Time passes

Hello everyone, hisashiburi, it's been a while~
Since I last wrote I have been visited by most of my family, gone to Summer Sonic music festival, spent two weeks (two fairly irregular weeks...) at a language school, got my A level grades and made it into my first choice university and have developed an intense fear of returning home. Hi!

I'll start with general musings and bring the amusing anecdotes and phabulous photos in later.

Living in Tokyo has been lovely. My guest house is in an area called Tomigaya, 10 minutes from the sparkly neon business district, Shinjuku and 10 minutes from teen fashion Mecca, Haraujuku. Basically, right in the middle of where one wants to be in Tokyo. The area directly surrounding my apartment is rather nice too, a convenient 7/11 just across the road from me for my morning carton of ice-coffee and serving my midnight cravings, a few nice local restaurants that I frequent and it backs onto Yoyogi Koen, one of Tokyo's largest parks. Location-wise I lucked out.

But the things I have enjoyed most about living in Tokyo aren't really things specific to Tokyo, or even Japan in general. A lot of the experience I have enjoyed is simply that of having my own space in the centre of a large city. The freedom, the connectivity to a wider world, the energy of being surrounded by people, it's something one does not get living in the suburbs with their (wonderful) family and it's something I doubt I'll get to the same extent at uni.

Tokyo itself is a wonderful city. Japan is very much a connivence culture, and a highly materialistic one (obviously nobody's told her denizens that her economic is pretty really bad) and this means that your average Japanese city of a few hundred thousand people has great food, great bars, and great shopping. There is something in the atmosphere of Tokyo however that instantly makes it feel just far far bigger and far far more important than even the sprawling second city, Osaka. Whereas most Japanese cities have /an/ upmarket shopping district, /a/ youth shopping district, /a/ drinking/nightlife district, /a/ traditional district, Tokyo, like London has many different areas catering to the same needs in slightly different ways. Both Harajuku and Shimokitazawa are for the young and fashionable to show off how young and fashionable they are, Harajuku is the more touristy and upmarket, Shimokitazawa the more studenty and budget. Its a metropolis of 30 million people, and it feels it.

In a bit under two weeks I'm going home. It's gonna be mega tough. But I'll leave soppy stuff for a bit later, for now just a few things I'll be missing:
Canned Coffee
Vending Machines on every street containing the above
Fast, cheap and comprehensive public transport
Japanese food as it is eaten in Japan
Western food as it is eaten in Japan
The price of the food (especially as I will be living on a student's budget in one of the most expensive cities in the UK...)
The many wonderful people I have met here
The ability to talk to anybody with the confidence afforded by an assured topic of conversation (you being foreign)
The ability to take pictures of people with the excuse that you're a photographer for a London based indie fashion magazine
Small bars (10 people or less)
Being able to count every conversation you have in every context as grammar and vocab revision

alas.

Other things:
I was visited by a large portion of my family of the last couple of weeks. The first lot was my dad, step-mum, younger brother, younger sister and baby sister. Then me 'mam visited on her ownsom :3 It certainly made for a change of pace, being on my own for 6 weeks previously, it was quite strange having company. On the downside, my Japanese slipped a bit as I was spending all my time speaking English, and some people, I won't name names, couldn't handle the heat/crunch time - it's hot here, you have to suck it up >_> But mostly it was really nice, it was fun playing the tour-guide and showing everywhere the places I'd enjoyed going to, I enjoyed eating at places I would not possibly consider eating at on my food budget (which counts anything over 1000 yen - a fiver - as a slurge), and mostly it was just nice seeing the fam.

Other than that, there was my stint at school. (I noticed this post is far more retrospective than the others, probably because lots of this happened a while ago, and the general sense of retrospect as a trip draws to a close) It was quite a lot of fun actually. There was one teacher (female, most Japanese teachers are, it probably has something to do with the ridiculous percentage of Japanese women who read English Literature at university (I was about to write that as 'major in English Literature at college', God help me)) who was particularly fun/excentric. I'm pretty sure one doesn't need a sexy scenario to explain the difference between 'personal' and 'indirect' - as in 'personally telling the cute boy you love him or indirectly getting a friend to', and it didn't help me remember the vocab for either term, but I defiantly appreciated the effort. Some of the students were really nice as well: notably the barrels-of-laughs man from Lebanon, and the Korean 18 year old who called me a 'problem student'. Otherwise I had a bit of a weird relationship with some students. Being the incredibly well-rounded person I am, I find myself pityingly disdainful of those worse at Japanese that me, and jealous of those who are better... Compounded with the fact that in some ways I was far better than most my classmates - higher character recognition, better accent, some more advanced grammatical constructions - and in some ways far worse - very patchy basic grammar, very patchy basic vocab, and far more frequent with mistakes - I'm not certainly looking forward to starting my Japanese from the beginning at university and working my way through the basics far more methodologically.

Summer Sonic was a lot of fun, really excellent line up. It's set up in a massive baseball stadium in Chiba, and the immensely large convention centre (a building that fit three festival sized stages inside) nearby. Because of this, and it's pretty urban surroundings, it doesn't feel much like other festivals, indeed, were it not for the most-deffinatly festival-like collection of food stalls inside the convention centre, it would barely count as a festival at all. Off the top of my head I saw, Cajun (asian) Dance Party, the pillows, Tokyo Police Club, Devo, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Fatboy Slim, Justice and the last five minutes of Hot Chip covering Sinead O' Connor. But 1000 words < 1 picture, as they say so I present you with:













Apparently you're not supposed to take photos at Japanese gigs. Japanese met will shine lights at your camera, cross their arms in front of their face and shout "DAME" - "FORBIDDEN" >:0

Shiny things:









Misc things:




He/she was not only a man, but a beautifully demeanoured man who could in fact have passed for a Victorian lady:



Indie fashion:






Firstly, the second guy's Champaign was really nice and secondly, he's a stylist in training at Toni and Guy Hiroo where I got a haircut today and now look like this:



I asked for "interesting, but not crazy" and now have short sides. The smirk was an unintended after effect.

I wrote this post over 3 consecutive evenings. I think being in the same place for so long, and having the internet in my room has killed my productivity. Anyway, I hope to write to you at least once before I leave, but I don't know if it will be much more than a few pages of ;___________; D: D: D: D: I DON'T WANNA GOOOOOOOOOOO ;_____;

Adios amigos~ xxx