My new flat is wonderful...
And what a strange end to the week!
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Hello you lot,
At work I think we might be getting somewhere with my issues, but it still feels like we have a long way to go.
Went almost straight there. Watched a program about the history of Radar from the American perspective and the program seemed to put forward the idea that Vietnam was a test run for the Gulf wars and how Sad-ham Whose Insane was a worse threat to world piece then Hitler! He was a very unpleasant man but I don't quite think he threatened the whole world as much. Well, I suppose they have to justify GWII some how. Other wise it was a good program and I enjoyed watching TV that I could understand. On Tuesday at work I feel that we are getting close to a solution, just need to get over that final barrier. But as always other things that you hadn't expected stop you from moving forward.
When it was time to go home it was pissing it down! I tried to cycle home as fast as I could but kept getting held up by pedestrians. Here in Japan you Cycle on the pavement and don't go on the road! It is quite fun coming up on people and ringing your bell and watching them move out of the way. Its like bike have right of way on the pavement. This doesn't work that well if you get a westerner in your way. They just look at you with the expression, "What are you doing on the foot path? You aren't using your feet!" They will learn. The new place has a gas stove but I couldn't light it so had to go out in the rain to get a lighter. Had a bath, its even smaller and taller then the one in my old flat. Its not bad though. Plugged the laptop into the Internet connexion and "Bing!" I was online. It was quite strange listening to Jeremy Vine show on Radio2 while having dinner.
I think I had a good nights sleep but was awake at 5:45. Checked my email and guess what? By Jove we've just gone and done it! Supper, now all a have to do is wait until I go into work to try it out. Had a cycle to see if I could find the Rainbow Bridge, enjoying the lovely Spring sunshine. No sign of the rain that fell last night. Did over 8miles before heading off to work. Tested out the new s/w from the UK when I got in. Yes! It does what the customer wants. Great. That is a load off my mind. Now all I have to do is get the customer back on board... At lunch time I took my suitcase to the flat on the back of Bikey-san. It worked really well. Just had to tape it onto the back supports. Found the afternoon really hard work as I was feeling very tired.
Got lost a bit on the way home and ended up doing an extra couple of miles. Ate diner listening to a tribute for the Late Bob Monkhouse from the Radio 2 website. (Yet another sadly missed person who passed on recently) The internet is a wonderful thing for us Ex-Pats! I love listening to the Radio back in England and now that I have the internet I can do it once more. Its even better in some ways, because you can Pick the show you want to listen to, its like having a Radio Video Recorder! Long live BBC Radio! Must see if I can catch up with the Archers tomorrow. Looks like my Brother, Simon, will be coming over to visit me on the 19th. That should be fun, but finding a way of meeting up when he gets here, could be a problem. I do hope his Mobile works here. Well, I have sent him as much info as I can and it is up to him from now on. I suppose that if everything goes wrong he will just have to get a Taxi to the office. It is just they are so expensive 3,000-4,000yen to go about 3 miles. By contrast the Subway would only cost 170yen. On Thursday Morning I wrote him an email while listening to Sounds of the Sixties from the Radio2 website. (No, I am not being paid by the Beeb to advertise their services but it is so nice to be able to listen to stuff that you can understand, both in language and culture) I was sitting in the sun, on my balcony, drinking Orange Juice while doing it. Now this IS nice... The troublesome Japanese customer who was very angry with us is now back on board, he even phoned me! Good to know that we have solved this problem. Toshiko-san has given me the address of a book shop that sells Birthday cards and I will see if I can get one for my sister this weekend as it's her birthday on the 14th. The Japanese don't do birthday cards and I haven't been able to find one yet. She might have to put up with a home made one at this rate. After work I went for a cycle to see if I could find the local Ito Yokado but spectacularly failed even though I did see the rooftop sign at one point but the road didn't go the way I wanted and after about half an hour I decided I was completely lost and headed for home. If I could figure out where home was. Luckily it was a clear night and I could see the north star and I decided to head east until I came upon the main rail line to Shinagawa. I did find a very cheep veg shop in the process but doubt I could ever find it again. When I got to the Oimachi station I heard the most musical tune at the start of a platform announcement that I have ever heard. It went on longer then the message. Finally I know where I was when I came across Gotanda err but that is north of Oimachi? So what was that start I thought was the north star? I don't know... That night I when I finally got back, I bought some Sake to celebrate me moving and solving the customers problem. Do you know that they sell the stuff in 1.8 litre bottles? Now that is a good party! Listened to the Archers from the Radio4 website and slept very well, the first time in over a week. So much so that I was slightly late for work, well by five mins. Kevin said that he had to go back to Canada on Sunday because his Farther was going into hospital, and he had only just come back from there. This week has been just one string of bad news after bad news. Kevin asked if me and Reza are still up to going out to Night, and we say yes.
