FujiQ Highland [富士急ハイランド]

...Oh bugger.

Was the main thought going through my little grey cell (there was only one left as the other 3 had inexplicably left on some kind of vacation) as I plummeted at high speed backwards towards the ground...which would have been fine, I guess, if the large contraption which was now in full control of my life hadn't-midfall- decided that the best thing to do was to swivel my seat to get a better view of what felt like impending doom.

Just a few moments ago, the ride had trundled suspiciously peacefully along the track facing us backwards up the big slope to the top of the ride, facing us towards the majestic mountain scenery that surrounded the amusement park. I had been thinking calm happy thoughts, trying to quell the queezy sensation which had been lurking in the depths of my stomach while I had been queuing, and taking nice deep breaths (so that I could potentially scream louder, without initiating some kind of heart attack), and forcing myself to enjoy the view.

the very tall ramp to the start of the ride. it really is VERY tall...

The ride was amazing, but the people who designed the thing had some really sadistic moments, where; as you were entering at the top of a swooping loop, head first with your body facing to the outside of the loop so that you could only see a blurr of sky, the seats would then swivel you to face downwards as you came into the turn. THAT really made my stomach and grey cell go something along the lines of: 'ohnonononononoNO!'.

one of the many swoopy bits... (these were nice..)

You can tell it's a good roller coaster when your legs are all wobbly when you try and walk cooly to the exit. It definitely did something weird to my blood circulation. Not only was I impressed by the ride experience (minus the queuing the irratating song that played for the entire hour we waited for the ride ...eejanaika eejanaika eejnaikaaaaaa [ええじゃないか]! ARGH!).

Anyway, it was totally the best roller coaster I have ever been on... Oblivion scared the crap out of me, but only at the point where they make you look into the abyss for what feels like a disturbingly long time...but Air, was very relaxing, gentle ride with no: ohnonononononoNO moments...just the general ahhhhhhhhhhhh... feeling.

Greg and I also spent a lot of the time after contemplating how they made the seats swivel around...we figured that it was the cunning second rail controlling it....very cunning indeed.

We also did the speedy ride called DodonPA [ドドンパ]! Which had a horrible looking hump of doom, and high speed...although it was over all too quickly because it was such a fast ride...the start was very nice though, like being catapulted out of a tunnel...on the bright side the theme song was less irritating.

The hump of doom on DodonPA

A second view of part of DodonPA [ドドンパ] with the ferris wheel and Mt. Fuji in the background.

We also did Tsunami, which had a VERY big wave (funnily enough). They really meant it when they said you WILL get wet. Greg and I were the only people in our ride to NOT buy a plastic rain coat...much to the concern of the mother and son behind us who very shyly asked if we knew that we'd get drenched...we just beamed back and said YES! - it was what we wanted...it was Soooo damned hot!

And yes we were completely soaked...mind you, so did a few people not even on the ride.

We had lunch on the ferris wheel, cycled some little bicycle contraption on an overhead track, a stupid shooting aliens ride - which was utterly pants, not only was the ride crap, but the guns you were meant to use to 'shoot' aliens were useless...hence my score of 1, failed to escape from a haunted house, tried the highest roller coaster; Fujiyama - which would have been a very good ride, HAD it had some neck restraint going on. I felt rather Ragdoll like, and so my neck hurt after...Big swings on chains, a ride in small clouds with hamsters, a vicious Mad Mouse ride which looked very small and tame but really threw you about AND a carousel.

The carousel and eejanaika [ええじゃないか] we did twice each, because they were just soooo good.

Don't be scared Greg! It will be over soon...

A very cool café

Rei had insisted we do some form of climbing on Sunday, and luckily for me rain was forecast; which meant that I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed at silly-o’clock to get me down to Yugawara. So, to satisfy Rei’s urge to climb we went to Pump2 instead…

When we got to the wall, Rei proclaimed that she would climb 10 tens (5:10’s); she seemed very excited about this. I think she’s just trying to kill me…I just gone climbing on the Wednesday before for the first time in about 2 weeks and I was crap! So I wasn’t really expecting to be able to do much today but see how long it would take me to wear myself out.

