I arrived at the station about 6.30am and recognised a gentleman sitting on the bench in front of the bus-stop. He didn’t know me but seeing as he’s in A class after being here for 2 years and graduating this year, the teachers were making a big deal about him, so everyone knew the name, face, and blog. I spoke to him for a few minutes until my bus arrived, got on and spent the hour and a half to the airport messaging my friends (whichever ones were awake anyway).

I arrived at the airport and went straight to check-in, but saw that the check-in desk for Lufthansa wasn’t opening for about 15 minutes. I just waited anyway and was checked in by the girl at the business-class desk. I explained that I didn’t have my booking number but gave her my name and she confirmed that I was going to Budapest. I smiled and explained that I would rather go to Dublin if possible and she realised her mistake, laughing at herself, which probably helped a little with the extra weight in my bag.

I went to the “Sky Town” area, got some breakfast at Starbucks, and wandered around looking for anywhere with an electrical socket and a chair, and found one between Claire’s Accessories and a Korean restaurant. While charging my iPod, an American walked in front of me and who was it but John from my class. We spoke for a while before he had to go to see a friend and I headed to my gate, called Ayumi to say goodbye and thank you to her and her parents, and boarded the plane. A middle-aged Japanese woman was sitting beside me and we began talking and that helped shave a few hours off the flight, which again didn’t have any seatback entertainment system. When feedback questionnaires were distributed I did my best to clearly express my wishes for a personal entertainment system on a 12 hour flight, using capital letters and little Japanese-style frustrated faces. （´д｀）

The plane had very few people and so I was able to take a couple of seats for myself to half-lie-down in and got a bit of sleep. My requests for first-class were denied, even when I explained that I didn’t need the food, just the screens. I should have just sat in one at the start when I saw how few people there were. It’s not like they go around checking tickets. I’ll know next time.

I arrived back, went through the expected reverse-culture-shock of how dark and dirty the airport was and how unhelpful and unhealthy-looking the people were, and got my bags and met my parents. We went to a hotel where I got to see some relatives, I gave them their souvenirs, and then headed home.

The next day Olivia came over and we went to Seán’s. We played his Japanese Playstation 3, Niall came over, and we both criticised the Playstation as best as we could. The we told Seán we were going to Burger King but pulled a fast one and brought him to the Kilmurry Lodge for some lunch. I had eaten some artificially sweetened chocolate that morning and I assumed it was that that was making my stomach feel a bit strange, but went to toilet and then realised something was really wrong when the vomit came. I thought about driving home but got an image of puking on the steering wheel or wind-screen and causing a horrible, horrible messy accident and just called my parents to get a lift home.

It wasn’t a fun night and at one stage I tried making it from the bathroom to the bedroom but couldn’t get past the bathroom doorframe and had to be carried down the hall. I was freezing cold, even with four duvets and a hot water bottle and the next morning, even with my stomach and shivers settled, my back was really sore. I don’t know if the sore back was from the luggage or illness related. I don’ t know how much of the diarrhoea is attributable to the fake chocolate and how much to the gastroenteritis. I don’ t know if my tiredness and waking up during the night was entirely the jet lag or the sickness. Anyway, after a day I was alright again and I’ve put back on the few pounds I lost in vomit ‘n’ poop. My energy is probably just about back but I’m guessing the jet lag isn’t helping that.

I’ve nine days to get used to the jet-lag and then I’ll be travelling the same distance around the world in the same direction, giving me another chance to get used to the same circumstances (hopefully without gastroenteritis this time) in San Francisco. Today I got the first month’s rent for my accommodation sent out to secure it, I got my visa from the US Embassy, and I got my paperwork with Havok sorted out. My tickets were also kindly sorted out for me a few days ago and everything looks like it’s fallen into place today.

I’m looking forward to being in San Francisco now, even if not just for the opportunity to live in a city which is probably the polar opposite to where I’ve been living for the last three months. Japan’s all about being the same as everyone else, keeping your opinions to yourself, and generally not standing out from the crowd so that we can all get along together. San Francisco seems to be a whole lot more about expressing your individuality and embracing that no two people are exactly the same. It will be interesting investigating that over the next while.

