Easy Rider

When I first arrived in Tokyo I was woken up in the middle of the night by an extremely loud siren, with someone talking over the top of it through a loudspeaker. My initial reaction was....

a) that it was the end of the world.
b) a large earthquake was about to destroy Tokyo.
c) Godzilla was on the rampage.

Breathing a sigh of relief five minutes later, I realised that it was just an extremely loud ambulance.

And speaking of loud things that keep me awake, gangs on motorbikes frequently drive past my building late at night very slowly, revving their engines extremely loudly.

Now when I saw the Japanese anime film called Akira, I thought young Japanese people riding about on motorbikes was really cool.

I have since changed my mind.

Apparently in the Toyama prefecture, music therapists have developed a police siren which is soothing and reassuring. Click here for the article.

Today I went To Sumida City Hall and I was interviewed for the local TV channel by my friend Ken, who works for the local government.

You can check out the website for the district I live in here.

The interview was about cultural exchange and how Sumida is viewed through the eyes of foreign people. I got to talk about what I like about Sumida and how it is different to other places. A Chinese woman was interviewed as well and she talked about how she helps foreign people intergrate into Japanese life and how she helps organise cultural exchange.

It's on Channel 9 this Sunday.

The interview went really well and I think I may yet still become famous. Ideally I'd like my own show.

This isn't the first time I've been on TV in foreign climes though.

When I was in Thailand I went to a Robbie Williams concert and afterwards I was interviewed about it by a local cable channel. The only reason I probably managed to get on Thai TV though was by telling a slight lie about how I'd been at school with Robbie and what great mates we still were because money hadn't changed him.

Sapporo Snow Festival

Last weekend, I went to the Sapporo Snow Festival(Yukui Matsuri), on Japan's northern most island, Hokkaido. The official website for the festival is here.

The snow festival first began in 1950, when local highschool students built six snow statues in Odori Park. Now it's one of Japan's biggest winter events and attracts around 2 million people over its seven days to see the snow and ice sculptures.

The festival now has an international snow sculpture competition and other events which include ski-jumping and musical performances.

Sapporo is also famous for its beer and it hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics as well.

I caught a plane at 6.30 from Haneda airport in Tokyo on Saturday morning. I arrived at my hotel in Sapporo feeling pretty exhausted at about 9.00 as I hadn't had much sleep the previous night before. The hotel I stayed at was the Keio Plaza Hotel which was very nice (a lot classier to what I'm used to), if a little expensive.

It was really cold but I had a very nice time. Many of the statues and sculptures were very beautiful and the amount of time and effort that goes into them is amazing. It's just a shame that they don't last forever.

I even got to make my own snowman in an event to make as many little snowmen as possible, in order to get into the Guiness Book of Records.

Other highlights included my trip up Mount Moiwa to see the view of Sapporo. Unfortunately there was a huge blizzard and I didn't get to see much. I did get to have some miso ramen(noodles) in a nice restaurant at the top, which was delicious.

Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything.

-Mr Miyagi

Hosts

One of the strangest sights I've seen here in Japan so far, are hundreds of young Japanese men, just standing around looking very smart in their suits with highlights in their hair(looking like a horde of 80s Simon le Bon lookalikes), in a part of Shinjuku called Kabukicho (a very dodgy area if you know what I mean - I was lost, honest!).

I later found out that these men were hosts. Apparently women can hire out their services for a bit of company and they can earn up to fifty thousand yen a night.

I'm obviously in the wrong profession. I'm more than happy to charge 20,000 yen a night (+ bus fare home and a bag of fish and chips). The thing is I think some of them in the menu above, taken from outside a host bar in Osaka, look a little odd.

And if you think hosts are overcharging, apparently Mickey Mouse costs 330,000 yen just for fifteen minutes if you want him to come to your party. I've learnt that he is so expensive because there can be only one Mickey Mouse at a time in Japan. You can't have more than one existing at the same time in different places.

Hello! It's a man in a suit. He doesn't even say anything.

Today was the Setsubun festival, which welcomes the coming of spring. In the past people would drive evil spirits away with the strong smell of burning dried sardine heads, the smoke of burning wood and the noise of drums.

Nowadays people throw beans around their house, or at temples and shrines. When people throw the beans they shout 'Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!' ('Devils out, happiness in'). People should then eat the number of beans according to their age.

Sumo

Last Sunday, I went to Ryogoku for the first major sumo tournament of the year, which is also one of the most important as it gives wrestlers their first chance to prove themselves for the coming year.

Sumo is over 2000 years old. In Japanese mythology the gods wrestled with each other, which was later adopted as a form of divination and then as a spectator sport.

The rules are simple. Each opponent must try to force the other out of the ring(dohyo), or make the other touch the floor with a part of his body other than the feet.

The tournaments last fifteen days and I went to the final day. I arrived early at nine o'clock so that I could get a seat near the ring. Later in the day when it gets busier, the person who has booked the seat turns up and you have to move back to your own. So it's worth getting there early so you can get close to the action.


Useful Sumo vocabulary and stuff

Rikishi - A sumo wrestler.

Senshuraku - The last day of the tournament.

Dohyo - The ring.

Dohyo-iri - A ceremony in which the wrestlers all enter the dohyo together to show
themselves to the spectators.

