Laziness...

Just a quick post to say there WILL be a proper post coming soon, or maybe even a few.

Recently I've been to FujiQ Theme Park, Hakone and Mount Takao, which all need to be blogged over. I would've wrote some tonight, but I was shattered after a lot of walking today. I'll see if I have time tomorrow, if not it'll be Friday morning. I promise. Maybe.

6 months today...

Well, exactly 6 months ago, on the 9th of September, I waved goodbye to my parents and little sister at Newcastle Central Station and took off on the train down to London with my Uncle. Then after a mini-bus journey across London, we arrived at the airport - I said my final goodbyes, to my Uncle and to England, and I was off. Off to Sri Lanka anyway. And so began the painfully long journey to the country of Japan.



The only way I can really put my feelings into words is: Christ, I cannit believe it. I've been here 6 months! 6 months without my family and friends, without sunday dinners, greggs pasties and chavs. Not all bad then, I guess. Infact, if I'm honest, it was painfully difficult to come up with many things I missed other than my friends and family (sunday dinners was an easy one, don't really miss chavs though, for obvious reasons).

If we could boat all of my friends and family out here permanently, I'd have no reason to go back to England. It's not that England doesn't have redeeming qualities - I love the place. The only problem is Japan is atleast 20,000 million times better. I love this place, it has so much England doesn't have - the coolest history of any nation (oh come on, a country which got invaded by the french can't match up to samurai, no matter how hard it tries), delicious food and so much more.



Maybe I'm just feeling mid-year blues (well, post-mid-year... I may be returning at the start of August) and panicking at the short amount of time I have left here, in the same way that when I was coming out here I spent the last few weeks of English life not really wanting to leave. Either way, I'm really setting out to make the most of these last 5 months, mostly in the form of martial arts. I've already been doing Shorinji Kempo (although, I've been hugely lazy since Christmas, but I will properly start again in April with the new school year), I joined a Shotokan Karate class a few days ago and I'm looking to start Kendo. 'How will you juggle all of this, Michael?' you ask. 'Do you really have that much free time?' Well, no. I don't, and I'm not quite sure how this will all fit in but I have my heart intent on trying. I also really want give Taiko drumming a try. How I'll manage all of this? No clue, but I really feel the drive to do more things that I can take away from the gap year, so that when I get back home I can get that "holy crap, I just spent a year training three different martial arts in Japan, the home of each of these fighting styles". The sense of achievement would easily outweigh the exhaustion that will come with it.

When I stop to think like this, I still have so much left to do before I leave. So many places to see (Kyoto, Nara, Iga ninja museum, Utsunomiya...), so many new things to experience (Taiko, Kendo, Hanami - wiki it, festivals...) and so much still that I need to do within Tokyo that I haven't got around to (seeing the Imperial Palace, visiting the war museum and the national history museum, seeing Sumo...).



Hopefully this post can be not so much a wake-up call, but a promise to myself, and to whoever reads this, that I'm going to really try to do everything I possibly can in my last few months before my journey back across the world.

This can also be a post to say "I'll be back home soon, get ready to party". I demand atleast 5 welcome back parties, including (but not limited to) some nights out, some house parties and a few trips to Japanese restaurants so I can criticise them on how un-Japanese their restaurants are.

The pictures in the post are just random ones I selected from my first few months here. The top one was taken at the Junten Bunkasai (school festival), which happened in my first few weeks here. Despite the fact that this will sound immensely cheesey, it does almost seems like an eternity ago, I'd kill to go to this year's Bunkasai just so I could relive it now that I'm really at home at Junten and now that I know so many students. Never mind, still sports day to come! The second picture is of my trip to Nikko, again that feels like so long ago - my first real trip in Japan. The third is a random picture at karaoke which must've been taken in my first few weeks when Paxman was still here.

Hopefully my next post can be about a trip somewhere - no trips planned as of yet, but I have another 3 weeks off. A small amount of travelling can and will happen!

Oji - Part 3: Return of the... Museum?

Can't promise this one to be quite as interesting as the others, but I shall try. As I was walking through Asukayama park earlier I came across two museums, I'd heard a little about both but didn't realise they were both in Asukayama (although since one is called the Asukayama Museum, I maybe should've took the hint).

So there was the Asukayama Museum and the Paper museum. Yes, the paper museum - something about the old Oji paper mill. Swiftly ignoring said paper museum, I decided to have a look around the other one. After milling around the reception looking at some really cool postcards and books, I finally bought my ticket and asked if it was ok to take photos - I didnt understand her reply very well (damn asking questions in japanese, you arent going to understand the answer! fool!) but it seemed to be "yes, if you write your name here and wear this arm band". I'm not sure what the band said but I'm hoping it said something like "foreign press - photo taking allowed".

