Bright light city gonna set my soul on fire

Day 29


So I woke up in Tokyo
Not to my alarm, but to an earthquake, only a tiny one though so no need to worry
It was quite exciting really, my bed shaking around and whatnot

Neither Tom-san nor Sam-san felt it, tut.

We all awoke and showered and started our first day in the big city
Having a huge brain full of logic, I thought a practice trip to the hospital would be a good idea.

Simple as, 10 minutes on 千代田線 from 千駄木 to 新御茶ノ水 then a 10 minute walk to 順天堂大学.

Afterwards, we walked the 15 minutes to the Tokyo Dome to see what's what.
Wow, you can see the thing from ages away and it looks mighty impressive
Moreso when you get closer and see that it's surrounded by a theme park:

There you have what I believe to be the world's first (and largest) hubless, spokeless ferris wheeel
And the rollercoaster goes through it, then it goes through that hole in the building


Sadly the park is closed due to Darwinism (a fat person fell out of the coaster).


We were rather peckish at this point so we had lunch; I had the most, best shrimp I'd ever eaten in my life, as did Tom-san. 
Sam-san was gay and ate vegetarian, it had leaves and fungus in it.


For a post-lunch excursion we decided on Akihabara (because Sam-san is a massive otaku)
We passed the Tyne Bridge on the way there:

We were greeted by a beefy looking arcade:

So we had a cheeky explore of Akihabara, the main roads are pedestrianised at weekends again now, so it was pretty amazing to walk down, surrounded by a bajillion short, hairy otaku with their shirts tucked in.


If you don't know why the roads were opened for a while (and I don't think many people do) have a read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_massacre


After browsing electronics and AKB48 merchandise for a while, we went to a terrible arty place (3331 Arts Chiyoda), it was like the Baltic, only worse.
I had been promised a soldering cafe, and instead was presented with a tiny room with a school trip in it, and rooms full of mediocre photographs.


Though we might have gone to the wrong floor.


Having had our fill of Akihabara for the time being, we got back on the subway and headed to Tokyo station to have a peek at the Imperial Palace.


On the short walk from the station to the palace, we came across an absolute nutcase singing incredibly loudly and incredibly badly with nobody stood listening to him.
We hastily moved on.


As it was Sunday teatime, I figured anything open would be shutting, my companions didn't.
As we got there, they were closing the gates.


Tom-san & I spent the time finding a water fountain and seeing how high we could make the jets of water go
They went pretty damn high
Then we had a water fight, ending in me running after Tom-san and spitting a mouthful at him
We are well mature.


With a 9am start looming, we headed back to Sendagi, got some cheeky udon, hung out for a bit then headed to sleep.

Hangovers at 35,000 feet

Day 28


So I awoke, without a hangover
I have no idea how

I quickly tidied my room and did my last bit of packing, then checked on my travelling companions
Oh dear.

Sam-san was slumped in a chair, his room smelling rather strongly of his vomit from the night before
Tom-san was frantically packing, his room smelling rather strongly of his vomit from the night before
It turned out that Tomoko (student, not anaesthetist) had come round to see Tom-san while I was cleaning and packing, he apparently awoke naked, sweating, shaking and covered in chunder.
Sexy.

All Sam-san & Tom-san could do for the next few days was talk about her shorts
And bum underneath them

Feel rather hurt I didn't get summoned for a gander.

After everyone had packed, Takemi rocked up and sent us on our way in the taxi.
I played the role of parent as my companions almost chundered every time the taxi went over a small bump in the road.
Oh yeah, Tom-san didn't have any clean pants so was wearing swimshorts.

We got to the airport without a hitch, and 2 of us got through passport control with ease.
Tom-san decided to deny that he was carrying a lighter in his suitcase, so you can imagine the inspector's surprise when a lighter-shaped object showed up on X-Ray
Cue a confusing exchange in broken Engligh and Japanese
Thankfully we all made it through in the end.

After getting Tom-san a drink as he couldn't stand, we got on the plane to Tokyo:

They felt worse than they look.

After landing and navigating Tokyo's vast underground system, we finally made it to our dormitory
We're living in Sendagi (千駄木) for those of you who are interested:

That map only shows about half of the routes available
But we made it
Yay!

