Well hello there. It’s a bitterly cold Monday morning over here in Numazu and I am stuck in school in my wee basement office all alone yet again :(. Today I have the pleasure of watching and grading 63 skits that my first years performed last week for their final exam. For the second time. First time round, I was inexpertly recording their performances – now I get to watch them back and see just how crap I am with a handycam. This task wouldn’t be so bad if more of the skits were innovative and witty, and some are. But you have no idea how mind-numbing it is to watch 50 skits over the space of a week that all have the same story line – boy and girl talk on phone, make plans to go to restaurant, go to restaurant, order food, boy gets food poisoning, goes to doctor, doctors gives him medicine and says get some sleep, end. And to watch them over again is the dramatic equivalent of self-harm. So I’m procrastinating for as long as possible by arsing around on the internet and writing this. If only I hadn’t finished book 4 of Harry Potter last night (I’ve decided to read them all again to prepare myself for the arrival of book 7 in July. Read the first 4 books last week, then realized that we don’t have books 5 and 6. Bugger). Ah well.
So here’s what I have been getting up to since last week. Went to Tokyo last weekend to celebrate Ross’s birthday and stopped in to see Stevie Wonder in concert on the way. The man is a legend, his voice is sublime and his selection of tunes was spot on. It’s been a while since I danced, sang and clapped so much, but I think I made up for it that day. Spent the rest of the week recovering from the weekend (as you do), then on Saturday I finally went and bought myself a bass. I have been thinking about doing it for a while, but somehow always had too many other things to be doing to go shopping for it properly. This weekend, however, I quit procrastinating, grabbed my Italian exchange student Ire and her Japanese friend Sumiho (who is a bassist/body piercer/all round lovely person) and went and bought the thing. If you’re asking me what type of bass it is, let me answer you by saying that it is a cheap one. But it works and that’s all I need right now. And I have the incredibly sore fingertips to prove it. I’m starting off easy learning Pixies basslines (which are really fun to play) – I’ll let you know when I’ve mastered anything more complicated than that…
Oh, just one more thing before I sign off – what about that Ireland v England rugby match? I nearly spat my cereal all over the computer screen when I saw the final score! It’s even being reported over here, it’s the top sports story in the Japan Times today, full with commentary on the historical significance of Ireland thrashing England in the first game against them in Croke Park in light of the slaughter of 14 people on the grounds by British forces in 1920. Much as I appreciate such poignant journalism, this means only one thing for me – I am going to have to explain all the history to all the Japanese people I know at some point, because they will ask. This is easy enough when the enquirers speak English, but just try discussing the finer points of Irish politics and conflict with sign language and pigeon Japanese. I had to do it on Saturday to some punk guy who came into Sumiho’s shop to have his tongue pierced, as he had Never Mind the Bollocks and wanted to know about what the Sex Pistols were shouting about in Anarchy in the UK (that would be “Is this the UDA, Is this the IRA” etc etc). 20 minutes and a whole lot of hand waving later, I think he got the gist, but I can’t be sure. So I will have an interesting week ahead of me. Ah well, if nothing else, I’ll be deadly at charades by the time I’m finished. Now there’s a talent that’s bound to come in handy one day…
Sunday, 25 February 2007
Saturday, 10 February 2007
I wish i was a fisherman...
I've been sitting in my house in a wee bit of a daze today, alternating bursts of manic spring cleaning with the intense desire to curl up in a tiny ball under some blankets and sleep for days. this is mainly because of the fisherman-like hours i was keeping yesterday. amir and i decided that this would be the weekend to go to tsukiji fish market in tokyo, since monday is a holiday and we would have more recovery time from the crazy-early start we'd have to get to go. anyway, we got the 3am saturday morning train to tokyo, got in there for 5am then headed straight to tsukiji because the auctions start from 5.
tsukiji is the biggest fish market in the world, operating every day except sundays and holidays and selling most of the world's tuna. you really have to see this place to believe it - hundreds of enormous dead tuna lying either fresh or deep frozen on warehouse floors, while men in a uniform of aprons, wellies and cigarettes shout perhaps in japanese though it just sounds like grunting to bid for the poor beasts, while looking at the fish flesh with torches and scooping bits of meat out with their fingers to make sure they're buying Good Shit. because just one of these monstrous tuna will set you back something like 2000 euro.
(In case you're wondering what the things that look like missiles in the picture above are, they would be frozen whole tuna.)
outside of the warehouses, hundreds of stalls sell the less illustrious fish, keeping them alive until someone hands over the cash, then unceremoniously beheading and gutting them in front of your very eyes. the whole procedure looks like a painful as hell way to die, but the executioners of the doomed fish do all this quite cheerfully.
