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 friends 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 I 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 protrusions 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).