About The Journal
Photo by: Sebastian Mayer
Hawken King is a designer and illustrator living and working Tokyo. He has been keeping and online journal since 1999 – this is it.
Brighton bound!
Published 3rd of Jan, 2003. Stored under diary
Awoke and had my bath, which is always relaxing in Japan. Firstly you shower down your dirty grimy body (or use a pitcher if your bathroom doesn’t come equipped) then when clean from head to toe, jump in the tub. Japanese baths are rather deep compared to western ones, they are also cramped for western bodies – although this is not a problem when used to the style.
After that I ate my usual breakfast which my girlfriend lovingly prepares each morning; consisting of a bowl of rice, a raw egg, some miso soup and a few satsumas. That may seem like a hearty breakfast but the concept of lunch is largely unheard of in Japan, with a slant towards snacking instead. This breakfast includes fish or ham (cooked). With luck, this breakfast should see you through till tea time!
We were packed up and ready to drive me to sendai for my 6 hour journey to narita airport, shoved all the stuff into the family space wagon plotting our course on the car navigation system. A car ‘navi’ is one of the best devices I’ve ever seen, basically a small flat wide screen on the dash that allows you to watch TV or know where you’re going via satellite – it may sound grand but its entirely commonplace in Japan’s gadget hungry populace. Typing in the destination by place name or telephone directory listing creates a route automatically with ETA checkpoints, busy road warnings, traffic light status and vocal proximity announcements – startrecking!
Some 2 hours later and we pass through Sendai cities toll gate, but the drive shaft on the front wheels pops out of place producing a grating grinding sound – not to worry, the space wagon is 4×4 so we keep on truckin! Later taken to a Nissan garage to get the front drive shaft disabled.
We ate cow tongue while watching the snow outside, saw me off and I’m alone once again – with a mountain of stuff standing outside a bus station. Wonder to my self when I’ll finally get settled! This transient life is never ending and soon I’ll be at Narita airport hoping my plane would tidy up my life by crashing into a mountain! I always wondered why the majority of suicides in the UK are committed by 25 year old males… But no! Life is something to hold on to. I have no diseases, I’m not living on the streets and I have found a new direction in life. Although that direction is against the clock now, Brighton beckons me & Sayuki, lets hope I can get a decent job on arrival!
Time to leave Japan again (the 4th time!) I’ll come back soon when I have my life sorted in the UK. shed a tear and close my book, my work here is done – I had fun!
scary bus
Published 28th of Dec, 2002. Stored under diary
Awoke under Kotatsu with my legs thoroughly roasted. Didn’t wake up the other guys around the table as they were probably too drunk to understand where they were anyhow! But I did turn off the Kotatsu so they didn’t roast to death. We snuck out of the front of the house and out on to ‘a road’… right quite lost now, must find the main road, probably the biggest problem in Japan is the way roads are laid out or rather the way they are sign posted.
Finally made it back to Yuki’s house and got cleaned up, fell asleep under another Kotatsu until late into the afternoon then continued on wards back to Tokyo, as our final destination is a town some 8 hours by bus. My girlfriend locked her keys inside her bag somehow, so we had that to contend with – plus the fact that we were lugging 4 huge bags on wheels!
After wisely going to the huge coin lockers in Shinjuku station we could continue our separate paths. Me to buy a nice digital camera for my friend (with my friends money, which I could have used for numerous activities) while my girlfriend went off to collect the tickets for our bus journey. Theres some fucking fantastic cameras about at the moment but all of them were just out of my reach. I did however manage to pick up a Nikon Coolpix 2500 with a 64mb card within my budget (only just), it runs in English and has a real zoom factor of x3 plus a footprint of 2.0 mega pixels… those specs may seem wonderfull but are just a drop in the ocean over here – most new cameras are tiny little toys but take a footprint of 4.0 mega pixels, and have an operating system to rival most PCs!
The bus we travelled on was rather odd. As long as a National Express but instead of the usual 2 seats on each side that don’t recline very much this bus has rows of 3 seats one on each side and one in the middle and they recline fully (to crush the knees of the person behind).
Lights off, front window curtains down, total darkness.
Karaoke!
