I finally heard from the Internet people by email. They are going to ring me on Friday to arrange a time to visit. So another week goes by without any means of decent communication.

The other day the headmaster gave us an introduction to Japanese caligraphy. Here are some photos.

This was my first one. They got subsequently and sequentially worse.

NB top left

Great sign at a station. Girls really do wear hats
like that with their school uniform here.

Wish I could have had a full frontal of this chap. His trousers were ace.

Typical Japan. A fantastic array of boxers. Every single pair a medium.
I checked each rack individually.

At the theatre the other day I smelt a Japanese fart for the first time. It was in the lobby waiting for the start of the prodigious production of Les Mis the ballet. We were encouraged to look at photos of past performances and, for want of other entertainment, people were loitering around the boards. It was pungent and lingered and smelt foreign. An umamier fart there never was.

Little Update

Within a week of arriving here I had a ticket to see my first Noh production but I was unable to go due to an unexpected meeting. Last week, feeling the need to see soemthing, whatever it might be, I ended up with a ticket to see Les Miserables, the ballet.

This was every bit as bad as it sounds, from the very moment the 30-strong corps de ballet pattered on stage as feisty French fisherwomen. The music appeared to be a specially composed score which veered horribly from orchestral Berlioz for the strident parts to Shostakovichian piano for the frivolous moments, with scenes of high-emotion danced to a warbling Celtic soprano who can only have been inspired by Enya. The choreography was one long enchainment of cliche. If I had had a yen for each time Valjean and Javert clutched their heads in despair/frustration, I might even have clawed back the mighty cost of the seat.

What makes the outing even more frustrating in retrospect is that playing at the same time in Tokyo was a French production of a Moliere I had been ever so keen to see. The daily grind of school and the lack of Internet meant I had completely lost track of the date and I missed the run completely. The play was being performed with life-size marionettes by a highly-regarded French puppeteer and I am gutted not to have seen it.

I eventually returned to the National Noh Theatre to try and pick up some more tickets only to find that all the productions are now sold out until Christmas. The only seats available were for a production of classical Japanese dance which I went to yesterday with Tom. Japanese dance is rich in symbolism (most obviosuly various complex manipulations of fans) but lacking in much accessible aesthetic/artistic value. It was interesting to see but no great theatrical experience for someone not in the know.

Most intriguing was one long set which was more than a little reminiscent of morris dancing: six dancers adorned with bells who danced in various morris patterns (albeit at quarter speed and devoid of joy). They even danced 'on' and 'off' and had one dance which featured those little tasselled sticks. Unfortunately there were no subtitles for the lyrics so it was hard to decipher what was going on although we were informed that one piece was "danced to a song describing the act of collecting sea-water in a bucket". Watching the dance itself was more akin to collecting sea-water in a sieve.

The second half was quite terrific, however, featuring a performance of Kyogen which is a particular style of Japanese drama. This was subtitled and the stillness in both poetry and performance was very fine. The semi-sung delivery was enchanting and it was very rewarding to pick up a few words here and there that I could actually understand. (Very few, mind, and mainly things like please and thank you. Still...) This is exactly the kind of drama I had hoped to see out here so I am extremely glad to have gone. It has already given me some thoughts.

I have signed up for Internet at home but it will take about a fortnight for them to turn it on which is rather tedious.

Hasty snaps

I have a very tight window with a chance to post some photos so here goes... (still no Internet at home)

My main room. Kitchen bit on right, bathroom on left,
big sliding door goes through to bedroom.
This is palatial by Japanese and my friend's standards.
Most of the flats I was looking at were the size
of this room alone.
Only furnishing so far is an inflatable mattress.

My ever-so-modern kitchen units. Need to buy gas cooker
for the slot.

My bedroom. Air-con.

Out of the window. I could keep a chicken here.

I do have a lot of wardrobe space.

The sliding door. Glass not paper. Makes me think of Nanny.
Not quite sure why.

Bathroomette.

Obligatory shoe rack. On my first night I sat on the step to read
since I had no other furniture.

There were three of these in a row. I think it must be the local
nursery's minibus.

