Bloody Bus Ballyhoo

This morning the most unbelievablely bad thing happened to me on the bus on the way to work.  The annoying speaker announcements have been translated into English!  No longer will I not understand after peeople get on at every bus stop that we’re not allowed to use our cell phones, nor that we shouldn’t stand up to get off before the bus has stopped (that would be dangerous you see), nor indeed what tourist attractions are coming up on this commuter route.  Not only does this mean that I understand what’s going on (not a good thing – I now can’t so easily get away with breaking the rules), but the announcements are now twice as long and thus twice as annoying.  OH MY GOD TURN THEM OFF.  Seriously I think I’m going to go postal on those speakers soon.

Amusing work request

They were doing a photo shoot for a new brochure for work, and requested a shot of “a foreign researcher talking with a female Japanese researcher”. The myriad foreign and female Japanese workers that there are, they picked me (the only foreigner in my lab) and a girl (the only one). We had to pose in front of an enormous TV screen which, rather amusingly, was showing lots of tanned babes in bikinis. Life size. And then we had to pretend to be “researching”. If only that’s what research was.

Gotta love political correctness.

I LOVE SHOTEN

Came across this highly amusing advert on the train…

Earthquakes and Drills

I’d never experienced any earthquakes before coming to Japan. But since arriving I’ve felt a few – the biggest was at night, when it felt like someone was shaking me to wake me up. Slightly freaky.

We also did an earthquake drill at work. This was particularly funny since we had to all wear shiny white hard-hats, and on the alarm bell, hide under our desks wearing these hats.

Descending Mount Fuji

I’ve left the interested reader at about 3776m on top of Mount Fuji. For some reason, we thought it would be a great idea to descent a different route, the “Gotemba” route. Little did we know what we were in for…

The group had somewhat fragmented now – Burak was stuck in a hut half way up, Yusuke & Asae needed to return quickly and so went down the way we came up. So it was Love, Gizem, Zoli, and myself. So we embarked downwards. Pleasantly after the insanely busy push and shove on the way up, the path was comparably quiet, and people were friendly, giving us the old “Konnichiwa” or “Ohayoo”.

The way down.

Yunessun

So the day after I climbed Fuji, Love and I headed to Hakone. Since the weather was, well, rather atrocious, we headed to Yunessun, a hot-springs complex. This has tonnes of indoor and outdoor hot baths and unusually for Japan, you get to wear bathing suits. Except of course in the “Naked Zone”.

The baths come in all shapes, sizes, temperatures, and of course colours – not the bath, but the water itself. The crazy baths include: red wine (sadly doesn’t have the flavour, just the colour), green tea, coffee, curry (this one I was really glad it didn’t have the flavour), and sake.

But there were two particularly special baths that deserve mention.

Three Months of Keitai Photos

There are many amusing things you see around Japan. I managed to capture a few of these on my Keitai (mobile phone). They’re all up here on picasaweb but here are some highlights:

Climbing Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji (富士山) rises 3776m above sea level, straight up from the plain below. On a clear day (these are few and far between in summer) you can see it from Tokyo:

Mount Fuji from my own room!
Sadly the Pachinko parlour ruins the view somewhat.

Mount Fuji from top of the Mori tower in Roppongi Hills.

The Best Words in Japanese

のみほうだい (nomihoudai) and たべほうだい  (tabehoudai).

These mean all you can drink and eat respectively.  And they’re such good value for large 外人 (gaijin – foreigners) such as myself, who can drink and eat my way through the whole restaurant

Expeditions with Matt

Thankfully my friend from home Matt was around for the first couple of months to hold my hand. Metaphorically that is. Some of the things we got up to were:

• A weekend away to Taipei, whereby Matt narrowly avoided being deported from Japan.  Met up with Angel’s extended family who were incredibly kind and generous, taking us everywhere – great restaurants, out clubbing all night, post clubbing lychee champagne, hot springs, the night market, Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building int the world!).  Fun weekend!
  

  Taipei

• Museum of parasitology.  Yup, a museum about worms.  Some are about 10m long, and they used to live inside people.  Yum.
• Tokyo dome roller coaster!  Followed by coffee in the “moomin cafe” with real life-size moomins!!!
• Traditional Izakaya – a Japanese pub type thing.  We had to great the ‘master’ when we went in: genki master?  He was a nice chappy so we bought him some beer.
• Donkey.  Matt’s idea of heaven.  Everything you could possibly buy, all under one roof.  Food, furniture, and furry sex toys.