It's taken me less than 12 hours in Japan to sing karaoke and I'll give these guys credit for how much fun it can be. After an afternoon nap (which only encouraged the jet lag!) we caught the train back into Osaka station to meet Tom's American friends Vince and Tom (Vince should probably change his name to Tom hey?) and went out to get something to eat. Pizza wasn't what I had expected to eat coming to Japan but I'm not complaining and the Americans were good company. Apparently in a number of the restaurants you can pay for 90 or 120 minutes of "drink all you want" rather than paying for individual drinks but I didn't think nursing a hangover would be a suitable look for this morning so opted against it for now! I'm not sure what the area of the city was called but it reminded me of Carnaby street in places as it was traffic free and full of interesting little streets and shops and its definitely somewhere I'm going back to. After eating we went into the arcade next door and its pretty much how I imagined it to be - japanese guys absolutely nailing "Guitar Freaks volume 4" and "Dance Dance Revolution". I played a cool game called Pop Music Party which is a rhythm based game where you just hit the right buttons at the right time (Parappa The Rappa anyone?) and watched someone getting a near perfect score on DDR and then getting out towels to mop his sweat from the floor. Outside a large crowd had gathered to watch someone else on DDR and it's crazy how good these guys were at it.
Karaoke is big in Japan and just standing in the entrance of this place showed you how diverse a crowd you'd get at 9pm on a Saturday night - as we had groups of younger people mixed with wasted middle aged women and then Japanese couples. We had a little room with a table suitable for six with a flat screen at one end, a media player at the other and then a huge book full of different songs to pick. Tom had told me before that they had the more well known pop-punk bands like Blink-182 but I never expected to be able to pick songs from bands like Pennywise and Cute Is What We Aim For. I was nervous as I'd never sung in front of a group of people I didn't know before but eased into it was "Feeling This" by Blink with Tom, and then ventured out by picking Jimmy Eat World's "Sweetness" (Are you listening? woh-ohh-ohh-ohhh-ohhhhh), New Found Glory's "Truth Of My Youth" and Green Day's "Waiting". At least I wasn't the only one who couldnt sing to save his life though! I was half tempted to go with Ben E King's "Stand By Me" as it's my favourite ever song but I didn't want to massacre that on my first night and I'm sure I'll get round to it this week!
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Saturday - Day 2
I'm currently writing this sat in Tom's apartment in Daito, Osaka - as he's at work right now and I have a bit of jet lag to work out of my system! Yesterday morning I met Tom in the arrivals lounge at Kansai airport and we headed off to catch the JR Loop train into the city centre. The train map shows you how much each station costs in yen so you select the price of your ticket at the machine rather than the station itself and it seems straight forward enough. The harder part is working out what train to actually get on so I let Tom work that out and we didn't have to wait too long before we were off. The first thing you notice is that the train seats have reversable backs so you can either sit facing forwards or backwards and most opt for facing forwards it seems!
Osaka at first glance comes across like the outskirts of most major European cities as it's predominantly high rise housing and smaller scale shops - the obvious difference being the limited use of English on signs and a lack of any graffiti (which seems to blight most cities across Europe, London very much so). The JR Loop Line is like the M25 of the train world - as it forms a circle around the city and we head up the east side - passing the Nagui stadium (host of England vs. Nigeria in the 2002 world cup) and the Osaka Dome before changing trains at Kyobashi station and making our way to Suminodo. There's a much better system of queuing for entry onto the trains though here and trying to get onto the next train seems much more civilised than the scramble I normally have at Baker Street station! Suminodo is Tom's stop and his apartment is a five minute walk away.
Osaka at first glance comes across like the outskirts of most major European cities as it's predominantly high rise housing and smaller scale shops - the obvious difference being the limited use of English on signs and a lack of any graffiti (which seems to blight most cities across Europe, London very much so). The JR Loop Line is like the M25 of the train world - as it forms a circle around the city and we head up the east side - passing the Nagui stadium (host of England vs. Nigeria in the 2002 world cup) and the Osaka Dome before changing trains at Kyobashi station and making our way to Suminodo. There's a much better system of queuing for entry onto the trains though here and trying to get onto the next train seems much more civilised than the scramble I normally have at Baker Street station! Suminodo is Tom's stop and his apartment is a five minute walk away.
Friday - Day 1
Long distance journies of any sort suck, end of discussion. My four hour stop over in Amsterdam wasn't too bad in truth as I just sat and read my Bill Bryson book and clock watched - but the eleven hours after that weren't my finest moments. As the flight was between 3pm and midnight UK time I just didnt have any desire to really sleep and its incredibly frustrating when everyone around you is fast asleep and I'm sat counting down the hours until I definitely knew I'd be jet lagged. I started off watching "No Country For Old Men" and after an hour I realised that I just didn't care enough, so I switched to "Flushed Away" but couldn't deal with the awful English accents on animated rats so in the end settled for "Dan In Real Life" and "Horton Hears A Who". I don't know why I'm sharing this with you, I'm just fascinated by what movies people see on flights.
When we touched down in Osaka the first thing I noticed was how, even at 9.30am, the heat and humidity were much greater than we could hope for in England this summer. Before getting off the plane the stewards asked us to fill in customs and immigration forms - but conveniently had run out of immigration forms when they got to me so I then had a nervy few minutes making up the addresses I'd be staying at (I hadn't written them down!) and then embarassed myself for the first time. I couldn't work out what the lady was saying so just handed her everything and walked off without my passport. I went and got it back, but it was a clumsy start to Japan and customs wasn't any easier!
When we touched down in Osaka the first thing I noticed was how, even at 9.30am, the heat and humidity were much greater than we could hope for in England this summer. Before getting off the plane the stewards asked us to fill in customs and immigration forms - but conveniently had run out of immigration forms when they got to me so I then had a nervy few minutes making up the addresses I'd be staying at (I hadn't written them down!) and then embarassed myself for the first time. I couldn't work out what the lady was saying so just handed her everything and walked off without my passport. I went and got it back, but it was a clumsy start to Japan and customs wasn't any easier!
Friday, 6 June 2008
Heathrow
So today I fly out to Japan and it's taken me roughly 4 minutes to work out that Heathrow terminal 4 is a real kick in the face. What the hell kind of departure lounge doesn't give you the chance to eat McDonalds breakfast at 6am? Don't get me wrong I can't stand the stuff normally, but its somewhat of a tradition and they've now had to pass that over to Starbucks! I'm having flashbacks to 2005 and my flight to America where I spent my time in the departure lounge attempting (and failing) sudoko for the first time. Damn you Carol Vorderman!
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