The Shinkansen, Tokyo Aquarium, and of course, Happy Birthday Ray!

Happy birthday Ray!  First of all, follow that link for my Happy Birthday Ray Japanese lesson.  Curtesy of a couple of willing Japanese 'volunteers.'  You have no idea how difficult it is to convince Japanese people to participate in such events.  They either have to be drunk, or in ann extremely good mood.

Secondly, check out my visit to Tokyo Aquarium.  It has more drums, is full of fish; and even has the best meal ever conceived!  The whole day was fantastic.

So onto yesterday.

Yesterday was a travelling day, I took the shinkansen (bullet train) from Yokohama to Kyoto; and arrived around 2:30PM, having left at 12PM.  Frankly speaking the whole thing was too efficient. While i was on the train I wrote todays entry, so here it is:

At this point I mention Nan and Ray. I got the people in the hostel to say happy birthday in Japanese, and I recorded them, but I've lost that days' pictures and videos. So hey Nan, happy birthday! I'll give you a ring later.

And hey Ray, happy birthday, I'll probably catch you on MSN when you should be working, at a later date.

So I'm sitting on the bullet train, on my way to Kyoto.

I woke up this morning and decided I'd had enough of Tokyo and Yokohama. I'm off to Kyoto, for some serious temple and shrine sightseeing, while meeting up with Pascal for some fun and frolicking; maybe. I'm told there's not a lot to do in Kyoto, other than the temple and shrine route. This has driven a number of my fellow travellers to distraction, and I've found a number of them crave the Tokyo life after only a week or two in Kyoto. I have to say that the type of person who's commented in such a way is usually here for the technology, rather than the general tourism. A number of people have come here on stays for cultural reasons, Naree for example, and loved Kyoto. Then again, she was engaged in dancing activity for a large amount of her time, so it was more like a job than a sightseeing tour I guess. We'll see how it turns out for me, I might get bored of it, I might not.

One of the guys sitting next to me seems extremely nice, he's chatted a little, and even showed me the power socket for my computer. His English isn't very good, but neither is my Japanese so I think we're equals in this sense. The other guy is too cool for school. Ginger hair is big over here, men and women wear it with equal zealousness. Genetically speaking, I don't think it's possible for a native Japanese to have anything other than black hair, so when they see foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes, they immediately stare, mouth agape. If you happen to be blonde and have blue eyes, and be female, no matter how ugly you are - a job teaching English beckons here.

So to explain my motivation for dropping such a large amount of money on this mode of transport: The shinkansen is just awesome. It's doing two hundred miles per hour, and it feels like we're on a cloud. The trains have their own dedicated tracks which means no interruptions by normal intercity riff raff, and the tracks have neither junctions or much in the way of bends. Those corners we do round, as you'll see in my videos when I upload them, are banked like an american oval to a degree that you can actually feel your bum being pushed into the seat. That's really g-force. However minor it may be, the fact it happens on a train is just plain mental.

I also can't emphasise how luxurious this travel is, even in scumbag class (I accidentally got on the wrong end of the train, meaning I had to walk, bag and all, through all the really nice parts of the train, knocking people, cups, sushi, bento and all flying) I have ample legroom, and I mean ample, just check out the pictures. My baby laptop is sitting so far away from me on the aeroplane style desk, that I'm having to lean forward to reach it. This is amazing. Width is still something of an issue, but since the age of ten it became obvious my shoulders were not designed for public transport. Height is the most amazing thing though.

Most trains require me to enter sideways, while bent double in a full ninety degree shuffle. This modern, forward looking transport system means I only have to nod my head down to get through the doors, and once I'm inside I can stand tall! It's amazing! In twenty years time, foreigners might not even have to duck at all.

I've been on the train an hour or so now and the air hostess lady has passed three times. Now that's (expensive) service.

The noise is also something that took me by surprise. English trains, at their fastest, do half the speed of this thing; but by god do you know they're doing that speed. One hundred miles an hour on an English train may as well feel like a thousand, and every time another train goes past those with gulf war syndrome jump aside for cover; and those sleeping pretend it didn't just make them wet themselves.

Here, when another bullet train goes past, in the opposite direction, at a combined speed of over 400 miles per hour you hear nothing. I kid you not. Nothing. The only reason you know something just happened is because train rocks slightly, and by the time you look over to see why, the other train has already gone.

So it was getting a little crowded between the other two guys, so I switched seats, and using my incredible foreigner powers I've bagged myself a seat with a spare to the side.

