Neil Hopcroft

Bleurgh, its 6pm saturday, and I’ve just woken up. How did that happen? There was so much I had to do today.

Arrived. I’m now in my new flat. Theres a 24 hour supermarket around the corner, with the best meat counter I’ve seen since I arrived here, perfect for those 4am steak cravings. Now all I gotta do is figure out how to microwave it.

Mobile coverage here (or Foma coverage at least) is poor, so I’m sitting by the window waving the phone at the neighbours across the courtyard in the hope of finding a carrier. Maybe there’ll be an open wifi router around somewhere…?

The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company

“In 1849, Sir Richard Broun proposed buying a huge tract of land at what is now the Surrey village of Brookwood to build a vast new cemetery for London’s dead. The 2,000-acre plot he had in mind – soon dubbed “London’s Necropolis” – was about 25 miles (40km) from the city, far enough away to present no health hazard and cheap enough to allow for affordable burials. The railway line from Waterloo to Southampton, Broun realised, could offer a practical way to transport coffins and mourners alike between London and the new cemetery.”

(from )

Oh, and apparently Japanese people do get dyslexia, the kanji all come out in the wrong order….I find this strangely reassuring.

I picked up the keys for my new flat today – I’m only there for one month but that is now all paid for, leaving me with three grand to live on until my transfer comes from the UK (about 15 quid). I’ve not seen the place yet, but I’m sure there’ll be no problems. Its between Hiroo and Azabu-juban, so hopefully quite a nice area and with a number of ‘international’ supermarkets and things around.

Then this evening I went to see Kikko-chans play, in a small theatre above a petrol station in Akabane-bashi. You have to climb the fire escape from the car park at the back of the petrol station to get in.

The theatre is small, seating around 100 people, with uncomfortable chairs arranged in tiered rows. I sat in the back corner, knowing that I’m likely to be taller than most of the audience so not wanting to get in their way. It seems they’d rather oversold the tickets for the evening, and even once all the seats were filled more people were entering. They just dug out a bunch of kneeling mats and arranged chairs along the corridor across the highest tier.

I didn’t understand much of the play itself, Kikko-chan did give me a sheet explaining briefly in English what was going on, which helped but I had to remember as much as I could since I knew I wouldn’t be able to read once the performance had started.

The story seemed to centre around three intertwined love stories, with a mentally disturbed girl stirring up the relationships between these people. In some ways its refreshing to watch a play without understanding what is going on, it gives you a chance to watch characters other than the main focus of attention, so you get to pick up a whole bunch of subtleties about how the various people are interacting. Sadly they’re not worth much without the context you get from understanding the story.

All in all, worth going to, just to see a small theatre production here, but I suspect its unlikely to be worthwhile going to another, unless its a story I know already.

Met up with jamese and Damian last night for Mirage at Head Power – but we went for some food first at a ‘private dining restaurant’, chosen by Tomako, Damians girlfriend. We wandered apparently lost through Kabukicho until suddenly we arrived at a big steel door, which opened to let us into a basement where there were booths, like cages, each with its own door and blind system to allow you privacy. I don’t think the four of us were their normal clientele.

Then on to Mirage itself – Tomako left before she missed the last train – so just the three of us. By some fluke I’d managed to get my name on the yoyaku list, which meant that all three of us got in for the pre-booked price. Thank you to Maya-chan.

It was good to see everyone again, though special mentions for Satoko-chan’s wonderful DJing and Isola’s nurse uniform. There was a prize draw halfway through the night where Jamie won a GoGoPinkyStreet doll, which I went to claim, since he was asleep at the time. This lead to some confusion when I later won ‘another’ prize, under my own name, but all was OK in the end.

We went on to Jonathans afterwards, where we stayed until 9, before retiring to sleep through the whole day – this is really gonna help my jetlag…ho hum. Somehow I ended up with Jamies prize, if you want it back let me know…

Back at work, now, and its almost like I never went away. Back into the fights about whos responsibility this thing is, why that thing hasn’t happened yet, who should make the next move on the other thing.

The jetlag is catching up with me now, though. Only two hours sleep last night, then a full days work, I’m gonna sleep well tonight. I hope.

Next, theres a weekend, but I doubt I’ll end up doing much in the way of straightening out my body clock then.

There is no plan, just go with the flow for the moment, maybe Mirage tomorrow night, then see what happens….

Oh, I didn’t get around to describing the bathroom in my earlier post, did I? Its the kind of bathroom you’d expect to find in the tardis, except that its a good deal more yellow, it has a built in hairdryer on the wall and no corners, everything just curves in on itself to make easy to wash surfaces.

Indeed, its a feat of engineering to get such a volume of fibreglass into a hotel room in one piece (well, three pieces since it seems to come in three bands, one at waist height, one at shoulder height). I wonder what happens if some careless guest punches their way out of the resin/glass bubble?

This has made me speechless…I can’t believe I inhabit the same internet as these people. (though, it’ll probably be appreciated more by those who understand Japanese – turning on the subtitles helps but for me that is only enough to tell me there are more jokes in there that, right now, there is no way I’m going to understand)

Another first – this time reading a real book in less than 24 hours. I’ve never been a particularly prolific reader, given the way the words don’t really make much sense and swim around on the page, and that by the time I’ve got to the end of a sentence I’ve forgotten where it started. It was Douglas Couplands “Hey Nostradamus!”, so disposable trash, but 240 odd pages of disposable trash in 24 hours, thats an average of 10 pages an hour. Remarkable. I feel all burned out now, time to get back to “Globalization and its discontents”, a somewhat dry look at the IMF from the point of view of an advisor to the World Bank.

HN! is trash, its typical Coupland, character narative, character building incident at begining, study of human interaction and coming to terms with incident throughout book, theres no depth, everyone is so fake, characatures. But its an easy read, and compelling enough to get me through the spaces between snacks on an 11 hour flight.

With my usual exquisite planning skills I landed in Tokyo on the hottest day since records began – it is traditionally the hottest day of the year, complete with a ceremony involving burning herbs in a pot on your head. Fortunately they didn’t require that as part of the entry conditions. Indeed, there weren’t even any awkward questions about my return.

Now, I’ve just gotten back to the hotel from a meal at Jonathans, its 330am, so I don’t think its breakfast, but its not really any other meal either. I’m staying in the Shinjuku Prince, in kabuki-cho, so even though its the middle of the night it is practically daylight outside with all the pachinko, disappearing to generic cityscape of buildings delineated by red flashing lights in the distance.

The mullets are out in force tonight, too, mostly dressed in kimono (or the summer equivalent, I guess) and more tan than really suits Japanese people.

British Airways are so British, everyone else flying to Japan gives you hot towels all the time, just like everywhere in Japan, but BA have a standard for what you get in cattle class for long haul and, no matter where you’re going, that it what you get.

‘Yesterday’ (Monday, I’ve lost track of what day it is now) was a mad dash across London to catch the last train, having failed to be able to look up trains on the interet – I was trying to catch the 9pm from Huntingdon, except that runs on Sundays not Mondays, so ended up on the 930 stopping service which arrived around the back of Kings Cross at 2250. Still, it only took 20mins to get to London Bridge where I was then treated to a graffiti exhibition as many previously delayed Dartford trains passed before, at last, the Dover train.

I’m back in the UK around end of August. Anyone passing Tokyo, pop by.