2 - Explore

I can't actually believe this place. Photos of the main building to follow, but for now just know that the Keio Plaza Hotel is swank-tastic. 35 floors of posh flooring, lighting, staff... I felt a little common for the place until I got into the rooms and they're the same as any hotels', just with a cheaper, slower internet. View's nice, though.





Yeah, that's my bed by the window, the sofa bed one. Hey, it's horizontal, so it'll be a million times better than any aeroplane seat!

Breakfast's at 7am tomorrow morning, and we're expected to be there. Won't find me complaining, but I do wonder what sort of surprises a breakfast in this sort of place is gonna throw at us. Best not thought about for now, because now is the time for Big Thunder! Yes, my quest for the elusive 53yen chocolate bar has proven successful, and I have two of the golden nuggets of sugary treasure sitting in a plastic bag waiting to be eaten. But I'm savouring them, oh yes, for when the time is right.

Coffee and onigiri were sensational after so long. It's a real sign of being back in the country, that taste. Both shopkeepers seemed very pleased that I was able to buy my items correctly, as well, which made my heart swell a little.

But first, one very good reason why this hotel is like God's way of welcoming me personally back into Japan. There's a Bic Camera 5 minutes away, the route to which involves walking through Yodobashi Camera. That's my two favourite stores right there. And you know what? That road also had a Traders on it, where I spotted a copy of Sexy Parodius on the Playstation for 3000 yen. Tempting offer, despite technically owning the game already on the PSP in the form of Parodius Collection, for the sensational multiplayer. Though thinking about it, challenging people to a game of Sexy Parodius sounds like an easy way to lose friends...

The small neighbourhood between Keio Hotel and Shinjuku Station appears to be some kind of Yodobashi Fortress, with five or six different versions of the shop dotted about in a grid shape. There's the Yodobashi Camera for electrical goods, the Yodobashi camera for toys and games, the Yodobashi Camera for travel goods. And don't let me get started on the Yodobashi phone shop, with its hundred-odd staff, all working for different phone companies and all trying to shout out the others. I'm not complaining necessarily, I've just always thought the idea of multiple copies of the same shop, differently specialised, in the same area was a bit off. I'll cut a long story short and tell you I didn't buy anything, save the food. There were more tempting offers out there, though. Gundam Musous 1, 2 and 'Special', which I'd never heard of. Slimes from Dragon Quest as key chains, phone charms and child's cutlery. Pokemon Smash EX, or whatever it's called. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and a pity that much of my money should really be saved up for when I'll invariably need it for rent etc. over in Kobe.

I also found myself buying a funny set of one bottle of some melony soft drink and one of Pocari Sweat, which I am reminded now with a stomach ache is actually rank-tacular. It TASTES like you'd imagine sweat does, y'know? Maybe it's just the name but... that taste...

Much of my time was spent traipsing round the shops, killing time before the quickly approaching 5.30pm, at which time I will move down to the lobby area to play on the DS in the hope that Steph will magically appear. I spent a good long while in the one arcade in the area, actually, which despite it being Sunday afternoon, a time typically spent doing lazy things, was hosting two events. One was a Shin Samurai Spirits tournament, with some kind of Hello Kitty biscuits up for grabs, and the other was a demonstration of the power of the brand-new Gundam vs Gundam EXTREME arcade game's 8-player scrambling system. There were some sixteen machines for this latest game in total, pretty much all taken up by smoking youths and glasses-wearing miscreants. But wow does that game look good. Heh, not that I had a go, you understand; I'd get ripped apart in a most humiliating way, no fun for anyone. But wow. It's like it takes every suit from every Gundam Battle game (including my beloved SEED Destiny Rengou vs ZAFT II Plus) and shoves them all into one beautiful, beautiful melee. This is including brand new Unicorn suits and some stuff I've never seen before. Crossbones and stuff. Ace to watch, I spent a long time there. Also got briefly mesmorised by a new fighting game called Aqua... something. Something girly-sounding. And by the looks of it you send cute little girls into bloody fights with each other, and occasionally against burly men. The characters in question were all characters from popular dating-sims-turned-anime (not that I'm an expert on the subject...) and flailed about with the most ridiculous-looking attacks I have ever seen a young Japanese man exclaim over. The highlight was a match between a girl who looked about 9, who ran gaily across the battlefield with a handbag slung over her dainty arms, who took great pleasure in ripping apart a girl about the same age except she was clearly a robot, whose only means of defending herself against this bloody onslaught was a simple broom. And every time she turned around her eyes went all swirly. It was quite a match, let me tell you.