When I was getting the last of my souvenirs today at SEIBU at AEON (they love capital letter names here), the sales assistant asked where I was from and I told her that I was from Ireland. The other sales assistant heard this and while the first was wrapping for me he approached me and told me that in university he had studied Irish folklore. Apparently he was studying English and had always had an interest in Japanese ghosts, monsters and other mythical beings and wanted to put those together, so hearing that Ireland had faeries and such, he chose that as his subject of study. He seemed delighted to meet and Irishman and I told him about the fairy fort across from Niall’s house and that sort of thing.

I had dinner last night with my private lesson teacher (let’s called her Koto-chan… there are so many names to call people by here) and her friend. We tried getting into Yama-chan’s but we didn’t have reservations anywhere and Kanayama (place near Nagoya) was really crowded so we kept trying a few places until we got to a really classy (therefore expensive) restaurant beside some hostess bars. The food was really great and the conversation was even better. Koto-chan’s friend is from Fukuoka, on the most southern major island of Japan, and apparently the women there are very traditional in how they treat their husbands. It was interesting hearing how she said she could never tell her partner about his bad points and hearing her reasoning for that. I gave arguments for expressing your feelings like a foreigner and she gave arguments for keeping them to yourself like a Japanese and I learnt a lot. The conversation I had with Wana over lunch today overlapped in some areas and it was refreshing to hear another foreigner annoyed about the Japanese habit of keeping comments to oneself all the time. It often just ends up with one person deciding “ok, I’ve had enough” and breaking off their friendship, without giving the other person a chance to know what is it that they’re doing to annoy their partner (and probably lots of other people too).

We also got to talk about 三歩下がって (“three steps behind”), the name for the Japanese idea of the woman keeping three steps behind her husband. Koto-chan’s friend spoke of how she would want to support her husband and build him up, so wouldn’t say anything bad to him. Wana pointed out how this is true, but at the same time it’s foolish to underestimate the strength of Japanese women, and that they actually always get their partners to do what they want in the end, even without saying it.

I’ve really grown so much since I’ve come here and I understand people, especially Japanese people, obviously, a lot better. Living by myself isn’t the reason. I feel that if I lived at home I could still have made the same progress, but it’s speaking with so many people from so many places with so much experience in so many different areas. I wonder if I can do the same in America.

Well, I’d better hand over these bits and pieces to Andy.

When I went there last night, the first thing I ordered was “まずい青汁” (“mazui-aoshiru”), which translates as “disgusting green-vegetable juice”. I did my best to imagine how “disgusting” (‘mazui’) it was but it was so much worse than that. It was a deep green colour, with ice floating in it, and the smell was horrendous. I tried a sip and quickly washed it away with orange juice. It took a lot of orange juice to wash away. I was eating with my friend Rui and his girlfriend, both students studying English in Nagoya, and it was described as smelling like horse food. It did sort of have a grassy hay-like smell to it. I was telling Ayumi about it and she told me that usually it’s not considered food for humans.

After Yama-chan’s, we went to a traditional Japanese ice-cream parlour and I had a powdered green tea (抹茶) parfait, with beans and other weird stuff in there. There were small white balls in there too, called 白玉 (“white-balls”). Rui’s girlfriend said I should ask for the gold (金色) variety (zing! Anyone get it? Seán?). On the way back to the station, we passed a building with “ヘルス” (“health”) written up in big letters and Rui’s girlfriend commented on it. I wasn’t sure what it was but when they started explaining it to me I immediately remembered the Wikipedia article I read last week about those places. Rui said how convenient it is that it’s in front of the station and I commented on how in front of Japanese train stations you can find anything, be it English conversation classes, karaoke, or cheap hotels. I explained how we don’t have these “health” places in Ireland. Neither do we have “Love Hotels” (ラブホ), nor Pachinko (パチンコ), nor Tele-clubs (テレクラ), nor Hostess/Host bars (キャバクラ), nor “meeting cafes” (出会いカフェ), nor karaoke (カラオケ… at least in the Japanese sense of karaoke), nor capsule hotels (カプセルホテル), nor many of the other defining Japanese entertainment facilities. We do have bowling though, like they do here. I haven’t done it here yet though. It was a fun night. I really noticed how much my Japanese has come on and lots of my new vocabulary came up.