Anyway, Rei bounced up and went into her mission with all her energy…we did 5 and to celebrate the halfway mark we had a little break. Up in the rest area, from where there is a nice viewing window to watch all the people doing the viciously high overhangs on ‘tsunami’ from a comfortable position, we had a nice little rest and our usual animated discussions in English attracted some attention as per usual but this time from someone we actually knew. After a little chat we went back to the business of climbing…

Five climbs later and we were both quite happy to get away from the wall…And Rei had been told that a band that she liked were playing at a café half way between where we were and Shinjuku, so we headed off to the Café.

We walked in the rain down a narrow road, lined with little shops, in a very nice little town. Finally we found the entrance to the café besides a book shop, the signs took us winding behind the shop and upstairs to the roof. The metal stairway opened up into an outdoor lounge area. The rain drizzled through the straw-matting which sheltered the space. Directly opposite, you could see the more solid structure of the main part of the café. As you enter, the hatch to the kitchen would be seen through the ordering window. The band was at the furthest wall in the small, dimly lit room. On the bare sheets of wood which were screwed on to the walls were a mixture of brightly coloured paintings of tropical scenes and artistic sketches. The whole room had the perfect atmosphere for the music which followed.

We were just in time to get a small table at the edge of the room, which someone had just vacated, and we perched ourselves down on the dark wooden oblongs that served as seats. There were only about 12 people in the room, including staff, and the café was pretty much full. Rei got down to the serious business of ordering us some food…climbing is hungry work…and not long after she sat back down, the music started. There three in the band, a cellist, guitarist and the lead guy was on a tiny guitar (I don’t know what they are called) and doing the singing too. His voice was perfect, fitting with the chorus from all three instruments and the atmosphere of the café. Obviously the songs were all in Japanese, so understanding what he was actually singing about was practically impossible for me, but the music impressed me nonetheless. The second song, saw the cellist change to a flute and the front man pick up a Sanshin (similar to the Shamisen) Japanese instrument made of snakeskin…(apparently home to the Okinawa region, where snakes are rife and thus the easiest source of animal skin for music making).
Our burgers arrived, and they were delicious! My BLT was perfect and before I knew it Rei had magicked hers away. Anything other than rice is good, after 8months of the stuff everyday.

The band went on to play some Spanish music, also sung in Spanish, which was impressive, with not even a hint of a Japanese accent. And there was a truly brilliant performance by the guitarist during an acoustic solo, which involved a blur of finger movement over his strings.

They had some really attention grabbing songs, which I’m sure would have been catchy too, if I’d understood them. An awesome band in a cool café…

Tiffin Reunion - part2c [Shibuya]

It’s Monday, so I head into uni and leave Emily to go to Asakusa before meeting the others for a day of sightseeing. I thought I would just go in and work on my presentation that I have to do each term to both my lab [Hongo Campus] and Koseki lab [Komaba Campus] so that they know what I’m doing and to show what I’ve been doing for the past 6 months; which isn’t much…ooops. Anyway, not so simple. At about 9am I get an email from Isobel saying that it’s actually today that is best for returning the tent (I borrowed a tent – *deluxe* apparently, but I never got to try it out so I wouldn’t know – for a climbing trip to Ogawayama; very good Granite I’m told, But the trip fell through; so no climbing.) and Isobel needed the tent back for some running event she seemed to be trying to pull together. I had obviously misunderstood the email she had sent earlier that morning so anyway, I went back to my apartment o pick up the tent then came back to uni for my 430 lecture then left, with the tent, to meet Isobel at Nagatacho. Had a nice but short chat then we jumped on to the Hanomazon line and I headed off to Shibuya to meet the Brits.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to make a reservation with the restaurant, which is always packed. It’s a very popular restaurant and thus a reservation is really the best idea if you want to eat some thing that day; I was shown the restaurant by Amy – an unofficial mentor of sorts; Malaysian Chinese and doing a PhD at Todai as well.

This restaurant is pretty damned hard to find if you aren’t shown where it is. It has a very well hidden entrance which you have to walk through and behind a building to find. From under the small plastic canopy which covers the little walkway leading to the entrance to the left of you train lines are about a meter from you. Then, when you do get to it, it’s literally a hobbit sized wooden sliding door, which even I have to crouch to get through. Once through the door you enter a different world. The calls of the staff shouting orders and welcomes to customers, the smell and sounds of food cooking, and the busy chatter of the guests fills the air. There is a very small entrance area with a big flat-topped stone which steps up to the floor level of the restaurant. There are small cupboards for shoes and from the entrance area you can see the chefs counter with guests seated around. I try to explain to the guy who greets us that we want to eat there tonight but don’t have a reservation. He looks a little sceptical, in a friendly and apologetic way, and has to discuss with a fellow waitress who spoke English, that they didn’t really have space, but if we came back at 930pm we could be squeezed into a booth meant to seat 4. ‘paaaah! That’s fine!’ I say. So, we head off to Tight to await dinner. I personally thing that the wait will be worth it, even though I’ve not been in there yet…