Upon arrival, we met Gorai-san who showed us our rooms and explained the air conditioner for a good half hour.
We also met Phoebe & Jill, other students living in the dormitory, they translated Gorai-san for us, which was pretty helpful.

Being completely knackered, and with my companions hanging like proverbial horses, we had to find some food and get some sleep
First thing's first - fried chicken skin, sold at a little stall on the street corner
It was one of the best things I have ever tasted.

We settled on a pasta place, and it was surprisingly really nice *smiley face*
After a cheeky trip to the 7-eleven for snickers and other supplies, it was time for bed.

In the morning: exploring Tokyo (東京)!

2 outta 3 aint bad

Day 27 (Friday Night)


Our last night in Okayama, what to do?
Oh yeah, go and get drunk with the ESS of course.

We went to the place we went on our first Friday night, Ippu I believe it's called
We were greeted by a crowd of 6 girls because we are that laddish
That and the fact that Toshihiro-san was being super keen and at a lecture
And Yugo-san was doing a ballet tea ceremony or something.

We got rather drunk:

It seems Toshihiro-san developed gas pain

Total damage was: far too many beers, enough shochu to float the Yamato and an amount of sake so vast that Sam-san "had to" down a pint of the stuff.

They also gave us a gift, which is really nice.
We did nothing but give them hepatitis.

We invited everybody back to the party pad for more drink, sadly Kyoko-san & Yoko-san had an English exam the next day so they couldn't come
*sad face*

On the way back, Sam-san wandered into the takoyaki shop to use the facilities, and have a conversation with the man
We feared we may never see him again
But he turned up, looking less worse-for-wear than expected.

So we started to drink
Sam-san poured himself a large glass of shochu, downed it, and started looking a little queasy
Edit due to regret, guilt & sensitivity
Sam-san then went to chunder
We didn't see him for the rest of the night

Much fun was had by all:

More people had turned up! Yay!

Sadly, it got to the point where we had to say our teary goodbyes:

I'd like to point out that I'm bending down in that picture, not surrounded by insanely tall girls and a gargantuan Tom-san.

After the Nihon-jin had departed, Tom-san decided to urinate outside, pretty much on the letterboxes about a yard from his room, prompting the following conversation:

"Tom!"
"Yeah?"
"I can see your cock"
"Yeah, it's big innit"

This was a low point of the evening.

Tom-san then ran down the corridor with his table from Sam-san's room and was not seen again.

Not being a complete wreck, I cleaned Sam-san's room, took all the bins out and swept away some Japanese chunder from outside.
I then did some laundry, skyped my mum and did my packing ready for the next morning.
Then went to sleep at 9am.

Farewell Okayama, it's been good.

The final week

Days 23-27 


So it's the final week in Okayama *sad face*
Turns out we've been asked to give a presentation at the Kawasaki Society of Medicine about our stay
"it will be attended by many professors and open to all doctors and students"
eek.

With our English attitudes towards work, we decide to somewhat sack it off until later in the week
We spend the meantime eating Halow's burgers, looking at second-hand electronic trumpets and winning mediocre arcade prizes
Oh yeah, I sent a package of novelty sweets home

Monday, we had been invited for dinner and a game of tennis with my orthopaedic professor, sadly, due to my epic vomiting sesh, I did not feel up for this, Tom-san & Sam-san said it was good however (tennis was cancelled due to the ridiculous rain).

The weather began to get drier and hotter as the rainy season was on its way out, being replaced by the death that is Japan's Summer
The silver lining was that the 牛カエル had all been killed off by the snaked and weird rat-like-thing that arrive in Summertime.

Wednesday soon came around, and we decided to start work on our presentation
With it not being the hour before the deadline, progress was slow so we decided to go bowling instead and tackle it in the morning.

Thursday comes round, and we put our game faces on and start whaling on PowerPoint like a group of possessed mother truckers, pausing only to sip fanta grape, buy novelties from the shop and take photographs of ourselves:

Boom.

So we finally finish the thing about an hour before presentation time, definite win.

Scary stuff.

The presentation went down a storm, even though Sam-san stole 2 of my slides.

Afterwards, we were given a gift from the Kawasaki Society of Medicine, presented by the Dean, Mr. Fukunaga
He seems pretty terrible at Birthdays as he gave us the gift with a "I hear it's a paperweight"
Might've been a nice surprise, who knows.