Published 27th of Dec, 2002. Stored under diary
Not slept a wink since I left Cornwall on Thursday evening, really starting to show; from the stale sweat clinging to my balls, I am a mess! (I’ll continue to mix past and present tenses thank you very much) Hung around in Narita airport for a bit while my girlfriends flight fell out of the sky.
This really felt odd, like I wasn’t in Japan at all, it was my fourth time to arrive at Narita and somehow the clear vinyl wipe clean surface image I have of Japan is in need of a clean.
To my amazement I was able to speak Japanese ‘fresh from the bag’! Seeing how I didn’t really try to learn ever, not even while I lived in Tokyo for a year and even the six months I’ve spent doing practically nothing, it shocked me when the words flew outta my mouth! So I started talking at any opportunity until the Japanese bird fell from the sky and we started conversing in Englo Lingo. Always ironic, story of life one must belive.
A good six hours laters later and we had jumped the train out past Tokyo to the land of Karaoke & sex pubs, Kanagawa!
Met up with our old friend called Yuki and her brother at their nicely situated house, between SagamiOno and Machida… plenty of Convini (convenience stores), FamiRa (family restaurants) and KaraokeYa (foolish places to sing). By this time I was almost dead! My body had practically given up so when we had to spend another 5 hours waiting for Yuki’s New Zealander boyfriend to finish work (so we could all go to Karaoke together) I just went into a deep trance like sleep in the middle of a FamiRa. Possibly shouting, mumbling, dribbling and getting spontaneous erections within this trance, its always funny to wake up in a packed restaurant feeling highly self conscious.
Eventually the time came when we could depart, bound for Karaoke and the possibility of meeting some new faces. We drank, sang, drank, sang, drank and used about 3000 yen a piece – thats about 15 GBP – for the 4 hours or so of utter joy! Karaoke could never work in a western country, well not in the way it does over here. (click here for information on Karaoke).
We descended on a convini at about 6am buying up stocks of beer and food to be consumed at a Malaysian mans house, he is the boss of this New Zealander… we all fall asleep in front of the telly with our legs under Kotatsu (under heated table).
Japan bound
Published 26th of Dec, 2002. Stored under diary
After the insanely boring bus journey from Cornwall to London Heathrow, arriving at 5am, I sat and tried to stay awake the long 8 hours before my flight departed. As it was the day after Boxing Day there wasn’t the usual travel options to hand. The bus journey was in some ways better than travelling by train, as I would have. The major downside to all travel is that I can’t sleep a wink!
When flight check in time eventually came I wondered over to Terminal2 and right into the most shite system I’ve ever had the misfortune to be controlled by! Virgin had taken all the destinations and flight numbers out of the millions of check in points held to the virgin empire and instead manned four or five said points with the objective of checking in any passenger for any flight within the day!
Needless to say, the queue grew to gargantuan proportions spilling into other and out of their own slices of ground to sky domination.
Thirty minutes before my flight and two hours into resting a book upon my vaguely moving trolley, I was checked in. ‘oh you better hurry’ was the information uttered by my check in attendant seemingly oblivious to the fact that their incompetence was causing that days entire flight schedule to be grounded… the check in point next to me left a customer waiting while he casually wondered off returning some ten minutes later, two coffees in hand.
On my tickets it says ‘doors are locked 30 minutes before take off’.
My flight left in approximately twenty minutes, I still hadn’t been through the fake gold watch detector, my luggage still un scanned for sex toys, dead animals and explosive lighters.
Sod it! I bought time by running the 300 meters to the gate, as I just wasted another 10 minutes buying tacky London souvenirs to pay off my girlfriends family in Japan. As I got to the gate, and produced my boarding pass, the flight attendant asked me if I could speak any Japanese. ‘Can you announce a final boarding message for us? In Japanese?’ – I didn’t have much of a clue how to go about it so I declined, although on contemplation I could have done it.