I drop the girls off at Tight, then accompany Ian to Bic Camera so that he can buy himself a camera. He says he needs to replace his because it’s broken…I think he just wants a new toy...So, yeah, we have a little look at the selection, and try and work out how their labelling system for the camera specifications works. We harangue a couple of shop assistants for a while, trying to work out in broken Japanese what all the numbers mean.

Ian makes his choice pretty damn quickly and within about half an hour he’s chosen his camera…we then buy the thing and use some of the points to get a SD card, then head back to the bar.

We get to Tight to find Isabella, Laura and Emily a little tipsy, they seem to have found a new drink of choice…kahlua and milk, and have already made their way through 2 each. Tight is *packed*, which isn’t hard, but is fun to see. There are the most number of people that I’ve seen in the bar, ever, 9 (if I remember correctly). Squeezed into the bar and wedging themselves above the stairs by bridging between the wall and the banisters.

I could tell that Emily was hungry, because she started chewing on the coasters and asked me what time it was every 5 minutes…and when the time was nigh, we trotted off back to the restaurant. At the restaurant, we were led down some stairs to the basement where there was more seating, and were taken to a western-style seated booth, which happily seated the 5 of us. They took one look at us and handed us the English menu; which was great, because it had some pictures of the food too. We started with some salad; which apparently incurred a service fee, and it was tasty! The crispy noodle-like stuff was particularly ingenious, to complement the softness of the veggies, and topped with a lovely dressing. To follow that, we got hold of some, kimchee, fresh tofu, beans in black sugar, jimuchee pancake, and some fried veggies.
I had to take a break from the ordering to eat some of the salad before it all disappeared…then I ordered some Strawberry Shoujuu (fruit wine), as recommended by Amy as well as ebi mayo and negitoro-something-something.

Ian was enamoured by the selection of food, and proclaimed that the meal just went from strength to strength…then ranted a little about how amazing the sauce on the Ebi mayo was; I said ‘…well…it probably involves mayonnaise for one; on account of the name and tomato sauce…’ on the bright side he still loved it despite a dislike of mayonnaise. The Strawberry Shoujuu, seemed to go down well too, it actually involved real strawberries and had the general aura of something which wasn’t alcoholic. I’m sure this makes it very dangerous.

Time to go home and get some rest I think, they all have an early start tomorrow to get a train to somewhere which isn’t Tokyo. And yes, I’m applying the same kind of geographical ethic I have for the UK: where there is London, and ‘Other places which aren’t London’; Japan has a more complex system of: Tokyo, near Tokyo, and ‘Other places which aren’t Tokyo’.

I *love* this restaurant…something tells me that I’ll be here again…

Tiffin reunion - part 2b [Harajuku and Shibuya]

So, it's sunday the 13th and last night we agreed on meeting at Harajuku at 2pm on the account that I was refusing to get out of bed early on the account of having the plague. What ended up happening was that Is and Ian phoned to say that they would be late; issues with moving bags and checking in at hotels and all that palava. So, we rearrange to 2:45ish...In the mean time, Emily and I happen to pass through the Tokyo International Forum; which has a very cool market on sundays, there are stall selling yukatas, jewellery, Japanese crockery, antiques, handbags...a good way to waste a few minutes/hours. We get a little distracted and end up buying yukatas, which I've been wanting for ages...well since I stayed at a ryokan in Hakone.

This shopping excursion results in some unforeseen lateness, despite the fact that we were going to be early...we eventually get to the craziness of Harajuku station at about 3pm where we find Ian, Is and Laura in the mist of the throng. I then walk them to the bridge outside Meiji Jingu Mae to look at the cool kids hanging out in their crazy clothes and the statutory group of ‘Free Hugs’ placard holding people. Then on to Meiji Jingu and Yoyogi park itself; where I had been told that there was a Thai festival still on…we walked around in to the temple which sent the architects in to a frenzy at how cool the Japanese roofs are, lots of pictures ensued. The temple had a minimum of three weddings that day, we watched three of the processions with their immaculately dressed bride, groom, guests, and ministers.


