December 29, 2001
I guess I should just
I guess I should just clarify the festive season hiatus currently being suffered by this blog. Having been given a taste of "real" life by yours truly, Chris has decided to continue to prefer it to the solipsistic pursuit of blogging. In short, Chris has gone to America for New Year, no doubt to be very, very naughty. Also, he expressed a desire to see in the New Year amongst people for whom "Auld Lang Syne" does not excite a primal instinct to go to the nearest checkout and leave. It is curious, though, that he's never spent New Year's Eve in his adopted nation - this year, however, he was there for Christmas Day. I wonder what it was like...
Posted by dan at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 21, 2001
I could have done with
I could have done with a rangefinding stapler last night, certainly. In a pub in Northwood, Middlesex (average house price - GBP200K, typical indigenous resident - pretentious middle income with unruly kids) I was watching my local football team being eviscerated in the Cup quarter final. As the second (or was it third?) goal rifled in, a random woman, ugly almost to deformity I might add, pointed at me and started laughing. I proceeded to do something you never actually expect yourself to do (right up there with carrying on running after you go over the edge of a cliff a la Wile-E-Coyote, or winking at an imaginary camera/audience) - I looked behind me, over my left shoulder, in a really exaggerated fashion.
Discovering that there really wasn't anyone else there, I inaugurated a polite dialogue with the female (species undetermined), calling into question her powers of identification and suggesting a more appropriate course of action. That is, I said "Who the f*** do you think I am? You don't know me. F*** off." At which point her "boy"friend (quite extraordinary that two of these semi-sentient lifeforms should somehow have dredged up the initiative to discover each other. God forbid they procreate and produce a whole litter of abominations sharing their genes, although like as not nature would ensure the majority of these malformed abhorrences do not survive their infancy) starts asking me whether I want him to come over to where I am. As I felt unprepared for an even closer look at him, and even less inclined to take in the halitosis and BO that no doubt accompanied his cosmetic unpleasantness, I strenuously endeavoured to decline his invitation.
So in the end, I didn't get in a fight. If I'd had a Muji stapler, however, I could have taken all comers. The relevance of all this gibberish is quite simply - that although I'm an aggro little sod much of the time I didn't encounter any "trouble" the entire time I was in Japan. None. God knows I put myself in the way of a couple of potential serious beatings (not least karaokeing Bohemian Rhapsody and Candle in the Wind in a Kyushu bar full of drunken salarymen and youths only trying to enjoy themselves, pestering yakuza while they were collecting the rackets from a pachinko parlour, openly and brazenly eating in the street etc) but never was there the sniff of a ruck. Nor, indeed, was I fleeced, conned, pickpocketed, attacked, knifed, lightened, raped, stabbed, racketeered, mugged or buggered at any point during my time in fair Nippon, despite spending a good portion of it wandering around it slack jawed and aimless, like an asylum escapee. No language skills, plenty of ready cash and saleable documents, all my worldly goods in an easily made-off-with container, identification almost certainly limited to "one of those yellow chappies". I may as well have been adorned with Perfect Prospective Victim in nine foot tall flashing lights - though in itself that might make the most hardened criminal just a trifle suspicious, I suppose.
So. No crime. No fighting. No trouble. I don't know how Chris can stand it.
Posted by dan at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 17, 2001
Alternatively, there is the possibility
Alternatively, there is the possibility that the shop is only open during the full moon.
Another nice, relevant piece from The Onion this week. Reminds me of the Design Festa for some reason - an event Chris has been itching to blog about for a while now.
Posted by dan at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 14, 2001
Letting me post on this
Letting me post on this blog was a little like Chris giving me the keys to his flat (which he also did). Though now back in England there are loads of pertinent observations that I just darn well didn't make yet, so I guess I'll be hanging around a little longer - whether y'all like it or not. Rather like a bad smell. In any case, my suspicion that blogs only exist as a rather pitiful replacement for a real life rather than the documenting of one have been confirmed by the sporadic nature of Tokyo Tales of late (from the "how to offend everyone on the Internet at once" manual, p.92).