After work I cycled home to get changed and then cycled to Roppongi. I got a bit lost and ended up on the wrong side of the road and had to travel about 1/2 a K further down the road before I could cross it. I was concerned about being late but Kevin and Reza were even later then me, so I needn't have. It was a "Gentlemen's Club" called Private Eyes where you could eat and drink all you wanted for 5500Y (GBP28) from 7 to 9. It was the first time I have ever been to such a place. I suppose that the English equivalent would be Spearmint Rhino. The floor show was quite interesting. One woman came over to us and started to talk, but it was only to get us to by her a drink. She was nice enough but we were more interested in ordering food and I was still a but unsure of the place and hadn't had anything to drink yet, so hadn't relaxed enough to really start to enjoy it. Two of Kevin's friends met us there, John who is French but works in Japan for a US company and Joey who produces movies. At the moment he is working on a film about a girl's last week alive. He has got Sarah Michelle Gellar (Yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as the star but he doesn't even know if it will get made yet. He showed us a picture of him and SMG that was taken earlier that week. The studio wants to re-write the whole story to give it a happy ending, she doesn't die in the end, thus making the whole thing irrelevant. We talked about the Movie/TV series that we were thinking about and Joey told us the trouble he had when opened a Business account with Mitsubishi Bank. The manager said that he didn't want to give him an account because he didn't have a "Relationship" with him!? After about an hour of telling the bank manager about the film, he finally got the man to open him a bank account. Another woman, a Russian, came over to us, she was very attractive but only wanted us to by her a drink and made it obvious. Which we found a bit of a turn off. Then a girl who looked a bit like Brittany Spears came over to us and she was quite different for the first two. She came from Seattle and I asked her, "Does that make you a Seatllite?" She wasn't stupid either, she had originally come over to Japan to teach English, and even knew the main religions in Persia/Iran. Reza was very impressed by this. Her email was a very good word play as well. We didn't buy her a drink but when it was her turn to do a stage show she got some nice tips! Boy, she is good at Exotic Dancing and she really seems to enjoy it and it comes across in her performance. I think both Kevin and Reza enjoyed them selves. I just liked watching... I have no idea what sort of career she wants but I think she will do rather well in what ever it is she does. Then we went on a bit of a pub crawl, to cut a long story short we ended up at a place with a delegation from the EU. And I got talking to a Japanese Jazz singer who is now working for the EU for Public and Cultural Affairs. She was a good dancer and we did Salsa and Meringue to allsorts of music. About 4:30 I went home on my back and got stopped by another Policeman for running a red light. Have they got it in for me? After checking Bikey-san registration he let me go. I got home and crashed out about 5:00
Sunday was rained off, I slept for most of the morning making up for the sleep I hadn't got the day before. We had an earthquake at sometime during the night and it was really strange being woken up and the whole building swaying. Pots and pans crashed to the ground in the kitchen, after it finished, I thought no more about it and fell asleep again. Around 11:00 I went to see if I could find the local Ito Yokado. When I went to get Bikey-san he had gone! Well, I couldn't see him where I parked him last night. Had he been stolen? Oh, No! Then I saw him on the path below! He was the right way up and it looked like nothing had happened to him except he had moved in the night! After looking at the scratches on his handle bars I figured out what had happened. The earthquake must have caused him to fall off the road and on to the path below and someone had picked him up and put the right way up.