We then took a little walk around to try and find the Thai festival, but after about ten minutes I decided that it wasn’t actually there. So, we headed to the depths of Harajuku to find the okonomiyaki restaurant that I took my brother to at Christmas.

We order several Okonomiyaki’s (with egg and flour), and a monjayaki (just veggies and some meat or seafood with a little water and starch). As soon as the first one arrives we get on with the business of cooking the thing so that we can eat the bugger. It’s great fun, everyone gets around to attacking the stuff on the hot plate with the spatulas. Emily was forced to defend her okonomiyaki with some spatulas to prevent contamination from the other meaty thing being cooked on the other side of the plate. The vegetarian option was damned nice, but there was a really good Jimuchee okonomiyaki which was rather small, but *very* good…






After finishing with the whole eating and whacking food with spatulas, we ventured out to the main shopping place in Harajuku; Takeshita Street. There are some pretty funky shops down there; very Camden-esque just with more sock shops containing more leg adornment items than you could shake a stick at. There’s the funky dog fashion shop too….with the little outfits for your tiny mutt. Emily and Is are very distracted by the shopping opportunities, and there is ample window shopping going on. We did stop to introduce Laura and Emily to the joy of Japanese Crepes; although the one they bought here didn’t look half as good as the one that Is and Ian managed to get in Ueno park.

After all the walking around we are all pretty tired, and Is, Ian and Laura have to go and sort out their bags and hotel stuff, so they head home from Harajuku but Emily and I drag ourselves to Shibuya on the way home to go have a snoop around and watch the crazy Shibuya crossing. We pause for a coffee at the Starbucks which overlooks the crossing before heading back home.

Tiffin reunion – part 1

So, Isabella and Ian arrived on the 2nd of May (at least that’s when I thought they got here) there was some emailing and I arranged to meet on weds evening in Shibuya, so that I could show them around a little. I sent very precise directions (well I thought they were…they were probably crap directions) via email of how to meet at the infamous Hatchiko statue.

I turn up just before 7pm, and Shibuya, as usual, is jam-packed with bodies (live ones) but it’s not so hard to find Caucasians in Japan, they kind of stick out. I find them hiding behind one of the large planters beside the Hatchiko statue. I scream at them as a form of greeting (a traditional Tiffian greeting call). I haven’t seen Is in ages! So, it’s entirely full of all types of coolness that I see her in Tokyo!

The first thing we do is the main crossing, which is a veritable melee of people trying to get across the road. We weasel our way to the front of the amassing crowds waiting to cross, so that we can get the full effect of the crossing. I must say I was a little disappointed as you usually get a full on wall of people coming at you and it never looks like anyone is going to get past anyone else, but somehow the opposing walls of people meet, mesh and get to where they want to go.

We have a little tour of the main street then we look for dinner. We end up in a little Japanese eel restaurant (I had no idea it was an eel restaurant, I just thought it was an izakaya). The waiters quickly work out that we are English and send over their best English speaker! Very sweet of them. They really make an effort. There is a moment where they nervously ask if it’s okay that they only sell eel and that we can only stay 2 hours. There is some great sign language going on, where the waiter tries to describe their restaurant with something that looked suspiciously like a rendition of ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’. He was actually trying to point out that they sell all parts of the eel; the head, body, tail, the internal organs, and everything in between. Luckily, Is and Ian aren’t fussy eaters, so it’s all good and we order our drinks. Then comes the harder bit of ordering, as the entire menu is in Japanese (including the price, but to be honest food in Japan is very reasonable and luckily I can read the Chinese numbers, so it’s not really an issue) I ask what the waiter recommends, and he says something, then I stare blankly back; obviously, nothing has gone in, but hey, this is just yet another culinary adventure for me, and it’s been how I’ve been ordering food most of the time in Japan, close your eyes and hope for the best), pause for a moment, then smile and nod ‘yes please, we’ll have whatever you just said’, nicely rounded off by a big grin.

So, we sit and chat about stuff and things. I get shown the ‘itinerary’ that Ian carefully prepared, in CAD, of their whole 5 month trip. I am suitably impressed. There’s even special time dedicated to the ‘Tiffin Reunion’, which had been lovingly hatched in Tiffin blue, the colour had been carefully recreated using Is’s expertise.

