Well, it`s the last day of March for another year and I guess for once I am stuck for an idea of what to write about. I don`t suppose I should admit that, but I did anyway. It`s not fun and games all the time here you know - life can be pretty regular even for me. I had a normal an uneventful week at work, went out for dinner a couple of times, drank a few beers, and watched a bit of TV. If that`s not regular I don`t know what is. Oh, and today I did laundry, cleaned my apartment and bought some groceries.

Yesterday I went to Tokyo again. I really like Tokyo - arriving there gives me a kind of adventurous feeling and I always seem to find myself in a good mood. Whatever you do in Tokyo, you always feel as though there is something else you are not experiencing adn therefore have an urge to discover it. I suppose this is the attraction of big cities - that and the atmosphere. We have many ways of getting to Tokyo from Gotenba as you might imagine - one is via local train and then Shinkansen to Tokyo Station (which is modelled on Amsterdam Station by the way) - this costs about 5,000 Yen (about 30 pounds) and takes about two hours. The cheaper train ride I have discovered is to go in the opposite direction from Gotenba on a local train and then connect to an express train further on down the line and head for Shunjuku Station. This costs about 1,200 Yen and takes 2 hours. See the price difference. There are probably many other ways of going by local train etc, cheaper but maybe taking longer, and then there is the express bus which takes about 100 minutes and costs about 1,600 Yen.

Nowadays, I think you call Tokyo a `megalopolis` or whatever that means. It is a very complex city laced with layers of railways and roads, and lots of buildings and people. Tokyo is dozens of cities within a city. I read somewhere that over 30 million people now live in this `megopolis` although it`s probably higher now. The urban sprawl of Tokyo has been that great that it has subsumed Yokohama - a big city itself. All the major stations in Tokyo have departments stores all around them (and I mean big department stores) - I think I counted about six in Shinjuku - and some are actually built into the stations. But looking at a map of Tokyo, there are many parks and gardens to split up the urban confusion, although I guess Tokyoites would argue that its actually a very well ordered place! So far I kind of have to agree. I read a quote in a travel book recently which said " Tokyo is clean and safe, easy to get around, and to get things done. The low crime rate is famous, and the efficiency of the city's public transport legendary. Computerized systems keep the city functioning smoothly; shopping is easy, and information is on tap from any source in the world via printed media or on screen" - there you go - who can argue with that!

I don`t know that much about the history of Tokyo but let me tell you - it`s big, very big. Basically, after being inhabited by Stone Age tribes, the present city was founded in the 12th century and known as the village of Edo. In 1923, a very large earthquake and fire destroyed nearly half what was then densely populated city and more than 150,000 lost their lives. The city was rebuilt but half devastated again during heavy Allied bombing during World War II. The Meiji shrine (which I mentioned in a previous entry), which was dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his consort, was badly damaged but was restored. Amazingly, the Imperial Palace and the surrounding area housing the embassies, the diet building (parliament), and the newest office and administrative buildings was left entirely intact.

Anyway, arriving in Shinjuku is like arriving into the middle of a jungle - a jungle of people, signposts, noise, kiosks, ticket machines, ticket barriers, steps and escalators, oh, and a few dozen trains! It really is very big and there really are lots of people. The great thing about Shinjuku is that while you might think you are the only one stuggling to find where to go, what to do etc, there are bound to be another hundred or so doing exactly the same thing so it makes you feel a little less stressed. But it`s fun really. The first time in a new situation is always the hardest, then it becomes easier and before long it becomes second nature, right? So back to Tokyo, its great and I guess you could say I am still in the novelty stage of things here but those of you who know me well will know I like big cities and Tokyo is big let me tell you - I don`t think I will ever tire of cities and I kind of want to experience the city life again. One thing that does bother me is crowds of people. Not because there are lots of people but the fact that people who are trying to have in depth conversations in crowds sometimes forget they are actually in a crows and sometimes forget to actually keep walking straight. This can be a problem especially when you nearly walk into them and the people behind you nearly walk into you. I feel like saying "Either move to the side and finish your conversation or please increase your speed!". I am troubled by the fact that some people find it impossible to continue a conversation and walk at a decent speed at the same time - I mean its not like you have to extend your brain that much is it? If not, I guess that they must be having pretty intense conversations then. I guess it all comes down to awareness of the other people around you at the end of the day. I think I am an `aware` person. Does anyone agree or have an opinion?