The efficiency of the entire endeavour boggles my mind, every time I think about it. It's never late, there's no fuss with tickets and whatnot because you ask someone before buying, buy it from a person, have it pass through a machine, then another person checks it. In terms of economic efficiency, it's probably much more labour intensive than it could be, and therefore much more expensive; the human and mechanical efficiency of such a system means that everything runs smoothly. It's obviously an expensive service, as I've just seen first hand, but the fact a large number of people are using it, even today at a decidedly non-peak time is testament to the value this service holds, beyond the cost.

I guess justifying having eight members of crew on-board a single train, not including the drivers (plural) would be difficult for the bigwigs who run British trains.

On a side note, rural Japan seems to be extremely nice. Contrary to what I was expecting, a large percentage of the houses do seem to carry the traditional style to some extent, specifically the typically oriental roof design, that seems so frivolous and eccentric. It's difficult to see at this speed whether there are any wooden buildings left, I fear this might be simply a dream. The number of rice fields here is also surprisingly high but then again, Japan produces 120% of the rice it needs as a country, so presumably they've got a large export industry in rice. This is of course nullified immediately by all other foodstuffs. Except maybe daikon. They love daikon here, and I don't even know what it is; bar some kind of vegetable. All meat is imported, hence the horrific bill I paid yesterday for my yakiniku meal. A day on and it was still worth it though, so I figure I'm safe in terms of conscience on that spend.

On a further note about Japan; I learned in a geography lesson a while ago that the landmass of Japan is primarily mountainous and cannot be built upon. Therefore, despite being (roughly) 1.1 times the size of England, they only have the luxury of being able to build upon a quarter of that land. This is the reason for the chronic population densities, that top anywhere in the world. Having been here for a while I couldn't really see where this particular mountain statistic came from, or what the Japanese obsession with yama (one of the few kanji I know, 山, mountain) was. I now know. Since we left the built-up regions I've seen nothing but mountains. And I should add they're mountains that are quite definitely not populated, or able to be built upon. The effect is quite incredible, having massive high rise apartments a stones throw from a great big hill. Although most are quite modest, some reach through the clouds. Most belong to chains, and I suspect a lot also have shrines and temples on top, with thousands of steps ala Kill Bill, or any number of samurai/martial arts films.

Factor all this into a population of 125 million, and the density now makes perfect sense in my mind.
Awww jeez I wanted to write so much more, but we're already at Kyoto. Damnit.

You never know, maybe we'll be delayed and I'll have more time to write...

And now for some pictures!

A funny little warning telling you not to run on the platform.

Presumably to see this sign you've made it onto the train; so you survived the platform experience.  You never know though I guess; someone might have been carried aboard.

It also tells you the load weight of the table!  How thorough a warning is that!

Look how much room I have!  There's enough for me and my enormous bag!

I don't think you can buy this kind of space on any other mass transit system.  First class?  Pfff who needs that...

So this is an aisle view of the train.  Looks pretty much like an aeroplane in my eyes.

Three on the left, two on the right.

That's as many words as I can stretch this picture to.

Moving from Tokyo to Kyoto is one hell of a creepy experience.  I was in this underground station, and there wasn't a single other person; it was only 7PM!

The hustle and bustle of Tokyo only really begins to become apparent once you move to a city like this.  There are still 1 million or so people living here, but it feels like a village... Albeit a village with a metro line.

And this is the view of the station looking in the other direction.  Creepy.

It's like something out of a horror film - decimated population, zombies in the woodwork, that kind of thing.

A mini salesman and repair shop.

In the middle of kyoto.

Interesting.

A lot of them were pretty beaten up though it has to be said.

I do think the mini is the perfect car for here though.



So for the Shinkansen videos:




So this is the platypus jawed machine pulling into the station.

I managed to get on the wrong end, and had to traipse through the entire train; knocking people and sushi flying. (they have an airline style food service onboard) A lot of people were very angry.  Stupid foreigner.




And this is an onboard shot; looking out of the window.  You can clearly see the banking of the track in this photo, and it might make some seasick!  Advisory, don't look at this video if you get motion sickness!

Oh wait, this is below the video...  Oh well  (please don't sue)

So basically this machine is expensive, and horrifically efficient.  Efficient beyond the realms of probability.  But then again everyone already knows that anyway...

Ride the shinkansen:  Tick.

On an unrelated note, Naree used a couple of my pictures on her website.

Picture one:  A tree that she made negative.  On her homepage as well!

Secondly: A blurred picture of  the zanily dressed girl!  I don't really like this picture because it's blurred as hell!  But then again, covert documentation such as this often carries with it such risks of poor quality.  Thanks for using my pics!

Ciao for now!

Pictures of the Typhoon... Kind of.

