Winter in Japan

I hope that every who reads my blog understands by now that Japanese summers are hot and oppressive. They sap your strength and range from uncomfortable to torturous. What you may not know is that winter here is testing too, in its own way.

In Britain we have the best combination of humidity and seasons: the summers are dry and the winters are damp. It’s great. In Japan, the summers are damp and the winters are dry. This is just plain bonkers.

Before I came to Japan, I had no idea how the humidity of a climate could be felt. Sure, I’d experienced the dry summers of the classic British holiday destinations, but Japan was something else altogether. Unlike the summer, when I pour with sweat from morning to night, winter is far more subtle in its effects.

You can tell how dry it is with just a simple unscientific test. In spring and autumn, a pair of trousers take about two days to dry out; depending on the weather, in summer it takes one to two days; but in winter, inside with no heating or breeze, it takes about 12 hours. That’s great news for your laundry pile, but terrible news for your body.

This week I’ve had the sniffles. It’s cold out and that’s just what happens. However, whenever I blow my nose I find blood mixed in there: not a lot, but enough to be noticeable. This is something new to me; I’ve never even had a nosebleed. That’s not all: my lips are constantly dry, my forehead feels taut and my elbows are peeling. Unsurprisingly lipbalm and moisturiser sales boom at this time of year.

Worse still, the cheaper places to live in and around Tokyo completely lack winter-proofing. Due to the extreme summers, many places are uninsulated. While most people have air-conditioners to provide heating, they are environmental unsound, expensive to run and not particularly effective. The best option is a gas space heater which requires you to run a pipe from your gas tap in the kitchen (something I’m pretty paranoid about), or, if you live higher up the property ladder, underfloor heating. The cheapest option, and the classic image of winter life in Japan, is to sit under a kotatsu: essentially a heated table. Last year we used one and it worked a treat, but this year we’ve not and I’m regretting every minute of it!

So spare a thought for your shivering blogger, cowering under the covers each morning; and more importantly, consider the thousands of homeless around the country in a far worse situation than me. Whatever I feel, they’re getting tenfold.

First Bath of 2010

Well, it’s 2010. While the world was arguing about whether we should call it ‘two thousand and ten’ or ‘twenty – ten’ (clearly the latter), I slipped off to Onneyu Onsen (an onsen is a hot spring bath resort) outside Rubeshibe in Hokkaido. My first and long-awaited onsen visit, and it was the in-laws’ treat.

It was snowing heavily (the first of what looks to be a bad January – 110cm the other day), the roads were turning white, and some poor soul had lost control of his car and it plunged into the roadside ditch. Clearly we arrived safely, but the journey wasn’t without its thrills.

I was glad to get through the doors to the hotel to warm up, but then i grew alarmed: had I stumbled into some sort of pantomime? The hotel staff were wearing face paint as they went about their reception duties, and one was in drag (albeit a female yukata, but still drag). It turned out that they were having a special New Year’s event and we had a small indoor festival to look forward to that night. But that could all wait… You don’t go to an onsen and ethuse about the sideshow. No, you go to get in the bath!

The Baths

The first thing that struck me was the fact that I would be bathing with my father-in-law, and while I previously said that you shouldn’t be afraid of nudity in the bathhouses, this felt a little more personal and uncomfortable – until I got soaking that was. With the 45°C water and the slight whiff of sulphur, I quickly got over my embarrassment and started to enjoy it.

The water temperature was surprising. Sitting beside the entry point of the spring water was so hot I couldn’t bear it. While the average temperature ranged around the mid-40s, the temperature by the tap (or whatever you might call the trickling stream of geothermally-heated water) had to have been in the 60s or 70s.

There were several baths of varying temperatures and infusions but also, most importantly for me, a rotenburo (outdoor bath). Rotenburo are the quintessential element of an onsen visit. With the outside air in the minuses, it was instantly relaxing to sink up to my shoulders and watch the steam drift along the surface of the bath. Protecting our modest from the balcony above and from the falling snow was a bamboo wind-shelter, but it was hard to really care about all that. The only thing I had to worry about was the sub-zero naked walk back inside (a sprinkler sprayed hot water pouring onto the stone path so that it didn’t feel too cold underfoot).