Another good thing about this weekend was that I managed to finish my latest book - `A Wild Sheep Chase` by Harumi Murakami. For those of you who don`t know Murakami`s books they are simply brilliant and the guy has such a great style. He has written maybe fifteen books in Japanese all of which are very popular and have subsequently been translated into English. I have read three of his books and I will no doubt read the other twelve during the course of this year if I can. The book I read this weekend is about sheep and a wild chase funnily enough, but its much more than that of course - I am not going to spoil it for you. I recommend you all to read it and hopefully you will get as much enjoyment from it as I did. I really wished that after I had finihsed the book I could have talked to someone about it as I had many questions. So if anyne has read it or does read it in the near future please let me know. I am that keen on him at the minute that I have ordered two more of his books from the Internet. The first Murakami book I read was `Norweigan Wood` - this book is one of my favourites ever - the story evokes so many different feelings in the reader that it is very very hard to actually put down (until you have finished it that is and even then it is difficult as you kind of want to start again). Once again if anyone has read this book I would like to hear from you what you thought of it. I also read a Murakami book called `Underground` - it recounts experiences from survivors of the Tokyo Gas Attack (the Aum Shinrikyo cult and all that) and also goes onto interview many members of the Aum cult (both present and former) - it really does, and very interestingly in my opinion, make a success of examining the effect of the gas atack on the Japanese psyche. Anyway, enough of Murakami for now.

So that`s about all I can manage today. I have to work tomorrow (!) - my days off seem to go really quickly but then I always have that feeling wherever I am. Time doesn`t pass any quicker or slower does it? For those of you who like Star Trek you might remember an episode in `The Next Generation` when Commander Data (the andriod) tries to test (unsuccessfully as it turns out) the proverb that `a watched pot never boils` - I think he did it 80 or so times before someone told him to stop. I guess what I am trying to say is that time still passes at the same rate whatever we do or however we feel but we have to make the most of time. I try to as much as possible. Until next time...!!!

So today I decided to go on a bit of bike ride and see some sights - I planned to go to Gotenba Municipal Hot Spring which is about five kilometres outside of Central Gotenba up in the mountains. After seeing a signpost, in English and Japanese saying "Gotenba Hot Spring Resort: 2.6km", I thought OK this is fine but the road was a bit steep and my bicycle only has six gears so it was a bit of a struggle. About 4km, and a lot of effort later, I realised I must have gone too far along (actually `up` is a better description) the road as I only seemed to be passing hotels and disused windmills (yes you read correctly - must have something to do with the Dutch link!) so I turned around thinking I`d maybe see the entrance on the way back down. After enjoying a five minute downhill ride I was none the wiser as to where the heck this place actually was so decided to try another route (downhill!). I eventually saw a coffee house which happened to have a large map outside and I managed to see that the Hot Spring was actually back up the hill (!) that I had just enjoyed freewheeling down and off to the right somewhere- now, 30 minutes ago on the way up I had passed that exit but as I had been unable to read the signs and advertising hoardings I had not realised that I should have turned left. You see, there had been signposts in English before, but now they only seemed to be in Japanese. Strange to have an English sign 3km away from the place but then not to have one when you actually arrive there, don`t you think?!

Anyways, after another stuggle back up the hill, I turn left as I remembered and ride up to the building only to find the place is closed!!! Can you believe it! (or as Victor Meldrew would have said `I don`t beleive it!`). After all that! Only yesterday afternoon I had been sitting in the Internet Cafe reading about the Gotenba Hot Spring and never even noticed that it was closed on Mondays. Words like: "Gotenba City hot spring hall is in the heights on the way to go to Hakone, and you can look out over Gotenba city and Mt Fuji"; "The bath is only an inside bath. The color of the water is light green. It is the water of the hot spring"; "This hot spring is a simple hot spring in the alkalinity"; "There is a big window in the bathroom, and Mt Fuji and Gotenba City can be seen from the window" all sounded great and wonderfully enticing and I had been meaning to go there since I arrived in Gotenba. Unfortunately for me, but maybe funny for you reading, the bit I missed was: "Closure day Monday. When Monday is a national holiday, the next day". You`d think that this would have been the first thing someone with some common sense would have checked but then I .............!!!

