Darlo's World

Wow. Friday night was fun. Too much fun. So lets start off with some music eh. Hit play from the youtube link, and carry on reading.

Today’s music comes from L’Arc En Ciel and is called Daybreak’s Bell. It’s a tune I’ve found quite fun to relax to, drive to, do homework to, clean to … honestly, I find it very open. Most listeners might know it as the theme tune from Gundam 00 (don’t worry not all the music I’ll be putting on here will be from anime themes, or always in Japanese).

So starting off at the Torikizoku (the everything 280 yen (£2.01) place), actually no, starting off at a convenience store, two of us bought a can of beer (each) to get the night kicking. In Japan it’s not uncommon for people to drink on the streets, but it still felt quite odd to be, especially as my alcohol wasn’t concealed by a brown paper bag.

Heading out in the direction of Osaka’s Hep 5 building, where we were to meet another buddy, I soon realised I should have worn more as a vicious wind blasted a shot of cold air right down my back. I can’t wait for the days of being able to just wear a t-shirt (and bottoms ¬_¬) again.

After joining our third amigo we then made our way to Torikizoku. Being a Friday night we’d expected for there to be a bit of a wait to get in, though to be honest this didn’t worry us. The central area of Umeda alone has plenty of branches, so if one had a hellova queue, we could have just headed to another. It’s not quite as bad as the number of Starbucks in a city center (in Birmingham’s Bull Ring you can see one easily from sitting within another), but there are a fair few. After endulging in many an over-sized glass of beer and assorted bits of a chicken (my favourite part being the heart), and an alcohol fueled conversation (of which I can remember very little of) we were soon on our way to Sam and Dave, a bar and nightclub in the area.

The rest of the night was filled with dancing to a good variety of music (this is the only place I’ve been to that had Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” followed by 50 Cent’s “In Da Club”), drinking (mainly beer and Malibu & Milk … yum!), and a lot of conversations (shouting to be make sure people could hear me and being shouted at for the reverse reason of course). Sam and Dave is a very international club. The bar staff were from all areas of the world with a mixed knowledge of Japanese, some customers (ourselves included) were also from abroad, and the Japanese customers who go there seem to use this as a good time for English practice as well as me for the other way around. For a while I was talking to one woman in Japanese while she replied to what I was saying in English. It made for a very interesting conversation.

We left at about 4 in the morning on some very wobbly legs and headed into a nearby Matsuya to complete the night. I couldn’t find Curry Rice on the vending machine, so picking a random button I ended up with a random meat-rice dish, of which I found I could only eat half. Matsuya also proved to be a good time to practice speaking as my trio conversed with two girls who had also been at Sam and Dave that night.

Coming back to the dorm, taking care not to wake anyone up, I turned off all alarms on my phone and put my head down to sleep.

I’ll always remember that the strangest hangover I’ve heard about happened to Dave Gorman when he did his Googlewhack Adventure, where his Texan hangover was in his arm (which turned out to be a very badly done tattoo). For me, waking up totally fine at about 4pm, with the exception of being a bit thirsty a hangover was no where in sight. Sitting at my desk, my stomach slowly started to dance on it’s own accord. It was as if a village of Hula Dancers were putting in the extra overtime. Since I had no orange juice and had skipped breakfast, I made my way (very tenderly) to the 99 yen shop to pick up supplies.

To spare you the details, shortly after arriving home and having some OJ, I found myself very thankful to the fact that I had something in my belly. The strangest part about this hangover, is that it wasn’t really much of a hangover. In fact, it was just like I’d caught a bit of the flu that has infected the majority of the dorm. Truth be told I wasn’t feeling too great before Friday night … hmm … yeah, that’s what I’ll put it down to. Trying to rest, I didn’t wake up (get out of bed) until 11 o’clock this morning.

So welcome to March, and for those readers in Wales happy Dydd Gŵyl Dewi (St David’s Day). I’ll be boning up on some kanji today for this week’s midterms, as well as making a start on tidying.

Also thanks to the family back home for the socks, jeans and chocolate I got through!

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day in which couples get sappier and singles get whinier, generally speaking that is. Being one of the latter it did mean that I was free to enjoy my day without the social obligations of meeting the missus. But that doesn’t mean I completely missed out on the tradition.

In Japan the tradition (in a nut-shell) is for girls to give chocolate to boys. There’re two kinds of chocolate depending on who you’re giving it to, and I don’t mean with nuts or without … although reading between the lines it probably does. First is 義理チョコ (girichoko) which you’d give to someone you feel you have a social obligation toward. This might be your boss, teacher, dorm manager, but not only people ‘socially higher’ than you, you might choose to give some to your friends and so on.

On the flip side to this is 本命チョコ (honmeichoko) which you’d give to your boyfriend, lover, husband or a boy that you fancy. Don’t worry girls, boys will come to return the favour next month on White Day, and for guys who got no chocolate, we can all get together and celebrate the Korean Black Day in April, but more on those days as they come.