It's 5.23, I should be off soon. Tomorrow will mostly be speeches from CLAIR's admin team, followed by workshops about life in Japan and so on. You have to choose some to do, so I'll have to pick wisely over brea-

Oh hold on, there's something I was meaning to say but haven't yet. It has come to my attention that I'm more fashion-conscious than I realise, and no this is not a good thing. The first problem is that I didn't bring any comfortable shoes to wear when not in a suit, so suit shoes it is. They still look quite nice, quite smart-casual, when worn with one of my new pairs of jeans, except the jeans require a belt that I... also forgot to bring with me. I say require, I did just fine today, but it'd be a handy addition, let me tell you. One solution would be to wear my shorts, which I DID bring, and which DON'T require a belt, only when you wear formal shoes with cargo shorts the whole thing comes off as ridiculous. Do you see my point? I shouldn't care about all this, but I do, and it's very inconvenient.

And then there's the fact that NONE of the above goes well with a bright blue raincoat. I love that coat, but it doesn't suit formal shoes nor cargo shorts. I've really done myself a disservice here. At least I have a lot of pastel shirts. Silver lining, and all.

Anyway, that's that. I'll write again tomorrow if anything important happens.

Thanks for reading.

1 - Entrance

Hello, and welcome to the third in a series of blogs chronicling the grand adventures of student-turned-teacher-plus-internet-superstar Swanner Peek. When we last left our intrepid hero, he was graduating from Edinburgh University with his MA in Japanese and Linguistics, and now we see him putting those hard-earnt letters to use in a job out in Japan. As we speak I am on board a coach heading to Shinjuku from Narita Airport, and everything around me is Japanese. Like, everything. It shouldn't surprise me, but I think the past eleven and a half hours on the plane blurred together to make a strange, dreamlike state in which I didn't go anywhere at all. Needless to say this is all a little shocking.

The flight was bearable, I suppose. My head hurts and my poor suit is a little crumpled (they have irons at the hotel, apparently) and my feet are twice the size they should be and I seem to have lost and then refound every last item in my inventory over the last half hour. First I had everything, then I was told that having money in the luggage being sent off to Kobe City (did I mention that's specifically where I'm heading?) wasn't clever and I had to pull it all out and shove it into my hand luggage. Then, having sent everything off, I found I no longer had my passport nor my boarding card for the bus and, fearing the worst, spent a few panic-stricken minutes pulling out every last of my million pockets (I'm wearing a raincoat over this suit, not that I need one) in search of it, before realising I'd foolishly shoved it into the main compartment of my handluggage with my money. So, all that found, I went to board the bus, only to find that AGAIN my boarding card had escaped my clutches. Were it not for a helpful coach driver finding it on the floor, I'd have been forced to take the walk of shame. Now I'm on the bus, and everything's gonna be alright.

Rest of today's free, operating out of Shinjuku's Keio Plaza Hotel, right in the thick of it. We've been heartily instructed to make the most of this free tourist time (particularly those of us newcomers to this crazy culture), and I fully intend to do that. Steph's flight gets in at 5.30pm, and until then I'm on my own. Do you know what I'm gonna do first?

