UCL Lost Boys

On my way in to work this morning I could swear that pasted on the train I was on, stuck in the middle of a big poster  for a random womans mag, was a big picture of Carol Smiley. Odd.

Whilst deleting the links for poker and online gambling that them lovely spam bots leave in the comments on this blog, I came across to slightly bizarre links. One was for some unknown website that referenced my The Bath entry as “an interesting post” – even though it includes derogatory references to gay sex in it, and another was a link to a webpage linking various sites that have animal statue pictures on them…..as well as mucho links to wild and varied porn. Nice work.

Yesterday, the missus and I went for a bath. Not the pokey little one in the bathroom, but one of those big outdoor jobbies in Tokyo. And it was good.

It starts of in good for too. After paying your cash (3000 yen, roughly 15 quid) you pick out the yukata you wear for the duration from those on array. I chose a quality number with a rampant samurai laying waste on the back of it. The only thing that stopped me looking like a total hole-hitter was that that was quite a consistent theme, so I only looked as dumb as everyone else there.

There was plenty here too. Not just baths, meladdeeoo. But mostly. There were a few shops, some random game stalls (I won a bracelt for my wife on the cork shooting range. Brownie points plus!) many restaurants, a roving beer cart that served jumbo booze, a relaxation room and a few other non-descript things that I forgot about because they weren’t interesting. The relaxation room was good, many big recliner chairs with built in tellies and speakers in the head rest. There was A LOT of people sleeping in here. Old ladies snore like dying elephants!

On the wall in the entrance hall was this fella too:

It’s a random poster for the police apparently. Nice. I would have prefered some scantily clad totty though. Can’t win them all!

Went to Chiba for some more lumps on saturday. Had a great keiko with a copper (and I actually learned something, like an Archimedes moment!), as well as a good bash in general. After keiko, went out and consumed a few of these puppies:

and yet again discussed Hiro’s ambiguous sexuality with his child hood friends.

All is well in the world.

The ultimate test to see if someone reads that garbage you write? Put a stupid picture up of them and see if they ask you to remove it!

This is a sun-burnt Matt. Notice the stark contrasting line, slap bang in the middle of his forehead. I’m guessing no sex for Matthew for a while then…Recently Matt also got banned for life from a theme park and still hasn’t told me why.

It’s raining a lot here at the moment. I should be used to this being British. I’ve already had my quota of 3 whole days of sunshine this year so I should feel like anything else is a bonus and rain is just my normal default setting. But christ, rain in this country is Rain, note the capital R. Rain here has 2 levels, “On” and “Off”. No light spring drizzle, no early morning shower. You get Downpour Yes/No. Last week, it was most definately Yes, and the end result was this:

That is the bloodied carcass of my unbrella, and the second one this week. Note the spindly look the thing has, and the nakedness of the arms. Umbrella snuff, thats what this pic is. You dirty perverts. Outside or near most train stations in Tokyo you will see loads of these kinds of umbrellas (ie fucking broken) strewn in heaps, like an elephant grave yard.

On the plus side, the general abundance of good looking laydees does not end with a minor outpouring of the heavans. And dam, some of them look fine in the rain…..ahem. I saw one young lady in particular, dressed in her carbon copy office attire of sensible black suit with skirt and white shirt, wearing some pink wellies on her way to the office. The combination of an ass that I would have knelt down and begged for butter milk for, and the cute pinky wellies underneath said perfectly shaped posterior was enough to make me walk funny.

Maybe the rain isn’t so bad after all….wellies + arse = 1/2 stonker. Now thats some maths I can get my head round!

At the moment on a telly programme called Gakkou e ikkou (Let’s go to school….. the title alone clues you in that all is not well at the Circle K….)they are having something of an enjoyable time parading teenage trannies around Tokyo. Let me write that again just to make sure you properly understand this:

THEY ARE USING CROSS DRESSING 15 AND 16 YEAR OLD BOYS AS “ENTERTAINMENT”.

Right, now thats cleared up let’s continue shall we. So, they have these little benders all lined up and dressed in birds clothes, like a japanese teenage tribute to Eddie Izzard. And they decide to take their little parade to some large fashion show and have them on the runway. Thats right, boys, dressed like girls, modelling on a fashion show runway. Hello Japan! Who on Planet Fucking-hell-is-that-little-bender-dressed-like-my-mum decided that this was in no way mentally damaging?! But before that….

….they decided to play a trick on some “Celebs”. First they tricked the woman hosting the fashion show, a peewee little bird called Yaguchi Mari, formerly of Japanese Instrument of Torture Morning Musume. What was funny about her was that every time one of the presenters pressed play on the little tape deck he was holding, cuing some tune that she caned a few years ago, she had this pavlovian response that resulted in dancing to it. 6 times. Strange, very strange.

