'Cock Skin in Vinegar' and other stories

Apologies for crudeness in the title - this cracked us all up on a restaurant menu this evening. They also had 'the stew that lasts', 'the cucumber is soaked' and 'fry some cabbage and bacon' (well, if you insist). Excellent.

I've now had two days at Naganuma language school, which have been very intense but OK so far. We have three different teachers, all of them very nice thus far - the ever-obliging and smiling Nishimura-sensei (lots of listen and repeat, which is very comforting when you know virtually nothing like me), the massive Sting fan (?!) Toda-sensei, and Ueno-sensei, who talks even quicker than me. There's an awful lot of information being pumped in all at once, but so far I'm enjoying learning. I dare say I'll be griping soon enough, though! Homework at the moment is handwriting practice, quite like the stuff I remember from the early years of infant school. I'm very slowly getting to grips with hiragana and katakana, the two phonetic syllabaries, and can now *mostly* write down words in dictation (another daily activity) if they're said very slowly and repeated several times! Tomorrow we learn our first kanji (Chinese pictogram characters, normally with several different readings) which will be a challenge.

I have a second viewing of a flat tomorrow - if that goes well and I like it as much as I did the first time, and if the landlord doesn't freak out at my being a foreigner (rental racism is rife, as is alliteration), then I should have a provisional move-in date of 10 October. Very exciting! I don't want to get my hopes up too much though, just in case something goes wrong. I'll gladly let you know my address as soon as it's confirmed.

Three of us scholars have been getting futons and other bits and pieces through Sayonara Sales (one of your favourite words, Will G!), the nearest equivalent in Japan to Freecycle, led by Charlotte, scavenger in chief. Yesterday I carried a double futon almost as tall as me, and a lot wider, on three metro lines across the city. Apparently the only bits of me you could see were my hands and feet; otherwise I looked like a walking futon. Today was comparatively easy, with just a single futon on two metro lines. I should note here that Japanese futons don't have a wooden base - designed to go on softer tatami mats, so they don't need one - which is how we managed to transport them, but still, I feel very virtuous for doing so much heavy lifting.

I also went to a proper karaoke bar for the first time - a true Japanese experience. We went after our welcome drinks with the scholars from the year above us... it was fun, overall, though my microphone was accidentally turned off during 'Back for Good' so my practice from the many times I've watched the TCBC video kind of went in vain. We're planning another trip with all of us (not everyone came) some time soon. I will make sure there is no Cher-esque video evidence.

I also have a new laptop! I lost patience and bought a Toshiba one which was on sale for just under 70,000 yen (around 450 pounds) because it was already set up with an English-language operating system and seemed to have quite good specs, from what little I know about computers. It has an inbuilt webcam that does facial recognition, which is very exciting, and apparently it has a very advanced new generation USB drive. I must confess that I have yet to make use of this, but there's plenty of time yet...

First Impressions

Hello everybody,

As suggested by Olly (I think?) and promised by me, here's a blog to keep you all up to date with my manic adventures in Japan. This should be much simpler than my old habit of enormous group emails - please do carry on emailing me, I promise to reply, I just want to streamline things a little.

I went laptop computer shopping today, which was... intense. So much noise and garish posters everywhere, as well as tons of people - my own fault for going on a Saturday afternoon. It would have helped if I had known exactly what I wanted, but I'm far from being a techie expert! The cheapest ones were Lenovo, the Chinese brand, but I think I'd probably rather go a bit more upmarket. The best deal looked to be in a shop called Labi, with a Sony Vaio N type for 49,800 yen (about £350) - that's the most basic model, and you can customise it with added extras. I ran out of energy to decide which, if any, of these I wanted, plus things are complicated by some of the options being 'sold' (presumably sold out?). If I went for the cheapest option marked as available (which means getting a better processor, more hard disk space and Blu-ray reader), that would be a total of 81,800 yen - £572, quite a price difference! Still not a bad price overall, I think, but I don't feel like I know anything any more. And the operating system would be in Japanese - apparently it is possible to change it over to English, but that would invalidate the warranty. Not sure if my credit card automatic warranty would count over here either. Aargh!