I'm gonna change, go down the street to the first convenience store I can find, and I'm gonna buy a tuna mayo onigiri, a bar of Big Thunder and a carton of coffee milk (and maybe even something else, like a melon bread). The lunch of gaijin kings. Hey, maybe they'll even have those instant kitsune udons... nah, sounds like too much bother all of a sudden. Dinner'll be sorted when Steph gets here, so it'll be up to me to hunt down some romantic spots ahead of time. And for dinner on Tuesday, for that matter, the only other meal before departure on Wednesday morning that we'll have to get for ourselves.

Suddenly I find myself wondering what Hanayama neighbourhood's gonna be like. I think it'll be strikingly similar to Steph's Mukaijima from third year, all homes and farmland with one supermarket to cover a good many homesteads, and big roads and bigger thunderstorms. And y'know, I think I'd quite like that. I've done the suburbia thing, I think I know enough about the... uh, urbia thing to know I'd rather not try it, so it makes sense to have a few years of country life to complete the experience.

Ah, one of the customs guys I was talking to was looking through my passport and suddenly splurted out 'Nihon-go, daijoubu desu ne.' Scary stuff. Fortunately he didn't go on to test my 'nihon-go' very much, just asking if I had any liquids or medicine I needed to declare. But it struck a chord: this was what I was gonna have to do fairly regularly for the next few years.

I just saw a Pokemon Center!! Do you think the driver'll be angry if I ask him to pull o- Ah, now it's gone. There'll be time, oh yes there will. I have my Ash hat ready and waiting.

I hope he doesn't realise I'm typing about him, but the guy across from me just opened his luggage and found a 'Safe travels' card from, I'd imagine, the girl I saw mournfully clutching his arm back in Heathrow. Now his reaction lenses have darkened over, and maybe he's happier that way. Maybe if I ask he'll do a Roy Mustang from Fullmetal Alchemist.

"No... it's raining..."

Think the flight drove me a little crazy, to be honest. I got about an hour and half of sleep, but boy was it not enough. But fear not, readers, Swanner will ride out the day so as not to get hit by jet-lag tomorrow morning. But boy, when I get into that hotel room my body's gonna be screaming for a lie down. After I've lunched up, maybe, but no sleep! Oh right, I was gonna talk about the flight. There were 65 films on offer, sixty-five! Can you even imagine how many hours I could have wasted watching Battle:LA, Friendship With Benefits, Bollywood films about robots and the like. In the end I only ended up watching a single hour of The Adjustment Bureau (that's right, isn't it?) before being ejected from the plane. Seems interesting, in a sort of pop supernatural conspiracy way, and I'll have to finish it later. Also watched two very good episodes of Modern Family, two very good episodes of Family Guy, and then one episode of Family Guy that had me giving up ten minutes in due to the sheer vileness of it. Those who are curious about that sort of thing, it was the 'notorious' (Virgin Air prided themselves in telling me) 150th episode where Stewie and Brian get locked in a bank vault. Oh, also watched one of the Inbetweeners, which was pretty good.

Just passed Disneyland, everyone's very excited. The massive ferris wheel is getting less attention, despite it reminding me warmly of previous Japan travels.

Seriously, EVERYTHING is Japanese! It's a real mind-bender. I mean, I'm in a coach full of Brits, and our guide is a San Franciscan, but when I look out the window it's all Japanese. Like a portal into another world, or one of those amusement park rides where it tries to make you think you're in a marine APC gunning down Aliens by shaking the seat around. Maybe when we get off we'll all be in London again... I'm not sure that'll happen.

This bridge is apparently called the Rainbow Bridge. Looks pretty dreary to me, and to be fair that's exactly how I'd like it right now. No sun in sight, just a lot of overcast, cooling goodness. Coor, there's a nice-looking bridge further towards the sea. Skyscraper heaven, here; reminds me of Godzilla: Save the Earth on the Xbox where spotting chuckable skyscrapers became a favourite pasttime. Baseball, there. Let's expect some more of that.

Think I'll stop talking about the stuff I pass on the way to the hotel and sign off. More updates to come, rest assured. Until next time.

Thanks for reading.