Today for the first two hours of class we watched the Ghibli (that’s pronounced ‘jiblee’) film “The Cat Returns“, which was much better than I anticipated and actually quite fantastic. I recommend it to anyone. I watched it in Japanese and it was really hilarious. It was nice watching it with foreigners as opposed to with Japanese, as everyone was laughing together. Japanese people hate it when you make noise during films, but you’re allowed cry. Again, lots of the vocabulary I’ve studied recently came up and it was good practice.

I got some paperwork from Yamasa today. The first form gives my 89/97 result for the general Japanese test I did, covering basic Japanese and a small bit of intermediate Japanese. It also says my average for written is 94.6% (class avg 87.5), my average for listening is 86.5% (class avg 80.2%), and my average for conversation is 87.5% (class avg 85.3%). All grades are equivalent to “A”. Electives all show full attendance and “A” results. The bottom shows composition as “A”, “small test” as 85.7% (I’m not sure what this is), and attendance to class as 100%. Final result: A+.

The second document is a certificate of completion of course, just saying that I got through it all and that I did 239 hours of class altogether. For second level Japanese 600 hours is prescribed, so I might be able to make a stab at it, I wonder. Only problem is that it’s once a year only, in the middle of my university Christmas exams, and the nearest test centre is probably London. The next closest would be Paris. I’m not studying Japanese for test results anyway so I’m not too disappointed that I probably won’t be able to take the exam for almost two years.

Later I’ll write about my dinner last night in Nagoya. I’ll be going again tonight with a different person. Actually, to the same chain of restaurant, “Yama-chan”.

We wandered around looking for a good restaurant and settled on an Okinawan restaurant in a department store. I found out that I’m not crazy about Okinawan food. Asami eventually turned up and the three of us went to Karaoke for a couple of hours. I tried some pretty ambitious songs, but they quickly got out of my range. Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce and 愛唄 (“ai-uta”, Love Song) by “GreeeeN!”.

Machida is pretty far from central Tokyo (that being the Yamanote-line in my mind), so I had no idea how to get back. I was to meet up with Yukine in the evening but couldn’t figure out where to go, so I just called Yukine, gave Yoshie the phone and asked her to sort it out for me. It turned out that I was going as far as Yoshie’s station anyway, then changing there onto some other line and eventually ending up at Yukine’s station. It took a while but in the end we found a restaurant that didn’t require us to wait an hour before we could get in the door. It was Italian but the food wasn’t very good and even though we got in fast, it took an age before the food actually arrived.

The following morning I met up with Hiroshi and his friend Brenda, who is actually British but has spent much more time in the Americas so you wouldn’t know it, and we ate Yakiniku at Harajuku while waiting for the parade to begin. Brenda wasn’t feeling very good because of the jet-lag and I left the two of them at the restaurant to go to the station meet Yukine. It took a lot of effort but we eventually found the parade, heading towards whatever seemed to be the most crowded street. It was fairly impressive, but the Irish were incredibly out-numbered by Americans, English and Australians. I was complaining a bit about the lack of Irish, but at the same time I was aware of how happy I am to be so rare in this country.

After the parade we found Yoshie, who had brought two friends from her university along with her: Aki and Emiko. See photos. We went to a nice restaurant at the top of Takeshita-dori near the station exit, Wolfgang Puck, and three of us had Loco-Moco, the Hawaiian burger-based dish. After we ate I got back on the train and to Shinjuku, parted with Yoshie, took the Chuo-ou rapid transit across to Tokyo, changed to the Shinkansen Hikari, changed at Toyohashi to the rapid transit back to Okazaki, and walked home. It sounds hectic, but I’m so used to the route right now that I don’t even have to look at the signs most of the time when going through these stations. I’m officially a Bullet Train Expert, I guess.

It was a great weekend, as expected, but not a whole lot of fantastic anecdotes to tell. This one is best left to the photos.

Next week I’ll end up going to Nagoya a few evenings too. Yesterday was the last of my electives and private lessons, and I’ve been in contact with one of my private lesson teachers (the one who’s been to Dublin before). She gave me her mobile’s number and email address (instead of texting, people email from phones here) today and we’ll get dinner some time during the week. I also want to meet up with my friend Rui, who’ll actually be coming to Europe (UK) about September this year.

Let’s hope this weekend’s as good as the last one was!

Fred-san, the guy from Tahiti, surprised me with how high his voice could go. We were going to sing some Muse together but the time ran out (even though we had 3 hours all together).

