Tokyo Blog

There’s nothing cooler than speeding through a neon-dripped Tokyo night in one of these taxis, now a metropolitan icon in its own right. The immaculately clean interior and exterior and driver-operated automatic doors enhance what is already a very Japanese experience. Doilies on the seats and the driver’s white gloves betray the Japanese obsession with hygiene.

If you’re wondering where you’ve seen one before, Bob Harris has a similar neon retinal burnout experience in the opening scene of Lost In Translation whilst riding/sleeping in the back of one of these vehicles, before swinging into the Park Hyatt Hotel in Shinjuku. Riding in a Crown Classic is one of those cultural experiences that lies outside the gamut of usual Tokyo sightseeing, and should be on the to-do list of anyone planning to visit.

BTW: I ate at the restaurant and drank at the bar in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, featured in Lost In Translation, and the views at night from the floor-to-ceiling windows are amazing. I don’t know why I didn’t blog it then, it was a pretty long time ago now.

I dropped into Wired Cafe on the 6th Floor of Q-FRONT Shibuya today to take advantage of their free wi-fi connection. I’m currently re-working an ongoing Flash project which I expect to be able to unveil soon, schedule allowing.

The cafe is pretty unremarkable. I personally prefer the Shinagawa Wired Cafe just down the road from my apartment, but it served it’s purpose. I also discovered it’s a great place to pick up information on forthcoming music events in Tokyo. I even picked up a nicely illustrated book on surfing in and around the Tokyo area. That’s going to come in very handy when a day off finally comes round and I can finally get in the water again.

The food was average. I chose the French onion soup, an asparagus and mozzarella wrap and a cup of coffee, but it wasn’t worth the ¥1400 price tag. My MacBook Pro battery being what it is, I didn’t really take full advantage of the free wi-fi either, but I got a chunk of work done, then took off back into Shibuya.

They’re not particularly exciting, but I took some pictures the other day when I was out and about in Shinagawa. I took a trip to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, that just so happens to be in Shinagawa, inquiring about how to start a company in Tokyo. It turns out that people with working holiday visas have a hard time changing their visa status at all, but some Japanese companies hold enough sway over the authorities to make it happen for you. The other interesting point, is that you can’t join a company like this, or even change your visa status at all, after you have less than 4 months left on your working holiday. It just so happens I have 5 months and 5 days left on mine as of writing this post, and I sign a contract of employment on Friday! Phew. Extended play.

Finally, I’ve uploaded the videos of the Asakusa Hanabi Matsuri (Fireworks Festival). I had forgotten about them and left them languishing in iPhoto. These should give folks a good idea of what it’s like at the Summer festivals in Tokyo. Really enjoyable. You can still check out the photoset at flickr too, if you haven’t already.

I’ll embed the vids here too, so it’s easier for everyone.

Asakusa Hanabi Matsuri from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

Asakusa Hanabi Matsuri from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

I’ve moved again, this time to Shinagawa. What you see above is the view from my balcony. Could you believe I’m on the ground floor? The reason it feels elevated from this persective, is because my apartment block is situated on top of a hill, and the ground drops way steeply at the back of the apartment, where the balcony is. The neighbourhood always seemed like a business district to me, but with expensive restaurants and shops to cater for those clocking out. It wasn’t a place I ever came to often. I only came here once before to see Kage Hinata ni Saku at the Prince Cinema. I’ve had a good look around now, but have found only skyscrapers and hotels, the odd expensive restaurant, and high class shopping arcades. Where’s the sushi? Where are the izakayas? It’s a fashionable district for sure, and I’m glad to be exploring a different are of Tokyo, but there will always be a place in my heart for Taito-ku, and the areas of Ueno, Okachimachi, Asakusa, Minowa, Iriya, Yanaka and Nezu. By far the most atmospheric towns in Tokyo.

It’s not a big deal though. Meguro, Gotanda and Ebisu are still only a stone’s throw away.