Otsuki-sensei looks very happy

Oh yeah, we also got a certificate of achievement which is well nicer than anything we ever got from Newcastle, then several official photos were taken:

Don't we look amazing.
Ooh I forgot to mention, the whole presentation was filmed by some guy with a huge official-looking camera
I have a copy on DVD if anybody would like to steal it from me, it's also in the Kawasaki Medical School library
Wonder if anybody's watched it.

Turns out all we needed to do on Friday was turn up to say thank you to the Dean and President, that's a nice way to end the week.
We said our thanks to Mr. Fukunaga and then went to see Mr. Kawasaki himself, he really does have an aura of importance.

He instantly got his 2 assistants to make us coffee and looked at Otsuki-sensei as if he had never seen him before (he probably hadn't)
Then we shared coffee with somebody who is probably on Japan's rich list:

Such a legend.
After coffee, he cracked out another gift for us:

It's a tie pin! Modelled beautifully by Tom-san

Then we had to hand all our free gear back (Tom-san & I stole our shoes) and bid a teary farewell to the hospital.

Alas, we would never use these again.

We went home to change and bask in freedom, then came back to say a quick farewell to the anaesthetists, especially Tomoko & Shiori, as they were by far the loveliest people I had met for quite a few years.

Then we said another goodbye to Takemi and told him we were off to get drunk.

Hey Jude...

Day 22


Awaking again sans-hangover (gotta love that feeling), we were faced with the conundrum of what to do
Of course! Get red, sweaty and almost vomit from football-related exertion.

After the torture, a quick shower and Halow's burger preceded a trip to karaoke
That's right
Karaoke
Sober
Wtf?!

After nominating Sam-san to sing first, we went to meet Toshihiro-san & Kyoko-san
We also met Eriko-san, who is very lovely

Eriko-san was the best singer by far, but Toshihiro-san had the moves
He even sang Momotaro's song
I sang AKB48's Heavy Rotation, of course, whilst Sam-san was forced to sing Beatles, repeatedly

We went for dinner at the restaurant where Toshihiro-san & Kyoko-san had their first date (aww)
It was pretty good

But I had an epic vomiting sesh through the night so maybe it wasn't
Hmm.

Just call me Harry, I'm a Master Potter

Day 21


After a lovely lie-in, I awoke without a hangover - lovely and unusual.
Quick breakfast of a Halow's burger and off to meet Toshihiro-san & the gang.

The activity for today - making some bizenyaki, pottery if you will.
It was already feeling like a school trip.

Between Okayama station and the pottery place, we rode the tram (chin-chin)
That's funny you see, because chin-chin means willy
Teehee.

Everybody was there: myself, Sam-san, Tom-san, Toshihiro-san, Kyoko-san, Yoko-san and Yugo-san, but there were only 6 wheels. Without a second of discussion it was decided that Yugo-san would serve as cameraman for the afternoon.
Awww.

We made a plate and a cup.
I got told that mine were good *smiley face*
I clearly have mad pottery skillz.

Tom-san's creations were also pretty good, as were the girl creations.
Sam-san's regained form after the sponge had been deployed to remove the excess water.
Toshihiro-san's.. well.. let's just say we love Toshihiro-san.

I'll add pictures at a later date, I'm frantically trying to catch-up with my happenings


For something that sounds a little like a boring school trip activity, it was actually a really good fun :)

Afterwards, we had a cheeky walk to the Korakuen gardens (one of the 3 most beautiful in Japan, or so the brochure says).
Being dirty foreigners, we were exempt from the 400円 entry fee, score!

It was a pretty nice place and we got some nice pictures, including some panoramas from Tom-san which, as you can guess, will be added later.

As we were coming round to leave the gardens, pow! The heavens opened and the most epic rain yet began to fall, being smart, I'd brought my most plasticky of plastic coats, however, the rain found a way through:

We sheltered under a roof for a bit, then decided to run for it and try to get back home.
Because we were in Japan, not England, and people (bus drivers) are therefore not complete wankers, a bus stopped in the middle of the road to pick us up.
The bus journey was lovely and dry.