This octopus's tentacles were as thick as my arm.

I love the middle warning.

Wouldn't wear this on the tube in London.

No Internet

I shan't have Internet in my flat for a while so posting is hard. Might go quiet for a bit.

First night

Moved in. One of my sempai offered to lend me his inflatable mattress so I had something to sleep on. We arranged to meet at the station but after half an hour he wasn't there which was slightly worrying. I have no phone and no Internet (except at school) so I was heading for a hard night. Luckily another sempai lives nearby and she was in so she called him for me. Turns out he was at the station all along and I was just waiting in the wrong place. So I had some kind of bed, at least.

This morning I nearly threw a wobbly trying to take my enormous suitcase and library across Toyko in the rush hour. Bag was so very heavy. I took everything to school on the metro since it was on the way. After lessons I gave up and just took a taxi the rest of the way.

I bought some fruit.

Accommodation

Today I signed the contract for my flat. This is something of a drawn-out process in which the landlord's agent reads the three separate contracts out loud. In Japanese. Took forever.

The flat is old and close to a railway. But it is a whopper (by Nippon standards and compared to my chums out here) and only 10 minutes from Shibuya which is dead central happening Tokyo. Having said that, it's in a quiet suburb with a park and is more reminiscent of Reigate than Soho.

I have the keys in my bag and move in tomorrow. But flats are rented completely unfurnished out here. No fridge. No cooker. No light in the bedroom. Not even a bed.

It will be an interesting first night.

Frustration

[NB see further down the blog for two updates: Chinese meal and onsen trip.]

Today the weather was amazingly fine. Really baking hot and with a perfectly blue sky. It was also a public holiday so there was no school.

I pottered down to the Institut Franco-Japonnais to see what the library was like. I half expected it to be closed. The building was unlocked but there was no one at reception so I just wandered in. I strolled all around, took the French proficiency test on the computers in the lobby and found a small theatre upstairs. Even the library was unlocked with its thousands of books and DVDs. I spent a good while browsing and then pushed off without being challenged by anyone.

In England, to find such an institution unlocked and unmanned would be inconceivable; but I do not think it was an accident here. This is a country where you leave your umbrella in a rack outside the supermarket, come back 3 rainy hours later and find it still there. I know because I tried (using the hotel's umbrella). The other day, in the very heart of the city (their Oxford Street), a man cycled up and went into the bank. He was gone for some time but he just left his bike outside, propped up and unlocked. It remained. What a pleasure to see, especially for someone who's lived in Oxford.

I then found a good spot to bask in the sun by some water. I read my book on kanji. It was rubbish. Now abandoned. It was very pleasant looking around, though. Dad would have liked the fish.

I came back early to catch the opening of reservations for the Christmas season at the Paris Opera. Everything there sells out very quickly and I have it in mind to pay a visit when I come home. The demand for tickets is so high there is an online queuing system even to make it onto the website. So I duly queued for 45 minutes but when my allocated turn to browse came up, the website was playing silly buggers.

I spent an hour and a half going around in tiny circles trying to select seats before the system kicked me off and tried to make me queue again. Another 45 minutes later, I found all the good seats had gone. So I ordered the cheap ones and only once I had paid did the system decide to offer me something within decent distance of the stage. Very, very frustrating. The whole episode took 4 bloody hours. At one point during the going round in circles part I punched my desk several times very hard. At least, since I ended up with the cheapest ticket at €16, it won't matter so much if I fail to make it...

Took up all my swimming time. Pf.

We are indulging in a three day weekend.

Today my backgammon rating crept to its highest ever and I chose a flat. We also went to an onsen (Japanese spring/public bath) which was terrific and shall be described tomorrow.

Yesterday I mainly slept.

More tomorrow.

First onsen trip

One of the relationships in the hierarchy of Japanese society is the sempai-kouhai relationship. Your sempai are your elders in any given situation and you are their kouhai. If you join a sports club, for instance, anyone who joined before you becomes (and remains) your sempai. You are expected to show them respect while they are expected to mentor you. It's a mutually beneficial set-up.