At midnight until 10am (check-out time), the bath areas switched. So the next morning I was able to go to the ‘female’ side (of course, having switched with us, there were no women there). Whereas the previous side was like a cave: no windows, stony walls, with a damp atmosphere, the other side was bright and airy with windows facing onto the town (with opaque tint to hide the naughty bits from the outside world (although I imagine there is a telescope shop doing quite brisk business down there). The baths were mostly the same, but less roughly designed. There were also two rotenburo. The first had the same swimming pool-like features, plus a reclined area for lying in. This side also faced the town, but a large bamboo screen hid everything from the outside world (although I could see through the small gaps). The second rotenburo was the best: it was quite small, but it had a rock garden around it, and the trees were close enough to touch. Someone had made two little snowmen and placed them on the rocks beside the pool. As I sat in there, my mind drifted off. Eventually though, the conflicting temperatures between my head and my body were tiring me out, so I got out. However, that bath really made my holiday for me.

The one thing I knew about but had never encountered in previous bathing locations was young children. At first I was a little disconcerted about seeing a parade of young girls accompanying their fathers into the bath. I could hear The Sun and the Daily Mail readers preparing their torches and pitchforks… But I realised that it didn’t really matter. If anything, the propensity for Japanese fathers to bathe with their daughters and mothers with their sons might help create a healthy attitude toward nakedness, something severely lacking in modern Britain or America. Then again, thinking about some of the sexual mores created here, this attitude might not really be a good thing.

The Meals

After the first bath, we went for dinner. The hotel served a buffet-style breakfast and dinner, although other courses were apparently available (in a different hall). Everyone (about 50 people) gathered in the dining hall, a large tatami-floored room and helped themselves to sushi, noodles, meat, and particularly crab. I’d only eaten crab from the shell on New Year’s Eve for osechi, the New Year’s feast (outside Hokkaido, people eat osechi on New Year’s day), but these ones were much bigger and meatier than I’d ever seen. I ate my fill and drank beer by the litre. The quality was good, but at breakfast I resented the lack of kocha (normal tea, to us Brits). I can’t function without my morning cuppa, and I spent the better part of the 3rd trying to stay awake.

The Rooms

The room was wonderful. Above the genkan was the washbasin. There was a washlet toilet in the bathroom, along with a bath and shower (in case you couldn’t go into the public one, I guess – infectious diseases, period, disability perhaps). As I write this, it occurs to me that that was the first bathroom toilet I had seen in Japan since I came here to live. Typically the toilet is stuck in a small room of its own for several reasons: hygiene – the toilet is dirty, hence you don’t put it where you want to clean yourself; mould – it’s hard enough to keep the shower area clean; and finally, convenience – most Japanese houses seem to have only one toilet, and people sometimes bathe/poo for eternity.

The next room was the living area. A big coffee table stood at the centre, surrounded by zabuton (cushions). There was a TV, a kettle, some matcha- (powdered green tea) making facilities, and two armchairs. This room was separated from the sleeping area by sliding doors, and while we ate dinner, the staff pulled our futon out of the cupboards and made our beds. The whole area was tatami and, despite being uncomfortably warm, it was very pleasant.

The Festival

As I mentioned before, the hotel held a festival inside the building. After dinner, we went to play some traditional games. We all gave hoopla a go, and Keiko did exceptionally well. Emasculated by my loss, I moved on to the pop-gun gallery. With my exceptional shooting ability, I scored a surfboard-shaped lighter (which I had to leave in Hokkaido) and a toy sword (which I will be giving to one lucky child in the near future). I then attempted the most heinous game known to man: you have to cut a shape out of a thin sugar wafer using a drawing pin and a toothbrush without breaking the internal shape. It’s very, very difficult. Nothing happened when I scraped and brushed, so I turned to brute force, using the pin to snap parts away, hoping the counter-sunk edges of the shape would cleave nicely. Of course I was wrong though, and Keiko and I dropped out with only cardboard-tasting broken pieces of sugar wafers for consolation.