We ate ramen that eve, and it was one of the meatiest, most satisfyingly filling tasty meals I have ever had (screw you wagamama ramen)
Sam had to have eggy rice because he's a herbivore.

On our way home from Kurashiki station, we saw a humungous caterpillar-type thing
Sam-san loved it:

What else could we do but invite the gang back for drinks? That's right, asbolutely nothing
So back they came:

I'm not sure what the hand gesture theme was meant to be.

Suffice to say, everybody got a little tipsy, and i was described as "so coooool"
I think that's a win.

Roll on Sunday!

がんばって！ あらい！

Day 20 (Friday Night)


It's friday, it's 6 O'Clock, it's now number one
It's baseball time!

Turns out Muscat Stadium only hosts 2 pro games each year, so it was a pretty big deal and the whole city had come out to see the game.
We met Toshihiro & Yoko in the pouring rain (Kyoko was being a loser and attending a lecture)
Then we headed to the stadium, after being briefed on Japanese baseball etiquette - fans take it in turns to cheer, the Tigers and Giants fight each other a lot (more on this in a few posts) and each player has their own little song.

We were going to see Hanshin Tigers vs Yokohama Bay Stars, we decided to pledge our allegiance to the Tigers.

Before entering the stadium, a beer had to be purchased, along with some yaki soba (Sam had green beans), and we got some things to hit together and make noise, as well as a free seat cushion saying さあいけ！ (Lets go!)
This was good as it kept my bum dry

We went and sat down, then the rain stopped, because God obviously knows we are VIPs not to be messed with.

There we are looking a little damp.

It was rather full, as I said.

So yeah, having seen baseball on the tellybox I was expecting it to be a little bit dull

But

It was absolutely amazing!
So much fun shouting in Japanese, I got told I have 'good chanting voice', which has to be one of the biggest compliments I've ever received.
Kyoko turned up after the first inning and was shortly followed by Yugo - the gang was back together.

Essentially, the Tigers kicked the Bay Stars' ass, so after the 7th inning, we got to celebrate:

Everyone buys rocket balloons and lets them go, about 60,000 of them all at once, it's a pretty good spectacle to behold.

And after the top of the 9th...

The Tigers won!
There were speeches (in Japanese), the Tigers' pitcher won man of the match, but he apologised for throwing so many balls and said he would go away to train more before their next game.

We decided to go bowling and have a bit of Japan vs England.
This ended badly as Sam had had way too many beers, and they had 4 people, even though Kyoko did bowl 11 gutterballs in a row.

Yeah the Japanese won, but I won from team GB, and that's all that matters
Well, not really.

Then it was time for bed and to meet in the morning.

GO TIGERS!

Mine's a Brompton

Week 3 (Days 17-20)


I wasn't on anaesthetics anymore. *sad face*
But it was time for orthopaedics
at 0730
on a Monday.

Turns out orthopaedics is as dull as water from the most watery of ditches.
Oh well.

I filled my week with enduring bits of hip, knee, spine and thumb being shaved off in various amounts and being bolted back together.
Weird, I like bolting things together, but this was very much not my cup of tea.

On the plus, I made a friend who bought me lunch, yay!
We are friends for evermore on Facebook.

On Wednesday (水曜日）Tomoko (Dr. Hino to you) took Sam-san & I to a British pub in Okayama.
It's called Skipper's, and because I'm a retard I didn't take any pictures.
It was a great night, Tomoko's friend, Tetsumasa (a 'booby cutter') came to join us, and we got rather merry.
I think he might have been a herbivore.

It transpired that she (Tomoko) and most of the anaesthetists were going to see a baseball game on Friday night
So were we!

Thursday passed rather uneventfully, as did Friday, the tedium of orthopaedics being what it is.
Then it was game night!

Motivation - such an aggravation

Day 16

After awaking and taking Sam-san to rehydrate, we pieced together the previous night and concluded:

Sam Sheppard is more animal than man

He shaved Yugo-san's eyebrow off, and wrote offensive words on his face, including ほも　(gay) on the back of his neck.

Oh dear.

We concluded that Sam-san should buy Yugo-san a gift, cue: trip to Halow's.

I treated myself to a burger and grape soda.

Sam-san purchased a gift that none of us (even Toshihiro-san & Kyoko-san) could identify.

We got the train to Kurashiki, specifically the Bikan historical district.

