These people are trying to kill me
Friday, 12 November 2004
Well, we are back in Tokyo now feeling safe and sound in a nice western style hotel but the last few days have been rather trying I have to say. On wednesday we decided to go to the Fuji Goko area which is a bit of a rural holiday resort type place where alot of people start from when they climb Mount Fuji. There's hills, lakes and very nice views of the mountian and we were talking to a load of welsh blokes that had just come back from there and had stayed in a luxury style hotel with views of Mount Fuji from a hot spring bath and so on. Ah yes, we thought, sounds like a pleasant thing to do on the way back to Tokyo so off we went.
After a train and two bus journeys that lasted for many years it seemed we ended up at the tourist information place wanting to book a room at this hotel we heard about. it out of season for Fuji climbing at the mo so we thought it would be fine, unfortunately, it wasn't. No space at the nice western style hotel with the hot spring bath etc etc. The tourist info dude suggested a "minishuku" which is basically a down market cheapo version of a "ryokan" which is a very regimented, but plush traditional japanese hotel. Anyway, we had no choice and we booked it. It included two meals...
As most of you who know may be thinking, this made me SCARED. There are one or two japanese food items that I've come across that seemed reasonable but on the whole its just fucking grim. It's so grim that even Catherine has been having trouble with it (see below for her drippy octopus account). To add to this, on reading the Lonely Planet on the way to the minishuku it says that its customary (read: compuslary) to have a bath which sounds nice but while ryokan have private baths for each room minishuku just have public baths! This does actually mean getting naked with random people which just isn't sitting well with my western sensiblilities at all. Now I am VERY SCARED.
So, we get to this place by which time I am visibly shaking at the thought of being shoved into a room naked with loads of random people then fed raw fish and I'm already trying to think of ways to get out of it. For gods sake, I just want a bed can I just opt out of the food based torture without too much hassle. We get out of the van with our packs at this place and its not looking good at all. The owner woman, a nice looking little old lady, comes out to greet us and blatently doesn't speak a word of English, which is to be expected but this means that she won't be able to understand any kind of elaborate excuse I make up. She then shows us, still carrying a bags, straight into the public bath area! At this point I am GROTESQUELY SCARED. CAN'T WE EVEN GO TO OUR ROOMS FIRST WITHOUT GETTING NAKED??!?!
Catherine has come up with a good method for dealing with these situations, smile, nod then do what the hell you want. Simple, but devistatingly effective. This alone would make me glad I married her. We employ this technique for the first time and get shown to our room (eventually) and then she makes us drink tea. We did actually have a nice view of Fuji from our room but by this point I really didn't give a shit. She then started to ask us what time we wanted to bath but we issued the smile/nod defense and eventually she fucked off and left us alone. Catherine did a bit of communication style and found out that we would be eating at 6 and we needed to bathe before that so, after apologising to Catherine for what I was about to do, I did what any sane man would do and bolted. In a short sleeved shirt, with no idea of where I was, in the freezing cold night for 2 or 3 hours until the whole thing was over. After wandering through nothing-ness for ages and ages and nearly falling down a huge ditch in the dark I found a trustly 7-11 and had two microwave burritos for tea. Much better.
Catherine seemed perversely into this whole tradition thing and wanted to attempt the meal so she stayed and told everyone I was ill and went to find some pills. It turned out that the bath was unpopulated so she had a nice undistrubed bath. I missed out there it seems if it wasn't for...
THE MEAL. Apparently it was my actually my worse food nightmare. Raw fish and even raw beef all over the goddamn place with really foul veg and shit. Urgh. Catherine did a brave job and had some of most of it. She reckoned I would have like the rice...but nothing else.
I crept back in at about 7 thinking the meal would be over but was greeted by the nice looking evil lapdog of japanese food satan lady trying to drag me in to have food. NO! NOT AGAIN! "No thanks, Ive just had two micorwave burritos and Im full", I said, not knowing what Catherine had told them. I did a Im full belly rubbing motion to clarify this. This might possibly have blown my cover. Anyway, she wasn't buying it and persisted. I smiled, nodded, then fuck off to our room. It worked and she didn't follow me.
After the meal they all started doing Kareoke to really strange and fucked up pop music at a boomingly loud volume while we cowered in our room hoping not to be hassled. We weren't and ended up going to bed at about 9.
This however wasn't the last trauma. In the morning, traditional japanese breakfast was being served. Which being japanese consisted of more rank uncooked fish......NOOO!!!!!!!!!
Tokyo is much better. We went to Shibuya last night which is kind of like the upmarket Camden of Tokyo with lots of trendy types wandering around and record shops, clubs and that all over the place. Was a suitably Bladerunner style experience, however, my main mission was to try to sample a bit of japanese hip hop and see what they are up to. I went to several extremely impressive record shops and push my way through lots of silly B-Boy posers and listened to some stuff. I have to say what I heard was quite poor. Mostly mock gangsta type stuff, I obviously didn't dig that deep but I hope it gets better than this.
I was also a bit unimpressed with the japanese trendies, they do copy the fashions quite closely but some how it just looks like they are dressing up with no originality on their part. Your hip hop type bloke will have a Nelly style plaster on his cheek and one trouser leg rolled up and all that stuff while your punk type person will be wearing some kind of ripped t shirt claiming to be from London etc etc. Authentic but not cool I dont think. All interesting stuff.
Until next time, good bye.
On November 12, 2004, Fenn said:
That made me laugh for about 3 hours. I had to create a new project on our timesheet system for it.
There was a really harsh documentary the other night about japanese herding dolphins into a lagoon and killing and eating them. Good job you didnt see it.
On November 12, 2004, Daz said:
Excellent!
I've often found that the smile, nod then do what the hell you want technique works in England too. Especially at work.
On November 12, 2004, Dave said:
Dan, this blog was a finetastic idea and in a truly western style I'll say this "I'm lovin' it", mMMmm!
On November 13, 2004, Dan said:
Fenn - it wasn't funny. I was very upset.
On November 14, 2004, Tim said:
Dan, you are rarely wrong. However this time you are are - it's fricking hilarious!
On November 15, 2004, Master Quan Lo Chung said:
Hm - sooo, I see you have mastered.. the smile-and-nod-head.. defence style.. Hm - I'm impressed. Your ninja skills are.. powerful.
And Tim is... correct: Very funny!... Hahaha...ha. Hm, I've dropped.. my uncooked fish. Damn!