So these are the pictures of the typhoon.  Or rather, these should be the pictures of the typhoon, except that it moved an awful lot quicker than people were expecting, and therefore the brunt of the storm hit around 5AM here, instead of the predicted 9AM.

I even woke up especially early (8AM) in order to capture this event on camera.  However it had already passed, so all I managed to get were a few shots of the wind, and an incredibly high tide.

The air pressure was so low it made my joints ache, as if I'd been scuba diving or something.  This also made the sea level extremely high, and if there had been any wind whatsoever I'm sure the sea would have caused some problems.

As it was, the wind was actually pretty strong.  But there was nothing else of incident really, no blown over houses, no cows sailing past the window.  It was strong enough to physically push me off my seat a couple of times, which would have been hilarious for anyone who happened to be watching, had there been anyone else within fifty miles of me.  In the early morning there was no one anywhere close to me.  I think everyone was still under the impression it was storm weather, or had the potential to be stormy.  By midday it was sunny.  Annoying.

So basically I've never been blown away before, (well not since being a child presumably) and this did make me think that if it had the power to move me when it was only the trailing edge of the main event, the winds inside must have been really impressive.

The whole event has basically made me want to see a proper storm close-up.  I think it really would be impressive.

Anyway, onto the pictures!

So I found some other people out and about like I was, so I felt duty-bound to take some pictures of them.

A lot of the people walking around were salarymen aimlessly wandering about, when they definitely should have been at work.  I made the assumptiont that their employers had given them time off, but they didn't want to spend it at home, so they pretended they had to work anyway; suits and all.

Having said that though, wearing a suit seems to be obligatory for men here, even wearing the tie at all time must be adhered to.  So I'm sure I won't be climbing any corporate ladders if I get a job here.

Ok so I bought a set of waterproof legs to go over normal trousers in the local corner shop; thinking I'd need them for the reporter style 'being blown down the street in pouring rain and thundering ocean spray,' camera shot I was looking to get.  Of course that didn't happen, and I was thoroughly disappointed when I took them off.

This is me looking confused.  It was pretty much 9AM at this point, and I was wondering where the storm was.

I was all done up in plastic finery to avoid gettinng wet, but there was no rain!

Palpable disappointment in this photo, I think you'll agree.

So this cool looking building is a ferry terminal, and a park.  There's grass and benches and whatnot on top, and this was my primary destination originally.  However they denied me access to the park on top, even though I'm sure it wouldn't have been much worse than where I took this picture from.

You can also see the height of the tide in this picture.  That little road is an access road for cars and whatnot, and when I came here a few days ago the sea was about two metres below that, despite being at a high tide then!

So this is the biggest building in Japan again.  Remember when I said you could see it from anywhere?

I wonder what it's like to have those winds in a building that high and wide?  I'm sure that would have been an interesting experience for anyone inside.

So it did rain a little bit, but nothing worth shouting about really.

I put on my waterproof trousers just to get some kind of use out of them.

Stupid?  Yes.  But I'm never averse to making myself look like an idiot.

Even the few people that were out and about disappeared at this point, and it felt like I had the whole city to myself.  It was quite an interesting situation, and let me get pictures of the sea that would have been impossible without this weather.

And this was on the way back to the hostel, about thirty minutes after that last picture was taken.

People think the weather changes quickly in England, come and visit Japan during a storm.  It's amazing how quickly everything switches around, and going from rain and wind to bright sunshine and... wind takes seconds.

By this point the general populace were out and about too, so a few people were falling over, and stuff was getting blown around so the walk back to the hostel was quite fun.

And people still had their umbrellas.  No-one here has quite  twigged that imbrellas, rain, and fifty mile per hour winds do not mix.  It's really funny to see a line of people put up their umbrellas, and them all get snapped in succession.  I would love to video it, and maybe I'll get the chance another time.

And we end with this guy.  He's staying in the hostel too, and is studying Japanese at the moment.

I've not had a lot to do in Yokohama lately, because of all the interview based waiting around, so I've spent a long time aimlessly wandering, and chatting to the random people who turn up about the place.

I've spent a long time talking to this guy, so I definitely feel he's worthy of recognition in my blog.  Brazilian born Japanese are becoming commonplace in my travels!

Ok so I took a few videos as well.  This first one is during the night, and is basically demonstrating why I couldn't sleep, with a little voice-over on my part.



Ok now this second video is to demonstrate how windy it was.  Think of this video as the base level of windiness, gusting much harder than this at times.



And that's pretty much all there is to that day of disappointing non-typhoon action.

Some Interesting Foodstuffs.

Ok so I'm finally getting round to putting up some of the pictures I took before the storm, randomly around Yokohama.