My plan for today involved a trip to 日本橋 (Nippombashi) and Denden Town. If you remember my previous blogs it’s an area that’s known as the 秋葉原 (Akihabara) or Osaka, with plenty of manga and anime related stores, cafes and … stuff. So we headed downstairs (in the lift) and were greeted by the dorm manager. His wife had bought a small piece of chocolate for all the dorm residents (male dorm don’t forget). How kind of her; clearly this was girichoko (especially since it was her husband who gave it to us).

This wasn’t the only chocolate I received this year though. During the week some of my friends who frequent the Ajisai room had brought in their own home-made chocolate and biscuits and shared them around. Delish!

As usual Nippombashi was tons of fun and rumaging around the second hand book shops I found plenty of cheap manga, starting as low as 10 yen (about 8 pence by today’s exchange rate). As per usual DVD’s are expensive, though some stores here were considerably cheaper than the status-quo, and walking past the doujinshi covers you could see the usual ‘dripping’ images. Funnily enough afterwards I was talking with another friend about whether doujins are rated on some sort of ‘drip-scale’ or ‘dripometer’. Don’t get me wrong however, I did spot some of a non-sexual nature, and had I been interested in the series may have considered buying.

After my friend headed off home I stayed around for a walk and a wander. I was actually surprised how close Namba was to the area and ended up eating lunch at a Matsuya near Namba Parks. Though 95% of the time my self-navigatory skills are spot on without the use of a map, the cloudy day and the fact I’d spun in a few circles nosing around and exploring this new area meant I had no direction which way was North, and thus was a bit muddled. However (as all great men say at some point in their lives) I was not lost, I could have turned around and gone back the exact same way I had come from (something I usually find odd that people don’t do when they are ‘lost’), but prefer the fun way of walking and hoping until eventually passing out.

Thankfully I didn’t faint, but instead found a familliar sight in the distance. It was a large arcade (sega arcade I think), that I’d passed on the way. Keeping this to my right hand side I kept on walking and soon found myself on familiar ground.

On my way I found myself drawn to a particular retailer. The small table-top store was selling Monopoly … Osaka Edition! Now I can’t remember if my familly (we’re competitive when it comes to Monopoly) had asked me to buy one in Japan, but me here staring the the Osakan version of Monopoly took my by complete surprise! The only thing stopping me from buying it was the price of 4500 yen (£33.97 by today’s exchange rate). Even now I’m still umming and ahhing about it. I guess I’ve still got some time left here so I don’t need to make a rush decision about it.

To get to Nippombashi it cost me 230 yen (£1.74) on the underground, but me being me, the stubborn money saving twazzerk, thought “nuts to that” and walked home. Quite ironic when you consider my Monopoly incident. The walk (which according to google is just over 3 and a half miles) took somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 hours. Due to complications with a watch and a phone call, I really don’t know.

It was actually on the way home that I made my biggest cock-up of the day, possibly the week (or longer >_<). When things are put ‘on sale’ in Japan, they might be marketed by a number of prices rather than the one you actually pay. To be fair this isn’t something that’s exclusive to Japan, just think of the times in shops you’ve seen £10 in huge letting next to something expensive only to look at the very small ‘off’ next to it. Well todays balls up was quite simple. I saw a sign saying 800 yen (£6.04) and jeans. Due to an unfortunate split in one of my pairs of bottoms I’ve been left juggling between a few pairs as of late.

Anyway, after nosing through the rail which was out the front of the store, I eventually found a pair that matched my size. Smiling like an idiot at the thought of picking up a bargain, I take my new jeans into the store and head for the desk. Something struck me the moment I entered the shop, and it wasn’t the low signage by the door. This was a nice looking shop, the kind where it looks like all they need to do is sell one thing in order to cover all their overheads, the kind of shop I never (like to) enter!

Being served by two very well dressed well mannered young men felt somewhats off-putting, me standing their in an old work-uniform coat, a University club jumper and jeans that … well, they’re almost as holy as the Pope. When it came for me to pay I stuttered and stammered. I had misread the sign outside, and the jeans were 800 yen off, not 800 yen. A total of 2800 yen (£21.14) for the jeans was paid, 2000 yen over what this idiot had thought they were. To be fair (trying to justify stupidity is something that can seldom be done well, but I’ll give it a go) even at 2800 yen, compared to other shops I’ve been here they were pretty cheap. A lot of people may say that Uni-Qlo is Japan’s cheapest clothing store, and about as close to Primark (oh beloved Primark) as you can get, but in my eye it’s still expensive. Perhaps it’s all these years of buying Tesco and Asda jeans that have conditioned my mind.

Oh, and yes Nippombashi has maid cafes … no, I haven’t been in one … yet. ¬_¬