Slave to the claw...

The claw chooses who will go and who will stay...

Some nights it chooses whether I'll be eating dinner or not too.

Of course, I'll be happy to share the spoils of war with my comrades in the USA :)

Early Morning Blues

Yesterday (Tuesday 16th), due to a combination of dorm-mates getting in at the early hours, the garbage truck coming by, going to bed at 21;00 knackered, and hoards of loud crows; I was up, washed, dressed and out of the hostel by 6.50. This gave me a chance to get a good look round Asakusa before the herds of tourists decended and the quiet atmosphere was shattered.

A few native early risers were milling about, walking their dogs or just jogging through. The monks were doing their own early morning rituals and some people were praying or giving donations to the temples. Asakusa has a cluster of shrines with donation boxes so you can win favour with the right Kami- there are statues relating to children, health etc etc, just like saints of the Catholic church. I bought a red tag thing from a monk. I don't know what it does, but as long as it helps prevent Japanese children eating my face/soul or makes me very rich, I am happy to have it.

This is a raccoon dog statue. I don't know why it has moobs, but it's supposed to stop wild animals coming and digging up your vegetable garden (I think).

There was also a shrine with loads of red flags commemorating the family of a woman who found a treasure chest in her back garden. She thought that if they lived off the money they'd become lazy, so she reburied it and they supposedly prospered. Visitors are supposed to put a little tray of white power in their purses for good financial fortune, but I didn't fancy the idea of explaining that to customs in LA, so I skipped.

Wooden prayer slips hanging by a shrine.

I considered buying a tin of whale meat to use as a paperweight, but then reconsidered the idea of having a greasy tin of marine mammal sitting on my desk. Eventually, like all mystery tins, it would get eaten out of curiosity.

Eventually, I decided it was time to see some of the actual bits of Tokyo so when people quizzed me I'd be able to say "yeah I went there did you see this I love that blah blah", so I headed off for Akihabara- electric town. Of course, I didn't know that most shops in Tokyo open at 10 or even 11.30. It was now about 8.45.

All hail MAG-LAR; centaur king of digital storage!

That little screen at the bottom would periodically　form a big yellow face and shout good morning at the commuters as they filed past it. It had a certain je ne sais que about it that made me reeeeaaallly uneasy.

Advert for maid cafes- little cake and tea shops where you get served by girls in frilly dresses and alarmingly high pitched voices. They cater for the socially stunted anime fans who want to interact with a girl but dont want a hooker, and for girls who want their snacks with lashings of kawaii. Some of them offer extra services like massages or reflexology or CDs of the waitresses singing.

Anyway, I got horribly lost in Akihabara, AND everything was still shut, so I decided to hit the freakshow jackpot- Harajuku.

Tokyo districts, Roo style:

How to draw attention to yourself in a quiet sushi restaurant (apart from being the only non Japanese person there)- point out the cat.

Asakusa:

Akihabara: Harajuku:

Asakusa by night

First off, apoligies if this post　is all over the place，I can't get used to this crazy Japanese keyboard in the youth hostel. And secondly, apologies but no photos　this update. The computer is being a little bitch. Ｓｅｅ，　Ｉ　ｂｅｔ you wish you:d bought me that laptop now, stingy parents.

The 11 hour air Japan flight over was... interesting. Nothing has quite sunk in yet so aｔ the moment everything feels a bit like a weird simulation or a dream or I've actually died and gone to live out my afterlife on the moon. On one side of me I had a chubby man playing Phoenix Wright on the DS for most of the flight, and on the other girl wearing a man's shirt backwards as a dress who didn't bring anything　to do so sat and watched me butcher the hiragana alphabet on my wipeclean board.

Weirdest thing I saw on the plane? A guy on the plane with both a SARS style face mask and one of those eye masks to help you sleep. He looked like part of a weird sensory deprivation experiment.

Japan is very quiet. It's strange.

I thought of getting off at one of the more rural stops on the train in. It looked nice.

Anyway, I didn't, and I'm glad because Asakusa is really beautiful. It's one of the oldest districts of Tokyo, or at least one that's bothered to preserve the architecture. The streets are completely silent apart from the terrible keyboard music drifting out of Kobe Fried Chicken and the rain. It was disgustingly hot when I got off the plane, but the rains have cleared it all away. After check in and a shower, I went and wandered around for a bit.

At the Japanese version of 7/11 you can buy about 40 different variety　of pot noodle, but no apples. As I said, the streets are deathly silent save for the few homeless men peeing up against parking meters, but if you dare to walk into a pachinko parlour it:s like being slapped round the head with a cymbal every 3 seconds. I tried to win a rubber leek out of an arcade machine but failed because rubber leeks are badly balanced :(

There are a lot of French people in the hostel and they cant decide what language to speak so it:s coming out as Francaningrish.

Last few days

The time has come, people. It feels like only yesterday I was nervously making my way into that fateful interview room at Orion Ltd, and now here I am on the eve of this terrifying trip.

This is why you shouldn't encourage people to save. Next thing you know, there's a credit crisis, interest rates drop and you're left with an unemployed 19 year old girl with £3k to burn.

Anyway, as the majority of my friends hadn't got back from Africa/university/last night's party by yesterday, Sajan and I were left to see me off alone. And by alone I mean surrounded by the violent water fowl of Windsor.

Yes, we went to feed the ducks. Thrilling, I know.

See, somewhere in my childhood, I worked out that if you throw the food (in this case, Tesco Value Cornflakes) into the dip in a swan's back where their wings meet, they all attack each other in some hilariously frantic feeding frenzy. Unfortunately, this meant I was soon surrounded by angry swans. It was like jumping straight into a piranha pond after chucking a leg of lamb in, except, you know, not in any way shape or form life threatening (actually, I have heard that swans can break your arm, but I have no fucking idea how they do it).

In retrospect, I should've just gone drinking, like we did for Twigz's leaving do. But instead we went back to mine, listened to Daft Punk and dressed Sajan up in gothic lolita clothing.



If that didn't get my brain ready for the sensory bukkake that is the streets of Harajuku, then I don't want to know what will. Thank god he's wearing clothes underneath.

Anyway, I've got to get 2 months of stuff into a tiny green suitcase (no, I'm not going to do what my brother did at university and put off washing anything for 3 months until he came home and got my mum to wash it to avoid laundry fees.) and as I have the spatial awareness of a humpback whale, this looks to be an all-nighter. My flight to Tokyo is tomorrow at 19.30.

Hopefully the panic attack will strike before I get on the plane and realise I'm going to a country with 3 systems of writing and multiple levels of vocal politeness armed only with a vocabulary of about 30 words. Why did you people not try to talk me out of this...