This first batch are interesting food items I've seen about the place, and with no further ado, here they are!

Ok so at this stage the foodstuffs in this box are still alive.

They just come outside and whack it on the head essentially.

I don't really know what the one swimming around is, but it was tiny; not much of a meal to be had with that guy there.  Maybe a sandwich.

Then again, eating bread here is taking your life into your own hands, so you've got to contend with the bread and the poisonous fish.  I don't really like those odds!

There are assorted shellfish here.  I know it's not a very good picture, but they were being aerated so...

This also presumably means they're alive, or maybe it's to keep them fresh; who knows.

They didn't look particularly delicious though, so only those who really like slimy shellfish should probably eat these things.

Ok at this point I feel I should stop and say:  This was actually outside a chinese restaurant, not Japanese.  I know they eat disgusting things over here in Japan, but china and the chinese have the monopoly on that particular plaudit.  As the saying goes, the chinese will eat anything, and so far this appears to be true.

If the English saying, 'you are what you eat' is also true, this makes an awful lot of chinese people, and those who frequent chinese restaurants here, quite disgusting and rather slimy.

So this is a close-up of the two dimensional fish at the bottom of the box.  They're still alive too.

People in England are always looking to obtain the freshest food possible; yet they baulk at the idea of having a live fish swimming around in front of them.  This is the ultimate freshness, either go for the most fresh produce in everything, or put up with frozen food!  Put up or shut up!

I like this sign because it's a perfect example of Japlish, or Engrish, whichever you'd prefer.

Deep 2 Deep is the shop name, with a random 'import' thrown in for good measure.

It also says 'sweet heart beat,' in the bottom left, and in the middle of the actual heart itself, '...beat...'  Very interesting design going on here, I think you'll agree.  The philosophy seems to be, throw as many English words together as possible.

Ok so I include this basically because I really liked it.  The incessant rain we had during this time also makes it look much nicer in the twilight of whatever hour this was taken.

Most of the 'sculptures,' using the term loosely, that exist here in the street are extremely abstract, and generally fall under the category of, 'we had too much money and too many artists, so we needed to keep them fed.'  There are one or two good ones though, and knowing these kinds of things are entirely subjective I guess it's merely statistics that dictate there should be at least a few I like.  This just happens to be one of the ones I do.

I'll take some photos of a horrendous example at a later date.

This was on the side of a supermarket.

What can I say.

They have *almost* got it right, but not quite.

I want to give the person who penned these lines a hug and a gold star for effort.



Ok so I'll get round to doing the typhoon in  a minute.

A Lot of Hot Air!

It basically came overnight, much faster than anyone predicted.  By the time I got up at 8AM (especially early to go out in what should have been peak storm times) it had already gone!

The shinkansen stopped running because of the safety risks, and the local services were severely disrupted on what was essentially, a bit of a windy, perfectly sunny day.

A number of shops were closed, and my friends' lecturer cancelled her university lessons for today because everyone thought it was going to be bad, but it turned out to be a reasonable day.

Last night sucked though.  A bunch of Italians, who are noisy at the best of times, were hysterical at being stuck in the middle of the storm and were crying in the hallways, literally, and generally keeping everyone up.  That coupled with the noise of the rain, (it hit overnight) meant I didn't get to sleep until 5AM.  I now dislike Italians, which is interesting because in Italy they're a part of the landscape; some countries travel well, Italy doesn't

The weathermen get it wrong here too it seems.

More pictures and whatnot to come at a later date.

The Day of Baseball and Sorting my CV Out.

(see the comments section for the corrections to this post regarding Japanese language)

So today was the 'printing all my junk out' day that I had planned.  I aimed to get it done well in advance, but didn't have the motivation really; then I suddenly woke up in a cold sweat last night worrying about what would happen should I not  be able to print anything out, or I not be able to find where the station is.

I tried printing my CV off in the hostel, but it wouldn't download the files from Hotmail for some reason.  I then ventured out into the world of internet cafe's here.  It's absolutely crazy.  The one I went to was half internet cafe, one quarter manga cafe, one quarter DVD rental place.  It's absolutely incredible.  Everyone has their own little booth, and a sliding door thing so it's very closed and private, entirely unlike the internet cafe's in Europe.

So I had to print out a few things, which I did, and then went hunting for the printer.  (The clerk spoke no English, and my Japanese isn't good enough to ask for the printer)  So I'm walking around this place, prying into all the nooks and crannies, and I found a food vending machine, a drinks machine, floor to ceiling racks of comics and books and an awful lot of nerds playing games I've never even heard of before.  All in all, it was quite an interesting, albeit minor glimpse into the world of geek culture here.