Then in the afternoon I went for a short cycle but it started to rain so went home and had a bath instead. Then listened to Radio2 on the internet. What IS going to happen next week? I think that Princess Louise is almost right about the fact that Japan just gets better and better to longer you stay here. Personally though, adjust it to say it gets stranger and stranger in a better way. Who, what, and how will next week turn out? Stay tuned... Cheers me dears. Paul Fincher.
[Week 1] [Week 2] [Week 3] [Week 4] [Week 5] [Week 6] [Week 7] [Week 8] [Week 9] [Week10] [Afterwards] |
On Monday Morning I was up quite early so spent the hour or so I had, before needing to leave for work, tidying up the flat. Toyed with the idea of going to work with my rucksack and the laptop and a plastic bag with the bits left over but I could stand the idea of travelling on the Shinjuku line with a rucksack on my back. Was glad I didn't in the end, as the Shinjuku line must have known that this was to be my last morning on it and put on a specially crowded service for me. When I had to get off at Morishita I physically couldn't move my arm to get the laptop bag off the rack until some people had got off and freed up some space. I was very relieved that will probably never have to do that trip again!
I went to pick up the key for my new flat at lunch time. I had to go on the Oedo line up past Roppongi and through Shinjuku to the north side. It was quite simple to find the letting office in fact. It just took longer then I thought. After signing the paperwork I handed over 137,000yen and the flat was mine. Back at work I stayed late so that I could talk with the UK about things. It is now easier that they have changed to BST. I then went back to Ichinoe to get my rucksack and did some washings and finished up the food by making dinner. After I had finished it the washing was done so I packed up the last of my stuff and shut the door, locked the door and posted the key through the letter box. That was that, Ichinoe is a nice enough place but its too far out of town and that flat was doing my head in. When I got back to the office I did some more work about solving the problem with the UK. About 22:00 I locked up the office and listened to the alarm system saying the she hoped that I hadn't had a hard day at work. Surreal. Then I cycled off on Bike-san with the rucksack on my back to my new flat.
Learnt that not only Sir Peter Ustinov died, a great loss of a fine entertainer and all round good man, but that Kevin and Louise had spit up and the that David Y and Sakamoto-san had both handed in their notice. Then Alistair Cooke had died. What a day, what a day! Dropping like flies... will there be any good news?
Had an email conversation with the UK office. To cut a long story short at 23:50 Japanese time, we had a breakthrough. Yes! 
Before I left I asked Toshiko-san where there were any good shops around where I lived. She told me to go to Meguro and Ebisu. I cycled there before having dinner. Ebisu had a very good food shop that wasn't that expensive but still think that I will have to find the local Heart Attack around here. Hope there is one. 
Being
Friday, it was David's last day so we went out for lunch at the Sushi place Matt
took me to last time. 
We went to MTV to deal with an Oxtel Problem in the afternoon. It was just up the road in Roppongi, almost net to the awful Gas Panic, hope tonight's place isn't going like that. I was able to sort out a couple of issues they had there and succeeded in getting them to upgrade their s/w. They were a very nice bunch of people, especially the Woman who translated for me.
Saturday was a glorious spring day so I phoned Louise and she said to meet up around 2:00 to go to Yoyogi Park and Hanami under the falling Blossom Petals. 
After a lovely afternoon we all went back home and I said that I might meet up with Margaret later that night but when she phoned about 23:30 I was just too tired to go out. I was still recovering from last night/morning. And couldn't handle two such nights out on the town. Sorry Margaret, I would if I could have... Still I will make it to your Sayonara party on the 10th! Promise!
I seceded in finding Ito Yokado this time.
I found a lovely cannel with Cherry Blossom on its banks that has started to
fall like snow. Its much easier in the day light. Japan definitely needs
Daylight saving! I would then have longer to explore in the evening until it got
dark. They are as bad as Queensland was, back in the mid seventies, probably
think the extra hour of daylight will burn the grass! At Ito Yokado it was 10%
off Sunday so I got lots of meat and had bacon and egg sandwich for lunch.