Found my tiny seat on this new Virgin skybus sitting next to probably the most hated breed on earth (for myself); a female Japanese artist studying in London… so at least I didn’t have to talk very much! The entire contents of the seat sack… what can I call that place pushing into my legs laden with stuff? Anyhow, the entire contents of that place was covered in molten chewing gum. Given the opportunity to move I declined as sitting in the center of the place just ain’t my thing man. One vastly redeeming factor was the v.port system that was embedded within the back of each seat! Everyone could watch movies on demand… very cool. (the whole system ran on linux and crashed countless times, a right botch up. Half of the screens were in linux dos for the entire journey.)
As the speedy flight was drawing to a close, I treated myself to a trip to the toilet. Fantastic spaces, these new Virgin toilets on both their planes and trains… certainly enough room for mile-high club antics! It was rather dark inside but I could make out some graffiti scrawled into the plastic walls; ‘Virgin staff stole from me’ it said. Make up your own mind as to what that might mean!
burnt finger
Published 19th of Dec, 2002. Stored under diary
Wednesday and the last day of christmas shopping, at Truro.
Although I didn’t go to Truro for that reason, I was there on bussiness! After spending all night and morning finishing off the final samples for flyin times new site.
When I got to Truro after much wrangling in a town called Liskeard (some 40 miles away) unfortunatly the people who were meant to see the site in flyin time’s main outlet shop were… not home. No problem, many more things to do. Met up with a cool programmer guy who gave team dadako some work for a disability standards compliant site.
Got very drunk. Noticed how many of my friends drive when they are drunk (slightly worrying)
As I was talking to some friends of mine in a bar, my eyes suddenly rolled in the back of my head and lapsed into a much needed deep sleep. They huffed and they puffed but could not reawaken me! Eventually Damon (you’re rumbled!) took his lighter and proceeded to try and cook my finger in an attempt to rouse me!
Dazed and confused, I rose. There after I continued in my misshaps, falling asleap while waiting for my train, again on the train… like that till I arrived at my door.
oh fuck! christmas is coming! look out
beer! kababs! Gin!
Published 27th of Sep, 2002. Stored under diary
On friday myself and my sister went to see our grandmother for her 32nd birthday! She’s still alive and kicking, and was very pleased to see us.
The journey back homer took us through St.Austell, where I stayed to see my good friend gary. A few other people were at his house, I was even introduced to someone by name… but I didn’t have a clue who he was until told his old quake handle! We all went down to the pub for some beers. Pubs in St.austell are fairly dire.
After meeting tons of people I used to know (and hang out with some years back) we all decided that it might be a laugh to go and visit the local nightclub. It was empty, not a suprise. Had a good time dancing anyhow, to music that sounded like it was being played in the house next door. Ate a kabab, felt highly sick.
Went back with friends to a friends house where we drank Gin all night, chatted a fair amount and played playstation. Felt like I had never left Cornwall, for a few seconds.
Well I haven’t been that drunk for a long time, and it felt very good!
friday the 13th!
Published 12th of Sep, 2002. Stored under diary
spooky!
I shall be travelling to Falmouth today, I’ve not been there for years and years. In fact the last time I went, I saw some breakdancers down at the Pirate, maybe a visit to there is on the cards again.
exersise
Published 31st of Aug, 2002. Stored under diary
I’ve been doing kendo exersises for a few years now, not that I do kendo however.
And I do it so that I can sit at the computer longer without getting cramps, it can also give you that get up and go on cold days. My sisters flatmate was looking to give up smoking by fasting as a detox. Then it hit me, I’ve been self fasting for years by total accident.
I sit usually go untill the last possible second until eating. That combinded with the exersises puts me in a perfect position to give up smoking again! (I gave up for two years, but started again three years ago in japan)
Smoking IS bad for ones health, but as a good friend said, its not bad for your soul. We are just walking lumps of meat after all, some of us infect that meat, others less so.
Should I give up smoking? Would it really change anything?
Nah fuck it. I enjoy to smoke. I can be the smoking ninja computer man… thin as a rake. But, healthy. Is it possible to be healthy and smoke?
Well I’m a living experiment.
Cornwall
Published 24th of Aug, 2002. Stored under diary
did a few days work at Victoria Real last week after a nice little interview the other friday… they are nice guys. I hope they’ll be getting me in to do some more projects soon.
I’ve been spending an ugly amount of my time on the computer, fixing websites, making a game with headstate, looking for more work (oh the joys of freelancing!) and basically living in a house with my who family for the first time in 10 years!