The only good thought I had at that point was that I had a bit of a downhill ride back into town. Other than that I was pretty frustrated (and hot!). I`ve found that many places in Japan seem to be closed on Mondays (it`s almost like a second Sunday - but then again most places are actually open on Sundays - it`s strange to get used to after coming from a country where just about everything is closed on Sundays and even if it is open, its only open for a few hours due to crazy licensing laws. Anyway, to make me feel better, I stopped off on the way back to eat sushi at what I call a `conveyor belt` restaurant (or 100-yen sushi bars as I have heard them called here - funnily enough I was only talking about them just last night!). Basically you just go in, sit at the counter and lift what you want to eat from the conveyor belt. The colour or design of the plate determines how much they cost (i.e. 100 Yen, 150 Yen, 200 Yen, etc etc) so you can pretty much know how much you have spent which is good. I have been to many of these type of places in London before so I know the drill. It`s actually quite relaxing to go there as you can take your time to eat (as much as you want really if you can afford it!) and there are no staff pestering you. After lunch, I came back to the Internet Cafe to confirm my suspicitions that the Hot Spring Hall was closed on Mondays - and guess what, it was! (I was secretly hoping that there was some other reaon as to why it was closed to so I wouldn`t have to feel so stupid about not checking the opening times but alas there wasn`t!). It didn`t really matter that much as I had a really great time anyway and some much needed exercise!

I should finish today`s journal by making a bit of an apology. For any of you who have been trying to call me lately I have had a few problems with my cell phone in that I haven`t been able to receive any calls - all calls were automatically going to the voicemail service. This problem is now fixed so feel free to call. I had somehow managed to activate the auto-answer function (God knows how!) but my friend managed to discover this for me (again I seem to have a lack of common sense to check things like this although I had checked some other function whihc I thought might have been the problem!) and change the setting. Oh, and just in case you are thinking how stupid I must be not to have realised this, just try taking a look at the 200 page plus user manual for my phone. It is advertised as being `bilingual` but actually it is all in Japanese with only about five pages in English and these 5 pages basically just summarise the phone`s functions but doesn`t actually tell you anything. It`s a bit like those movies which advertise their stars as: ....starring unknown Mr. X, unknown Mrs. Y and `this other really big movie star` implying you should watch it. However, when you come to watch the film you realise that the `and` was the operative word and `this other really big movie star` only says about two lines and has about three minutes of air time. Does anyone have any idea what I am talking about? If so please tell me what you think of my theory.

Anyway, thats all I can manage today. The weather here is great today and I can tell Spring has arrived. We are just waiting for the cherry blossoms now. It will probably snow again tomorrow though but never mind. Not to make you jealous or anything, but the view of Gotenba and Mount Fuji from up in the hills today was was just sublime. At this point I would usually say `photos to follow soon`, but I actually forgot to take my camera with me. I won`t even tell you how annoyed at myself I was for that!!! Cheerio.

You might be surprised that I`m writing on a Friday but today is a national holiday in Japan to celebrate the arrival of Spring so I have the day off. Nice! Japan seems to have a few more national holidays than the UK but I am not complaining (no doubt anyone else is either). It gives me a chance to do a few things like clean my apartment, get a haircut, and catch up with emails and the journal - oh and of course, read about and watch coverage of the `war` - can we really call it a war though? I saw a good quote on the BBC website from a diplomat who said: "It's not a war - it's a unilateral show of muscle power to the whole world" - I tend to agree although I will spare you my ramblings on what I think about it all. Lets just say I not as optimistic as Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair seem to be about the apparent ease and simplicity at which they see this operation going and their future plans to rebuild the Iraqi country and political system, and I certainly do not agree with the contempt that the US and UK seem to have shown to the UN at a time when all we used to hear from them was `we need to use the UN and make it a UN operation, but then I guess Bush never cared about the UN and was never really going to listen to them when push came to shove and it was always going to be a US led operation anyway. I just hope that the annals of history will not record this event as a disaster for the world. OK thats all on this subject.

I managed to acquire some additional furniture for my apartment this week - I came into the ownership of a black leather chair and a couple of small waist high tables from a friend of mine who moved apartments. They make a difference to the two just below knee high ones I have now. Living in Japan certainly makes you have to bend down a lot. So I will probalby re-jig the layout of my apartment this evening when I go back home - I certainly have enough space to play around with it. What else can I tell you today? For once I am struggling for ideas but there is some other good news. The construction company have finally finished resurfacing the road outside the entracne to our building and they ahev just about completed the new bus station whihc seems to have taken an age to finish. To be honest, it doesn`t look much different to how it looked when I arrived two months ago, but the good thing is that at last we can teach without having deafening machinery noise coming from the street below.