Even though I most certainly do not consider myself an extrovert, and any personality tests I’ve taken, for whatever they’re worth, have told me that I’m an extreme introvert, I was the person who made sure everyone got into the karaoke room, I was helping with the booking even though I had no relation to it, I sorting out the machine and sang the first song, I started up conversation with the teachers, took their coats to hang them up, and instead of sitting in a chair, I was actually more comfortable standing so I could wander around the room and talk to different people.

Last Friday, 6 Japanese people came to our class to practice conversation and before they came into the class, I spotted them in the hall and went out to them, approached them and introduced myself, guided them to the classroom and had no problem joking around with them and what not. I even have two of them as friends on mixi now (that’s a Japanese social networking site, like Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, what-have-you). When the rest of the class was sitting inside the classroom, I walked with the Japanese people to where they were having lunch and ate with them, eventually getting the rest of the class to join in.

I guess the only reason I’m introverted in Ireland is because I’m not that interested in talking to people, but I’m always up for conversation with Japanese people and I can make them laugh and chat really easily… much more so than Irish people. I wonder why… ideas?

Photos coming soon

We met up with Ayumi’s aunt at the tomb, as she was replacing the flowers, and she asked if I wanted to go into the nearby temple. She knocked on the door of the building attached to the side of the temple, where the resident Buddhist priest lives, and he opened it up for me and brought us in, answering our questions. I hardly understood a word of what he said, but smiled and nodded my way through it.

We came back to the house after and Ayumi was complaining about having to go to work at 5pm so we could only hang out until about 3. I kept telling her to skip work and her mother and aunt joined in, making excuses for her. She eventually called and asked “is it ok if I start work at 7 or something?” and the boss was apparently really busy at the time so he just said “yes, yes, sure, that’s fine” and let her change without looking for any excuses at all! With some extra time, we went to a meat-speciality restaurant for lunch and I had an ok burger. Ayumi’s dad called and said that he was back from soccer practice and wanted to see me again before I go, so he drove me to the nearest Shinkansen station, 小山 (Oyama), which was the better part of an hour way, along with Ayumi, her mom, her aunt and uncle, and their two boys (Daisuke and his brother, who I believe is Matsuhiro but I’m not 100% sure).

At the station, Ayumi’s mother and aunt bought me some local food as a souvenir and Ayumi and Daisuke bought the special tickets to allow them as far as the train’s doors, while I said goodbye to everyone else.

I boarded my train, cutting off the unrealistic thoughts creeping in that were telling me to forget about the train and try to go for one more night, and headed back to Tokyo, changing trains and continuing on the two-hour Kodama to Toyohashi, and changing trains again and getting back to Okazaki some time before 10pm.

It was, as I expected, a great weekend, and even though we didn’t go to many tourist attractions such as Nikko, or go to any recreational places such as game centres or karaokes, just being together with the family again and getting to know everyone that little bit better was an unforgettable experience. The whole weekend was basically spent eating and talking, hence the lack of photos. The Nakajima family have really been great to me and I can’t wait to see them all again whenever I get back to Japan. I won’t get to see Ayumi again before I leave, but she’s looking into an American J-1 for the end of the summer, or maybe an Irish working-holiday visa for some time next year, money permitting.

When I got off the train at Shinjuku I put all my bags into a coin locker, met up with Ayumi, and we took the Chuo line out of Tokyo to Tachikawa Station, beside which her cousin, Satomi, was working. The three of us went to eat some Yakiniku at 牛角 (gyuukaku, “the Cow’s Horns”) but were told we’d have to wait at least an hour before we could get in so we went to find me some new shoes to go with the new outfit Ayumi picked out for me at Gap the weekend before. I got a pair of yellow Timberland boots.

The area just outside the station was pretty interesting and had a building with “テレクラ” written up in large yellow and red letters. Outside of which, a man was walking with two hostesses from a Hostess Bar. Anyway, we finally got in to eat and as expected, it was really good, and we walked back to station. I arrived at the hotel in Jimbocho a few minutes after midnight.

Ayumi expected to be finished her interview at about 11.30am, but I got a message from her at about 10.55am saying it was all done. I got to Shinjuku station at about 11.25am and we met up and headed to Tokyo station on the Chuo line. Just as we were almost there, I got a call from Sakura hotel telling me that I left bags in my room: my shoes and the box of traditional Okazaki sweets for Ayumi’s grandmother, so we had to change trains and go all the back back to Jimbocho to get them.