I think it's my duty to point out that, after a rough calculation, I deduced that Chris's average sleep hours per night while I was there came out at around four and a half, including a couple of real corkers like 45 minutes the night before his Level 2 Kanji Exam and two consecutive nights of 2 hour sleeps. They say Sleep is the Thief of Time, but in Chris's case, it seems Sleep's been caught in the act and sent down. No wonder he always seems to blog at the absurdest of times.
Posted by dan at 03:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 03, 2001
Chris's music collection is, in
Chris's music collection is, in general, very good. Some of it is less good, however, which suits me fine, because my music taste is pretty horrific anyway. He has, for instance, helped me rediscover the magic of Jane Wiedlin. At present I'm listening to Alanis Morissette.
I wonder about her. I don't know anything about her, or really want to, but my half-understood impression of her story really contains the seeds of any number of interesting potentialities. Transition from parentally overdriven under achiever cum incredibly unhappy chewed up and spat out reject of the one stop judgement shop that is American high school for most people as ugly as she is to grillion-grossing-gross-grillionaire - now THAT'S ironic.
None of which affects the serious business of mishearing lyrics. It's not fair, to remind me, of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me (You Oughta Know). A quick check with the often mediocre and made up but occasionally scream with laughter, fall on floor crying, need to be taken away database reveals me not to be alone. Quick tip - the stories section is generally much better than the flat lyrics database.
Posted by dan at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Even better still, If I
Even better still, If I was a work of art, I would be Heironymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.
I am decadent and depraved. I have an eye for small details and love to fit in as much hedonistic pleasure as possible in everything I do. I buck authority and am not afraid to make a statement outside approved channels.
Which work of art would you be? The Art Test
Posted by dan at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Chris, sadly, has forced me
Chris, sadly, has forced me to confess that if I was a James Bond villain, I would be Max Zorin.
I enjoy horse racing, pretending to be sane, and setting off cataclysmic earthquakes.
I am played by Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill.
Who would you be? James Bond Villain Personality Test.
Better far than the disease test, which had me as gonorrhea, even though I made it clear that I was not sexually transmitted.
Posted by dan at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I suspect there may be
I suspect there may be some secret sport in Japan, perhaps a relic from the old samurai days, involving extensive throwing of very sharp things. Rather like the traditional Northern English pastime of catch the bottle. I say this on account of the extremely high number of people (maybe one in a thousand?) whom I've seen wandering around Tokyo wearing a gauze eyepatch, secured with medical tape.
Last week, Chris made me watch Fight Club (recommended), so perhaps this is influencing my perceptions somehow.
Yet this phenomenon is as nothing compared to the indigenous practice of wearing a cotton face mask in public when suffering from orally transmissable infections - a cold, cough, tuberculosis, pneumonic cholera etc. Very laudable from a public health point of view, but it is rather unnerving to sit between two of these masked murderers, sorry passengers, on a train, and to have them both turn to you making laboured breathing noises.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that both these cultural tendencies - eye patches and face masks - were fashion trends sparked deliberately and specifically to counteract the growing recession in the pivotal Japanese cotton gauze industry, and its affiliated corporate partners.
Posted by dan at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
That would be more true
That would be more true if I hadn't already eaten all the chicken pies. (Cue song). No doubt my innate self-preservation instincts are better than most - I was well prepared for being buried in rubble for six days, waiting for rescue. Continuing the theme of my trip to Japan / entire life, I was in the toilet when all the fun started, thought it is difficult to "miss" an earthquake. Perhaps the weirdest thing about it for me was how weird it didn't seem. Oh, the entire building, usually something entirely fixed and solid, seems to be swaying quite pronouncedly from side to side. Oh, look, the loo roll has fallen on the floor and is rolling around. Wheee!
Turns out the earthquake did do some damage after all - it made the milk curdle in *very* unusual ways (picture to follow... patience, patience).
Posted by dan at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 30, 2001
Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiii!
It's a real pity the acronym SAE has already been taken by those selfish postal guys, as it's perfect for describing the default conversation mode of the young Japanese female. SAE - Single Adjective Exclamation. Actually, it's a very pure method of communication. Involving either pointing or waving-hands-palms-forward-by-the-face-elbows-fully-bent, the staple SAE is "Kawaii!" (Cute!), followed closely by "Kirayi!" (Beautiful) and "Sugoi!" (Awesome!); however, normal as these are, they are only the tip of the iceberg, as the SAE can extend as far afield as Big!, Frightening!, Blue!, Painful! and no doubt every other short adjective in the language.