The next event was a geiko oiran parade. Keiko said something about one of them coming from Tokyo, but I’m pretty sure the main ‘girl’ was a guy. Either way, he or she had 50cm geta (traditional outdoor sandals) and walked with sweeping motions along the corridor as people snapped pictures of her/him. At the end, our whole family sat in front of her/him, plus two (other) girls [Keiko has told me they were all guys!] for a souvenir photograph.

We couldn’t stick around, however, as we were worried we would miss the opening of a cask of sake (they are opened with a hammer). Unfortunately, we did miss it, but the sake was free and so I wasted no time in gulping a few down. Meanwhile, the hotel held a draw for a range of prizes: weekends in other fantastic hotels, crab, sweets, and fish… there were so many prizes and seemingly so few guests that it looked like everyone would be a winner. Everyone around us seemed to win and we had some really close calls, but even with two rooms to our name, we went away with nothing (well, not quite nothing, I had some more sake to compensate).

The final stage of the festival was mochi-tsuki, (making rice cakes). I had a go at this last year, and I’m glad I did because it seemed that the hotel wasn’t letting just anyone have a go. We watched two burly hotel staff pound the rice into a sticky mess, and then ate the fruits of their labour: Keiko ate them with a little kinako, but I stuck to the anko (I’ve really taken a liking to anko - a sweet bean paste).

Final Impressions

The one thing that really struck me on this visit to Hokkaido, and to the onsen in particular, was the complete absence of obvious foreigners. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t any, clearly there were: I saw eikaiwa all over the place and the faces of ALTs in the local news-zine. There were undoubtedly Chinese and Koreans around, that particular area of Hokkaido has received a tourism boom after a few Chinese and Korean movie and drama features, but they could slip bar far less noticeably than I.

I sat down to eat my mochi in the hotel on a bench by myself. A couple of kids came over. The two kids sat down on the bench beside me, and the youngest, a girl of about 6, kept looking at me. I turned to her and smiled (my time spent teaching kids has made me far more friendlier towards the younger ones), but she continued to stare. A few moments later she swapped places with her brother.

A little while later, their grandfather strolled over and crouched down on the floor beside them, so I scooted over to the other bench (Keiko’s father had left and thus made some space) and offered the seat to him. As he sat down, the boy turned to his grandfather and said “Gaikokuji wa me-“. He didn’t get to finish his sentence as his grandfather shushed him. I assume that the kid was about to say that foreigners were pretty rare, he might (if I heard wrong) have been trying to say something else, but either way, he was just a little kid so I told the grandfather that it was okay. In the bath that night I bumped into the same kids, all of us stark naked, and they didn’t bat an eyelid. Every time I give up my seat, every time I try to help someone out here, it’s with full knowledge that I might be helping to break the stereotype: not all hakujin (literally, white people) are loud and self-centred. We’re not going to bite, and some of us can speak Japanese. I hope that just that small change in those kids’ attitudes will have stronger effects later on, but who’s to say.

Later the next day, as we went shopping for souvenirs in Kitami (a small city), a woman stared at me so hard she even craned her neck as we passed one another. That, to me, was a bit offensive (unless she thought I was cute/sexy, in which case, ewww). One of the benefits of having a Japanese wife in Japan, particularly one from the countryside, is that you really do get off the beaten track. As foreigners penetrate deeper into Japanese society and gain wider and more personal exposure, we might make some changes for the better here.

Anyway, OnneyuOnsen: check it out.

How Did Ichihashi Evade Capture for 2 Years?

On 26th March 2007, Tatsuya Ichihashi brutally murdered Lindsay Ann Hawker, disposing of her strangled body on his balcony in a bathtub filled with sand. Police arrived at his flat to question him, he fled barefooted and disappeared. Police received over 8,000 tips, all of which came to nothing until November 2009.

On 4th November, news spread that Ichihashi had rhinoplasty at a clinic in Nagoya. Ichihashi visited the clinic on 24th October, using a false name, an address in Osaka, and paid with cash. During his time at the clinic, Ichihashi told the staff that he was a part-time worker and was staying at love hotels in the city. The staff noticed that he was carrying several hundred thousand yen. He returned for some post-operation treatment, but failed to return to have stitches later in October. The clinic informed the police on 27th October, who released a pre-operative photograph on 5th November.