It's sort of a bit like the naff bit of York (Shambles?), but people like old stuff I guess.

There's a river running through it.

It had mahoosive koi and some cute cygnets swimming around in it.

We had a looksie around the shops, one had a load of shiny gold まねきねこ looking a bit like a legoin of nazi soldiers. Scary.

If anybody asks, we went round the O'Hara museum (we only went to the gift shop), I bought this guy:

He holds business cards and pens, I'm gonna call him めいしーさん.

We went and had かき氷　(shaved ice) in a little place, it's like a slush puppy but tastes really good and comes in a bowl. It made a nice change from the million degrees it was outside.

I had lemon.

After this, we found Yugo-san! Sans eyebrow.

Sam-san looked sheepish and gave him his gift, then we went for food and drinks.

It was another all-you-can-drink in 2 hours job, I came across an alcoholic vegetable juice-type thing (sounds horrible I know) but it tasted like a cheeky V so that was my tipple for the eve.

Oh yeah, we found something that Sam-san would not drink, it was Campari & Grapefruit juice (eww).

After we had drank our fill, we went to see "the streets illuminated beautifully".

Turns out they just turn the streetlights on. Oh well.

Since I'd only taken my sunglasses with me I was in complete darkness, but I looked cool.

On the way back we came across a statue of one of the 七福神 (shichifukujin), whom I had been given a keyring of by one of the anaesthetists (think I forgot to mention that).

So, who are the 七福神？ They're the seven lucky gods (a bit like the seven dwarfs).

Again, from wikipedia:

1. Hotei - the fat and happy god of abundance and good health.
2. Jurojin - god of longevity.
3. Fukurokuju - god of happiness, wealth and longevity.
4. Bishamonten - god of warriors.
5. Benzaiten - goddess of knowledge, art and beauty, especially music.
6. Daikokuten - god of wealth, commerce and trade.
7. Ebisu - god of fishers or merchance, often depicted carrying a sea bream.

We saw this guy:

I think we've found Ebisu!

And that concluded our Sunday.

Asian with a bit of boob

Day 15
Saturday, hooray!
I can't really remember what we did, I vaguely remember playing football and losing about 3 stone of body weight in sweat, mmm sexy.
Oh wait, yes I do remember!
In the morning (early afternoon) we met Kyoko-san and her crew at the hospital, went across to the med school and into their 'tea ceremony room', why the hell don't we have one in the RVI? Because the RVI is shit, that's why.
So yeah, we went to a tea ceremony.

There's the majority of the paraphernalia, as with most posts, I'll stick pictures up when I sort them out.
So what's a tea ceremony like? I hear you ask.
Well, it's pretty weird, the room has a tatami floor with lines marked on it, you're not allowed to step on the lines and have to cross with a specific foot first depending on which way you're going. It's a bit like being a kid walking on crazy paving.
You have to kneel, like a geisha, which is so much more painful than you'd ever imagine and pass things in a certain way.
We split into 2 teams of 3: Sam-san, Toshihiro-san & Kyoko-san; Me, Tom-san & Yugo-san.
The team without me went first.


You start by all kneeling, the others come in with a tray of sweet things (a bit like kibidango), the person on the right takes the tray, rotates it (so as not to be rude), says a few things then passes it on, this continues down the line.
Then you eat the thing.


Meanwhile, the other team are whipping up some green tea.
Sam made mine, it tasted absolutely hideous.
And it looked more like pea soup than tea.


Before you can drink the tea, you have to rotate the cup (so as not to be rude) and appreciate its beauty.
The 'servants' have to kneel at an angle so you can't see up their kimonos (that's rude you see).
Then you're allowed to drink the tea, say some more words and they take the cups away.


Then it's all change.


I was a master tea-maker, you put what appears to be green powder paint in a cup with some water then whip it with what appears to be a shaving brush. Making big bubbles is rude, mine were well small and polite.
Then I served the tea and dango and everybody loved it.


A strange experience, but a good one nonetheless.


We said our goodbyes, had a look round the hospital shop (with pre-paid cards, of course) then headed to the second hand shop to buy a football.


After getting thoroughly sweaty and tomato-faced, Toshihiro-san, Kyoko-san & Yugo-san arrived at the party pad, shortly followed by Yoko-san.
We had to transfer most of our furniture into Sam-san's room, which was fun and Chuckle Brothers-esque.


