Well I tell you it’s hard to forget where you are in this crazy place.
Tokyo is just as random as the films make it out to be. Yesterday we were trying to find our way through Shinjuku station, which is not an easy task seeing as it is at least the size of four city blocks and there are people everywhere, and we saw this completely random act. There were these two guys with Mohawks screaming into megaphones along to this distorted yet cheery music while this guy wearing a bear coat with 100 balloons attached to him walked around. Then about 20 other people walked out wearing these bazaar clothes that looked like someone had just wrapped heaps of coloured wool around them. I think it was some sort of advertisement for a clothes store, but who can really tell? Trucks driving at 10km an hour with dressed-up girls screaming through megaphones, also a regular occurrence. Also if you’re a tissue junky Tokyo is for you, on every corner people are handing out packs of tissues with advertisement on them. One could never run out! And we can’t forget to mention the vending machine epidemic.
Although no one understands us, everyone makes a huge effort. See they believe that Japanese is the hardest language to learn and therefore we can’t be expected to know any. In time I shall prove them wrong! There are lots of really helpful people here, I’ve been offered help numerous times even when I didn’t need any. The funniest is the taxi drivers, cause of course it is impossible to find a place just by it address, everyone needs to ask directions even the taxi drivers. So your taxi driver will get out and ask for directions, then the guys he asked will go ask someone else until you’ve got 10 people trying to figure out where it is that you’re meant to be going. It took us a long time to find our apartment building, even though we had many people on the case and a map.
The face masks are a bit freaky. I think they freak out Alex more than me. I reckon 1 in 10 people are wearing face masks. We read that it is what you do when you are sick, but I don’t know if there are that many sickies or if they just wear them cause they don’t like germs.
We get a bit of attention cause we’re whities, but not too much handle. There are very few other foreigners here. Walking through Shinjuku, which is busiest ward (suburb, kind of) I think I saw only 4 other foreigners the entire day.
I bought my first CD yesterday. There were these two guys busking with semi-acoustic guitars, they were really cool. It’s kinda Jazzy in parts, but very different. They call themselves New Age, but this is not what I think of when I think New Age. I think they’re confused and don’t really know what New Age is, could be a translation thing. They gave us very strict instructions when we bought it and that was mashi tashi weanaki tao, play it lroud! We got the last bit.
We live in a really beautiful area. It is very green with a lot of pot plants lining the footpaths and trees lining some streets. We found a really old house that is so beautiful, it has the pointy corners and the gold and red trimming, and apartment blocks surround it, it just looks so strange.
Up ya…
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