Things will get slightly worse before they get better is my bet. Need a house asap. Somewhere to be alone, somewhere to do my work. Brighton was the destination, but I may try to pick up a few nice teleworking contracts and rent a place down here in Cornwall, to chill and save money. Also to get my fiancee over from japan, which is important, without a house… ‘am DOOMED!
Bungled attempt!
Published 13th of Aug, 2002. Stored under diary
I decided to take a lift with my mother in her rented car to Bristol, on her way upto Yorkshire to do the things she has to do. (shes a landlady, but usually lives in south Africa!)
After trying to find my friend Adam we gave up for being totally lost. We were given directions from junction 16 on the m5 but told to come off at junction 19 mistakenly… so I told my mother to continue on her journey and I would find my way on foot. Adam has done quite well for himself working as a chef, recruited by an old school friend of ours.
Adam and myself drank the night away, then decided to take the last train back to the station closest to his house. This is where we broke our first bottle of san miguel beer, as Adam put his bag on the ground too swiftly. We later bought another two bottles off beer to take with us but it would end up that these beers were in danger too.
When we left the train it was quite late, being wise to the ways of Bristol we delayed our exit from the station just incase someone tried to try something on. As it happens we were very cautious but still got caught out… we let the two previous brothers walk to the end of the path, although I wouldn’t call them brothers, they spoke of a different regional accent, and then descended the stairs as the coast was clear, but two guys who obviously were brothers (by brothers Bristol people mean to say black people who will mug you) walked just a little too close, on the this dark station path, and grabbed me by the arms. I wriggled free while they kept on trying to trip me up by kicking me in the leg (?), I did fall over in the end and cut my arm, then Adam was picked on as I ran to a relative distance of safety, the two guys chased him about a metre as Adam ran into a shopping trolley! His two bottles of beer became ammunition at this point and he lugged them smashing on the floor in front of the two bungled muggers. We were both able to escape without much damage.
On the journey home through the maze of streets that is Bristol, we, too drunk to do anything but run off, tried to reason why we were picked on and how they bungled what must have been their first ever attempt at mugging. They didn’t have any weapon to speak of, no motive, and Adam is quite stocky, whereas I’m 192cm tall. We see it as waste of time on their part and ours. The problem was mostly that Bristol is shite and I’d never think of living there, hell London was enough, I’m totally passive when drunk, and would rather live in more passive surroundings – like Brighton.
sunny weather
Published 5th of Aug, 2002. Stored under diary
well, I’m back in cornwall, finally got my modem to work (thanks for the new drivers gazz), managed also to set up the dialer… not easy in japanese windows.
Besides from that, little else has happened to me. Still looking for a job. Sunbathing a lot. Enjoying living in my sisters house (east cornwall, UK), which is HUGE! It’s right on the corner of an estate (a land estate, not a housing estate) and totally surrounded by fields and farmers.
One problem about the nice weather is that we tend to get a lot of flies in the house during the day, they seem to fly up from the fields and into the garden.
But nothing can compete with the massive dragon fly that made its way into the house today! My god was that a mother of a beast, about eight inches long (20cm) dive bombing for my head… sounded like a fucking helicopter! Luckily my sisters kitten/cat took care of the intruder and chased it outside.
its all go!
That cat is currently climbing on my shoulders as I type.
London Sucks
Published 24th of Jul, 2002. Stored under diary
London, I hate you.
Trying to find a bloody job is impossible, although I’m not looking for a job in London, thats where I am at the moment, off to see crazy steve tomorrow, saw lovelly Lloyd from Kleber and Anson angst Harris from WCRS yesterday, drank lots, remembered that London is sort of OK if you’re sloshed.
One thing I can’t work out though… why does everyone look down over here? Madness. Come on London… Lighten up!
Leaving Japan!
Published 9th of Jul, 2002. Stored under diary
A strange morning of hurryment, was what I expected, but infact all I did was take a shower, ring a taxi then connect with a bus that would take me to narita airport three hours before my flight. I changed the remaining twenty thousand yen that still clung to my wallet for a hundred quid on the nose. That was all the money I had in the universe, and it wasnt even mine. I had to borrow about fourty thousand yen… that was offered to me, as the money from my friend didn’t appear in my bank account the 10 days I waited for it to clear.