I am not sure what I will do his weekend - I am trying to learn the Japanese alphabets (of which there are three - two manageable ones (Hiragana and Katakana) in terms of symbols and then there is Kanji - the complicated one built from Chinese characters which you can never fully master I don`t think). I already learned Hiragana and am now in the process of practicing and trying to read it at a faster pace - I tried to do a Japanese song last night at karoaoke but its still a little too fast - give it time and I`ll get there.

OK that`s all for today. Have a good one!

Hello there again. As I write this introduction I am immensly angry and annoyed because I just spent the last forty minutes writing about my trip to Fuji Five Lakes yesterday and when I went to post the text to the site the bloody thing crashed so I lost it all. I really want to swear, shout and punch something (maybe the screen?) but I guess I should just vent my frustration on making the second version better - although I suppose I could write anything and nobody would ever know any different. Oh, and I have also recovered from my Korean experience of the other day - it has really motivated me to try and learn to speak more Japanese so when faced with a similar situation I can help the people quicker and then go to bed sooner!

Well, as I said before, yesterday I went to Fuji Five Lakes with a friend of mine from Tokyo. Fuji Five Lakes (or `Fuji go ko` in Japanese`) are a group five lakes (what wonderful perception you need to have to work this out!) situated near Mount Fuji and are a bit like Lake Windermere in the Lake District in England for those of you who know it, but not as big I don`t think. The names of these lakes are Yamanakako, Kawaguchiko, Saiko, Shoujiko, and Motosuko of which Kawaguchi is the biggest and Shoujiko the smallest. Anyone who knows please correct me if I am wrong. The day started out grey and I was unable to see Mount Fuji from my balcony but I thought the rain might hold off. In fact I couldn`t have been more wrong and it is actually still raining now as I write and its 6.30pm the next day. The rain started at 2.56pm to be exact and I remember this because we had walked out of a restaurant and I had looked at my watch and only a few seconds later it started to pour. From that point on we didn`t leave the comfort of the car we had rented from Toyota and we made a plan to drive around all of the five lakes in turn - you do crazy things when you are faced with bleak weather and no prospect of it getting any better!. Anyway, about half way around the fifth lake (Motosukoko) we were confronted by a sign saying `Road Closed due to snow`. Obviously disappointed, but not surprised since the area had had very heavy snowfall the couple of days prior to this and the sides of the roads were packed with snow, we drove back around the half of the lake we had already seen and I guess you could say we completed our mission - in distance terms at least. To be honest, if you had gone to Fuji Five Lakes not knowing Mount Fuji was there you might have missed it as it was not visible the whole day due to heavy cloud cover. I have another chance to go to Fuji Five Lakes again in a couple of weeks time so here`s hoping the weather will be clear and I can see the great views that this area offers. I am going to pray every day until we go.

Before I write off today I want to tell you about the experience driving home from the fifth lake. Imagine for a moment you are driving along an unfamiliar windy mountain road, in fading light, and in heavy rain and also imagine you are trying to use a GPS car navigaiton system which would have you believe that the twenty or so kilometre route was one road and not as it turned out about four or five different roads made to look like a single one. These roads ranged from dual carriageway to what can only be described as dirt track. Add to this a few hairpin bends, a couple of construction and roadwork sites and a few big trucks and SUVs coming around corners far too fast and you will have an idea about how this journey was to complete. And all this because I had decided to take the longer way home around the far side of the mountain (which we hadn`t seen - well to be honest we hadn`t seen any of it yet that day) which I thought would be quicker. I should have asked a local, but the locals had too much common sense and had decided to stay in their homes on such a bad day. Needless to say I went wrong about five times or so and was that freaked out by the time I managed to see the sign for Gotenba through the driving rain that I went wrong a couple more times. It was fun though and I haev to say exciting. For a person like me who loves driving it was great and I really wish I had my own car here. I would let you know the number of the road so you might avoid it in the future but I can`t remember it - route four one something or other. Oh and another thing, this route was supposed to be the scenic mountain skyline road - it`s amazing what the weather can do to your perception of something that is meant to be such a beautiful experience.

Hi there again, time for my weekly ramble about life in Japan. I hope everyone is OK and doing well.