I wasn't disappointed, the museum was quite interesting - this may have been due to the lack of English in there. Museums are always better when you're just there to look at pretty pictures and exhibitions rather than having to read through a load of text to understand anything.

Luckily, I'd arrived just in time for a historical theatre piece which was basically mechanical mannequinns telling the story of something or another with a video. Despite understanding none of it, I really enjoyed it; the trees changed due to the seasons, I understood words here and there, there was a woman with a tail... wait, what? A tail? I didn't quite get that bit but due to some history Oji seems to have with foxes, I assumed that the fluffy tail emerging from her kimono was showing her to be some kind of fox god... maybe? Either way, it was a good watch, and a video came on after which, although really fun to see, didn't seem to be very informative so much as showing that, in the cherry blossom season, people got ridiculously drunk in historical japan under cherry blossom trees. Not much has changed then... hopefully.

But yeah, despite understanding nothing, it was really cool to see the kanji for Oji in really old historical documents (with pictures, Im not a psycho reading through long texts in a language I don't understand just to find two letters) and being able to see some of the history this area has.

And history it has, it seems. From all of the pictures Oji seems to go back quite far, which is cool, especially since Japanese history is the coolest thing since sliced bread.

This piece of art really took my attention. It was a photo of a really long scroll (lifesize, it went quite far down the wall) and is an artwork map of the area, and this little bit (you cant see due to terrible quality, for some reason the camera didn't like this picture) is Oji. Changed a bit, like.

Oji - Part 2: The Nature Strikes Back

And Part 2 of the academy award winning series on the town, the park and the foreigner that could.

So this post is about Nature in Oji. The picture above is Oji shrine. I think its a fairly famous shrine, really amazing place although I'm sure I've mentioned or showed it before.

Sorry about the quality of this picture, the camera, as great as it is, tends to screw up pictures now and again. Anyway, this was a really cool thing to experience when I arrived at Asukayama park (for the first time, I add, despite it being a major attraction in Oji, especially during Cherry Blossom season at the end of this month). A group of kids doing a drumming performance on a small stage in the park. They looked a bit rag tag since they couldnt quite stand still, but this didnt detract from the cracking performance they gave. Really good for a group of kids.

Asukayama park. On a really nice spring day, this was a great place to go for a while - the pictures don't seem to capture much of the nice day due to the leaf-less trees though. I'll be sure to come back when every single tree in this picture is glowing pink with the Sakura.

Random water feature in the park. Looked good. Nothing else to say.

Big stone I couldn't read. Looked cool. Anything else to say? 'fraid not.

View from Asukayama park. Really shows the mix of nature and metropolis, I think, with the green park and traditional looking clock-thing juxtaposed with the high rise buildings in the background.


A view of the small river... thing that runs through here and under the station. It's the same one that you saw in the last post in the pictures of my route to work. And heres some more pictures of the same place:

A really nice little feature in the middle of a city like Tokyo. It makes for a really picturesque walk to work, it has to be said.

Onto part 3!

Oji - Part 1: The City

Well, after visiting Hokutopia (the big high rise building in Oji) and seeing the amazing sights of the cityscape from 17 floors up, it got me thinking. I haven't really done much in the blog to show people the city I actually live and work in. And, come to think of it, I hadn't really seen much of it myself. Obviously spending most of my time here I've seen the main areas of it, but I hadn't really thought about sightseeing here, in the same way that back in England I wouldn't think of sightseeing in Sunderland.


This is probably going to end up just being a long picture post due to the amount of pictures I took today but it'll give you a really good view of Oji, the town (I'm still confused about what to call it, I suppose towns good because its a town in the city of Kita in the city of Tokyo... you get the picture) I live in. Look out for the huge contrasts in Oji, i.e. from old to new, from calm nature to busy traffic. Enjoy. Oh and the picture at the top is the area just outside the train station.




These two pictures are of places I pass on the way to work, I also go through a shrine as you'll see in one of the next few posts. Not a bad walk to work I have to say, really nice area and in a few weeks this path will be lined with bright pink trees (if my informations right) when the sakura bloom. Pic taken on the 17th floor of Hokutopia: Asukayama park on the left, bullet train and local train lines below it and huge cityscape behind.

I doubt you'll be able to see it due to the size of the picture on the blog but my appartment block is on there, to the left of the ENEOS red sign on the right of the picture,

Oji ekimae (in front of the station). I go through this place twice a day every day, sometimes it can be ridiculously busy - the amount of people who get off trains here is shocking since it isn't a big shopping area or anything.

And last but not least, a Hummer. This holds no significance to the post at all but I saw it on the way back today and, naturally as Hummers do, it stood out a fair amount. Undeterred by the Hummer's hefty japanese owner, and his black stares every time i took a glimpse at this beastly vehicle hummering up my Oji, I took a picture... although I waited until he turned his back. Not like I was scared or anything, I just... erm... didn't want to have to show him who was boss... that was all... yeah...