Sent a few postcards and spoke on the phone to my girlfriend.
I’ve never had any trouble at airports in my life, untill this day. It turns out that because I overstayed three days longer than my visa the assholes at the airport wanted to take me into central tokyo (about three hours away). Luckily I pleaded my insanity and laziness and they charged me four thousand yen and send me on my way. Well, its not totally like that. They took twenty pounds off me, so I’m now down to about eighty pounds… just enough to get back to Cornwall, maybe.
Japan has treated me as well as it has bad. The cost of shipping a box by air from Japan to the UK is 500% more expensive than the other way around!
Everything costs something. After living without money or a job for a few months has taught me this well. Now I return to the majesty of gray skies and outdated technology, a nation of technophobes without a clue of how things could be run if different. Its a dog eat dog world – Japan is not excluded from this saying, as it soon became clear. Every country thinks ill of one another, negativity is easy to find in the world but if someone is putting extra doses of floride in the Japanese water suply, I wouldnt be suprised. Japan is an ever hungry learing sponge, without much predijuice or ill thought.
Well onto a plane I leap. It feels wrong, I should be staying! Just when I learnt a reasonable level of Japanese too! Its going to be hard to change my brain and reading style.
After leaving Hong Kong and flying all the way to the UK, I noticed that flying really doesn’t take that long anymore, for myself. When I first took a 12 hour flight to San Francisco in 1995ce it felt like an entire year before we touched down. But this flight felt like I just got on a bus for a bit.
My remaining eighty pounds bought me a heathrow express ticket to Paddington station, a young persons railcard, a train ticket to Cornwall and a cup of tea. I was spent! To my suprise my old Nokia phone still works. First thing to do was to call the guy who was meant to send me that bloody money!! Turns out he gave it to his mother and she, being on cornish time, took over 10 days to get around to taking the said cash to the bank… even though he stressed it was urgent! They eventually did send the money, two days before I touched down. Now I have to go through some amazing bollocks to get the money back!
Its fantastic to be alive.
Disney!
Published 29th of Jun, 2002. Stored under diary
It was my birthday last monday (24th) and I went to tokyo disney land!
Embrace what you hate
Wow! Japan is becoming strange now, both of my best pals have left now, dave and klaus. Its just me, trying to hold on with minimum cash reserves before the big move to the uk on the 11th of july.
I am looking for work, should anyone be interested 
solar eclipse
Published 10th of Jun, 2002. Stored under diary
Jun 10, just incase as all times on this diary are GMT and I’m on +8 currently
there was a solar eclipse this morning, no-one noticed and it wasnt on the news, it was 45% at 7.45 am… I had the feeling I was the only person in japan who knew or watched.
It was rather cloudy in the morning, and was hardly noticable for the 30 or seconds that the sun was partially obscured.
Radio off!
Published 24th of May, 2002. Stored under diary
Ooo! I miss hanging out at trendy parties, sipping wine with media luvvies and getting so shitfaced drunk I don’t know which side of up is up.
Well, all my dreams were answered as my old work mate here called Klaus sent me some cryptic information via email about having a drink or four. We got some tucker in as cheap as we could then headed out to another station around midnight.
Klauses phone shut itself off. May seem like no big thing, but it fucking reset itself… back into Japanese language and cleared the entire contents of his address book! Great, we now had no directions for the party or anyone to contact so we could get there. I stopped a Japanese couple in the street with my half drunken level of Japanese (which is quite good!) and got them to fix his phone back into displaying English once again.
Klaus luckily found some scrap of paper in his back pocket with a guys phone number on it. We were back in the game! Off to the party!
On the way to the party I found a guy walking down the street, I knew him from the other big night out beforehand (see below post) and I dragged him to the party too, turns out thats where he just left, but didn’t mind going back for some more Klaus+Hawken powered mind boggling drunken stunts, which we did ten fold.
The night finally had to end, I think it was when we lost the power of sight, myself and Klaus staggered off home. Amazingly we were able to find our way back on track to Harajuku (where we both used to live last year). On the way, Klaus photocopied his ass in full colour at the local kinkos…
!
