UCL Lost Boys

Listening to another dude fart and shit loudly in the toilet creates a very awkward silence in the gents loo at work.

So, concious that a lot of what I write appears to be only indulging myself in that great British past time of whinging my unfeasibly large bollocks off, I thought I’d share a beautfiul experience I had in the dojo last night, which involved everyone else there, pink slippers and a big red japanese face.

 The club I am a member of is slap bang right in the middle of a residential area, and has been for the past 140 years or so, its quite an old place and its got pictures on the wall of my teachers granddad, which means it must be really old (incidentally he looks the spit of his grampy, like, almost identical! I thought it was some arty print of himself until I noticed the period suit!).  So the locals are pretty much used to us being noisy bastards right? I mean 140 bleeding years? Even the japanese with their lets-rip-Noma-Dojo-down mentality must realise that unless you have been there longer than 140 years you’re on a losing argument when it comes to facing off…..right?

Last night, same as other monday night, we’re all going at it. Plenty of kirikaeshi last night (its like kendo’s bread and butter, except I normally like bread and butter….) and I was wading through and had just finished yet another set, when I see this geezer angrilly struggling to get himself through the dojo door. “Here we go….” I’m thinking, because…..

….the twat was in his pyjamas, and these are japanese middle aged salary man jim-jams, so they are prison white and very unimaginative. He also has on a pair of fetching pink slippers (that were probably liberated from his toilet) and a brilliant patterned balck and white dressing gown. And he was also shit faced drunk, and a lovely shade of red.

So this entity comes storming into the dojo like some sort of rabid animal from the plains, grabs a guy’s shinai and tries to chuck it on the floor (afterwards that guy said that because he couldn’t see behind him or to the side because of his Men, for the first second he thought it was an exceptionally angry sensei. Then he saw the dressing gown), and starts screaming and shouting:

“You’re all bloody noisy! Think of the locals! People are studying! (this was my favourite – what are you studying, pops, the bottom of another fucking bottle?!) How dare you! This is unbelievable!” Then he turns to the teacher in charge – the normal guy wasn’t there – and starts giving him a lungful also including “This is outrageous! I’m calling the police!”. The teachers response to this was A1 class, like a real calm hard bastard, and it made me instantly grin. He looked the guy up and down and very calmly said:

 ”Please take your slippers off”

Absolute genius. And he refused to say anything else! Whenever matey boy started shouting again, the teacher would wait for him to stop and then ask him to take his slippers off again, which produced more shouting. After the third go the drunkard decided to leave (probably the thought that he was in a dojo with 20 armoured and annoyed kendoka managed to seep into his asahi-addled brain), taking his slippers with him.

Upon his exit, the guy in charge turns to the rest of the class, and says “lets not stamp too hard tonight, eh?” Heh. My only regret is that I didn’t have a camera, because this guy really looked like sunshine bus-fodder.

Obviously not wanting to make too light of this whole thing, its also worth pointing out that we did call the police. Afterall, before every adult practise there is a childrens practise there and part of the collective responsibility of the dojo is giving the kids in its trust a safe environment. The policeman was understandably sympathetic with us (like you would be surprised after some shit faced dude dressed for toilet-then-bed attempted to storm the dojo with nothing more than his breath and his dirty drawers) but asked us not to do anything to “aggrevate” the situation. Once he had gone we started shouting our bollocks off again as if nothing had happened. Joy.

I would love to say that this is some sort of deep cultural insite into the minds of the Japanese, with metaphors between late trains and the suicide cultural that is all over Japan but never actually spoken about by any of them, but its not. Its another rant about my journey to work. Live with it.

Here is a silly picture to start you off. This is what the express trains usually look like just before they leave. Note how the stupid bird standing in the door way only actually has a bloody heels inside the train. Needless to say she squeezed in somehow in a typical Japanese-solution-to-small-places kind of way.

Here is another picture. I managed to get a little closer, and tried my best to serruptitiosly take a James Bond style picture to show a little more of the rush hour lunacy of japan:

Notice how the idiots in the door, despite obviously not being able to board safely are still doing so anyway. The platform is empty, because everybody on it crow barred themselves on to the bloody thing. Tru bloody minded japanese-ness at its best. There is always room for one more body.

Especially, it would seem, on the tracks. This may seem a little harsh and insensitive, but I endured this morning the single worst train journey of my short life……

The Japanese, especially those in London, love to tell us ignorant hairy barbarians that they have a wonderful rail service, especially compared to the shit heap that is the British rail system. This would be true, if it wasn’t for the fact it was actually A FLAGRANT LIE.

Like so many other simple Japanese truths, it is only applicable at specific times, or to specific places. Next time a Japanese person tries to tell you about the joy of Japanese rail travle, call them a liar. Japanese trains do certainly run on time, in comfortable oriental efficiency, but only at midday, perhaps the early afternoon too. Even when people aren’t busy throwing themselves onto the tracks (today’s happening was described as a “human incident” – ie, pushed, fell or threw themselves on, but however it happened someone ended up under a train.) the train I get in the morning is usually at least 10 minutes late getting to my station. Its roughly on time in the evenings, but still later than the ultra efficient timetable suggest. Which makes it utter bollocks and not worth the paper I wiped my arse with twenty minutes ago.

Japanese trains are impossibly crowded at the best of times, especially during rush hours of course, but today was something else. I spent an hour and 25 minutes sandwiched between a salary man and two old ladies today, and was 45 minutes for work where had the train only been its usual 10 minutes late I would still have been 15 minutes later. Efficient Japanese travel? Total bollocks more like.

To polish off the experience, because things were so stupidly crowded this morning, someone on the train in front of the one I was on became sick and had to be taken to hospital. Which meant standing in the same impossible position for an extra 10 minutes.

 Then you have the getting on and off. Compare the platform in the previous two pictures with this nightmare which I was confronted with when I got to my local station:

This really was crazy. I will never believe or tolerate another transport lie! The stupid thing is though, if you say something like this to someone Japanese you’ll get a variety of deflecting responses:

“Oh, that’s the rush hour, its always like that. Youcan’t count that”

“Oh, that line, its always like that. You can’t count that”

“Oh, that’s Tokyo, it’s not like that everywhere else. You can’t count that”

I bloody can! It’s where I live! And Tokyo is Japan!

…and immediately took a picture because its funny.