(this poor fella looked straight at us as he was meeting his maker. eerie...)
in the midst of all the fish blood and entrails, men on crazy motorised carts zip about the place, not really looking where they're going (i saw one guy merrily driving along sending a text message before almost ploughing into an unsuspecting american woman) and assuming that you will get out of the way before they run you over. the carts are steered by these big giant barrel-shaped wheels at the front of the vehicles, weird looking things that make you think you've accidentally stumbled into an episode of Dr Who. it's all a bit surreal - it doesn't feel like tokyo, or japan for that matter. gone is all the politeness and decorum that is so prevalent in pretty much all walks of japanese society, and it's replaced by a haphazard, pre-dawn mania that is made all the more confusing by the fact that you're walking around totally sleep-deprived. it's a scary scary place, but fuck me it's great craic. i can't explain exactly why, and i know that walking round a fish market at 5.30am on a saturday doesn't exactly sound like a good time, but it was one of the coolest experiences we've had since coming here.
(5am louise - dazed, confused and smelling of fish)
after seeing all we could see, we headed for one of the sushi restaurants in the market to taste possibly the freshest sushi that can be found in the whole world. we had to stand in line for an hour to get a seat, but jaysus it was worth it - the sushi literally melted on your tongue and tasted exquisite. we sampled 3 parts of tuna, each with a different fat content, enormous shrimp, slivers of squid, sea urchin (which we had trouble keeping down because the texture just makes you want to hurl), egg and miso soup, all washed down with some green tea. we were so ensconsed in the consumption of our breakfast, and so taken aback by how tasty it all was, that we forgot to take a single photo of what we ate. that's how distractingly good it all was. and that's how sleepy-stupid we were. ah well, we'll just have to go back again some time.
tsukiji is the biggest fish market in the world, operating every day except sundays and holidays and selling most of the world's tuna. you really have to see this place to believe it - hundreds of enormous dead tuna lying either fresh or deep frozen on warehouse floors, while men in a uniform of aprons, wellies and cigarettes shout perhaps in japanese though it just sounds like grunting to bid for the poor beasts, while looking at the fish flesh with torches and scooping bits of meat out with their fingers to make sure they're buying Good Shit. because just one of these monstrous tuna will set you back something like 2000 euro.
(In case you're wondering what the things that look like missiles in the picture above are, they would be frozen whole tuna.)outside of the warehouses, hundreds of stalls sell the less illustrious fish, keeping them alive until someone hands over the cash, then unceremoniously beheading and gutting them in front of your very eyes. the whole procedure looks like a painful as hell way to die, but the executioners of the doomed fish do all this quite cheerfully.
(this poor fella looked straight at us as he was meeting his maker. eerie...)in the midst of all the fish blood and entrails, men on crazy motorised carts zip about the place, not really looking where they're going (i saw one guy merrily driving along sending a text message before almost ploughing into an unsuspecting american woman) and assuming that you will get out of the way before they run you over. the carts are steered by these big giant barrel-shaped wheels at the front of the vehicles, weird looking things that make you think you've accidentally stumbled into an episode of Dr Who. it's all a bit surreal - it doesn't feel like tokyo, or japan for that matter. gone is all the politeness and decorum that is so prevalent in pretty much all walks of japanese society, and it's replaced by a haphazard, pre-dawn mania that is made all the more confusing by the fact that you're walking around totally sleep-deprived. it's a scary scary place, but fuck me it's great craic. i can't explain exactly why, and i know that walking round a fish market at 5.30am on a saturday doesn't exactly sound like a good time, but it was one of the coolest experiences we've had since coming here.
(5am louise - dazed, confused and smelling of fish)after seeing all we could see, we headed for one of the sushi restaurants in the market to taste possibly the freshest sushi that can be found in the whole world. we had to stand in line for an hour to get a seat, but jaysus it was worth it - the sushi literally melted on your tongue and tasted exquisite. we sampled 3 parts of tuna, each with a different fat content, enormous shrimp, slivers of squid, sea urchin (which we had trouble keeping down because the texture just makes you want to hurl), egg and miso soup, all washed down with some green tea. we were so ensconsed in the consumption of our breakfast, and so taken aback by how tasty it all was, that we forgot to take a single photo of what we ate. that's how distractingly good it all was. and that's how sleepy-stupid we were. ah well, we'll just have to go back again some time.
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