To the amazement of the waiting staff and customers, he copied his ass 5 times and left. We held an improvised modern art statement to equal even Spencer Tunic by placing photocopies on the windshields of parked sportscars.
With that and drinking/singing/shouting ontop of local monuments and no access parks, we were the proper hooligans Japan has been warned about.
Lost badge
Published 17th of May, 2002. Stored under diary
Met up with Colin and Dave for some heavy drinking and chat, we were meeting Katsura (my old work mate) and a few of her friends came along too. Trying to avoid what is commonly called a ‘gocon’, being three guys and three girls, we ate drank got merry
After this merriment had finished the three ladies concerned went home. Shibuya is a nice place to meet up with people because of all the fine establishments to hang out at.
It was about 11pm, the adventure had just started. Myself and Dave went to meet some of Daves mates at ‘Hachiko’ the infamous dog statue outside Shibuya’s main train station exit. We met with some folks of diverse backgrounds and drank as one. Colin went home.
After hanging out until 3am in one place (for some reason), we decided to head off clubbing at Yellow. The que was massive, so I buggered off to roppongi to see my girlfriend, I hate roppongi, its a dirty smelly place full of westerners! Bit like soho, london.
First off I was with some guy called Tim and a Japanese guy who spoke like a rapper directly from the ‘projects. We actually ended up at a hostess bar, for the uninitiated, this is a place where men go to be chatted up by paid women, the charge is something like 6000 yen an hour (about Âœ30) to have some Russian lady wearing next to nothing, pour you drinks and chat you up. To touch her body costs 1000 yen per touch.
Luckily we had no money and the Japanese guy ran the bar!
Before we could get to finishing our drinks we decided to leave, it was just too much. My first experience of a hostess bar, and without indulgement we left. Its a pretty strange business, and pays well for the girls working. Near my house theres about 30 such clubs and I live in a tiny little backwater town with one bank and a police station the size of a bathroom.
Theres also about 10 pachinko parlours near my house, maybe I’ll go into what is pachinko another day. 
We danced at the club next door for a bit, with Tim desperately trying to get a catch, although the concept was a little odd to him and he came away empty handed. I had my girlfriend there, so no distractions for me.
After leaving, I noticed that I must have snagged my bag on the coin locker where I stored it, as my Green Blue Peter badge had been torn clean off!
The badge has history, it was the first to be issued to the public! I wrote to Blue Peter in 1989 telling them to stop using polystyrene in their homemade Christmas decorations as it released CFC gasses into the atmosphere thus destroying the o-zone layer we once had.
Bright kid, where the fuck was that sensibility when I staggered home half dead on a œ80 night out loosing not only my badge but my shades too! (they fell off as I climbed off the train, retrived just out of the nick of time by an old lady standing behind closed train doors)
So from this day onward, I am never going carry anything precious, in fact I shall be wearing a brown sack and living in a barn now…
new site
Published 10th of May, 2002. Stored under diary
I made something! not much going on these days as I’m not working but I am doing little bits of freelance work here and there, japan is a hard place without contacts, and money… luckily, I still have a little bit of both!
Me, the website renewal artist! Who’d of thought it eh?
Next I’m might re-new some pub and eaterie sites out here, it pays the rent, ahem. All good, all good. Cyber cafes are expensive though… and thats all I have, cyber cafes and a shitty old steam powered laptop.
the site, dont ask me what it says:
http://www.meibi.or.jp/
eve’nin
My Golden Week Holiday! prt.4
Published 4th of May, 2002. Stored under diary
We drove out to a large dam with the host’s son, in his passion wagon. A love mobile that seated 8 people easily, only played abba songs through a headache inducing subwoofer and had blacked out windows all the way to the windshield!
We joy rode here and there, even to some wooden cabins with a natural spring! (strange stuff this, a river, with bubbles) then on to a cafe p pstop place that hadn’t changed in 30 years. My favourite type of cafe.