Lets start with a few photos - there are a couple taken from my classroom window last week when the weather was really good and the view was amazing and there are a couple more of Mount Fuji in all its glory - I can`t wait to climb it in July. Its really great just to stand and look at it - it gives you a kind of inspiration and motivation to try harder!

A view from my classroom window



Fuji-san in all its glory



Anyway, enough of that. This week has been pretty hectic - I had to go to Nagoa again for my second training course since arriving and then I had to stay over to attend a teachers` meeting at head office. As I said before, I really don`t mind going to Nagoya as I get to take the Shinkansen. The only bad side to the journey is that I have to change twice to get to Gotenba and the last bit of the journey coming home seems to take forever. But this time I studied Hiragana and think I could write out maybe 75% of the characters if you asked me to. My aim is to be able to read Hiragana and Katakana (foreign letters alphabet) in the next month. Challenging yes, but necessary - you bet!

I did have one intersting experience in Nagoya on Thursday evening. After we had finished dinner in the Izakaya recommended by Alan (my trainer and also the place I went to eat when I first arrived in Japan) and about an hour and a half of karaoke, I left two of my co-workers and was heading for the compnay apartment when I was confronted by two Korean guys in their mid-twenties. They had heard me say good night in Japanese and they asked me `Can you speak Japanese?` - so I say `Hai, chotto matte` (which means `Yes, a little bit`) and their eyes lit up. Their English was very good and they went on to ask me if I could find them somewhere to go and see and meet `girls` - like a bar or club of some sort. Taking into account that the time was about 2.30am and I had no clue about Nagoya, but I did have a certain confidence in my Japanese ability considering I had drunk about three or four beers, I set out to ask someone. To sidetrack for a second, the area around the station in Nagoya is where there are some lets say not so honest establishments and in this part of town there were old ladies standing in the street obviously soliciting for customers for the younger girls hidden away somewhere in a hotel (and sociliting them simply to meet a guy!). I had kind of gathered this and went up to one of them and said, `Sumimasen, baru wa doko desuka?` (meaning `Excuse me, where are the bars?`) - to this I get a puzzled look and then I ask them if they speak English (in Japanese of course) to which I get a firm shake of the head. OK, so this track is not working, so I start to ask `Onna wa doko desu ka?` (meaning `Where are the girls?`) the reply to which was `Hoteru` and a pointed finger somewhere north and I also heard the word `Taxi` somewhere in teh middle so you can work out the rest.

So here were are - its freezing cold, I am really tired (and my throat is hurting after singing so much), and I want to sleep, and these two Korean guys are looking at me with so much hope that I might be able to find them some entertainment on their only night in Nagoya before they return home. As I am such a nice guy (!) I decide to walk around with them to try to look for somewhere - the the two of them would basically walked into any establishment and say `Do you speak English?` before being met with the No, and Japanese only anyway. They kept telling me to tell the patrons they were Japanese but when I did, the partrons started speaking to them in Japanese and when they could not answer it was obvious to them it was a con. We didn`t actually find anywhere for them to go - one place was just closing - and they were a bit disappointed but thanked me for my efforts. I was actually surprised for a big city like Nagoya to kind of close down around 2.30am was interesting although there may have been other places I did not know about (and how would I!). In the end they tried to get me to ask the taxi drivers in the station (of which there were about 300) where they could go to see girls but I told them that I was going home. As I walked away I kept looking back to see them trying to describe what they were looking for and kept hearing - `we only want to see, not to sleep with` but it wasn`t going to work. Either you paid the extortionate amount of money the old ladies were quoting (I think she said 40,000 Yen which is about 250 pounds and I didn`t quite catch for how long) and they packed you off to the nearest hotel or you just simply gave up and went home - I wonder what happened to them in the end. I suppose the lesson of the story is: learn Japanese but don`t practice it in public as you never know what might happen - I just thought it was funny and a bit of a laugh at the end of the day.

Anyway, this weekend I will go to Fuji Go Ko (or Fuji Five Lakes) which are funnily enough five lakes in and around the Fuji area. I am planning to rent a car and go driving around a bit so it should be good fun. I also managed to catch a cold but I don`t think I will buy a mask just yet as many people who suffer from pollen allergy here do. at first I thought they wore masks due to the pollution, but then I thought `what pollution` and the true reason was discreetly explained to me by someone who was trying not to laugh at my understanding at the time.

