Moody gaijin hanging outside Tower Records in Shibuya. Soon after this picture was taken, the troublemakers were moved on by a security guard - presumably because they were scaring the shoppers.

On Saturday and Sunday night we stayed in a capsule hotel in Asakusa, which had a fantastic view across the river. The building with the huge golden flame/turd on the top is the "Asahi Super Dry Hall", which was designed by Philippe Starck (the same guy who designed the lemon squeezer - you know the one I mean).

Gomen!

Huge apologies for the lack of posts this week - I've been incredibly
busy at work, so I haven't had time to write anything. It's made a
nice change to be busy though - some weeks, especially during the
exams, I find myself sat at my desk for hours on end, with absolutely
nothing to do.

Unfortunately, next week might be a little dry for posts too, since
I'll be in Tokyo for five days on a holiday - ahem... sorry.... at a
conference - but hopefully I'll be able to bring back lots of random
photos and stories for your enjoyment.

Mata raishu, ne!

Lew.

As an apology for the lack of posting, here's a bit of classic Engrish for you, which I spotted on a "purikura" booth called "Cocoa" in Fukui City. (By the way, "purikura" is short for "purinto kurubu", or "print club" - it's basically a glorified photo booth you can get all your mates in.) My favourite part is the slightly dodgy-sounding last line: "Infinitely large enjoyment!"

My Encounter with a Tea Master

I was invited to an outdoor tea ceremony last weekend. As you may
know, I'm a keen fan of Japanese tea ceremony - my school has a tea
ceremony club which meets every Thursday, and I make a point of never
missing it. I can't think of a more perfect way to spend a Thursday
afternoon than drinking tea and eating small sweets...

Of course, it's not all drinking tea and eating sweets. Sometimes we
have biscuits. And on one memorable occasion there was a sweet which
tasted a bit like a Fondant Fancy. We talk about it even now... (well,
I talk about it to myself, but if I could work out the Japanese for
"Do you have any more of those sweets that taste a bit like Fondant
Fancies?", I'd be talking about it with my tea ceremony teacher too).

Anyway, the tea ceremony I was invited to was part of the Miyazaki
pottery festival. I was expecting a small, garden fete type affair,
but it turns out that the pottery festival is big news in Fukui, and
there were traffic jams on every approach to the site, whilst shuttle
buses rushed back and forth from distant overflow car parks every few
minutes. Fukui-ites really like their pottery.

We found the tea ceremony tucked away in a little corner at the back
of the grounds. It turned out that there were several tents, each
being run by a different local tea master, and each one demonstrating
a different style of tea ceremony. The atmosphere was really pleasant
- it was great to sit under the trees and watch the "tea ladies" (as I
like to call them) expertly run through the intricate motions of the
ceremony almost without pause. Having tried it myself, I know how much
practice and concentration the tea ceremony takes, so I was thoroughly
impressed; whenever I try the ceremony it's reminiscent of a
chimpanzee throwing a tea bag at a kettle.

Our appointment was with a tea master called Taira-sensei, who's a
friend of my Japanese teacher. Contrary to my expectations, she seemed
pretty pleased to see a small and slightly hungover band of foreigners
turn up to her tea tent, and we were ushered into the best seats in
the house. There were four of us - Will, Emily, Luciana and myself -
and I was lucky enough to be given the "guest of honour" seat. This
basically means that I was to be given the first cup of tea, and
everyone else would have to watch me drink it before the other cups of
tea were brought out. Needless to say, the pressure was on.

After ten minutes of intricate preparation, the first cup of tea was
brought to me. "Lew, remember your training", I could hear old Obi-Wan
saying to me as the cup was brought over to me by none other than
Taira-sensei herself, but then, as I reached up to take the "cha-wan"
the voice of Yoda popped into my head with a warning: "The cave!
Remember your failure at the cave!"

Undaunted, I focused on my Jedi tea skills and remembered to take the
cup with a bow, then rotate it by two quarter-turns to the right, in
order for the cup's pattern to face outwards. I drank quickly, holding
the cup with both hands, and when I'd finished I delicately wiped the
rim of the cup with my thumb and forefinger, to remove any saliva.
After rotating the cup back the other way, I handed it back to
Taira-sensei. The first test was over. I may lack the skills of a Tea
Master, but I'm a more than capable padawan.

