Notes to Myself

Sumo

Have you ever seen sumo wrestling before? Back home in the UK I am not sure how we learnt about it, but I remember as children, my sister and I used to have pretend sumo fights in the living room. Later came E.Honda from Street Fighter II. I am sure he introduced the ideas of sumo to a great deal of children as Nintendo fever swept the world. I am yet to see a genuine 100-hand slap.

On Sunday I was lucky enough to have the opportunity of attending a day of sumo. Travelling to Tyogoku, Tokyo, I met lots of other ALTs (foreign teachers types) and it turned into a huge excuse for a natter (chat). We collected our tickets and decided it was time for lunch before entering the arena.

We ate at a karee, I mean curry restaurant not far from the station. Outside, the plastic versions of lots of curry looked too tantalising. Strangely, as is sometimes the case in Japan, you must pay for your dish using a ticket machine. It saves the workers having to deal with cash, but seems a little too automated. Behind us two huge sumos waited and ordered half the shop! I was surprised at how big they were, especially their heights. What great hair too!

Inside the kokugikan, the huge sumo building, it was hard not to be impressed. The place was huge! People sitting near the front sat on cushions sipping tea, while poor people - which seemed to include a billion foreigners like us - sat far far away, almost by Tokyo Tower. Still we could see what was going on below, underneath a fake suspended traditional Japanese roof!

So, sumo. The general idea being to force your opponent out of the ring or to touch the floor with something other than his feet. Some of the falls off the side of the fighting area were truely painful looking, but often the most entertaining moments. Before the actual slapping and pushing, there are long waits while the sumos move in and out of the fighting area and throw salt about, to purify the ring.

As the day progressed, more and more of the 'heavy-weights' came out, and at the end, the atmosphere reached surprising heights. I wasn't really in the mood to appreciate the intricacies of the cermonious style of the sumo world, but it still provided a very interesting day out.

Famous in Japan

During a recent visit to Tokyo's famous Harajuku district I took the following photo. Of course, Ayumi Hamasaki is a pop queen here, as seen on the right, advertising her latest 'Rainbow' album. I am starting to be disgusted with how popular our Mr Beckham is here, though. It's rediculous, he's everywhere, probably more so than in London.

As a side note, I am unsure of the future of this site at the moment. Would you all miss it if it were discontinued? Hmm, well, I want to keep writing, but I am having a motivational low in general right now. Thanks for reading.

Onsen

Can you believe that my first visit to a public bath, or onsen, was last week? 5 months along the line, and I've finally been.

It was especially soothing because it was during my icy Nagano trip. I was told it wasn't a traditional Japanese onsen and was perhaps built with foreigners in mind. Why? Because it was underneath a new hotel at the bottom of the ski slopes.

In the changing room, you leave your slippers in the entrance-way and undress, putting your clothes into a shallow basket. As a warning if you are shy, the towels provided that you can use to cover yourself are pretty small. Before you enter the main hot bath, you wash in the next steamy little room on a small stool.

Through the next set of doors it is extremely cold. You are outside! Under the hotel, you sit in a lovely hot pool, body relaxing while you feel the cold air on your face and see your breath over the water. Meters away very deep snow covers the ground. What a great feeling!

Dream Fall

As I talk about quite frequently, people love to sleep on trains here. Well, finally I have let myself fall asleep on trains. Actually I didn't really let myself: I just couldn't keep awake, and Harry Potter just fell to my lap. Feeling half-awake I my head popped up every now and then at various stations, but at some points I was dreaming! Do you ever realise when you are dreaming as you are falling asleep? Perhaps as you fall in and out of sleep? I like that feeling, though I find it rare.

So yes, I got a seat. Battling for a seat on trains is all well and good, but there is a down-side. That is the 'falling sleeper'. Especially bad late on Friday night, but it can happen at any time. Slowly, inch-by-inch, the person sleeping next to you starts falling in your direction.

It's quite funny when you see someone sleeping on another person's shoulder, unless you are that person, of course. I remember this happening to my female friend late one night on the way home. However, we wondered whether the man in question was actually asleep... I've been quite lucky that this hasn't happened much to me, but yesterday I was faced with one person on each side falling towards me! Maybe a quick elbow to the ribs was in order?

Ski

A whole week has passed without me 'speaking' to the internet. I do apologise, faithful readers, but I've been busy with one thing or another.

Last weekend, before the start of school term, one of my dreams came true. Yes, I went skiing. Yes, this time on real snow! I've tried dry-slope skiing (on plastic), on a big hill on the outskirts of London, but only a couple of times and that was a long time ago.

I travelled to Nagano with some teachers who kindly offered to take me with them. When I woke up from my sleep in their huge 4WD car, we were surrounded by snow covered mountains, climbing winding icy roads in heavy snowfall. This was my first time being in such a snowy environment, and I found it very beautiful indeed.

We only stayed for a couple of nights, but it gave me more than enough time to enjoy skiing. Not falling over on the first afternoon, I was extremely proud, and I seemed to recall the basics learnt back in London. Some areas of the slopes, even on the beginner courses were extremely steep and quite frightening, but in the end that made it all the more fun.

On the second day I fell over on a number of occasions trying to master parallel turns. Parallel turns are much more fun than turning in the 'delta' position, less painful on the knees, and of course, more challenging.

The heavy snow of the first afternoon became lighter by the second day. By the third day, the skies were an amazingly beautiful blue and the sights from the mountainside were stunning. I am not sure how many miles the eye could see, but mountains trailed off into the far distance and small towns could be seen between the mountains.

By the end of the day I was tired and my ski boots were really starting to dig into my poor shins, and I felt I had learnt enough for the trip. Whizzing down a mountain on skis is top notch fun and I thoroughly recommend going. Of course, I still want to try snowboarding.

Surprise Sales

The other day my friend looked through a shop window and pointed out lots of bags packed with items, all lined up. He told me that were sale bags, filled with mystery items. What? These bags are sold every year during the new year sales. You don't know what's inside exactly, only the general category of items. Was he having me on?

Yesterday I went to the shops and the sales were in full flow. There were so many people and outside the huge shops there were temporary selling areas, with the bags I previously described, being sold off.

[update - the bags are 'fukubukuro' - see comments]

New Languages

Things that look different to usual catch your eye. I mean a change to an environment you know. I find that interesting because you don't feel like you are looking or analysing much as your eye wanders over things, but obviously some thinking is going on.

This happened yesterday when I was riding on a train passed the usual stops. I looked at one of station name signs and something definately looked different. I looked again. There was another language besides Japanese and English. I think it must be Korean. [There isn't always English at every station, but normally hiragana as well as kanji.]

Is there a growing Korean population here? I was talking to someone the other day who thinks that soon all of the bilingual electronic message boards in Tokyo will start being tri-lingual, to include Korean. Or was it Chinese?

New Year

Happy New Year friends and strangers! 2003 is here just when you weren't expecting it and it's time for new resolutions and better behaviour! The best of luck to all of you, and I hope you will take a good while before failing to keep to your new resolutions. Haha.

You know, I am rather disappointed. A teacher at school said he'd try and arrange a homestay for me over the new year and I was looking forward to seeing the way a Japanese family really celebrates the new year: the traditional foods, the visiting of temples (or shrines?) and so on. As you can guess, nothing came of it my teacher's suggestion, so I didn't have a traditional Japanese new year. Well, not to worry. Did you have a good New Year's Eve? Is Angus Deaton still on the BBC? I miss TV I can understand.

I must apologise about the website still having the same problems on and off. My webhost says some bad ASP code on the same server is causing problems and that they are trying to locate the exact problem.