“Go and trick these guys,” she suggests, and off they go with there cross dressing harem to pull one over a comedy group duo called Kirin.

So, Kirin bloke 1 (dunno his name….? Tanaka?)is suitably suprised by little trannies, squawking out a quick (and worrying…) “Kawaii!”, or “Aren’t they cute!” Yeah mate, for 15 year old boys dressed like girls, they are absolutely fucking adorable. Tit.

“I know,” he says “Let’s get one over on Kirin bloke 2 (dunno about him either……Fujii?)” and of goes the harem again (one of them was wearing a full kimono by the way).

Now, instead of all piling in there, they thought it woul dbe fun to trap him….now just in case you missed that, here is again:

THEY USED  A 15 YEAR OLD BOY DRESSED AS A GIRL TO TRAP A CELEB FOR FUN

Has that sunk in? And sure enough it work.

Little lady boy goes in, asks for an autograph and hands over his SCHOOL DIARY. Gets autograph. And then says, I’ve put my phone number in there…can I have yours. Celeb obliges, and says “Yeah, let’s go out sometime….” Thats the celeb cracking on to a “girl” who has just handed him his/her school diary. Nice one, pal.

And to polish off? When the group piles in, they say “ha ha haaa! It’s a boy!!!” not “Jesus fucking wept, you nobend, you just gave the come on to a 15 year old!”.

That scares me……

6 years ago, about a week before my second european championships, I broke my tooth on a haggis pizza. This would be good except for 2 reasons:

a) Haggis tastes like shit

and

3) I can’t think of a second reason.

It left a black decaying hole in the tooth which has very slowly, but surely gotten bigger. Last month, at the Euros (therefore roughly 6 years to the day!) I broke the little fucker a bit more on a packet of sweets. Bloody Haribo.

This set me up for a visit to the dentist. I’ve heard many stories about Japanese dentist that usually fall in to 2 categories:

1) They are great – Japanese people

or

d) Fucking schysters – everybody else.

So I was naturally apprehensive. That having been said, most Japanese mouths* appear to have more gold in them than 60 year old numbered Swiss bank accounts, so at the least these guys get a lot of practise in.

*why do the japanese have such bad teeth?! Some of them have a smile with more heavy metal than Mr T’s neck and hands. I’ve never met a single one without something wrong, even the young ones. Curious.

My wife set up the appointment and off we went last saturday, for what would be, I feared, by last few hours of coherant speech and solid food. Thankfully it wasn’t that bad.

After the registration and filling in of forms, I was sat in the chair and an assistant gave me the once over. For those of you praying that the once over was me being strapped in, tied down, and worked over with bars of soap in pillow cases, I’m sorry to dissapoint. When she was done though I caught a glimpse of the mirror she had been tryingto make me vom with, and it was covered in my own blood. Nice……that was not a good sign.

At this point, I started sweating. Badly. Blood means bad, bad means moving metal objects taking chunks of me away.

“Do you have any allergies, Mr Gibson?”

“No, why?”

“Because we are going to stick this needle in your mouth and inject your gums 3 times in an extremely painful fashion”

“Oh good.”

After the annesthetic, the Dentist (I had the real dentist now) declared that it was Oil Season and my mouth was Saudi Arabia, and set to. It’s a bizarre and unsettling experience to have your head judder as someone drills holes from the inside out. It is however a downright alarming one when AFTER the anesthetic you are told to raise your left hand if it hurts. Which it fucking did, big time. As well as raising my hand I also declard “Hnnnnnnnrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhh!” at the top of my voice (The fucking drill was still in my mouth!). I think it would have been more appropriate to say “if it hurts, use your left hand to punch me in the face” because I’m sure the cow dug a bit too deep on purpose. And WHAT THE HELL IS ANASTHETIC FOR IF THE BASTARD HURTS ANYWAY!!!!!! Explain this! Come on! On the plus side, she was kind enough to rub her left tit on the back of my head while she was digging away, so it wasn’t all bad.

Once she was finished, she told me to rinse my mouth out throughly to make sure any bits of loose debris were taken care of. Time for my revenge, however unwitting. The anasthetic had made my mouth and lips numb, and also meant that the parts of my mouth closest to the injection were not quite under my control, the end result of which was me taking in a cup full of warm water, and spitting it straight back out on to the chair, mirror and floor. Twice. We’ll call that an honourable draw.

I was however cheated out of my Lollipop. Trips to the dentist should always involve sweets! Where is my Chupachup!

At the weekend, I went to watch this bad boy, a demonstration event held on a sunday with categories starting at Ladies 5th dan, then going up to Hanshi 8th Dan. All lovely.

I’ll get the inevitable whinge out of the way first shall I?