Now, before the tea was brought out we were treated to some
traditional Japanese sweets, in order to prepare our pallets for the
tea. They were delicious, but suddenly a problem arised: what to do
with the traditional washi (paper) that they were served on? We
presumed that one of the tea ladies would eventually emerge to relieve
us of the rubbish.

At the very end of the ceremony, it looked like our prayers were
answered - a young lady carrying a tray glided up to me and stood
waiting expectantly. After a confirming glance at Luciana, I carefully
placed my paper on the tray. The tea lady cautiously moved along the
line, and Luciana, Emily and Will followed my lead.

It was at this point that our tea lady turned to shoot a pleading and
confused look at Taira-sensei. The look seemed to ask: "What in the
hell are these stupid gaijin doing?"

Sure enough, a chuckling Taira-sensei confided to us, "The tray is for
your tickets, not for your rubbish!".

By this point, everyone was having a good old laugh, and as I turned a
bright shade of red I could hear a voice in my head saying: "The Force
is strong with you young Skywalker... but you are not a Jedi yet..."

One of the outdoor tea ceremonies. This ceremony is being performed in the traditional seiza (kneeling) position.

This is the tea ceremony I took part in. In my club, we usually perform the ceremony on tatami mats (as above), so it was interesting to see it performed using a table. It's mostly the same, but there are some subtle variations which make it look a little more complicated.

Dodgy searches

I've just been having a look through the "Referrers" list on my
internet counter. I often check it when I'm bored - it's really
interesting to see where people have come from to find your website.

If you have no idea what I'm on about, you can take a look for
yourself - just scroll down to the bottom of the side bar, and click
on the little bar graph under the site counter (or in laymans' terms,
"the colourful little box under the big box with numbers in it"). A
new window should pop up with loads of statistics about visitors to
the website. Now click on "Referrers" on the left-hand side under
"Visitor Analysis". You should be presented with a breakdown of the
ten most recent visitors, and if they clicked on a link to get to An
Englishman in Nyu-gun, the site they came from will be shown. More
interestingly though, if they used a search engine to to find the
site, the term they were searching for is shown as well.

Most of the people who come to my site through a search engine are
usually looking for something like "nyu gun", "asahi", "fukui", "JET"
or something like that. However, I noticed that one chap (and I'm
going to assume he was a chap) found my site after using this as a
search term:

"naked women firing guns pictures"

Apparently I'm way up there for naked-women-firing-guns-pictures,
since Google threw up my site on the second page of searches, along
with an article on the torture of women in Iraq and a treatise on the
Nanjing Massacre. Oh, and a website called "Alex's Girls With Guns". I
suspect the anonymous visitor found what be was looking for on that
last site, although I suppose there's always the chance that our
friend is a gender studies student looking into gun-related abuses
against women.

Though I doubt it.

Anyway, it seems Google picked my site because of a jokey article I
wrote in December about a magazine called "Arms", which had one of the
trashiest covers I've ever seen - a young Japanese girl with
frightening make-up sprawled under a Kalishnikov. I regret it now - if
I'd know it would be so popular with gender studies students, I
would've written more.

What I like most about the "naked women firing guns pictures" search,
is its exactingly specific nature... The author is no longer content
with merely searching for "naked women", he wants "naked women firing
guns". And what's more, he wants pictures. Presumably a steamy novella
concerning the sensual pleasures enjoyed by naked women who fire guns
would not be enough - this particular client demands pictures, and
nothing less.

A sad day indeed for internet publishers of erotic text-based fiction.

Engrish Bonanza

I haven't put any Engrish on the site for a while now, so here's a few
new gems to compensate - enjoy.

I saw this bank of vending machines (or "Self-Cafe" as it terms itself) in Shin-Osaka station. There was some fantastic nonsense written down the sides...

I remember the days when I still felt like a gentleman - before I was drawn in by the subtle and devious temptations of milk and sugar.