On the same day, a clinic in Fukuoka confirmed that Ichihashi used the same alias to arrange an appointment on 13th October, but was apparently refused surgery to reshape his mouth after they noticed that he had had prior surgery on his lower lip. He apparently had numerous surgeries prior to that in Nagoya, where he mentioned that had previously had surgeries to raise the bridge of his nose and make his nostrils smaller. The police photograph also shows that he had double-fold surgery on his eyelids.

Then, it emerged that Ichihashi had worked as builder for 14 months in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture. An employee of the construction company informed the police after seeing the new photograph. Since 19th August 2008, Ichihashi had worked for the company under the name Kousuke Inoue and claimed to be 32-years old. This alias was uncovered to be the name of a deceased man who lived in Osaka. Ichihashi disappeared after pay-day on 11th October.

He was typically found wearing a red cap and glasses, and was believed to be studying French. He kept to himself and bathed alone. After being coaxed out for a night of bowling, Ichihashi hid during a group photograph. He was strict with his money and, with retrospect can clearly be said to be saving up for his surgery. Police found passport application information documents in his room.

Soon came information that Ichihashi had worked for a demolition company in Kita-ku, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture from 28th February 2008 to 26th June. He had applied for a job at the company at a recruitment drive in Nishinari-ku, Osaka. He used the same alias, Kousuke Inoue and apparently wore glasses throughout his time at the company.

Ichihashi often stayed at an internet café in Chuo-ku, Fukuoka between late-October and 11th November. Police found CCTV footage of Ichihashi dated 2:30 pm, 11th November. From Fukuoka, he travelled to Rokko Island in Higashi-Nada Ward, Kobe.

On 12th November, he attempted to buy a ferry ticket to Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, but there were no boats available on the route, so Ichihashi took a taxi on to Nanko Port in Osaka (a 35-minute drive). The port employee in Kobe had called ahead to alert the Osaka staff that a man who looked like Ichihashi was coming their way. The Kobe employee was suspicious about bruising around Ichihashi’s nose and his lack of luggage except a single A4-sized bag.

The Osaka staff started ticket sales 50 minutes early, at 17:40, but the Ichihashi didn’t show up. At 18:45, an employee checked the waiting room and found a man sleeping there. The employee contacted the police who swooped in and arrested him.

In his bag, Ichihashi had two toy guns which have since been revealed to squirt something akin to pepper spray, a dictionary and 300,000 yen in a pencil case tucked into his trousers. Under questioning he identified himself and reluctantly, but peacefully, gave himself up. He was taken to Gyotoku Police Station, and the next day travelled by shinkansen to Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture where the 30-year old will go on trial.

 

Tatsuya Ichihashi: Before (right) and After (left)

So many questions remain about Ichihashi’s years on the run, questions that I can only hope will be answered in the forthcoming trial. The proceedings of the trial and the subsequent press coverage will hopefully raise questions about the police investigation that will lead to a strengthening of protocol to stop such things happening again. The same is true of plastic surgery.

 

In the meantime, however, I present 10 questions I would like answering in the upcoming months/years:

1. How does a man without shoes or socks, and presumably no money, manage to escape a group of policemen in the first place? Presumably they had cars or bicycles, as well as firearms. Why was Ichihashi not stopped right away?

2. How does such a man restart his life? Did he steal the necessary money or was he given support?

3. How can a surgeon trained to enhance people’s faces not recognise a fugitive whose face has been on posters everywhere?

4. How many times did he undergo plastic surgery? How significant were the changes he made at each stage?

5. Did he really work as a rent-boy in Shinjuku’s 2-Chome?

6. Did the change of the reward from Y1 million to Y10 million (29th June) loosen lips? Who will receive it and in what proportions?

7. What was Ichihashi planning to do once he arrived in Okinawa?

8. Was Ichihashi studying French? Did Ichihashi continue to study English? Did he have a teacher? Were other teachers put at risk?

9. Ichihashi has admitted to having a complex from the pressure his parents put on him to become a doctor. Was Ichihashi diagnosed with any sort of psychological instability prior to Hawker’s murder?

