of casual hilarity

I was teaching a group lesson in-company this evening, practising adverbs of frequency with a low level and rather slow student.

Me: How often do you eat lunch at your desk?

Him: I often eat my desk.

Cue much hilarity and it was nice to see the chap himself taking it well, slapping his forehead with one of those 'doh' moments. Ah, laughter. Sometimes it's the only medicine that works.

One last time unto the breach

As I made my way from the Heathrow check-in desk past security and duty free to the gate, my tired eyes happened to fall on the smallish man ahead of me. He was wearing a big purple puffer jacket and slung over his arm was a Louis Vuitton bag. This could only mean one thing; I was on my way back to Japan. Only this time perhaps for the last time. I've had my fill and am full of homesickness after a wonderful holiday in England and Paris and I want more of that, and less of the purple sodding puffer jackets.