Also, they open 24 hours, and 8 hours is 1500円, so if I can't find a hostel for whatever reason I can stay at one of these places.  Some even have showers...




The baseball thing is a bit hit and miss though.  I'm not really sure whether it's today.  The symbol for day is sun, and the symbol for month is something else.  So I stood at the sign outside the stadium (it's right next door to my hostel) for about five minutes, trying to figure out the time and date of the match.  As far as I can figure out it's at 6PM tonight.  I think.  I'm really not sure.  A couple of friendly looking girls (of indeterminate age; if I've not said before I have no idea how old women (or men for that matter) are here.  (Use of double parentheses, slap on the wrist!)) so maybe I'll ask them.

Oh no, it turns out the girls next to me smoke!  Ewwwww.

However it also turns out they're incredibly helpful, despite not speaking any English.  So today is １０月５日。  The fifth day of the tenth month!  Amazing!  So yeah now all I need to decipher is whether it's a home match or away match, I'll just turn up and see what's what, I have the right date for something at least.  If anyone is interested, month is pronounced tsuki, day is pronounced hi.  I think.  Maybe that's just the way it's typed on the keyboard.  Who really knows with this language?  I think they just make it up as they go along just to confuse foreigners.  'Haha that'll confuse 'em,' kind of thing.

I'm amazed at the number of people that smoke here, and how socially accepted it is.  I wonder if they've had the health nazi/health terrorist propaganda we've had in the UK.  If they have, and they continue to smoke then I have to say, I'm impressed.  They're worse/better than the French for ignoring health based criticism.

Does make my eyes sting though... annoying.

Anyway, I've figured out how to ask where kamiooka is at the ticket  office, so I'm off there now.

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So the match was fantastic.  I really enjoyed it.

I went into it wanting to hate everything about it, but it's completely different seeing baseball live, opposed to watching it on television.  Another important factor, I think at least, is that the baseball I've seen on tele has been American; this sport was very much Japanese.

There weren't many people there because it was absolutely pouring down for most of the match, thank god I had an extremely waterproof jacket on!  But the people who did attend were in good voice and high spirits.  Interestingly they segregate fans into home and away quite vociferously, and upon asking several member of the 'help desk,' staff, in English, what's what?  They relented and found someone who spoke English.  So I bought a ticket, chose the home fans section and headed on in there.  Everything is so orderly, it's unreal.  Both sets of fans has a band playing songs, but they take it in turns to do this.  And when your side is batting you have to sing different songs, depending on who it is that's batting!  Nuts.  What's even more crazy is that everyone knows every song.  There were maybe a dozen of us who didn't know the songs.  All the kids, men and women were singing all the songs for all the different batters.  All the pitches were cheered as if they were the last in a grand final.  Fantastic stuff all round.

I was a little disappointed to find the beers here aren't served in 2 litres buckets like in America, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the manner in which the beers arrived; more on that later.

I was also surprised by the number of balls that ended up in the crowd.  I calculated, before I even sat down, how many rows up and down, and how many seats left and right I could reach, should a ball find its way to me.  Using my super foreigner powers I was able to sit down in an empty row and keep it for the entire match giving me the perfect opportunity to catch something coming my way.  Unfortunately again, the nearest ball was three rows down from me, too far.

If you were wondering, five seats left or right, one row below me and four rows above me is my estimated catching range.

A man even came round to make sure we were all ok when the ball in our general vicinity, and martials blow all kinds of whistles to warn you!  Cool.

So onto the pictures!

So I took this because of the history China and Japan have.  I'm surprised they're allowed to do business here, it's quite surprising to see these banks around.

Having said that, the area I'm staying in has a massive Chinese population, and a big China town.  It's also really expensive, which is  surprising because the Chinatown in London isn't as expensive as here, and the ingredients have to be sourced from much further in Europe... Strange.

As one of my friends suggested, the Chinese who've moved over here must have gained a taste for louis vuitton bags.  Every woman has one here.  As far as I can tell prices start at one hundred pounds.  This is where Japanese money goes, it seems.

A random picture of a pond, with the ubiquitous carp in its reasonably clear waters.

So where is this I hear you ask?

It's inside the stadium grounds of course...

There's actually a park inside the stadium, it has all kinds of benches, green areas and this pond.  Amazing.  Imagine a koi pond inside the wembley grounds or twickenham.  Weird no?

Ok so they're doing some work on the top floor of this tall building.

I only noticed this when they started leaving, but a group of them were sitting on the edge where that one guy is now and they were eating lunch or something.  That net looks suspiciously like something for catching tools rather than people.  Health and safety seems to be self imposed here.