Sorry for that rather dull technical paragraph; onto more accessible matters. I'm having a good time so far - it's been really hectic and today is the first day we haven't had various things timetabled for us to do. Tokyo in some ways lives up to its 'ultimate big city' reputation - there are millions of people everywhere, the trains are always busy and there always seems to be a lot going on - but in other places it's strangely calm. If I open my window in the hotel there's a very faint hum - which is so discreet it could be air-conditioning units or distant traffic, but nothing obtrusive - overlaid by the sound of cicadas. The view is (when it's light, which it definitely isn't as I write at 6.20pm) of a little garden and the 'smokers' lounge' - which actually consists of some comfy leatherette bench seats, a few tables with built-in ashtrays and a mosquito-killing-light-cum-patio-heater, though it's so warm (20ish degrees at night, more during the day) that no heating is necessary.

The trains are amazing - they all run exactly to time, there are subway stations everywhere and there are clever LCD displays above all the doors that tell you the next station in English, hiragana (a Japanese phonetic syllabary) and kanji (Chinese pictogram characters), as well as bilingual announcements. People cram on but there's a lot of etiquette - mobiles work but it's considered bad manners to actually talk on one, and it's rude to talk beyond a discreetly quiet volume. Lots of people wear surgical masks - it's not entirely clear if this is to protect them from swine flu, general germs or indeed to protect others from their germs, as it's customary to put a mask on if you have a cold. And they have two Oyster-like systems, Pasmo (which I have already) and Suica. They're mostly interchangeable, but Suica, despite meaning 'watermelon', has a penguin logo. At the moment I'm just using the pay as you go function - no cheaper than buying tickets each time but much less hassle, especially as you buy tickets by value, not destination when travelling within Tokyo which means you have to consult complex maps which only label the stations in kanji! When I have a fixed journey from my flat (when I have one, which I hope won't be too long!) to language school, I can prebuy that journey for a heavily discounted price.

Speaking of flats, I've looked at lots of flyers, and have arranged tons of viewings for tomorrow and Monday. I was pleasantly surprised by how (relatively) affordable the kind of flat I want is - it looks like the going rate for around 30 square meters in a good area, 10-15 minutes by train from school, is around 85,000 yen a month (£600). Typically, the one I like the look of most is more expensive - 100,000 yen - but it's 35 square metres, with two really big rooms and a balcony in a modern concrete-based 'manshon' block, which is meant to be sturdier, better insulated and safer in an earthquake than the more traditional wooden-framed 'apato'. It's also only 2 minutes from an express station, though the agent claims it's not next to the railway line... we'll see tomorrow, I guess. Anyway, I don't want to bring bad luck on myself but it looks eminently feasible to find somewhere I like and move in well within the three-week deadline.

I had my first very clumsy moment today... a whole four days after I arrived, so you should all be proud of me for lasting so long! I was in a somewhat dubious fast-food-ish restaurant called First Kitchen, because it was opposite an estate agent I and some of the other scholars were visiting and we didn't have much time. I ordered what I thought was spaghetti in tomato sauce with basil, salad with a poached egg, and Pepsi. It turned out to be spaghetti with fish roe (not sure what species, but it was orange) and crispy seaweed, salad with a raw egg to crack over the top (and a hell of a lot of sweet mayonnaise-like dressing) and Pepsi. I got over the slight shock of that and was then trying to sort my rubbish and dirty dishes according to their complicated recycling bin system. No sooner had I put my tray on top of the bin so I could sort things out then I accidentally nudged it and it flew off and onto the floor, smashing both plates into many, many small pieces, coated in raw egg goo and leftover salad. It must have covered about ten square feet with debris. People looked shocked, and I had no idea what I could do beyond saying 'sorry' repeatedly in Japanese to the man in a uniform who came out from behind the till. He just bowed and said thank you (in English) so I apologised again, in English this time, three or four times and then fled the scene. It was dreadfully embarrassing, and will no doubt be the first of many moments of clumsiness-provoked humiliation, given my propensity to knocking things or myself over.

I think that's probably enough for now - I look forward to hearing from you soon, and I promise to write another post before too long! It should become considerably easier once I have my own computer to use...