It was time for takoyaki & okonomiyaki.
Takoyaki is octopus fried in a sort of dumpling-y thing, I was pro at rolling it in its special cooker thing.
Okonomiyaki is 'grilled whatever you want', its a sort of pancake, ours had octopus and vegetables, they were pretty tasty.


From wikipedia:
"In Hiroshima, the ingredients are layered rather than mixed together. The layers are typically batter, cabbage, pork and optional items such as squid, octopus and cheese."
We're pretty close to Hiroshima.
And we used camembert cheese.


Oh yeah, it turns out I really don't like octopus. Oops.
They add okonomiyaki sauce to all the shizzle, we didn't know what that was.
But
It's brown sauce! Yay! I was well happy.


After all the food had gone (I used my new chopsticks), we started drinking.
Again, photos will follow in due course.
Sam-san had a 1l can of beer, I rocked the pint tinnie, Tom-san made-do with the 330s, sadly nobody purchased the weenie 100ml cans.


We continued our corruption of Japanese youth by introducing ring of fire (2 rounds, lost by Tom-san then Sam-san) and beer pong (2 rounds, lost by Tom-san then Sam-san).
All the empties were beautifully stacked, until Sam-san fell into them, tut tut.


Several bottles of wine were consumed despite the lack of corkscrew.
The solution? Poking the cork into the bottle with a chopstick!
I'm amazed at my own genius sometimes.


After we all retired to our various beds, Sam-san chundered.
And he forgot to take the bin bags out for a few days, cue: room smelling of rotten octopus and vomit for a week.


Oh it's such a larf.

金曜日!金曜日! 週末! 週末! 楽しく! 楽しく! 楽しく!

Day 14
OK, so I put some of Friday (day 14) under my post of day 13, worse things can happen I guess.

Friday night came around, time for a shower & spruce, it felt like a Paul Smith night.
Specs on, hair done, looking like da bomb, off to the hospital I head to meet at 1830.

Sadly Hino-sensei is working, so I meet Fujita-sensei and the rest of the gang, and off to Okayama we head.
I can't remember the name of the place we went, it's a Korean restaurant if anybody has extensive Okayama knowledge and wants to fill me in.

It was all-you-can-drink and, as a celebrity, it was free for me *smiley face*
We had Jeonju, whatever that means:

I think it's legible on the picture.
I ate a pig's ear, it was surprisingly tasty.
Here's the gang:

This was after enough beer, shochu & sake to sail the Yamato in.
Machi looked a lot like Olivia, *sigh*
It was a thoroughly pleasant night all round, back to Nakasho we/I headed and around came Saturday.

いま なんーじ？

Week 2 (Days 10-13)
Getting into the swing of things now; I'm an absolute pro at anaesthetics
Apart from when Ikemura-sensei got me to fill in a form for 3 hours and I didn't record the pulse a single time.
Oops.

Speaking of Ikemura-sensei, she and Konjiki-sensei went shopping over the weekend, to buy me presents!

That's right, a fan and chopsticks with my name on.
I forget the name of the guy but he's a big deal around here apparently, I think his name translates as 'eye monster'
ç

The celebrity that I am got asked to present a paper on the Wednesday morning, in a foreign language to these poor doctors.
It was a surprisingly interesting read, about the history of anaesthesiology and the contributions of T. Cecil Gray, I'd put a reference in but nobody other than Laura Watson would be interested.
It went down an absolute treat.

That night, Toshihiro-san and Kyoko-san came round to discuss plans for the weeknd.
They brought presents too!

トトロ fan!
どうもありがとうございます！


We decided on takoyaki & okonomiyaki followed by a trip to Kurashiki's Bikan District (old town).
Sam then had to leave to go and eat sushi with PK-sensei, a traumatising experience for him as a lungfish struggled to breathe whilst watching him eat bits of it and its friends & family.

Friday came round very quickly (last day of anaesthetics *sad face*)
I sat in another presentation of an English paper by the Japanese students.
It's a bit poor that we (I) are reluctant to fully read a paper in our own language when asked to present it, but these poor guys have to translate what was quite possibly the worst-written paper in the world and present it to the ignorant gai-hin that is myself.