10. How did Ichihashi assume Kousuke Inoue’s identity? Did he have any documentation?

Kyoto: A Retrospective

For many people, Kyoto is the best place to go in Japan, a wonderful land of shrines, traditional architecture and geisha. There is no denying that everyone who comes to Japan, especially those living here, should see Kyoto. However, once you go beyond tourism, life perhaps isn’t so great.

With some days off and little else to do, Keiko and I made our way down to Kyoto, a second time for both of us. I had spent a month in Kyoto back in the summer of 2006, and Keiko had been sightseeing there sometime before that. We’d thus seen most of what we need to see, and only had to stay for a short time. After only two days there, I came to appreciate the differences between Kanto (the region around Tokyo) and Kansai (around Osaka), and my opinion of Kyoto has become far more complex.

Last week, I felt that Kyoto was a quaint place, rather convenient but ultimately lacked urban planning and effective conservation efforts. I believed that Kyoto’s highly developed bus system was an excellent means of getting about, and that it was nice to be in a city where you could walk home within two hours at worst. The hyper-locality of its shops and stores, and its wealth of independent businesses, worked in the city’s favour. Also, it was close to other major cities: Osaka (less than an hour away), Nagoya and Kobe (both about two hours away). Much of this still holds true in my mind, but whereas I once believed that I could easily live in a place like Kyoto (after all, is it so much different to much of the UK’s towns and cities?), now I can barely imagine it.

Take the buses, for instance. You might need to walk 5 minutes to your nearest bus stop. Then you may have to ride the bus for an hour just to get to the station or some other destination. Particularly on the tourist routes to places like Gion or Kinkakuji, the bus can be as crowded as any Tokyo train, and much less comfortable. In Kyoto, you enter the bus from the centre and exit from the front. This means that people in the back have to push their way through a 4 metre-long crowded aisle in other to get out of a packed bus. Kyoto buses, at least around the central wards, are flat-rate, ¥220 for an adult. You pay this at the front of the bus as you exit, in contrast to my local Kawasaki buses, which are also flat-rate (and ¥20 cheaper) where you pay on entry at the front and exit through the central door. This gives the driver more control over how many people squeeze into the bus, as well as making it easier for people to exit.

At one point, on the way to Kinkakuji on an unbelievably packed bus, a man somewhere behind me told me to ‘sit down’. The reason being that there was a priority seat right in front of me, and if I sat down it would give people some more space. I knew for a fact however, that there were some older people around me, and thus I was reluctant to do so, instead hoping that such a person would take it. Indeed, unable to turn around and offer it to anyone, a middle-aged woman beside me tugged on the shoulder of an old lady and invited her to take the seat. I couldn’t help but think that if that guy wanted to sit down, he should have done so himself instead of ordering me around. Keiko told me that that is just the way people from Kansai are (although Kanto vs Kansai is a rather big rivalry, people from Hokkaido are supposedly very intolerant of Kansai manners). I am inclined to agree, I cannot think of a time I have been on a cramped train when I heard people calling out for others to move forwards (even though they couldn’t move at all): on the whole, people in Kanto are far more impersonal and business-like with strangers. They may be rude, but they aren’t overtly angry for the most part.

These incidents with the buses, and the amount of time I spent standing up on them, made me realise just how inconvenient a place it is. From my house in Kawasaki, I can walk to the station in 10 minutes and reach Shibuya in 20 minutes, Yokohama in 35, and Tachikawa in 40. I can catch a bus to the next station down from me and be there in 10 minutes, I can walk to the next station up from me in about 30 minutes. The buses don’t stop until after 11, and even then, there are special late buses until 1 am. If you were to work in Tokyo and finish at 9pm, you could get back home by about 10:30 no matter where you lived in this area. By contrast, if someone worked in Osaka and went home to Kyoto, they’d be stuck with either an expensive taxi ride, long bike ride, or a longer walk if they lived in the north or south of the city. This is one of the key benefits of living in one of Kanagawa’s station towns, a suburban area full of commuters which exists simply because there is a station nearby, but it is one that holds true for much of Kanagawa, Tokyo, Chiba and Saitama.