So it is with the Daiwa programme, and our sempai have been extremely helpful in recommending shops for furnishing flats and taking us out for meals and so on. So far we haven't done much in return except be a novelty.

Yesterday two of our sempai proposed a trip to an onsen. An onsen is a Japanese hot spring cum public bath. They are all over the shop out here (Japan's volcanic nature makes springs very frequent) and yesterday's experience suggests they are as popular as ever and very well attended.

Ours was in a small suburb of Tokyo, not far from where my flat will be. It's divided into two halves by gender, each a mirror image of the other. There were 3 indoor pools: one was a cold pool, one had extremely powerful massaging jets and the other was the actual spring water pool. Outside there were a further three pools of varying temperatures. There were also two saunas, one out and one in (with a TV).

You don't need to take anything - towels are cheaply hired and bathing is nude. Shoes off at the entrance (before you even buy your ticket), then you pass through some funny little showers like they have at the swimming pool. I found a photo to make the strange nature of the showers clearer. NB I did not take this photo - it is from Wikipedia. Showering is very ritualistic in Japan and they all take forever over it. You have to be completely spotless before you go anywhere near a bath (even in your own home).

The different pools were excellent. The hot ones were just a tad too hot but that made the cold one very worthwhile. The spring water was quite odd. It had a strong mentholated/eucalyptine smell which encouraged one to inhale deeply. And just when it hit the bottom of your lungs it unleashed a fearsomely potent ammonia aftertaste.

It was a very peaceful place. None of the Japanese seemed to talk but we had a gentle chat without seeming to upset anyone. Sitting outside after dark in really hot water was an unusual experience. Slap bang in the middle of the largest capital in the world, all you could see was sky and stars. Very little external noise.

They really do sit there with their little hand-towels on their heads.

I had expected that we would be rather out of place for our youth. I generally associate spas with the blue-rinse-slash-at-least-as-old-as-my-parents-not-that-you-would-catch-them-in-a-spa-brigade. In fact, although there were some oldies there, by far the majority seemed to be under 35 and many were there with young sons. You wouldn't have thought of public bathing as a typical father-son activity but the Japanese do have their way.

So we stewed for an hour or so, waited another half hour for the bloody women to get out and sauntered off for dinner. Highly recommended.

Chinese meal

Last night we were invited to the inaugural meeting of a gastronomic society. It has been set up by one of the men we met at the British Embassy the other night who has a passion for Chinese food. The idea is to eat our way around China, visiting a restaurant each week or so that specializes in a different region. And then, once we have visited them all, start again. We started with Sichuan.

The substantial menu 

Here, masquerading as 'appetizer',are heart,
tongue, tripe and jelly fish tentacles.

This mutton was delicious but the hottest thing I've ever
eaten by several times over.

This was very odd but rather nice. The white is coagulated egg white.
It's floating in some kind of stock which makes it look (and taste) split.

The man from the Embassy.

This was really the only killer dish. Vegetables in a pork wrap.
Or 'lap' as the menu has it.

A very adequate meal (certainly so in terms of quantity) but not on the list for future visitors.

Lingo

In an attempt to find bargains I have been probing some estate agents who do not speak English. This means recourse to Internet translators. Japanese is such a different language to English that automated translation renders very bizarre results. Often very funny:

It's not the best medium for finding one's future home.

Octopus balls

In the area where I have been flat hunting there are several takoyaki vendors. Takoyaki are a kind of batter dumpling around the size of a golf ball. They have a crispy shell and are filled with chunks of octopus.

Not only are they rather delicious but they make them in front of you and the process if fascinating to watch. The moulds are only hemispherical; a skilled process of flip and tuck with two short spikes produces the finished spheres.

After a layer of batter, the octopus is added.

Puffed rice, onion and pickled ginger (I think) sprinkled.

Flooded with more batter.

Scoring with the spikes.

Each little square flipped over and tucked under.

Big tower

Today we went to the top of Tokyo's tallest building as VIP guests. Views were astonishing.

But annoyed to have missed my theatre.