The eel is amazing. Succulent and delicious, we also have some weird salad type veg; spring onions, cucumber, carroty stuff in some eccentric dip, which you couldn’t quite pin down what it tasted like. It looks like crunchy peanut butter but starts off tasting almost spicy, then bitter and sour with a lemony type kick. A very interesting assault of taste on ones taste buds, and a nice way to round off a new culinary experience.

I then take them to TiGhT. We get there and it already looks full, but I poke my head up and the barman sees me, I mutter something about it being a bit busy in bad Japanese, and he asks how many people I have. Just 3, I say. He say’s ‘come on up’ and gets everyone else in there to shuffle up to make some standing room near the mirror. We spend a good fews hours there, with the lovely eight sea mountain sake that I tried last time.

The time came to leave after a good chat and we arranged to meet up the day after, for a little sightseeing.

1pm, Ueno park, Exit 1 of Metro Ueno station. It’s a gloriously sunny day and everyone is out relaxing and enjoying the first day of an extended holiday. Is and Ian, aren’t there as early as they were for Hatchiko, so I start getting paranoid that they are lost in Tokyo…but they arrive at about quarter past and I take them back to a more appropriate exit so that we can have a look at the Ueno market, Ameya Yokocho.

We walk a little way down the street and straight away walk past a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It’s lunch time so we go in. We have some good sushi. There was some awesome slightly seared salmon which just melted in my mouth! Gorgeous! I nearly melted too. After our sushi interlude we continue the business of looking at the market, we have a quick walk through, and it’s packed. There are people selling meat and fish, tea, and intermixed are cheap clothes stalls. We wind our way out on to the main high street and I drag them into Yodabashi (an electronics store) and show them sheer superiority of the variety of goods on offer in a standard electronics shop. Including a jocky machine (hopefully pictures to follow).

After this eye-opening insight we head over to the park itself. We stroll in and very quickly find a Buddhist temple, the architecture was well appreciated by my companions. Who proceeded to spend a good 20mins taking photos of the roofs. More of a stroll took us through the temple and towards a lake. There were quite an assortment of food stalls throughout the park, some even sold takoyaki (I’ll go into this in more depth some other time…but, basically, tako: is octopus, and yaki: is a form of cooking where the food is cooked on the flame, which in this case is actually a dimpled hotplate.).

We behold the sight of the lake, which is crawling with floatation devices in the form of rowing boats, pedal boats, and pedal-powered swans/overgrown ducks. The swan/duck contraptions were also in possession of large bowties around their necks. Classy. It was obviously too much to resist, but we had to rent a swan/duck. I was in the middle of the thing; in charge of steering, and Is and Ian were in charge of pedal power…well, I say Is and Ian, I mean; Is was. It became apparent that Is was doing most of the pedalling and Ian was just being lazy. We cruised around in our Duck-mobile, accosting the other vessels and occupants. Is (and Ian) managed to speed past a few people for a laugh; an excellent past time. I was in charge of waving manically at people. We were not the only ones to be enjoying the boat rides; there was a very cunning seagull who had chosen to travel in style and was perched on the head of a swan/duck.

After our little laucastrine gallivants, we walked to the edge of the park, from where I was going to walk them to the University of Tokyo to let them have a little walk around. On our way, we did find a really cool looking pre-fab shop which induced much photography from our architecture tour. And then there was the sudden realisation that there was something else in Ueno park that they really wanted to see. The building of the museum of western art was apparently a must see. So we ended up heading back from whence we came. Powering it through the park to try and catch get in to the museum before the 5pm closing time was a little bit of a mission. Especially as the park is rather large, and I didn’t really know where I was. But we made it. There were actually two buildings very close to one another. The first was rather oppressive; it looked as though it was wearing a large sombrero, and the second was elegant http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/nmwa/index.htm. It was surrounded by several art works and looked like a very well designed gallery. There were really simple, clean cut lines and a sweeping glass front at ground level. We snuck inside, which was a little disappointing, as the lighting for the space was rather poor and the whole space felt a little dull and dingy, despite the huge glass wall which surrounded a good two sides of the space.



I then discovered that my University ID card got me into the exhibition for free, which was nice because we just wanted to look at the design of the building.