In terms of trains, Kyoto has a pretty large number. In its both hideously empty but amazingly modern-looking station, Kyoto plays host to several JR lines, and a small subway system. From the basement of the Hankyu department store in Kawaramachi Shijo, a good 15 minute bus ride from the main station, you can catch the Hankyu Kyoto Line to Osaka, about an hour away. Finally, around Shijo, you can take the Randen tram service up into Arashiyama. There seems to be lots of variety, but in fact given how dispersed they are and how you’ll have to jump from operator to operator, getting around in Kyoto without a scooter or bike quickly adds up. One such example of poor integration can be found in the payment system. In Kansai they use ICOCA, an electronic payment system similar to Oyster, instead of JR East’s Suica, or PASMO (used by non-JR companies in Kanto). However, while tourists can use their PASMO or SUICA on Kyoto’s JR lines, I was surprised to have it rejected when trying to get on the subway.

If you like the arty and independent culture that Kyoto offers, with its trendy and expensive areas, then you’d be okay to live there. It’s a place for students and small-businesses, not for the big business culture you see in the Tokyo region. Kyoto is more isolated and dependent on personal transport than a place like this, and that might be fine if you work in the city’s booming tourist industry or at one of its distinguished universities, but as a man accustomed to travelling around to different schools on different days, much further than any Kyoto bus journey, I can’t help but feel that the decentralised business in which I work would be unable to sustain itself in so small and so isolated a city. If it could, then I really wouldn’t want to be working there, where if the bus is full, you can’t get on. Rush hour would be hellish, and the tourist season worse.

Going back to Kyoto has simply highlighted what it is that I like about where I live. Yes, Kyoto has history and green spaces, but the Kamogawa (along which I used to love walking) is full of midges and is nothing compared to the great Tamagawa a stone’s throw from my house. Whether there is a major difference between the people here or there, or not, at least this feels like home. Kyoto, on the other hand, will only ever feel like a maddening tourist destination with little new to offer me.

One Year Past

Monday was our first anniversary. Any such occasion gives you pause for reflection, and looking back, I have to say that while the year has been difficult for us at times, we’re in a situation a million times better than where we started. Tough experiences at work, settling in, lack of time together, and topping it off with the miscarriage, we’ve had our good times and our horrible times, but finally we seem on the up and up. We have a home that we love in an area that is great for future family, the only thing that I really want is to change my job to be in something with either more convenient working hours or better pay, but there is no rush on that for now.

Monday was a national holiday, but not one for my company, so I asked for a day off months ago so that we could do something on the Sunday and unwind on the next. We really didn’t have a clue what we would do until the last few days. We discussed having a night in/around Kawasaki, but that was a little risky for me (we barely know the place and we’d probably be disappointed), or we could have gone on a buffet cruise in Yokohama, which seemed really nice (all-you-can-eat Chinese) but a little pricey (¥7500 each). In the end we settled on visiting Shibuya’s Bunkamura to see a Trompe de l’Oeil (Trick of the Eyes) exhibition. At some point though, I wished that we hadn’t.

I have never been to such a popular exhibition. The queue to buy a ticket was a 30 minutes long squeeze into sweaty, hot demarked lines at the end of which was a calamity: customers who already had tickets were being delayed from entering the exhibition because, as one member of staff put it, those who had bought the tickets on the day had been standing in a queue for the last 30 minutes. When we got out of the first queue, we joined the second queue while those around us strolled into the hall. The guy in front of us, with his family, was fuming and laid into the attendant. It was a bit of a farce.

Inside, we were confronted with another queue, although we were free to swan around in whatever fashion we wanted. Keiko went off, I stayed in the queue, wanting to see the pictures close up… but the queue barely moved. At picture after picture, people were either stood staring for 5-10 minutes, or kids were completing tasks in their programmes, or people were pushing their way in so that we couldn’t move forward. It was a rabble, people squeezing their way in and out of the crowds around the pictures, stabbing at the air around the paintings (despite the fact I was told not to use my fan near the paintings because they were ‘sensitive’); the usual Tokyo rudeness had migrated from the trains to the gallery and the staff were oblivious. Not to mention the fact that I have never heard such nonsense as was coming out of some of the attendees’ mouths. Some clearly did not get the idea that the paintings were tricks, although its a testament to the Renaissance artists that managed to fool even a modern audience. Others were clearly there to fulfil their monthly pretentiousness quota.

