Registration office

Took three different lines to arrive at a station whose name I still can't pronounce down in Yokohama today. Futamatagawa eki...give me strength.

I was greeted with amazing efficiency at the registration office though...had to go to about 7 or 8 different windows to complete different forms. Needless to say it was a bit confusing finding my way around but the lady at each window just pointed down to the floor where there were lines of various colours painted. Each time I was to follow a different colour line to the next window. This was the test.

With literally thousands of morons crowded into a building with multi coloured noodles as their guide it was complete bloody chaos.

When I'd reached the end of my last noodle I found my self in a lecture room with 200 or so other perplexed people. The lecturer came in and told us to sit. He then pulled out a very important looking stick which he proceeded to use to point to lots of impressive looking numbers for a two hour ramble on "road safety". He should have been completely demoralised as half of his audience had their heads down on their desks asleep and the other half so zoned out their eyes were focused on the backs of their own skulls. He delivered the lecture with great gusto though and we were all more road safety aware.

Fireworks

Went to a fireworks display on the banks of the river between Tokyo and Kawasaki last weekend. Fireworks were a bit blah ....the people experience has always been far more interesting for me at these displays.


They have about 20 or so diplays thoughout the Tokyo area over summer. All on the banks of rivers and beaches they are like a religious moment on the Ganges with absolute bloody hordes of fireworks nuts descending on them all.

Sandwiched like sardines and boggle eyed, each member of the tin enlightened the next with their deeply philosophical interprations of the display. ooooo it's a cat. Aaaaah it's green. Oohhhh it's so pretty.

A mate from work was going to go down with us but his highly tuned pair of female feelers picked up on the fact that she who must be obeyed wanted a romantic evening evening on the banks of this concreted river, alone as couple in crowd of a million spectators. Romance.

The reason we really went down there was to show Lani the fireworks. I don't know how she managed it but 10 minutes into it she bloody well went and fell asleep. Quite a feat as at times it is a bit scarey...they explode them so low here that at times the cinders actually touch the river so you are quite close to it all.

Tokyo

They say that if you draw a circle stretching out 50km from Tokyo station, on a weekday, there will be anywhere between 30 and 35 million people. Almost double the population of Australia in one city. There are stations here through which a million people pass through a day. a million.

Concrete. Ridiculous amounts of it. Buildings. Erected with no thought for their neighbour, in competition with each other for space and attention, attractive is not usually a word one would use to describe Tokyo. To be fair though I guess the same could be said of suburbia in Sydney.

Anyway you do get these little oasis' where someone has actually pulled their finger out and tried.

Saturday we got a call from Nobuko's family to say that g'ma was on her death bed. We raced up to the hospital and were met outside by the rest of the family to be told she was on the mend. But then we went up to her room and well...I guess no 93 year old is going to look hot in her nighty with tubes coming out of every imaginable orifice. There was a definitite communication breakdown though somewhere along the line. I'm still not sure whether she's sick or fine.

The locals tell me that Japanese couples have this learned ability to communicate without words but they are so disfunctional here communication wise that sometimes I am left in complete awe.

Anyway the photo above was Nobuko and her cousin communicating in this lovely little restaurant after the hospital visit.

The mobile phone debacle

Today I was reminded of something mind blowingly frustrating that happened years ago. Thought I'd get a mobile here cause they are so cool ...you can watch tv on them, listen to music, they can double as remote controls if u can't find your tv control. Some phones can even... if you're in a noisy place and having trouble hearing what the joker on the other end is saying to you, if you hold them up to your head... make your skull vibrate at frequency X so that you can hear joker Y on the other end as clear as day. amazing.

So some time ago I thought it was time I got one. Went down to the local mobile shop. Upon entrance and having been bowed to and welcomed the appropriate amount of times I approached second sales assistant Sachiko and requested a new mobile phone. The sales lady in great deference proceeded with oh most honorable customer this earth worm of an establishment thanks you for granting it the favour of your custom and asks to see your respectable ID...They have this function in their language here which serves to lift others up and put yourself down or visa versa. Anyway I said certainly here's an internationally recognised document; my passport...earthworm. After taking it to the back of the shop and holding a veritable conference with her superiors she apologised that as international as it was they still don't accept it. I'm sure my eyeballs almost exploded with disbelief. She went on to request my "alien card"....which is a card all foreigners have to carry that proves to everyone, once and for all, that foreigners aren't Japanese.

I said it's at home I'll be back.

Got back an hour later. Second sales assistant Sachiko's superior took one look at it and said your names are in a different order on your passport and on your alien card....which one is your real name??? huh?! After a moment of stunned silence while the proverbial tumble weed passed through the room I stammered out a ..they're both my "real" names. The order's just different...and anyway my passport was no good wasn't it? huh? huh? Son of a pox mucked earthworm...I pointed out to him.. To which he said he'd have to call his boss in Nagoya to check which way to write my most respectable but misplaced name. With great deference I pointed out that he could just write my name any old goddam way and indicate the family name in bloody brackets for example. After a great show, for in Japanese there is no "no", of sighing and hissing and arrring ...i realised the game was lost and said I'd be back.

After a two hour lunch I went back and got my phone.

It was at least a month later, when I received the bill addressed to a certain "Stefanm Ark Freeman". That made my bloody blood boil.