So dragons are everywhere here, in their shrines and temples, and like this little guy, pieces of art depicting them are commonplace too.

I love all the different styles they have, from the really mean looking ones to something nice and tame like this guy.  His spikes and spines are all rounded off, presumably because there's a kids park within 20 metres of here, so impalement is probably quite likely.

So they do have the health police here too!  It turns out people just ignore it.

I can't read the sign, but I'm pretty sure the picture is reasonably clear.

Close-up below.  (kind of closer anyway)

Poor kid.

Ok so no sooner had I left the, 'smoking kills children,' sign, than I came across this sign here.

It's even in English, that's how serious they are about enforcing this law.  It's talking about a large shopping street that I was standing on, no smoking on this street.

And then I found this:

A guy, sitting opposite the sign, looking at it.  Smoking.

This made me laugh, and was also deserving of two pictures.

A wide-shot of the scene as I looked on laughing.  I'm surprised the view isn't shaken from me chortling to myself.


It turns out there are lots of signs telling people not to smoke, don't do this, don't do that.

But people only seem to follow the ones that make sense.

Awesome.  Of course being a foreigner I break most of the rules all the time, and people just look miffed without ever doing anything.  This holds its own separate set of problems.

NOB Hair Design.

This picture needs no further explanation.

So a few days ago I took a picture of the biggest building in Japan.  I also thought, (I might have written it as well) that it was a little disappointing height wise.

However, when I was walking around Yokohama I noticed that you can see it from almost anywhere.  It really is gargantuan.  It's the width and depth of the building as much as the height, it's an imposing structure.

The shape is also peculiar, and seems to be completely different from any other skyscraper I've seen.  The four corner are far more pronounced than the sides between them, and it looks as if they're four separate towers holding the whole thing together.

So we now move onto the baseball pictures.

This was just before the match started.  I was in the white half of the stadium, the reds were our opponents for the day.

I later found out the reds were the hiroshima carps, but I still don't know who we were.  I couldn't read the name on the board, it was too difficult!

So the stadium is pretty empty in this picture.  It filled up a lot more, but was still nowhere near being capacity.

Everyone also had the full body poncho things, which I should have bought in hindsight because my legs got very wet.

What most people didn't think to bring though, was a little towel to dry the seat off!  I remembered this, and got some envious looks!  Strike one for the foreigner.

So the stadium pretty much looked like this, only with people milling around all the time.  People were constantly up and about the whole time, getting drinks and food.

They even sell noodles here!  Instant noodles in a polystyrene pot.

So one of the players on the opposing team managed to hit the ball out of the park, over the stand in this picture.

According to the statistics man it was a 150m hit.

It's really annoying to see that the runs the opposing teamm scored were all from foreigners though.  This is Japan, and Japanese baseball, essentially dominated by Americans.  My team didn't have any foreigners, and we lost.  I wonder if the two things are related.  Looking at the league tables it may well be.

Ok so this isn't the best shot for seeing the beer delivery girls, but it is the best shot for seeing the things they have to carry.

These poor girls take these big heavy things of beer all around the stadium for most of the match, and they look way too big for them to carry.  Plus they all got completely drenched.

Then they have nutters like me taking pictures of them!  What a crappy job...

Two innings in and the carp have got a run.

The stand you can see to the left of the scoreboard is where all the carp fans presided.

So this star shaped mascot was firing toys and fluffy things into the crowd during the intervals.  Normally teams swap round in under 2 minutes, but every third innings they take five minutes or so, enough time for these guys to come on and do stuff like this.

They had cheerleaders too, so this part is completely american.

So I managed to snap this beer delivery technician before she went on her way.  I didn't force her to do the bunny rabbit ears; it's a reflex action here.  Photograph, do the ears.  It's automatic, like tying your shoelaces.


But you can also see how much it's raining in this picture, so like I said before, it must suck to be these guys on a day like that.

I guess there's always the remote possibility of being slugged by a ball to liven your day up a little.

Ok so this particular girl freaked me out.  She was Japanese and she spoke Japanese fluently, but she had blue eyes.

They stood out so badly, she felt like a Japanese albino or something.  Really creepy.

So this is moments before the guy running back to first base gets out.  D'oh.

I was initially surprised by how accurate their throws were, but then I remembered they have mitts that essentially make it more difficult to drop a ball than catch one, which is why the scores are always so low I guess.

Ok this is another picture of the devils bride.

You can more clearly see her eyes in this one.

Freaky.

My camera is nearly out of batteries at this point, so nearly at the end of the pictures.

This is a little past the halfway point, and the carp have 3 runs, the whites have none.