I saw and heard some right sychophantic brown nosers there. Bloody hells bells! It was like some of these guys thought that their sensei at the bottom in the arena could hear them. More than likely, my guess is that they wanted to make sure that everyone around them heard them constantly praising sensei, and I mean constantly. Especially the guy next to me. Every time there was someone on that he knew, it was time to get the brown paint out, and give his nose a healthy coat. Blimey, towards the end it was like a stream of conciousness, maybe he didn’t even realise he was doing it! The fucking plum. Get a life and do kendo for yourself. I wonder what makes these people so desperate to ingratiate themselves with their seniors? I do perhaps think its a cultural thing though, and nothing exclusive to kendo. One particular “email contact” remarked how he thought that kyudo was exactly the same, and I’ve seen plenty of it in the office as well.

The other thing that annoyed slightly was the amazingly bad grace that some people showed in their matches. They had one match, in some rare occaision they had two, to show their kendo, and in the case of the hanshi, really, provide example and inspiration. It was with this semi in mind that I was looking forward to Chiba sensei’s match, one of the last of the day, with some block I’ve never heard of. Other matey boy must have known I’ve not a clue who he is and got the hump, because he acted like a right plum for the whole 3 minute match, doing almost exclusively gyaku dou, and turning his back on Chiba sensei EVERY time he did it too. It just broke the rhythm of the match completely, and made it actually slightly dull to watch. There was no connection, no expectation, just a feeling of “oh look, he’s done it again“. Great.

Aside from that, it was actually a great day, and I really enjoyed it (apart from the phone call with my wife at the end of the day explaining that I was now in a totally different part of Tokyo and was on my second beer…). I saw some phenominal kendo, there were many coppers on display, and also got from it a much better image of the direction that I want my kendo to go in, which made the trek out there totally worth while. I also saw a 3 minute match between two hachidan that involved literally no activity. Not even an exploratory stomp, or an agressive wave of the shinai! I was watching, and waiting, and expecting some apocalyptic ai-men that would have the audience “wooing” and “ah-ing”, but then time was called and the tachi-ai stopped them! After nothing! I hope if I ever get to hachidan I can remember to hit the guy in front of me….

I also got a chance to have a proper conversation with one of the teachers from the dojo. Most of them were there, either watching or taking part, including this guy. I hadn’t really spoken with him at all before, but this time spent a good 3 hours or so nattering away with him, which was kind of cool as well. He’s just a normal bloke! Nice to know that he’s not a lunatic or kendo-romantasist (I once met one guy who told me that as a foreigner I had to read books by a particular japanese author – whose name I forgot on purpose – in order to understand the japanese mind and soul, because only the japanese have the right mind and soul for kendo. What load of old shit. And this dude had a mole in the middle of his face that made it look like he’d slept in mag of maltesers too).

And, to round off, these guys (nanadans, most of them) had video’ed the whole thing too. At the drinking establishment, they got the camera out, set it on the table, turned it on, and proceeded to bitch unceremoniously about practically EVERYTHING on tape! Quality! It was nice to see that I’m not the only one….

In Japan, there are two employment seasons, which culminate with the new crop beginning either in April or September. September is ok, it’s mostly people who discovered they hate their job and had the option of moving.

April on the other hand, is when thousands of newly graduated students descend upon Tokyo’s burgeoning public transport system to make sure I am squashed against other commuters every morning.

Being an office n00b appears to be the short straw here. Not only do you have to look like a “fresh off the production line” carbon copy of every other 21-22 year old just starting out (this means jet black suit, white shirt, and sensible tie*) but you also have to deal with the joys of the hierarchical Japanese office.

*in the case of girls, I fully endorse this, because a hot OL showing a bit of leg is lurverly.

In the case of girls this usually manifests itself in getting the shit jobs, being a dogs body, and having to smile at the lecherous “elder gentleman” and their ridiculous attempts and getting some (I’ve seen 3 different counts of that between the station and the office already this week. One girl had even perfected the rictous grin accompanied by for-the-love-of-god-help-me eyes already!! Good girl!) with the lovely young totty. For guys its usually the shit jobs, being used as a dogs body, and then forced to drink at booze ups and humilate yourself. It really is the lowest of the low, and some of these poor fuckers get treated that way too.

It’s by no means as bad as it was years back (according to some people I’ve spoken to anyway….) but I’m just waiting to see a whole new raft of young salary men, covered in the own vom, holding on to a wide open and now empty briefcase, passed out in the flowers outside the train station. On a tuesday night. It’ll happen, you mark my words (I saw a guy a few months back, around the end of septmeber (the september employment rush!) vomming into a drain next to the smoking area outside Nakano station on a monday night on my way home from keiko). Thankfully, it won’t be me. I hope.