Dammit! I want to know the answer now!!! You mean there's more to coffee than the caffeine addiction and mild headaches? Well I never... So the love of coffee comes from within the heart? Is that why Tony Blair had a heart murmur last year after drinking too much coffee? I wonder what his heart was telling him? Probably: "Drink less coffee, Tony, or we're both gonna be up the creek without a paddle".

Whoever wrote this certainly loves their coffee breaks... Although if I was caught "getting energy from my valuables" on my coffee break, it could mean instant dismissal.

I saw this written on a wall in an office in Osaka - I think it might have been a travel agency... Anyway, I couldn't agree with the sentiments more, particularly "A woman does a revolution forever". Bloody women, always revolutionising all over the place. I came into the office this morning and SMACK! What happens first thing? That's a right, one of my female co-workers revolutioned, right up in my face! There were tears till lunchtime, I can tell you.

"Big Pocket - This good is another pocket for you". It's a good thing this pocket has a label, otherwise I'd never have been able to work out what it was.

"Huge Rock - We support your exciting fine". I wonder if they're talking about wrestler-cum-actor "The Rock"? Is his first name "Huge"? Is this a message of support from his loyal fans? And what exactly was the "exciting fine" for? It makes me begin to wonder what other kinds of films he's "acted" in...

In Kyoto station I came across this sign for a 300 yen shop called "3Coins". It's the first time I've seen a 300 yen (1 pound fifty) shop - which is basically a slightly more upmarket version of a 100 yen shop. Upmarket or not, the owners seem to be having more than a little trouble grasping the English language - it just goes to show, money can't buy you grammar.

The School Trip

Yesterday was the post-exam school trip at Nyu High School - in other
words, a free holiday for everyone, yay! Because I'm not affiliated
with any particlar class or year, last week I was given the choice of
either going with the first years, the second years or the third
years. I ended up plumping for the second years, mostly because one of
the second year teachers said her class had asked me to come along. I
was told we were going somewhere called "SST Land" (or "SST Rando" in
Japanese katakana English) - I had no idea what or where this was, but
apparently we would be having a barbecue there.

Then on Tuesday afternoon I was told that we'd be leaving school at
8.35am, and that I should dress casually. All well and good.

Wednesday morning arrived, but when I turned up to school I was a bit
confused. Where were all the coaches? How could there be a school trip
without any coaches? Then I bumped into one of the English teachers in
the corridor, and he asked me where I was going today. I told him I
was going with the second years to somewhere called "SST Land".

"Wow, you picked the furthest one!", he replied, "That's a two hour
walk! You must be fit!"

Hold on a minute - walking? No-one mentioned anything about walking,
and certainly nothing about a two hour walk... I'd been tricked! I was
told this day was going to be fun!

Still, there was no way out of it now, so I dutifully joined the queue
of second years who were loudly and cheerfully shuffling out of the
school. Almost immediately I started enjoying myself - there's some
really funny kids in the second year, and they were really excited
about talking to me outside of the classroom, so the time passed
pretty quickly.

And then it rained.

For the whole day.

Talk about putting a dampener on things - what was supposed to be a
fun day out for the kids and teachers turned out to be an endurance
test of mental and physical stamina. By the time we arrived at SST
Land (which turned out to be a campsite in the woods - not an
adventure theme park as I was hoping), everyone was soaked through to
the skin. A few lucky people had umbrellas, but most of the students
were just wearing tracksuits, and they looked absolutely freezing.

The barbecue helped warm things up a little bit (luckily the barbecues
were under shelter), but by the time it came to walk back it was still
pissing it down. At this point I thought that maybe someone would have
called a bus company to get some coaches to take everyone home - but
apparently not. With a grim air of determination, everyone stepped
back into the sheets of rain for the two hour walk home...

All in all, not a particularly fun trip I'm sure you'll agree.
However, it was saved from utter awfulness by three things:

1) The kids were still happy and genki despite being dripping wet and
cold, and it's difficult not to smile when you see their enthusiasm.

2) Even in the rain, the countryside round here is still quite pretty
(at least compared to the towns).

3) The rain reminded me of England.

And let's face it, you can't have a barbecue without rain...

The students set off on the two hour walk from Nyu High School to "SST Land". The weather was lovely to begin with - hot, but not too hot - just right for walking.

And then it rained. And rained. And rained....