Unfortunately that's how the game ended, despite us ending the final innings with a runner on second and third, with a batter everyone seemed to rate.  He struck out...  Loser.

It's also worth noting that all their runs were homeruns...  So our fielding was pretty good, it's just that our batting and bowling (pitching) were pretty shoddy.

So this is the scoresheet, and despite it being only the seventh innings, this is how it ended.

The last three innings are the best though, because everyone has had a few drinks and is quite well spirited by this point.  The small crowd made absolutely tons of noise.  I don't know whether it's the stadium design or that face the crowd are cooped up in offices for most of their lives, but the noise was fantastic, as was the general atmosphere.

So this was another breaktime performance.  I don't think there were any cannon this time, but the little star did about fifty backflips just to make his way onto the pitch, and by the time he made it all the others were leaving, so he just ran off.

He must have been dizzy!

Another view of the various mascots.

One of the benefits of being on the losing team on this occasion was that all the half-time action occurred on our side of the pitch, being the home team and all.







Ok so now we move onto the movies!




So this is a view of the enemy.  Those flags are actually pretty huge, and one of the guys carrying it got blown over, which was quite funny.  I didn't capture that part on tape though.  This is just a shot to get the sense of the minimum level of activity of those guys, at all stages in the match.  They were jumping around for hours.  Beats going to the gym I guess.




So I luckily managed to catch a catch.  One of the home team caught a carp out!  Wooo!  Well done him!

It didn't really help in the grand scheme of things, but I think it proves my 'good fielding, poor everything else,' theory from earlier.



The crowd favourite song of the night.  I've  no idea what everyone is singing, but this particular song was the crowd favourite for sure, and everyone loved singing it over and over again.

I've also just noticed the kids looking at me thinking, 'what the hell is this stupid foreigner doing,' which I didn't notice until I played it back just now.  Oops.



So this is one of the cheerleading intervals.  They weren't firing anything into the crowd this time, but they were all doing a surprisingly well rehearsed dance routine.  I'm amazed at how well practiced these guys seemed to be.  And even in the pouring rain they were enthusiastic about it.  Good Job!

So  that was my day.  I'm definitely going to watch another baseball match, it's a sport I thought I'd hate, and still continue to hate watching on the television, but turns out that I love watching it live.

So Yesterday I Visited a Museum...

So basically I visited a museum.  It was an art museum, with exhibits mainly from the mid 1850's onwards, depicting Japan and Japanese life through the eyes of a number of different people.  It was a general museum, but the exhibitions seemed to have a pre-occupation with foreign influences upon Japanese art, and the work of foreign artists interpreting Japan itself.  All in all I found it quite interesting, and I found the Japanese public reaction to the western influence extremely interesting.

Some of them thought the paintings drawn by Japanese in a western style, oil paintings from the turn of the century for example, were quite vulgar and un-Japanese.  I thought they were pretty decent, some of them had taken the crazy pills before painting, but they weren't as dysfunctional as Picasso.  The kind of painting you have to stand well back from in order to appreciate that it is actually a horse, and not a colour blind attempt at a cloud.  That kind of thing.

Some of my fellow museum goers thought the Japanese artists lacked something their western counterparts did.  At least I think this is what happened.  One of the couples kept looking between two of the pictures noting differences, and they seemed to me (with my handicapped  understanding of Japanese) to be looking upon the Japanese effort unfavourably.

So we have a situation where the Japanese don't like Western Style paintings, and don't like Japanese who have been trained in such techniques.  What did these peoople like?  Who knows, but I don't think they would have found it in that museum.  The exhibits went from the port opening in Yokohama, and the various interpretations of the opening, (western drawings, paintings, eastern paintings, calligraphy, etc.) all the way to the crazy modern pictures that are nothing more than splodges of paint randomly 'painted' onto a canvas to look like... love.  Or hate, or apathy; who knows.

Generally speaking I found a lot of the paintings, regardless of artist, to be quite skilfully drawn/painted, but I found few that I really liked.  I think the obsession with yokohama having its' 150th 'opening its' borders' celebration is what drove this particular collection, but I was kind of underwhelmed.  A lot of the Japanese style trinkets on display seemed quite generic, and even the ceremonial Kimono display, that pretty much symbolises Japan, was rather disappointing.

Its' bacon was saved however, by the photography section of the museum.  The photographs they had on display were absolutely fantastic, showing life from back when people still lived in wooden huts, up to the ubiquitous rocker phase that happened, by the looks of things, everywhere in the world at the same time.  (And is still going on in Ueno park!)