How awful it must be. Confronted with a gigantic and majestic ancient religious artifact, or a breathtaking panoramic sea vista, thousands of conflicting emotions must well up and vie with each other, until finally, confused, tumultuous but utterly stimulated and excited, you've just got to say something... Kirayi! No... that's not enough... wait... Kirayi kirayi!!! (copyright random girls looking at Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo by night 2001)
Posted by dan at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 28, 2001
Strolling back to the flat
Strolling back to the flat today, I saw a man (at work) in a suit standing behind a desk. So what? He was in a car mechanics' workshop. In a suit. Unbelievable. I don't fancy his dry-cleaning bill.
Posted by dan at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
For those of you who
For those of you who only know Chris by his web presence, it is my duty to inform you that he is as witty in the flesh as he is in print. Strolling through Kabukicho, we were accosted, not unusually, by a dirty old man. "You want Japanese sex?" he cried. Quick as you like, Chris replied "With you? No thanks." at which point his cronies all start falling about laughing. Witty, yes, although I must say I was half expecting a yakuza shuriken to burst out of the front of my chest as I wandered away, chuckling.
Posted by dan at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 26, 2001
After the Cavern Club, we
After the Cavern Club, we went on to a nooomeeeejaaaaa bar, where we met a great bloke called Terry. I'm sure Chris will tell you all about him.
I came to Tokyo for a multi-cultural experience, but as yet I have very little experience of anything other than its bars, pubs, clubs, restaurants and supermarkets. This is a terrible thing, and all Chris's fault. Left to my own devices, I am an abstemious person, as innocent as a baby and jaw-droppingly naive. In this club the other night, some folks we met asked us if we wanted anything. This is not the naive part, as I knew what this meant (actually, the Tokyo bartenders keep asking if we want "something" - one chap made a complete mockery of the term "euphemism" - "Here's your tequila sunrise. Can I get you anything else, something more, something a bit different, something a bit stronger, perhaps, you look like you'd like some, if you ever need something I'm your man, oh yes, just say the word... (cont. p. 94)")
In any case, we politely declined (natch. Apart from the obvious moral wrongness of such extra-curricular activity, the words "arrested and deported" just aren't really me, you know?) Nevertheless, Chris observed pointedly, they almost certainly were on something. In no more than the time it takes for a swathe of brain cells to wither and die, however, for some bizarre reason the possibility that they were all high as kites had taken its leave of me, and I proceeded to come across as a person almost literally born yesterday.
"Drink? What'll you have?" "Oh...er... I don't like to mix" "Okaay... so what did you have first?" "Pardon?" "To drink?" "What? Oh. *Sigh* Rum and coke then"
"That ___, she wasn't really dancing at all at the beginning, but she's really getting into it now, isn't she?"
"Chris, man, is that ___ a bit of a psycho? She keeps grinning and gurning at me like she's deranged, like she's going to murder me or something."
"Wow, I'm knackered. You've been on the dancefloor twice as long as me - you must be whacked."
Stupidly pure? Or purely stupid?
Posted by dan at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
That certainly was a good
That certainly was a good thing for all the little Japanese boys, anyway. The bar Chris refers to, however, was no ordinary "bar". Oh no. Rub, rub me do; She's got a chick-eh to lie; See - how - dey - lun! All are available at the Cavern Club, Roppongi, courtesy of Wishing, a five-man Beatles tribute band with a keyboardist and a drummer who, in tribute to Ringo (Lingo?), has no doubt deliberately not learned how to play. On learning we were English, our Japanese tablemates started in on us. "Are you from Liverpool???" "No." "Have you been to Beatles museums?" "No." "I am chief sub-vice President of Japanese Beatles Fan Club, South-East Tokyo Division. Are you Beatles fan?" "Er...yes?" That piece of quick-thinking dishonesty at least meant we got out alive - after the karaoke "Imagine", of course.
Posted by dan at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
At university, there was an
At university, there was an ongoing game we used to play. The sole objective was to get ourselves into as many Japanese tourists' photographs as possible - in the background normally, but sometimes the opportunity arose to crash the photo altogether. Ludicrous poses ("Thinker" a favourite, or deeply studying a book) were non-mandatory but preferable. Suffice to say, I've shot into the lead.