We walked into a three storey high gallery, which centred around two cylindrical concrete columns which stretched up to the intersection of roof beams. Some of the roof beams were exposed from the presence of a very interesting sky light; a pyramidal cut out from the ceiling with a isosceles triangle as a base, with the glass panes to let the light in on the face of the pyramid with the shortest base length. It looked amazing. We stood in awe for quite a while. The rest of the gallery took you through the building, moving from room to room there was a different style, but they all flowed very well with out ever coming across as a box sectioned into different rooms. Even the cladding was well chosen. Hopefully I’ll be able to steal some photos of the building from Is. Eventually we were ushered out by a rather menacing group of black-suited curators. Actually, it felt more like we were being herded out of the exhibition; quite a sight to behold.

After being expelled from the museum, we wondered into the park again, towards the zoo, where there were some food stalls and a very small fun fair for kiddies. There we found a Japanese crepe van, where I enforced the idea that they should try one. If you’ve never come across Japanese crepes, they are a delectable melody of sugary-goodness, possibly Death. My friends chose wisely; opting for a strawberry, custard cream, fresh cream and chocolate ensemble; in this crepe-shaped sugary-goodness/death there was: a strip of chocolate cake, piped custard, piped fresh cream, a very succulent looking redder than red strawberry, and strawberry ice cream. It was then expertly folded in to a sixth and placed into a paper holder garnished with some stick of pastry, a stick of chocolate shavings and two spoons (after some gesturing) inserted then handed over to a very wide-eyed Isabella. I had some lovely cinnamon dough stick encrusted in my favourite food-group: sugar. We sat and savoured. Well I sat and savoured my non-dairy-death dough stick, whilst Isabella and Ian fought to eat their crepe the fastest. Ian then proceeded to try and paint his lovely white shirt in the excitement, much to Is’s amusement.

Once the indulgence was over and Ian had made an effort to clean himself up, I dragged them down the back streets of Ueno towards Hongo and my University campus. After a little trek I managed to find the perimeter wall of Todai, but failed dismally to be able to find a way in, which didn’t involve scaling the wall. So we kept walking around, in so, passing a very cool house with a very nicely placed spiral staircase which was in full view due to the glazed wall. We managed to drag ourselves away from the coolness of such a house and finally got to one of the more vehicular entrances of the University. I then led them through the campus showing them the old style Japanese kendo training room, our very cunning underground gym with a sports field on top, Engineering Building 2; which has a newer building trying to eat another building with the nicest roofed court yard that I have been in (except for, possibly, the British Library), our very cool central library; complete with stags head and chandeliers in one of the ground floor reading rooms, and Akamon.

I dragged the jet-lagged pair to a cheap izakaya near campus where we sample some more Japanese food via my random selection method. Some yaki-undon, tempura fish, kimchee pork and eda-mame later I’ve apparently found Is’s and Ian’s repletion level so we drag ourselves out of the izakaya and I show them to the train station.

All in all a very interesting sightseeing day for all.

What the Dickens

Is a bar in Ebisu, which is near the infamous Shibuya. Ebisu is full of restaurants and bars, many of which are hidden away in the upper floors of what look like office blocks of prefabricated buildings that infest Tokyo.

You walk down the main street of Ebisu, which in the evening bustles with people looking for a place to feed. Then you walk past a small Japanese bar, and turn into a dark corridor, which is an entrance to one of these featureless prefabs, at which point a lift door greets you stopping you from going any further. There are some stairs off to the left of the lift, but they look very dark and menacing, and there are a prohibitive number of steps between the ground floor and the intended target; my chicken lungs will never forgive me if I tried (thinking about it makes me wheeze).
The lift is rather small, but someone has made the effort to try and make it at least seem less Closter phobic by cladding the walls with mirrors. When you get to the 5th floor, there is a dark and heavy wooden door about 1.5m ahead, and you can already feel the bass from the lift shaft. Opening the heavy door, the music gets louder and you are greeted with more darkness, and the general sounds of people having a good time. And you have arrived at ‘What the Dickens’.

Not only does this bar/pub have the feel of a nice old pub in the UK; with the strange and random wall decorations: but it sells Pints of beer, ale, and Guinness, not to mention pub food; they do a Sunday roast, how cool is that?! This is not, however, my only reasons for my liking of this place. There is GOOD live music; something which is desperately lacking in the majority of British pubs that I go to. Coupled with the great atmosphere, it’s a great place to just turn up to, even if you have no idea who will be playing.

