Movies, games and videos

I took my first trip to the arcade on Saturday.

Most of you are probably thinking "Is this the same Lewis? Has he really been in Japan for over two months and has yet to visit an arcade?" Well, yes, it took me a while, but I finally got around to sampling the Japanese arcade experience. And it was mental.

For a start it was called Joyland. Secondly, there were no scary children wearing Kappa jackets. And thirdly it had some of the most bizarre games I've ever seen. By far the best was Drummania, which is a giant pink cabinet with a set of touch sensitive drums - to get an impression of how popular it is, I should tell you that the one I played was the ELEVENTH version. The idea is that you can choose from a list of rather brilliant bubbly J-pop tunes and drum along to the on-screen instructions. It's brilliant fun, and the bonus is that you feel slightly less stupid than when playing those dancing games. I've attached a photo of a Japanese guy playing on it who was amazingly good. He was playing the game on extreme level, and he's obviously memorised every track. He even brought his own drum sticks. I wasn't sure whether to be impressed or to feel slightly embarrassed for him...

By far the strangest thing there was the eight player football game though. I couldn't quite work out how you were supposed to play it - as far as I could tell it was based on stat battles between cards that the players brought along themselves and put into the machine. A bit like a cross between Top Trumps and Match of the Day.

The best bit of the arcade was the Sega "Relax Mission", which was, quite simply, a massage chair. Just in case you need to unwind after a heavy bout of drumming.

And now, the weather... Is it me or has the world weather been going a bit mental lately? Japan has had NINE typhoons this year. That's the most typhoons to hit the country in one year since records began. The last one arrived this weekend, and was the strongest one since 1951, but luckily it veered east at the last minute and hit Tokyo. Well, lucky for me anyway, not particularly lucky for the people in Tokyo.

A rather random result of this is that Fukui has had the highest number of bear attacks ever. The numerous typhoons have knocked all the fruit and nuts off the trees, so the bears are coming down from the hills to look for food in towns. It's got to the point where the local government is issuing primary school children with bells for their walk to and from school, in order to scare away bears. They even cancelled the Katsuyama sports festival this weekend due to the risk of bear attacks. It all seems a little absurd to me - the black bears here only grow to about a metre long at most. Having said that, I wouldn't want to wake up in the night to find one rooting through my refrigerator.

And finally, I watched Love Actually with a load of Americans on Sunday, which was interesting. I had great fun trying to explain to them what Basildon was...

Beatmania - This guy was playing it on the extreme setting. He was playing so fast that I honestly believe that he can see into the future.

The eight player football game. I have absolutely no idea how you play this. 

So it begins...

I survived the recent typhoon thankfully - it was a pretty nasty one as it turns out. Luckily in Fukui we managed to avoid the worst of it, but in Hiroshima they recorded record winds of 216 kph, and five ships were sunk, along with lots of other damage.

I'm more worried about the insects though. The grasshoppers are more terrifying than the bird-like moths. Thing is, they look exactly like twigs until you walk up to them, when they suddenly leap across your path making the most terrible racket. Scared the shit out of me the first time.

Anyway, I've just had my first lesson, so now I'm officially a teacher, along with everyone else from the sounds of your emails. It was a good laugh - I had to do a self-introduction, so I explained to them about the United Kingdom and how it's made up of four countries. They were mystified. Here they just call Britain "Igirisu", which means England, and they're amazed by the existence of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Much to the annoyance of Paul and Kate, our two resident Scottish JETs.

I think I lost the class a bit when I started banging on about London, but then I got my guitar out and sang them a bit of Green Day, which went down well. Then I put on my fantastic spangly navy jacket (as seen at the goodbye party) and explained how I bought it in Covent Garden, along with postcards and diagrams. The jacket went down a treat, as did "Can't stand me now" by The Libertines - I can't wait to educate them all about English music!

I bought the new Libertines album on Wednesday - get in. I also found a fantastic second hand shop and spent a joyous afternoon buying all the CDs I never quite got round to buying when I was 16, for dirt cheap prices. Anyone remember Geneva? Silver Sun? Dubstar? Gene? Bis? The Wannadies? All classic bands lost in the midst of time. Or the bowels of Japanese second hand shops anyway. I also discovered that Shampoo released four albums here. Those crazy Japanese...

I've got my first office party (or enkai) tonight. Everyone automatically pays about 20 quid from their pay packets into the enkai fund every month, and then it gets spent on massive nights out for the whole office. Could be a bit dangerous... I'll let you know if I embarrass myself.

PS. I managed to get away with not wearing a tracksuit on sports day, but I ended up getting horribly sunburnt and now I have a mark across my forehead where I was wearing a bandana in my team colours. Highly embarrassing I can assure you.

Earthquakes and drama

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I had my first experience of an earthquake last night! It was really confusing at first - my windows started rattling and I couldn't work out why because it wasn't windy. Then I noticed that my TV was swaying and I finally twigged as to what was going on. But before I stopped wondering if I should dive underneath a desk or start preparing an emergency packed lunch it had stopped.

The quake hit at about 7pm here and was located about 70km off the southern coast of Japan and even caused a small tsunami of about 50cm. It was quite big, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, but didn't cause much damage because it was so far out to sea, and in Fukui we barely felt it. There was also a second earthquake which happened at midnight - it's bad enough being woken up in the middle of the night, but especially confusing when you can't work out why the room's spinning though you haven't had anything to drink. This one was bigger than the first, at 7.4, but it felt about the same.

All very exciting, I can assure you! I also got hit by my first typhoon last week. It's typhoon season here so there's been about one a week hitting the far southern coast of Japan, but No 16 was the first to actually come across the mainland and hit Fukui since I've been here. Luckily because Fukui is surrounded by mountains they dissipated much of the storm's force, but I was still kept awake all night by wind and rain. I also got to experience the phenomenon of tiny red vans whizzing about the streets with sirens on, warning people that a typhoon is coming. Now I just need to see a volcano and a tsunami and I've got the natural disaster set! Actually, there was a small eruption in a prefecture to the west of here last week, but it didn't require any evacuations - just dumped a whole load of volcanic ash all over the local crops, much to the annoyance of the farmers.

In other Lewis related Japan news I appeared in the teacher's play this morning as part of the school festival - a highly embarrassing experience. I've been practicing every night after school this week, but in the end the teachers I was acting with just ad libbed their parts, which left me a little confused, seeing as I had no idea what they were saying. This led to me coming in at the wrong part with all my lines, much to the amusement of the audience! So, a shambles, but a good laugh all the same. The play is a farce set in the eighteenth century, so they decided I should play a European merchant. So I explained that in the eighteenth century English people wore collars called ruffs made out of lace. Unfortunately I think the costume department got the wrong end of the stick and I ended up wearing a giant cardboard collar painted with bright pink and yellow stripes. Still, it looked great...