Posted by dan at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 24, 2001
There is an advert around
There is an advert around the place for some PC game with the entirely humourless strapline "Typing the Psychogun". So when we caught an arcade game called "Typing of the Dead" out of the corner of our eyes, this evening, we thought little of it. Typical Japlish? Not so. This is the new incarnation of "House of the Dead" (a standard shoot-the-ghouls arcade game) - except that where the guns should be, forlornly rest two very plain and dirty keyboards. Intrigued, we played. Up jump the undead. Rrrargh! Each wearing... a word. A Japanese word, in English script. KAZANA-SEIKOJI might trip off the fingers of a Japanese copy-typist, but not mine. In any case, you type it, they die (again). Crazy, sure, but a bit too much like early learning spelling games to be fun... but wait! The cut-scene hoves into view. Your characters lean and crouch over a grateful rescued civilian, in typical cool and besuited fashion. Instead of wielding guns, however, they carry firm slung perpendicular keyboards, Stephen-Hawking-stylee, along with Ghostbusters-like backpacks for good measure.
Your turn beckons. POSAJIMURUI!. Hahahaha.
Posted by dan at 03:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 21, 2001
At least 2000 words
I sincerely doubt that I'll be any good at this blogging business. In general, I'm kinda long-winded. Keats could see a falling leaf, and suddenly rush off to write a sensational fourteener. I see a falling leaf and can't contain myself for at least 2000 words. Same inspiration, different sorts of execution. (If you ask me, it was all that rubbish prose Keats kept bottled up inside him that killed him so young. It's all very well distilling brilliance out of your incoherent gibberish thoughts, but if all you ultimately produce is the pure essence where does all the rubbish go? Answer - nowhere. It lies around inside you, clogging your arteries like a caramel quiche buttie).
So it's decided. It's healthy to blog. Soon, my longer contributions to the field of English literature will appear in the "tales" section of this site, for everyone to freely ignore. This area will be reserved for shorter, more gnomic utterances, hopefully enigmatic and curt enough to conceal the arrant imbecility that will have spawned them. Here's one now.
Japan seems a lot like what America would be like now if rock and roll (and by extension, to be socially narrow-minded, the attitudinal rock revolution) had never happened - or, more precisely, if it had happened, just to someone else a long way away and in a completely incomprehensible language. Unfortunately, now I have thought this, my experiences around the place feel rather silly, a bit like finding yourself in one of those deeply implausible alternate-future novels or movies where the Nazis won WW2 or some such nonsense.
Posted by dan at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
As I write, my host
As I write, my host is watching the late night Japanese TV he blogs about so often - all talentless talent shows, elaborate adverts involving people with animal body parts and bad cartoons. "You've been here a week, drinking my sake and sleeping on my cold, hard, inhospitable floor", he says. "You haven't tidied the flat; at least have the common courtesy to fulfil your other promise and post on the blog." Hello. My name is Daniel. I'm a reader of Tokyo Tales just like you. (That's not too presumptuous is it? We only just met, after all). I won the Tokyo Tales competition several months ago and now I've used the free plane ticket Chris provided. I've come to provide this blog with the one thing it has so desperately needed. Perspective. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.
Posted by dan at 01:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 17, 2001
Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
Well bugger that for a game involving little green plastic figurines frozen into about-to-throw-a-grenade postures. Blogger's invite function ain't working, so you are denied the pleasure of my houseguest's trenchant observations on the marvel of modern Tokyo.
Time to explain what the hell's going on. Daniel, an old buddy from school (since I was... 13?) is staying on my floor for a little while... a month, actually. He has the luxury of being able to work from home... i.e., my home. We were hoping, oh yes, hoping that I'd be able to invite him onto the Tokyo Tales blog... but sadly not. Damn thing appears to be bust. I'll try and knock up a parallel blog page for him at some point over the next couple of days... hang on for much dual-blog, twin-cam action.
Right now, though, we have to get the hell out of the flat and restore our circadian rhythms. Remind me to tell you about our fortuitous discovery last night... I said, our FOURtuitous discovery... and when you find out just how weak that pun was, you'll hate me for it.
Posted by chris at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