Yokozuna - Grand Champion

Chonmage - Sumo wrestlers have long hair which is tied and arranged on top
of the head in a topknot.


In the morning I got to see the junior divisions of sumo which was very interesting, although some of them were a lot thinner than I had been expecting.

After this at lunchtime I had chanko nabe, a food sumo wrestlers tradionally eat to build themselves up. This is a vegetable and meat stew which is delicious, although I did make the mistake of ordering enough for four people. I managed to eat it all in the end though.

There is also a museum you can visit with many interesting things relating to the history of sumo and there are plenty of shops selling sumo souvenirs.

After the junior divisions have been completed it gets a lot busier in the stadium.

The most highly ranked sumo wrestlers (Makuuchi) enter the ring at around 3.55 in separate groups from the east and the west. They then all line up in a circle in the dohyo and face outward.

The main bouts began at around 4.00 and the atmosphere was very exciting. This is what I'd come to see. Really fat people wrestling. I saw some very good fights although some were very short.

During the fights there is a lot of ceremony. Before each wrestler enters the dohyo, they drink water offered to them by the previous winner in order to purify the their body.

When the wrestlers step up to the dohyo they squat down facing each other, rubbing the palm of their hands together. They then clap hands and turn their palms upwards. This is called chirichozu-wo kiru and is done to expel defilement.

The tournament was won by Asashoryu. He's seen as the bad boy of sumo having upset a number of the sumo authorities in the past. Although, having spoken to a number of Japanese people, they seem to think that he does in fact make the sport more interesting.

You can check out all the photos here.

Oh! Mikey

Japanese television is sometimes very odd. One of the stranger programmes is called 'Oh! Mikey'. This is a comedy about an American family who have moved to Japan.

What is surreal about it is that all the characters are mannequins.

You can see some stills from the show here.

You can check out this website for a bit more information here.

Curiouser and curiouser....

On Saturday, I went to a place called Super Deluxe in Tokyo. Each week they have different events including concerts, art, jazz and film. The night I went to examined the increasing growth and popularity of hip-hop culture in Japan.

Hip-hop is very big in Japan. Wherever you go you'll see the youth of Japan wearing baggy tracksuits with caps slightly askew, trying to look like their favourite hip-hop artist. It's not just imported music that the youth of Tokyo listen to. The Japanese hip-hop market has increased greatly in the past few years with a large number of homegrown acts.

In fact there are over 300 hundred shops selling hip-hop clothes in Tokyo alone. One of the biggest mistakes I've made in Japan is doing karaoke requests with Japanese people. They always end up asking me to do hip-hop songs by Eminem for example and I always end barely getting through the song, completely exhausted from the singing.

At the beginning of the evening there was a panel discussion with MTV Japan Chief Music Programmer Reiji Harayama, MC Utamaru from Japanese hip-hop group Rhymester, Japanese hip-hop writer Kou Furukawa, and Assistant Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at MIT, Ian Condry.

After this there was a screening of the film 'Black Picket Fence'. This was then followed by a hip-hop dancing competition.

I was looking forward to competing, but pulling a muscle in my upper right thigh, due to exstensive amount of physical activity I do, has left me unable to do windmills.

After this there was a hip-hop singing competition(It was like a cross between Hello Kitty and '8-Mile') followed by a hip-hop fashion show.

It was a very enjoyable night out, although in places it was very Ali-G.

You can check out the official website here.

I've seen 'The Last Samurai' starring Tom Cruise and I enjoyed it immensely. In the film Tom Cruise plays plays an officer in the United States Army called Nathan Algren. At the beginning of the film he is a drunk, who is selling guns for a living, having just fought in the American Civil War. He then goes to Japan in order to help the Japanese government get rid of the samurai by training soldiers. This is because the Emperor wants to move the country into the modern world and as a result is faced with a samurai rebellion.

In a battle between the samurai and the Japanese troops that Nathan has trained, he becomes captured. It is here we then meet the leader of the samurai called Katsumoto, played by Ken Watanabe. Gradually they build up a friendship and as Nathan learns more respect for the culture and way of life, we gradually see him change his allegiance.

The performances from all the actors are very good, especially Ken Watanebe. There's plenty of action throughout and the fighting and battles are breathtaking. I was also surprised with how much respect the American filmakers have given to Japanese culture and the way of life.

If you liked 'Braveheart' and 'Gladiator' you'll definitely like this movie. Recommended.

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone!

It's the year of the monkey.

You can check out lots of Chinese New Year facts here.

Cosplay

Last Sunday, I went to an anime festival in Ikebukoro. Anime is Japanese for animation. The animation industry is extremely big in Japan and very popular. For example, the Warchowski brothers, who wrote and directed the Matrix trilogy, were heavily influenced by anime films such as 'Ghost in the Shell'. Other famous Japanese anime includes 'Akira', 'Gundam' and 'Gatchaman'(Battle of the Planets).

You can check out the official site for the festival here.

The festival took place at a huge shopping centre called Sunshine City, which is a shopping and entertainment complex. It also used to be the tallest building in Japan. There were lots of shows and lectures given on anime in English and in Japanese and a lot of famous people involved in anime were also there.

Probably the most interesting thing about the whole event was the cosplay. Cosplay is when people dress up as someone from anime, manga or film. It's a bit like fancy dress in England. Everyone looked very cool. 

You can see the photos here.