Anything interesting happening in the UK these days? Did we go to war yet? To be honest, I don`t keep up to date as much as I would like but then again it wouldn`t make any difference as to what happens whether I did or not. But seriously, if anything of interest has happened please let me know - you know the email address.

Cheerio.....and have a nice day!

Hello again for those of you who have decided to return. Today I went to Izu Peninsula with my co-workers, a coastal mountainous region to the south of the main island, and very beautiful. After leaving Gotenba in bright sunshine it started to rain about an hour into the drive there (so obviously I thought we were back in England and strangely enough I had once again forgotten to take my umbrella as I had stupidly trusted the weather!) and we visited a famous waterfall along the way called "Joren no Taki" (meaning Joren`s waterfall) which was actually very beautiful to look and I got a couple of pics (see below). Its the kind of place that if you were alone as a tourist you would completely miss as its kind of stuck off to the side of the main road and when Yuko our driver suddenly started to indicate right and began to turn in to the car park I thought she had decided to stop for coffee! But it was worth seeing and somewhere I would definitely recommend if you are ever driving south on a main road somewhere to the south of Atami in Izu Peninsula in Japan as most of you obviously will be at some point in your lives...!!!

Joren no taki


So forever onward we then went to have Soba noodles for lunch which for those of you who do not know about noodles are the lightbrown type made from buckwheat and they are very tasty!. During lunch I cheekily managed to get Yuko to let me drive the car for the rest of the day - only took a couple of questions about insurance and I was away - so I did and it was really fun. After lunch we went to this type of mini-safari park which managed to cram in as many types of wild animal (and what looked like a model of a rhinocerous as it didn`t seem to move) as possible and to be honest it was good. Not so sure about the giraffes though (see below) - I happened to look in their direction just as one of them was starting to go to the toilet and the other was starting to have a good drink of whatever it was that was emanating from the former`s rear end! And after a few pictures of some other animals and a little walk we ploughed on to Jogasaki (on the eastern side of the Izu Peninsula) via the really scenic route 135 - or coastal drive as we might call it back home.

Giraffes in the Bio Park


Nice view in the Bio Park!


Well, we had originally planned to go on a pleasure boat for a cruise when we got to Jogasaki but we actually missed the last boat by 7 minutes (and remember everything is on-time in Japan so there wasn`t any point running for it). We hadn`t realised that in Winter the boats finished earlier than in the summer so we are little disappointed but we plan to return there in the summer (to join the other million or so other Japanese who will no doubt be there) and do it then. Jogasaki also has a suspension bridge - now you might think like I did that this means a large road bridge kind of thing that you can see from miles around - but I had misunderstood that this actually meant a small foot bridge (which was actually suspended) leading to a group of rocks and a great view of the Pacific. It didn`t matter in the end as it was quite impressive in its own way and we walked around and spent some time making fools of ourselves trying to take pictures of each other without any tourists getting in the way but its hard to do this when everyone wants to be in a photo with a Westerner (only joking! - well maybe!).

A View from the Bridge


The drive back to Numazu to catch the train home was great too - but as we had brought only a couple of CDs to listen to in the car (and might I add this car had a combination MD and CD player) we were on the 4th time through of Savage Garden when I finally cracked and tried to find something better on the radio. Alas, I couldn`t, so it was back to the 3rd time through of Sting! Not sure which is better to be honest. Although we did have an MD of some young American singer but I keep forgetting her name!

So that was Izu Peninsula - and we will definitely go back there soon I am sure. Tomorrow will be an easy day and I might take a Japanese lesson and read a book - who knows - maybe something even more amazing will happen to me! I suppose thats half of the fun of living each day as it comes. Ok, bye for now, and "Oyasuminasai"!

A bit of the Izu Coastline

Hi there - its me again. Well, what a weekend. Where should I start ...I hope you are sitting comfortably as I have lots to tell (so I very much hope you don`t fall asleep!).

After work on Saturday I went to Tokyo with my colleague to meet some other teachers and go out in Roppongi (an entertainment district of Tokyo where many foreigners go (and many Japanese too for that matter)). We arrived at about twelve mignight (about the right time for an all night clubbing evening, don`t you think?) and I had thought it would have stopped raining by the time we reached Tokyo as it had been raining very hard in Gotenba from about 7am to 3am and we had had flood warnings and everything (even the US Army boys higher up the mountain got stranded apparently). Therefore, I had decided not to take an umbrella because that wouldn`t have been cool, would it? However, in crossing the road from the school to the station we managed to get very wet - a hairwash each for free! - and then in Tokyo it was just as bad - I was starting to think that when it rains in Gotenba it rains everywhere. So, to get to the point, umbrellas are just as much a part of the club scene as normal life in Japan - the umbrella racks are just as plentiful outside the clubs as they are outside musems, for example.

