I had one of the most entertaining weekends since I arrived. It was the first weekend with Kevin around and so we headed into Tokyo, for a 48-hour bender. After an evening in Roppongi, one of Kevin’s friends kindly put us up in his very un-Japanese sized apartment. He had a spare room that was larger than my entire flat… well almost. The sun was out and so we decided to have brunch in Yoyogi Park, then spent hours exploring some of the most fashionable parts of Tokyo; around Shibuya and Harajuku. Soon enough it was time to start drinking again and so we cracked open some chu-hi (what is fast becoming my drink of choice) and met up with some other gaijin in Yoyogi Park. Kevin couldn’t resist the temptation of buying a fancy dress, one-piece Elmo costume in Don Kihote and as darkness began to fall he was quickly persuaded to put it on. Elmo and I trekked around a Thai festival for a while, looking for dinner and were then invited to an isakaya with Kathryn et al. Once we met up Kathryn, she decided that Elmo was not appropriate for the establishment we were attending, then sure enough an hours drinking later Kevin was again convinced to put the costume on. The remainder of the night was a blur and I’m not entirely sure how we all got home but the train home with Elmo was probably one of the most surreal and hilarious train journeys of my life.
During Saturday night Kathryn had mentioned the Tokyo Design festival and managed to persuade everyone that that's where we were meeting the next day. It was being held in a huge exhibition centre called Tokyo Big Sight, that was on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. We had agreed to be on our way by 10am, but realistically that was never going to happen. Me and Kevin arrived late afternoon and were not disappointed. The majority of the vast space was taken up by Spitalfield-esque independent arts, crafts, T-shirts, cards etc. artist’s stalls. There was a stage outside that had some unusual but very entertaining bands and in the central hall there were a performing arts stage, where we saw countless Japanese school children throwing some shapes. It had a really great carnival atmosphere and enough people dressed up in ridiculous outfits to keep us amused for hours
Kevin asked if he could come into school one day with me one day while he was visiting. I had a word with one of the teachers and Kevin came in with me on Monday. All the kids were as excited to see the gaijin visitor, as they were to see me on my first day. There were several questions about if we were related ranging from; ‘are you twins?’ to ‘are you brothers’ and the slightly less educated ‘are you sisters?’. We gave a little presentation about Switzerland to three of the classes, none of whom knew where Switzerland was or what languages they speak. The language question also generated some interesting responses. ‘What languages to they speak in Switzerland?’; ‘Chinese?’ ‘English?’ ‘Portuguese?’ and ‘Switzerlandish’.
One of the stranger discoveries of Japanese culture this week was finding out about what a ‘sasumata’ or ‘Japanese man catcher’ is. When Kevin was visiting school he asked me what this two meter long pole with a U shape at the end was. I hadn’t got a clue and hadn’t thought to ask because I assumed it to be something banal, an instrument to open high windows or something. However, a couple of days later I did ask and it turns out it's a ‘sasumata’, which traces its history to a medieval weapon that is used to pin an enemy down and restrain them. The archaic implement often had blades and barbs attached to it, luckily the one in school doesn’t. It would seem that after a few maniacs went into some schools and committed Dunblane style killings, decades ago, someone has managed to market these medieval weapons to schools. Each school has at least one at each entrance and several more outside the classroom. This seems a little odd, when Japan is more or less the safest country in the world.
I seem to have hit a wall with learning Japanese. This is something I was warned about. It all seemed fun learning all the kana and putting the sounds together and miraculously being able to read. Now I have the kanji to master, which is proving far more difficult. It’s an endless struggle and after the students were correcting several of the teacher’s kanji in class today, I feel like I might as well give up all hope. If the Japanese school teacher can’t get her head round kanji after who knows how many decades then how the hell am I ever going to be able to figure it out.
Today the weather was perfect. Roll on next week.
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