To me this little slice of life was the most interesting part of the museum, and I think the art was somewhat underwhelming.  I can say the photography section saved the experience though, and I must admit to being inspired by the photographs on display!

At this point I would like to say I'm livid beyond imagining.  I have spent an hour and a half writing a massively detailed report on what happened, and why it happened; but the website has had a hysterical spastic fit and deleted it all.  Good job blogspot.  Good job.


So I guess I'll just write it all up for another couple of hours again, I've got nothing else to do at the moment anyway.

Of course being a museum I wasn't able to take any photographs, which is a shame because I'd like to show you how awful some of the pictures were, and how good one or two really were.  On the way back from the museum, while looking for something to eat we heard some music.  So we went to investigate.  We happened upon a street performer the likes of which I've never seen before.  If I had to describe his and his performance, then I would say I couldn't.  You have to see it to believe it.  And so I will now present to you, with a newfangled piece of technoqiwizadry I've found, his performance in a number of acts.



So this guy had a sign up saying, roughly translated, 'the performance begins in 10 minutes.'  Seeing this I was fully aware that this was a part of the act as it were.  He was sitting down clothed at you see him here (with only two legs at this point) and some music started playing.  My companion, and presumably most of the Japanese audience were confused as to what exactly was happening.  This kind of audience manipulation worked extremely well with the Japanese audience, as it took everyone a minute to adjust to the fact the sign wasn't true!  He uses this  again in a later video.

I feel I must mention the sound designer, as the music was absolutely fantastic, and fitted the performance perfectly.  It really was something quite brilliant.  If anyone knows what the first song is please tell me!



This is as direct a continuation as I could ma
nage with my camera.  It only takes video for three minutes, and then spends a sizeable amount of time processing and saving that information.  Unfortunately you miss a bizarre sitting thing he does, where he crosses his legs and whatnot, but of course there are four so it looks strange - strange to say the least!  (I'm running out of words along the lines of weird, strange, bizarre etc...)



So at this stage we see his other 'study' into Japanese psychology.  Whether planned or not, I found this particular part really interesting.  He holds cards up giving different instructions throughout his performance.  This particular instruction is for the right hand side of the audience to move to a more central location.  This particular instruction made sense to the people on the right, because they were actually standing on a path and generally obstructing the public, whereas we were sitting on a group of raised steps in an amphitheatre kind of design.  So once these people moved, (he doesn't speak for this part) he took the same piece of paper over to the other side and, in a comedy manner (as you can see in the video) flips it over and asks everyone to move more centrally.  At this point no one moves, and he does the theatrical bit you see on the video.

Now by the stage of him begging I'm laughing because the Japanese people there didn't even acknowledge that they were being asked to move.  They didn't look him in the eye!  Their reluctance to move was quite astounding.

So I was the only one in the audience laughing...Awkward.

But it turns out he was anticipating this reaction.  Although I don't have it on camera he holds up another card that read something along the lines of, 'Ok, stay where you are.'  Roughly translated.

The audience laughed at this...



So at this point we return to more traditional street performance fare.  He manages to keep things feeling original however, by combining a number of disciplines.  The 'robot dance' + mime + his amazing music creates a performance that my camera doesn't do justice.

This section of the performance went on for a long time, but it was varied enough to keep it more than interesting!

So he eventually moves onto the next video, which requires a little explanation.

After his techno mime he pulls a glove out of his box of tricks, and it takes on a mind of its own and attacks the audience; eventually becoming stuck to his face.  At which point he asks a member of the audience to hit him on the back of the head with a mallet.  We pick it up after he's been hit...



So I stopped filming after this point, but he carried on for a good while.  I wish I'd been able to stay to see the performance that was after it; if it was half as good as this guy, it'd be amazing.

I couldn't take picture in the library, so these are mainly of the street performer, with a couple of random pictures thrown in for some reason.

So this is a view of the seating area.

The arrangement worked out really well, whoever designs these places in Tokyo is really clever, or really lucky.  Either way he earns his pay.

Ok so he does this little 'warmup' skit after the four legged animal, and he uses the legs from the previous bit, putting them over his head and doing stupid stuff like that.

Stupid stuff like this!

It's all done very well.

This is the volunteer from the video.  He was used in a number of different skits as well.

This looks like a small, little brother version of tower bridge.

I don't really understand what it's doing here, or why they put it there.

This is the tallest building in Japan apparently.  I spent a while lining this picture up, and I think it came out quite well.

I also like the lights and whatnot, pretty!

Ignore the finger, look at the curved escalator!  I've always wondered whether it was possible to have one, and now it's been proved possible!  Simple things...















Ok so after two writings it's up and running now.

Be sure to check out the post below here:

Naree's Videos!