After an hour or so in the scrums, but with a great deal of art under our belts, we headed back into the streets for a drink. It’s summer now: the humidity is unmistakeable, even if I feel less affected by it than I did in my previous two Japanese summers. So to stay somewhat fresh (as by now I was soaked with sweat) we had regular breaks for drinks. We were meant to visit another exhibition, a free one, but it was in a cafe and was awkwardly located, so we headed to Parco to see a Spongebob Squarepants exhibition which was tiny and free. It wasn’t really worth the effort in any case, but I did get to spend a long time in the bookshops in Parco’s basement floor.

Come 7pm, we were off to dinner on Parco’s 7th floor, a European dining bar (‘Fancy going for a European?’) called Marvellous. We had coupons for free champagne, and ate our way through German sausages (the best sausages I’ve ever had in Japan) and some chicken and steak. It is the Japanese style to share the dish, and despite this being a European-style eatery, the dinner plates were big and accompanied with sideplates. Not to mention the fact that the food came out at ridiculous times: our drinks came before we finished our champagne, and no dish arrived at the same time as another. We were disappointed with the service, but our stomachs were satisfied.

Over dinner we debated where to go next, settling on a British Pub and then karaoke (I had to twist Keiko’s arm a lot to get this one – she said she hates karaoke). The British Pub, the Aldgate, which had nice decoration but expensive drinks (although if you like Kettle Chips, you’re in for a treat). It was there I discovered that Heinz (of ketchup and baked beans fame) is actually an American company, a fact that haunts me even now. We didn’t stay at the Aldgate long, for a British Pub there was a noticeable lack of foreigners and no-one was really chatting to anyone else, plus I was itching to get some karaoke in.

We arrived at Big Echo and we were presented with a new style DAM machine with a new points system and remote. It was all pretty cool. Keiko sang and she said she enjoyed herself and wouldn’t mind going again, which is a result. Not really too much to report here though, I sang my usual variety and Keiko tried far too many songs that she either didn’t really know the tune to or needed a second part, but it was fun, as usual.

To wrap up our evening, we ventured into Shibuya’s love hotel-packed district of Dogenzaka. For the uninitiated, love hotels are hotels made specifically for romantic trysts. You can ‘rest’ (i.e. pay per hour), or ‘stay’ (i.e. pay for the night). Our choices for the night had been all-night karaoke (fairly expensive, about ¥12,000 all told – plus it’s impossible to sleep), an internet cafe (where we might have found a comfortable room and even have had a communal shower, but it’s hardly the way you want to spend a night as a couple), a business hotel (¥20,000 or up and difficult if you don’t book in advance), or a love hotel. Turns out it wasn’t that expensive either: for ¥16,300 we received a double bed, a TV, and an awesome bathroom with a mist sauna and jacuzzi-style bath (and a TV in the bathroom, which when I turned it on was switched to a porn channel). Okay, so you don’t really have room service (unless you’re looking for kinky outfits) and your bed has probably been soiled thousands of times, but truly, it was the best option.

Our room had some added spice: called Pinky Queens, it was, I guess, for bondage. The butterfly on the right actually has Velcro wrist and ankle ties for something… I wasn’t quite sure what, but I had my money on riding crops. There was also a strange chair with an unknown but undoubtedly kinky purpose. We hadn’t realised what the room held in store for us, but creepy butterflies aside, it wasn’t a bad place to unwind, bathe (oh god, yes – what better way to beat the heat) and rest. Plus we had the added pleasure of awkwardness as other customers walked in as we were trying to find a room, and also of watching the other customers in the district pour out into the rather pungent Shibuya streets in the early morning.

All in all, a good night. Certainly one of the  best nights since we arrived. We rounded it off shopping for Keiko’s birthday-cum-anniversary present – a coffee machine. She can’t complain and neither can I. One year down, many more to come.