The tour ended and we all went back the house. This house was incredible, and old. Old Japanese houses are starting to get thin on the ground so I do infact feel very lucky to see such a sight. We watched no-rules wrestling on the TV (K1 vs Pride) which gave great entertainment to all, although when the guys face slowly got more and more covered in blood I was slightly put off my food. Then in true Japanese tradition, all of the 8 or 9 people gathered around the floor level table fell instantly asleep! all of us lazing there in the mid afternoon sun, sleeping on the tatami mats, like a pack. A very animal and safe air was about this such procedure. Something I’ve yet to find in another western civilisation, Japanese seem to take comfort in big numbers – but that is a public moment, where courtesy must be met and rules obeyed. Private moments are usually one on one with Japanese people, more than one can cause confusion with formalities, so thats the way they like it.
Younger Japanese are starting to break this aging system apart, but still have the ingrained procedures that make Japanese families so strong.
An evening walk in the woods led us to no monkeys but instead to some shy Japanese kids of the age 17 / 18 or there abouts. They requested a photo or five with the funny looking ‘kakoi’ foreigners. I was able to speak minimal sentences and they seemed very nice. Everyone in the countryside had natural curiosity to the French and English faces that were thrust out there, natural meaning, they had only welcome and warmth to show us, natural in the respect of a babies curiosity.
In the city, being stared at holds a very different sentiment indeed, although as a gaijin I’m bound by my countries customs to either look away or try to stare out. Or talk, stick out my tongue when drunk!
The time came to come back to Tokyo. A joyous and eventful holiday. Best of all, I didn’t spend a penny!
My Golden Week Holiday! prt.3
Published 3rd of May, 2002. Stored under diary
What did today have in store for me then!?
Well if memory serves me correctly I think we went out to see another temple with its famous samurai graveyard, the name of this temple was Hodaiji. The temple its self was massive, beit closed, but the graveyard was very interesting. I was standing here looking at some tombstones of samurais 700 years past, cool! The tombs were in the shape of little houses, with little faces on the outsides peering at me quite menacingly. Me the Gaijin Devil
As we were walking back, with our cameras spent, I fell behind to walk with the French chap and the Lord of the house we were staying in (an old man in his 60’s who looked at least 50, and could probably do shot putting in the Olympics) when an old woman on her bicycle road past, looked at our host and just said ‘nani, shashin?’ which in basic terms means ‘what’s that? taking photos?’, then proceeded to ride away. Odd I thought, no hello, no good day, no goodbye. It turns out that she was in the old mans class at school some 50 years ago! In Japan it seems ok to drop all formalities if you know someone well, although I wouldn’t try it to this extent.
We said our goodbyes to our gracious hosts, heading out for Yokama. Tomorrow is Sunday, May the 5th, Boys day festival in Japan. Many of the rich or temple owning families have suits of samurai Armour on display, to the rest of the living this is quite impossible, but they don’t half like hanging bloody great big 20 / 30 foot long flags in their gardens! These flags were everywhere in the countryside, they are in the shape of the Carp fish, and just as colourful. There is a hole in the mouth a bit like a wind sock, so when the wind really picks up they inflate to stand horizontally in the sky. A monstrous and overwhelming sight. As fabrics became cheaper, I suppose the flags got bigger, and these days they really are huge.
We got to our destination but the hosts were out working, so we took a detour up a another mountain, this time is was a seriously large mountain which made my ears pop. At the top, for some bizarre reason, is Japan’s first milk farm. The cows were shipped over from England about a hundred years ago. The farms name is ‘Kozu Bokujo’, me and the cows were the only foreigners about, even though this place was packed out. Lots of animals, real milk (milk in Japan tastes like its been nuked) for a change, lots of people burning their names into wood with branding irons. (really!)
Met the new family, which had the name Aoki, same to Gen’s parents, and 3 other neighbouring houses. No sooner had we done that than we were whisked off to sit in another onsen (called ‘Ara Fune no Yu’ or ‘violent battleship spring’ in my shoddy translation). This onsen was mixed! but only every other week, not this week. Water was a bit better than the others, quite busy though.
Back to the house for more food and beer! Mr Aoki (Gen’s father) proclaimed that I ‘drank like a fish’ to which he kept filling up my glass on his mission to drink me under the table. I probably cursed him in my sleep.