View from Shinjuku, Tokyo


David Beckham has made it to Shinjuku too......


Around the Imperial Palace, Tokyo





So, when we in England talk about cloakrooms inside nightclubs we probably imagine a little pokey window with a woman serving you who looks as though she is about to stab you to death if you give her one more coat to hang up - and lets not even talk about complicating the matter by giving her two items on one ticket!!! - but here in Japan - or the club I went in on Saturday - there were enough lockers and SPACE to house about ten football teams including substitutes and all and nione of this window and raffles ticket rubbish. There was a 200 yen (about 1.25 pounds) charge for the locker but thats OK when you think about the fact you don`t have to queue for a lifetime on the way out either as you are straight to your locker and out again. The club was quite interesting actually - lots of smoke and glitter as you may imagine and everyone seemed to have illuminous light sticks which they kept holding up to the sky. Next time I will have to have one of those....and we all had a really great time. However, 3000 Yen (about 17 pounds) to get in was a bit steep although I suppose you pay for quality!

Before going to Tokyo I had actually misplaced my cell phone and after I had realised this fact, the train had already left Gotenba and I was in a bit of a state. I think I had left it on a bench in the station when I went to buy some tea from a vending machine. Anyway, there wasn`t much I could do at the time so I just left it. The next day, I heard that someone had called my coworker from my cellphone so this obviously confused him - he didn`t take the call as he was sleeping at the time and the guy who called didn`t leave a message. As it turns out, the guy who picked up my phone also called one of my Japaanese speaking friends here and arranged to meet her to pass the phone to her, but he was late so they missed each other. He then called her and told her he would put it in the GOES postbox. Remember all this is going on unbeknown to me who was miles away in Tokyo.

When I got back to Gotenba, I asked the Internet cafe manager, Ono, to come with me to the station to ask if had been handed in and then we went to the police station to report the fact that I had lost it. Three policeman in the office at 11pm at night - my event was big news for them and they went out of their way to help. Unfortunately there is only so many ways you can describe how you `think` you lost a cell phone and each time the story`s ending becomes more predictable. We also went up to the school to check again I hadn`t left it there. No luck. This morning I decided to come to GEOS to check whether it had arrived in the mail however I didn`t realise that the guy who found it had actually been up to the office and put it in the box we have attached to the door ! So, thinking about it, last night when I came to check to school again, I was actually standing about two feet from it not knowing it was there! To cut a long story short, I have the phone back and I am happier now. Lets just say I am quite lucky and very thankful to the guy who found it for getting it back to me. Maybe this is a crime free country afterall.

Another view of Mount Fuji - ain`t it just beautiful?


The other disappointing angle to the weekend was to do with sport. If you don`t know by now I am a Manchester United fan and we lost to Liverpool of all teams in the league cup final - what made it worse was the fact that I was so confident before the game but I maybe should have learned by now that when I get confident things tend to go wrong. And if we don`t win the European Cup then we will have no silverware again this year as we are not going to catch Arsenal in the league. Even I will be the first to admit that Arsenal have a little more quality at times. Also, please do not talk about cricket to me today - please tell me how England can go from being in a winning position in a game they really need to win to qualify for the super sixes to end up losing is beyond me! But, then again it is the England cricket team I am talking about, and we are playing against the best team in the world and sometimes you just have to say "well played". I don`t have a problem with a team being better than the one I like, its just disappointing to see England repeat this nearly winning but losing formula again and again. Maybe it comes down to belief at the end of the day. I don`t know. Lets hope Pakistan beat Zimbabwe and not improve their run rate enough to overtake us and qualify, although I am not sure what difference it would make.

Snow in Gotenba


Anyway, I can feel myself starting to ramble a bit so I will leave it there for today. Please feel free to write me at keveds2003@yahoo.com and let me know what you think of the journal and ask any questions you may have. Today I think I will take a Japanese lesson and try not to get blown over by the galeforce winds outside - or try not to get blown of my bicycle for the matter too. Ciao.....