Well it’s Christmas Day here in Japan, and in UK (albeit the wee hours of the morning. Here that generally means its just another Sunday. Since I know that many people don’t celebrate and/or particularly care about Christmas, I’m going to steal a line from Bob ‘MovieBob’ Chipman. “Whatever you’re having, have a happy one.”

I’m writing this blog entry from a Starbucks in the Asakusa area of Tokyo, and I’m doing it from my iPhone. That means all the pictures you’ll see were added after I wrote this. Why my iPhone you ask? Well I’m actually lugging my laptop around and wanted to write using it, but this Starbucks doesn’t give any ‘consent’ (an in-joke for anyone who knows the Japanese word for plug socket).

Mr Incredible comes out to meet the fans.

So I’ve been in Tokyo for a few days now and on the whole I’ve done very little in terms of touristy things. I’ve got another week here and I am actually trying to be the camera wearing bumbag toting tourist, only without the camera around the neck, no bumbag and I’d sooner die before saying something along the lines of “Hey Mable, take a picture of me with this little guy in a suit, poor thing thinks he’s a big shot or something” (yes I did hear a loud American-accented man shout that across a road this morning).

My first night here was a bit of a bust, I’ll be honest. For my last week at work I was viciously fighting off a cold and it finally took control just as I left my house to go to the airport. So an early night followed by a late morning, though I still managed to go to a local coffee shop for coffee and curry.

Christmas Turkey at Disney?

My first full day in Tokyo was spent mainly wandering around my locality. I have a copy of Lonely Planet Japan, but when I tried to read it my non-tourist instincts kicked in. I thought to myself how if I wanted to get the best views of certain places (and also stay warm) I’d be better off just looking on Google Images. So I dart onto my social network accounts and appeal for places to go. Thankfully my friends came to the rescue, giving me a few ideas.

The reverse side of Kaminarimon. I was here, but doesn't this image I found on Google Images look way better than a pic I could have took? I aren't you still warm? This picture is by Reza187.

I’ve always been the first to admit that when it comes to ‘tourism’ I’m the worst. I don’t like crowds of people meandering from side to side, not knowing where they’re going, stopping suddenly to take a picture of a cat, to faff, or to just stare with a blank expression on their face. I hate it even more so when I’m actually a part of that crowd!

Whenever I go to a new city or a new place (note how I didn’t say country) I DO like to spend my time aimlessly wondering around. But there’s a difference between me and those groups. For one, as an individual I’m less likely to get in the way of anyone, and when I stop to gawk at something I think about moving to the side, where nobody’s trying to get through. I also try to see the non-marketed, and non-’idealised’ areas of places, in order to see what they’re really like. It’s all well and good saying you’ve been to Tokyo, then reeling off a list of places you’ve visited that anyone with the same guidebook would know. But for me that’s not good enough. By just doing that, I could never say comfortably that I’d been to Tokyo.

I prefer my translation of the Japanese, If you get wet, well, soz about that!

So Disneyland! Don’t get me wrong, there ARE some touristy areas I know and DO want to go to, as yesterday’s trip to Disneyland shows. I’d been to EuroDisney once when I was young (which involved a fun moment where I became king for the day after pulling the sword from the stone … true story!), so I thought a Disney trip with a friend would be a nice relaxing time, as well as a bit of a nostalgic moment. Tokyo Disney is much smaller than (I remember) it’s French equivalent (being), but we still had a great time. We managed to go on the three big ‘mountain’ rides (Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain) as well as some of the other smaller rides (which were still very good). Unfortunately I didn’t get to meet (or even see someone dressed up in full garb as) Mickey Mouse, nor did I find a stone with a sword to yank on. Innuendo, lol.

This being said, no one really goes to Disneyland for the rides, the attractions, or the shops and restaurants. You go for the queues! And being British, I certainly enjoyed that part! The three big rides each having lines of over two hours in length, and smaller ones with lines of between 25 and 40 minutes, ahh good times. Even the restaurant had a nice 45 minute line.

So while I still have some time left in Tokyo before going back to the countryside in Shimonoseki, I do have a few touristy spots that I want to go to, and am still trying to be touristy to a degree (I’m in Starbucks for petes sake), but I genuinely can’t think of many touristy spots that I ‘should’ see, or things I ‘should’ do. If you have any suggestions, please write them in the comments box below.

Shitsurei shimouse!

Update: Found a McDonalds with powerpoints in the smoking section, phew, *cough* *cough*!

Darlo on Splash Mountain, or is that Usain Bolt? Or even Hulk Hogan back in the day?

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!