I’m not a keen cyclist, but sometimes you’ve just got to get your bike from point A to point B. The problem was, point A was really, really far from point B. My journey took me past famous spots like Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya (I crossed the main crossing in front of Shibuya 109 on my mamachari!), and Meguro. Nice ride!

Finally they’re up. Head over to my flickr for a look at what the annual Hanabi in Asakusa was like this year. High points for me were the beautiful Kimonos and cool traditional outfits being sported by the locals, the choatic atmosphere, and the hugely spectacular hour-and-a-half long firework display.

I don’t want to destroy the planet, but I can’t cope without air-conditioning any longer. I woke up really early today, because it was so hot in my apartment. The weather widget on my computer says it’s hovering around the 30° C mark, but it feels way hotter because of the humidity (it climbed as high as 93% recently).

I heard stories about the Tokyo summers so I tried to prepare myself for the worst, but it’s still so hard to get a days work done. I asked my friend the other day if it was particularly bad at the moment due to the fact that it is the rainy season, but they told me, in fact, it would get much, much worse!

This shot was taken as we pulled out of Shinjuku station at 12.39 on Saturday night. As you can see, it’s sea of suits, and as the train lurches they slosh up against the sides of the train and you get caught in the current. Suprisingly, it’s not annoying at all. It’s pretty hilarious, actually. The train is so ridiculously full that you can’t help but laugh (and take pictures).

I’ve just put some more photos up on flickr, this time of the recent festival that took place in the streets in and around Taito ward (where my neighbourhood is), Tokyo. There are also a few of Naka Meguro from when I visited a week or so ago. Naka Meguro is famous for being a trendy neighbourhood, but I didn’t find much during my visit. It struck me as being a little bit difficult to penetrate, and probably the cool places are hard to find, so I’ll head back there at some point with a bit more info.

Karaoke is better than I expected having done it twice now. Both times were after a night out and lasted until daybreak. You drink beer and sing a few songs with your friends. I did ‘I Want to be Adored’ by the Stone Roses, ‘The Way You Make me Feel’ by Michael Jackson (very difficult and a bad idea), ‘It’s so Easy’ by Guns n’ Roses, ‘Burning Down the House’ by Talking Heads, and ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ by the Clash amongst others. So you take one hangover and add stressed vocal cords into the mix for good measure.

Izakaya are a highlight of living in Japan. We went to one the other day and the food was nice, and not really that expensive. We had a boat-load of Sashimi to start with and beers, followed by Tempura. Then a woman came into the private room you get for your group, and showed us the freshest fish they had in stock. They were laid out on a tray made from woven straw and each fish had a small wooden sign with the name written on it. We couldn’t read the names so we just chose a good looking one and asked to have it poached in some sort of soup. You can ask to have it prepared in a few ways, like stir-fry or grilled. When it came it was the nicest fish I’d ever had but wasn’t big enough for everyone to share really. In Japan it’s customary to eat the soft part of the fish’s eye (avoiding eating the eyeball), so I did and it was horrible, but it’s supposed to be good for the brain so I washed it down with beer. We chased this with posh Sake which you drink from a glass placed in a small open top box (like a square cup), and the Sake is made to overflow the glass and run into the cup around it. This means that when you start to drink you have to leave the glass on the table and drink the first bit out from there. Then, after, you use the contents of the square box to top the glass up.

We also ordered Udon and squid ink risotto and maybe something else, I can’t remember. Came to about £70 for three people.

It’s 1.59am over here by my computer’s clock in Tokyo and we just had a pretty big earthquake. Well, it was big by my standards. I’ve felt one at least once a week, but only very slight tremors. Before I noticed the earth moving you could hear rattling coming from the overhead electric cables that festoon the streets. Soon after that you could feel the slow back-and-forth movement. Pretty scary considering the big one may be on it’s way. I waited a bit to see if it was followed by another (a sign of a larger earthquake on it’s way), but it never came, so I’m going to bed.

UPDATE: Here’s the official line on the quake from CNN. Incredible, because it was 6.8 on the scale! I guess I shouldn’t have been so blazé about it after all.