It’s packed on Friday and Saturday nights, so it’s a good idea to get there at a sensible time to get some breathing space or better yet, my favourite spot at a table by the balcony which overlooks the stage.

I seriously recommend going. This place *rocks*.

End transmission.

TiGhT. Yes, so it is…

I* have found the worlds coolest bar. You may think that you have found the coolest bar, but you’re wrong. It’s in Shibuya, Tokyo (just so you know). It all started when I had been stupid and missed my last train home when we had been out in ‘What the Dickens’^. This resulted in a rather spontaneous all-nighter, the best place for which was Shibuya, so after leaping off the train in the direction of home, just as the doors were closing, we got on one in the other direction heading back to Shibuya. It was the last train of the night, so it was already past the point of no return. We headed up the main street and found a little standing-room-only bar, which was packed with bodies. It had a cunning sign stuck on to the glass of the window which as fast steaming up, stating that all beers were 200yen each. So, we ventured into the throng and ordered our beers. We ended up chatting to a really nice pair of blokes, one was Japanese and the other was Australian. The Japanese guy seemed to pick up straight away that I was British. Apparently I dress just like one. Nice.

Anyway, we asked them if they new any good places that were open all night, and the Japanese guy was really helpful and after a couple of beers he took us around Shibuya pointing out clubs and bars that he recommended, whilst the Aussie headed home. The rock bar that he suggested was unfortunately shut, but the route we took to the club took us past a 24hour jeans shop. Should you need to buy a new pair of jeans at 3am it is possible in Tokyo….all seems a bit weird if you ask me. So, he carried on with his tour of Shibuya and the conversation went towards the direction of:
‘do you know ‘drunken street’?’
‘Errr….no.’
So, we were taken back away from the main street and headed back towards the train lines. We turned down a little side street and then went through arches under the railway, the sides of which were lined with bicycles and motorbikes chained to the installed parking spaces. The path then turned sharply right into a well lit alley. The alley was lined with the railway bridge to the right and small two storey buildings on the left. The buildings were tiny, with blazing signs to advertise their presence, a lot of the places had the little Japanese curtains hanging over their door to advertise the fact they were in fact restaurants.

Our guide pointed to a narrow and tall glass door. But the bar upstairs was unfortunately shut. We continued to walk down the alley and peered into tiny box restaurants packed with people. These restaurants were amazing. They could barely fit the 5 customers squeezed around the counter. Let alone the cook and kitchen equipment which must have existed behind the counter. We vowed to return and so we did…

When we did make it back, the narrow glass door was open. It opened outwards on to the street and framed the white tiled staircase behind. The staircase can’t be more than half a meter wide, and the steps are quite steep. I pushed myself up the stairs to be met with the smallest bar that possibly ever exists. The stairs ended about half a meter away from the back wall of the room which contained the bar and I was met with a glass-clad wall. To I looked to the right and there were four people in front of the bar. There was *just* about enough space between the bar and the banister stopping people at the bar backing into the void of the stairs that I had just climbed up for a bar stool and a human to squeeze themselves on to the stool. Turning my back to the mirror I looked straight ahead to see the whole side of the room to be a window, which nicely framed the railway which ran a couple of meters away, almost level with the bar. I looked upwards to see a very cute little chandelier. The bar had two beer taps and a line of bottled spirits on the shelf near the ceiling. We seemed to have timed it just right, because, two guys were just about to leave. I had to go back out on to the street to let the people out. There was no way that you could pass someone comfortably. We managed to be seated by the window. There were two flat screens behind the bar playing a very strange DVD. It truly is an amazing bar, and it has a really cool owner and bartender who doesn’t speak much English, but seemed to understand some of my broken Japanese, we had a little chat, but we were mainly busy being in awe of the utter coolness of the place. We did wonder if the place can actually make enough money to keep itself going, it would be such a shame if it didn’t exist.

I’ll try and take my camera there sometime and try and take photos of it, but I have a feeling that it would be pretty hard to capture it well, something to do with the name. The best solution is to go there and experience it. TiGhT is definitely my favourite bar, and the owner/bartender is lovely and friendly. I going to go there to practice my Japanese with him as much as possible!

Apparently, most major areas in Tokyo have their own ‘drunken streets’, so maybe there are other cool bars around. But something tells me this particular one will be impossible to beat.

