Blogs from Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, Asia - page 14

Well, that's it. I'm officially the last of the language school gaijins in Japan. Well, not all the language school gaijins, that would be a bold, ridiculous statement to make considering how many foreigners come here to study, but I am the last one out of my group of friends I went to school with when I first arrived. The second last to depart these fine shores is Italian Jane from Germany. We met up at Mysterious in Shinjuku to have a few drinks and a massive catch up as I haven't seen her since she flew to South Korea to get her Japanese visa re-issued. It was soooooo much fun to see her, I found out to my absolute joy that all the frustrations I'd been going through about 2 weeks ago was almost identically ... read more

Yay! I saw Haruka today! Haruka's one of my japanese friends from Sydney who's back in Tokyo for a few months. We met up a few weeks ago for okinamiyaki in Shinjuku, got lost in the rain for twenty minutes looking for the restaurant and ended up in an old style japanese yakitori (skewer/kebob type things) bar I'd found previously but had been to scared to go into by myself. The yakitori bar only had ten chairs, most of which were occupied with old japanese man getting pissed on saki in the middle of the day on a Monday. It was great, but we decided this time we'd go for something a little bit more respectable. So once again we met in the rain. Not drizzle, but pouring, bucketing weather. Navigating our way through the puddles ... read more

Email from Sanae yesterday: Rainy Season has begun!! Japan Weather Forecast announced today! Wow!! Wow indeed Sanae my love. All the more reason for me to buy a raincoat. Well, Rainy season truly has started, from the second I got Sanaes email it started pissing down and hasn't stopped. It's making me feel a bit blue and homesick being cooped up inside so I'm going to write a blog about why Rainy Season is going to be fun for the entire month of June. Oh god. A whole month. Anyway. Well I've just discovered it's not easy writing a list of reasons why rainy season is going to be fun so I'm now asking people for suggestions on how to pass away the rainy season so I don't get bed sores or damage my eyes from ... read more

There's a typhoon approaching Japan. I've never been in a typhoon before, so I'm not really sure what to expect, but if the build up to it is anything to go by then we're not in for a pleasant few days. So far it seems to involves a lot of rain, and when I asked Richard about it on the way to the kindergarten today he replied "This rain nothing, a typhoon is basically a f*ckload of water everywhere, and no way to escape it" Sounds Fun. So after a tiring morning of trying to tire out my classes with excercise (Have you ever hopped the entire alphabet out? I have) there was only one thing for it. Karaoke with the gaijins. And a hip hop lesson for dessert. I met up with Cecilia, Christine, Bernardo, ... read more

Up early(ish) considering the jet lag and out for a full day in Tokyo. All started very well with some nice coffee and toast in the train station before heading to Shinjuku. Sarah was very keen to get up a major building to get a feel for the city so we headed straight for the metropolitan building for some pretty awesome and free views from the 42nd floor. Quite difficult to conceive of a city that is so highrise and so sprawled at the same time, we had a competition about how many people live in the area but at 6, 12 and 15 million I have the feeling that we are all undercalling it by quite a significant margin. From the towers we headed across to Shinjuku goyen which a large park famed for ... read more