I, as a celebrity, had been invited to eat Korean food with the anaesthetists on Friday, Sam-san & Tom-san went and got drunk and ate watermelon at Toshihiro-san & Kyoko-san's place I think.

It's Friday, Friday.
Gotta get down on Friday.

Oh baby, I don't care!

Days 8&9
I awoke sometime the next afternoon, surprisingly not hungover (win).
Spruced myself and my room then went to check on the other gai-jin, Sam-san seemed find, then Tom-san rocked up looking rather sheepish, it transpired that he'd chundered twice, tut tut.

So, what to do with the day?

Lunch seemed the most pressing matter so we went looking for it.
We decided on Lotteria, looked a bit McDonald's-y, I went for the ULTIMATE CHEESEBURGER, it wasn't too ultimate but it filled a void.
Oh yeah, Sam-san ate meat, he too went for the ultimate cheeseburger.

Post-lunch, I kicked ass at bowling.

Then we spent a good 2 hours in the second-hand shop.
Gamecubes for 400円, porn in great abundance for even less, electronic trumpets, hawaiian kimonos and a little robot that follows you round with beer were just the lowlights.
Tom-san agonised over a 3,000円 acoustic but decided to leave it for another day.

An obligatory trip to Halow's followed where we bought beer for the evening and Tom-san continued his russian roulette of Japanese sweets.

You guessed it, dried fish, this time with the texture of old boots.
Yum.

After a number of beers, a few instant ramen and copious amounts of banter we hit the hay, ready for Okayama in the morn.

So we thought we were meeting Yugo-san at 1300 at the station, it got to 1330 and there was still no sign, we feared the worst: the last we'd seen of him was his drunken stagger in the darkness of Friday night.
Bravely we soldiered on to Okayama alone.
Gai-jins on tour.

A few steps out of Okayama station and who do we see?

Momotaro-san! With his kibi dango out for all to see.

After quite a lot of dithering and attempts to decipher Japanese maps (3 maps, each of a different orientation - who the hell puts North anywhere but the top?!) we found a route to the castle and gardens.

Whilst walking down Momotaro boulevard or whatever it's called, I was approached by a Japanese girl, Noriko, who thought I'd been brought in as a guest for her English class's barbecue, she was sadly disappointed but helped us on our way to the castle regardless, and we're facebook friends for evermore, yay!

Eventually we saw the castle peeping above the trees with a lovely little river, I was very interested in the bridge, being something of a budding engineer.
I'll add pictures when I get round to it.

The castle and gardens were perfectly nice, if you're into the kind of thing.
Walking back into the city centre, we saw a lovely log covered in caterpillars. Sam-san almost put his hand on it.
It was pretty nasty.

Back in Okayama we had to seek out some food, it consisted of some grizzly-looking meat and some so-so udon, but it filled a hole so nimind.

After more photography of momotaro-san and his many friends we headed back to Nakasho, bought some discount Halow's burgers then headed to the party pad and hit the hay to be ready for the off on Monday morn.

Glitter allover the room..

Day 7
Another day of anaesthetics passed rather nicely, I sat through a presentation on peri-operative asthma treatments given by some of the Japanese students, from a paper written in English that they had to present in English. We really have it so easy us English-speakers, and England is a rather pathetic country at language-learning as a whole.
Hmm.

The last operation finished about 3, then it was hometime, yay!
We were due to meet the ESS at 1930, time for a half hour power shower and some pre-drinking methinks.

Turns out we were going to an all-you-can-drink place for 3,000円 (about £24), not bad for dinner and copious amounts of alcohol.
I donned the white suit again because, let's be honest, I looked the business.
Several beers, glasses of shochu and jugs of sake later, we may have disgraced ourselves and the reputation of England somewhat.

Japan, a country famed for its quiet dignity and reluctance to accept the individual (it's all about blending in to the group), was faced with Sam-san pouring beer down his face, banging on the table and shouting faggot as loud as he could. In a restaurant.
Yugo (from the ESS) was trying to keep up with us alcohol dehydrogenase-possessing Westeners and was looking a little worse for wear when it was time to leave, more on him later.