* I lie. I’m good at that.
^ It’s a very cool English pub in Ebisu. Great live music, lovely atmosphere and PINTS of Beer!!! Hurrah! You’ll have to look up a different post for this, because I still haven’t gotten around to writing about this either…

A very cool restaurant…Shimbashi

After a hard day of climbing at pump2 sustenance is a must. So, off we toodle to Shimbashi (a common point in between where we who climb live) and having no idea of what’s good, we wonder around trying to find a nice restaurant. My climbing buddy is attempting to take me down bigger streets, where he thinks there will be more restaurants, while I’m trying to go down smaller roads…yes, possibly dark Japanese alleys. Not dodgy at all until I get there. Anyway the idea is: small alleyways = small cool restaurant…

So, we’re wondering around the back streets of Shimbashi, and there are indeed lots of little restaurants around. More importantly I see one, which has a bit of a shabby exterior and a big glass front window. Through the big window, the first thing I noticed was the fact that it was very smoky. It was also crowded and alive with business men in suits some sitting at small cramped tables around the edge of the room, and further in the background the restaurant looked as though it disappeared off to the right, possibly to more Japanese-style dining. The centre piece however, was a single cook wearing a yukata, looking very sweaty, sitting in front of a large open barbeque, on to which he was throwing a selection of the prepared items that were laid out on display in front of the barbeque, much like a butchers shop. There was a low counter surrounding the display of uncooked food and people sitting at the counter on small chairs. I looked on in sheer glee as the sweaty cook reached out for a large utensil which looked much like an oar, put a plate of cooked food on it, then extended out the oar parading it in front of the people seated at the counter starting from the far right of him, swinging it around until it probably would have completed a full 180 degree turn, if it had not been intercepted by on of the customers who had presumably ordered it.

There was no way I was going to try and find a different restaurant. THIS is the one for me! So we went in and were offered a place at the counter, which I was ecstatic about because this was where all the fun was, and there was also the potential for pointing at things if we didn’t order from the menu. It was very smoky, and reeked of charcoal, but the atmosphere was great: the sizzling of the fire and the energy of the discussions going on around us added to all the other waiters wearing yukata I actually felt like I was in a Japanese restaurant rather than a pseudo-Japanese restaurant with western décor.

I was able to order stuff that I could see in front of me an was written entirely in either hiragana or katakana, the other stuff just read ‘kanji-kanji’ or better yet ‘kanji kanji-for-chicken-kanji kanji’ which meant that I couldn’t shout at mr. cook what it was I wanted, and as the food display was 2-3 rows deep pointing wouldn’t have been soo much of a help unless I too were armed with a large stick like the cook was. So, we ordered a few things and sipped the beer while we watched the components of our soon-to-be-meal being cooked. What we had ordered was not going to be enough for a whole meal, and faced with the whole kanji issue, I ended up asking the Japanese guy sitting next to me. Who appeared to be on a date with the lady he was sitting with, but who had just gone to the loo, so:
Me: Sumemasen!
Gentleman looks at me as if to say: ‘you want me?!? Why?!’
Me: kono kanji, yomi-katta wa dou desu ka?
[pointing at something on the menu which had the character for chicken on it. Also, I think the question actually makes little sense in Japanese but it gets the idea across.]
Gentleman: ‘nani nani nani’
[sorry, I have the memory of a goldfish with short-term memory loss and thus have no recollection of what he said to me…]

This goes on for a few more things…and I apologise to him lots while thanking him for his help as his lady friend returns. He’s very nice though and asks if we need any other help…But in my usual arrogantly dismissive manner I politely decline, saying that we’ll be fine, knowing full-well that in 3minutes we won’t be.

We watch the cook like hawks, waiting for our dish to be ready. mr. cook carefully arranged our little fish on a plate, garnished it then placed it on the food paddle. Then, did his graceful swinging manoeuvre, at which point my eyes lit up and I sat up straight ready to receive our dishes on the proffered paddle. This whole cycle continued through the night, interrupted by either me trying to get a waiter to tell me how to pronounce some of the other kanji on the menu or the odd bit of food envy, where other peoples food looked really good so we tried to order what they had.

We even tried some little parcels of natto (fermented soya beans) which was very nice, despite most peoples claims it’s an acquired taste.

At the end of the meal our bill was some how calculated. I guess some of the other yukata wearing guys were noting down what we ate. So, then we left the coolest restaurant that I have found so far in Japan…My clothes were impregnated with the smell of barbeque for weeks.