I thought I’d post some info on this place, as a recommendation to those in Tokyo, and as a point of interest to others. It’s in my neighbourhood of Okachimachi, but it’s more towards the Ueno end, but still an easy walk, and an even easier bike ride. Problem is, once you’ve spent the night at The Warrior Celt your ride home is always one filled with risk taking and overconfidence. They serve English beer, as well as Japanese and some European beers. The people that work there are really nice and so are the regulars. It’s way too convenient for me actually, and I probably go there in the evenings more than I should. After all, the beer in Tokyo is expensive: ¥1000 a beer, which is around £5! Having said that, it’s nice to have a local to drink at. I feel more welcome at this pub than I ever have been made to feel at any English pub I can think of, so now I’m like my Grandad always was, work through the day then up the pub for a few pints of a nighttime, and in Tokyo no less.

There was a party at the apartment not so long ago. Mostly Japanese and Korean guys came, and in typical fashion bought a huge amount with them. We had already bought beer for everyone and made a giant cocktail (Vodka, Gin and fruit juices), but everyone who came bought more alcohol; more than they could even consume themselves to add to the stockpile. It wasn’t just alcohol they bought either: inside the numerous combini bags there were rice crackers, manju sweets, wasabi snacks, peanuts, pizza (uncooked), noodles, cup noodles, fish sausages (nasty), sour worms, fish crackers, frankfurters, dried fish, dried squid, crisps and loads of other stuff besides.

So when the party is underway and the the 3LDK is maxed out, the group of girls in attendance start cooking in the kitchen area. Like, 5 pizzas, plates of german sausages, large plates of noodles etc., and start handing them out to the party crew. It was like a wife-off. Who, out of the girls, can prove themselves to be the best, domestically? It was pretty interesting for me from a cultural point of view. I’m always comparing Japan to the UK. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but it’s really the only yardstick I have by which to measure.

So that happened, and then the next day I tentatively slide open the door to the living area from my bedroom. The place was annihilated. There was a mass of beer cans, food plates and packaging. The quantity of beer cans was astounding. I’ve had parties before back home, but this was something new. I knew straight away that this was going to present a problem for us.

In Japan, or at least in Taito-ku in Tokyo, you have a refuse collection system in place that segregates waste into 3 categories: burnable (paper, food waste, cardboard etc.), recyclable (glass, plastic, pet bottles, polystyrene trays etc.), and non-burnable (pretty much everything else that falls outside these categories). The problem is, recycling is compulsory. If you put out a bag of rubbish on burnable day, it will be checked, and if there is a glass bottle or a plastic bottle, or whatever, it won’t be taken. Same goes for the other days too; you have to put the appropriate gomi out. On recycle day you have a few different crates with the type of rubbish meant for it scrawled in magic-marker on the side (in Japanese of course - an opportunity to practice those reading skills). The problem is, these crates are so small. You could fit maybe 20 crushed beer cans in one, but we had like 150. Three full rubbish bags of them.

In the past, we had managed to put out a huge bag of recyclables on recycling day, and the guys just took it. I thought maybe we could do the same this time, so I lined up all 6 bags (the cans and the other packaging, plus the ordinary household stuff we had accumulated), and went to bed. Next morning (late-ish), I looked over the balcony down onto the street, and the bags were gone. I was pretty relieved. I went into the kitchen to make some English tea and we’d ran out of milk, so I was going to pop out to the combini, but I couldn’t get out of the front door. I pushed pretty hard to get out, and outside the door was all of the rubbish, piled up with more reading practice taped to the top.

So now, we need to find a way to dispense the waste in some other way. Doing it in dribs and drabs over time using the collection service could take years. Instead, I’ve been trying to devise a strategy to loose the waste somehow. More cultural info for you here now: In Tokyo, outside the numerous combinis (convenience stores), there are bottle, can and paper bins for you to put stuff in. They also have these next to drinks vending machines in the city. I’m thinking that there must be enough of these in my area to fit all of the party waste in. It will mean splitting the large bags up into smaller batches and putting them in the front basket of my bike, ready for the first sortie of Operation Gomi.