After all the fuss with the trains we finally ended up at Yurakucho station, just south of Tokyo station, and went to the Mitsuo Aida Museum at the Tokyo International Forum. Mitsuo Aida (1924/5/20–1991/12/17) is from Tochigi and we passed his house this weekend. He wrote short poems in beautiful calligraphy, often in a casual, colloquial form, and always with very deep and personal messages. Ayumi’s mother bought me two of his books last time I was at their house and I really love them. Seeing as they’re written in spoken Japanese, as opposed to a formal written style, it’s quite easy to understand. There’s some local Ashikaga dialect in there too (Ashikaga is the city in Tochigi where Ayumi comes from).

Lots of his earlier works from the 50s aren’t written in his signature style and as a result don’t have much emotion in them, but when I see anything from the 70s onward, I always think “I wish so-and-so could see this”. There were English translations but I used them only as helpers for vocabulary, as they just don’t translate properly into English. It’s the same with Japanese songs: what can seem quite moving in Japanese just seems cheesy in English. A Japanese friend of mine who was writing some lyrics translated some of her lyrics into English and even herself felt that the emotion disappeared immediately and it just sounded cheesy.

We ate “chats” (チャット) at the museum’s cafe between exhibits. These are small biscuit-cake things that Mitsuo himself designed, and they’re called “chats”, based on our own English word, in the context of “having a chat over a cup of coffee”.

After the museum we bought some food for the train and got on the express to Ashikaga. I introduced Ayumi to the Smashing Pumpkins while we talked and played word-games on my iPod. When we arrived at Ashikaga station, her parents and aunt were waiting for us in the car and they drove us to see Kaori at work at Mos Burger and Miho at work at SEIMS (chemist). Kaori made me a cream/icecream/apple/cracker desert thing, which was really really good, and I gave her the Irish phone strap that I had forgotten to give her last time. I gave Miho her phone strap too and we spoke for a while before she had to get back to work.

When we got to the grandmother’s house, I met Ayumi’s cousins: two guys (about 12 and 23) and a girl, who’s about 14 and as such is totally in love with the Janiizu (“Johnny’s”???) Junior boys. Imagine the most manufactured boy-band pop ever and multiply it by two. Even the fans know well that the singers aren’t able to sing but they’re just crazy about the guys because of how “cool” they are. She had a bag, a poster, a t-shirt, and a whole lot more merchandise from them. The boys, on the other hand, had an N64 with GoldenEye and Smash Brothers, and a PlayStation 2.

Ayumi and her mom told me to pretend that I can’t speak and Japanese at all when I meet the cousins to force them to use English. They were playing Winning Eleven, a soccer game, and asked if I like soccer. I explained that I was made play soccer by my teachers in school and had to get my parents to ask them to stop, but no one in the room understood, even after 3 times of saying it in English. Ayumi kept translating to Japanese but getting it wrong, so I just gave up and went back to Japanese and never went back to English again that weekend.

The cousins played with myself and Ayumi in GoldenEye. I was destroyed by them, even though I’m a foreigner so I should be better at shooting games like that. After losing, and forgetting about our agreement that whoever loses doesn’t get to eat dinner, we all ate dinner. We had shabu-shabu, potato croquettes (Japanese style), potato wedges (they know I like potatoes), rice, and lots more. I was really full but did my best to get as much down as possible. We all ate late into the night and people gradually disappeared off home or to sleep. At about 1am all the cousins, myself, Ayumi and her mom started watching Princess Mononoke, and even when Daisuke, the younger cousin, was told to go to bed, he crept back to watch it with us. He ended up sleeping on Ayumi who was sleeping on me and eventually said “Alright, I can’t do it any more. I’m going to bed.” (俺はもう無理だ。おやすみ。) By 3am, it was only myself, Ayumi and her mother left in front of the TV, and I was the only person left awake.

Myself, Daisuke, Ayumi and her mom all slept on the Japanese style room on the bottom floor and shortly after 6am all the paper walls started shaking with a strong wind behind them. When the floor moved with the walls I realised that it wasn’t the wind and was in fact an earthquake. I sat up and looked over Daisuke and Ayumi, who were both deep asleep, and saw Ayumi’s mom sitting up too. I said “Earthquake?” “Yeah. Are you ok?” “No problem! That was fun!”