Back to the party pad it was, via Halow's where we bought some more alcohol (and discounted burgers), Yugo finally joined us after having to turn back twice, firstly for his phone, then his bike; the lash rash was in full bloom.

More drinking, explaining of drinking chants and new words such as 'chunder' (conjugate the te form of that, Tom-san) rounded off the night before the ESS departed and we hit the hay, agreeing to meet at 1300, or was it 1330 on Sunday?
The last we saw of Yugo was him staggering off into the night.

During the night, Tom-san chundered.
ろる！

The joy of AKB48 bottoms a-jiggling

Days 4-6
So Tuesday kicked off with a 0730 start (wtf?!) and me being introduced to Hino-sensei (Tomoko) "the best English speaker in the department", she speaks bloody good English.
I actually enjoyed a day in hospital for the first time in about two years.
Saw loads of ops in the day and got taken for lunch in the fancy restaurant in the hospial, none of this school dinner nonsense.
In the afternoon, I got shown possibly the greatest thing in the world ever: AKB48. Japan's answer to the X-Factor and my goodness, they are absolutely amazing.

I implore you, watch and re-watch. It will be the greatest thing you ever do.
(All girls aged over 16)

We found out that a welcome party was being thrown for us on the Thursday night, this caused much worry and concern for the next few days, which, I am sad to say, passed rather unevenfully. Lots more ops, top Japanese banter and struggling to order food in restaurants. Thank god for Halow's.

The Welcome Party
We'd already met Mr. Fukunaga (The Dean) on Monday so we figured there would be no big cheeses appearing on Thursday night, right? Wrong. Mr. Kawasaki himself (and his interpreter) were coming, oh my.

We had a bit of a debate re: wardrobe - jeans? suit? tie? who knows.
I went for the white linen suit, blue stripey shirt and blue espadrills, teamed with aviators. I looked the shit.
So we walk into the room for this party, there are three chairs in the corner with a microphone in front of them, tables full of food line the walls and numerous bottles of Asahi (beer) can be seen. What the hell is going on.

So we sit down, and our professors and legends from our departments walk in (anaesthetics, cardiology, hepatology and a guy from orthopaedics) followed by Mr. Kawasaki, looking like an absolute legend.
A brief introduction from Otsuki-sensei and then Kawasaki-san starts his speech (in Japanese), thankfully/weirdly we had his interpreter stood behind us saying everything in English. It was like we were royalty or something.

The speech finishes, i mop the copious amount of sweat from my brow and start mingling.
The anaesthetic department:

Professor Fujita, Professor Nakatsuka, Dr Hino & Dr Ikemura came to drink and partake in banter (the names mean nothing to you readers, I know). It was well nice to see them.
After several beers, we were called upon to do a speech, scary times, but I think i pulled it off.
I got told I looked very handsome and that my hair looked good, that's gotta be a win, right?

Lovely Ms. Takemasa packed some food up into boxes for us to take home for breakfast/lunch/food for the next month then it was time to sink a few more beers and head back to the party pad.
Sam decided it would be a good idea to attend an evening cardiology meeting until 2100 however.
Meanwhile, Tom-san & I drank the majority of the Stoli (mixed with grape soda of course) to try and comprehend what had just happened.

Oh yeah, it turned out that Mr. Kawasaki had brought a personal supply of Shochu (a bit like gin I guess) to the shindig and had given Tom-san a fair bit to drink. Legend.

Roll on Friday!

わたしわ タコ が すき でわ ありません

Day three
OK, so I'm blogging from like 2 weeks ago, hence the tiles have nothing to do with the content of the posts, ohg well, nimind.

So day three, the first monday, the start of work *shudder*
We were to meet Otsuki-sensei at 0840 at the party pad (our digs), he then got us to run in the horrible heat as we twirled out umbrellas on every third step, because we are that damn cool.
We had to buy umbrellas on the Sunday, the ESS told us to since it turns out we're here in the rainy season (duh!).
So yeah, made it to the med school with Takemi, then he introduced us to lovely Ms. Takemasa who gave us shoes, coats, phones and money (even to do laundry with, on top of the £80 meal card we got given, winning!).
Then we had to meet the Dean, Dr. Fukunaga, a bit of a legend with his nervoud hands.
But woah, really? Meeting the Dean? Us? Lowly foreigners with limited medical skillz and poor Japanese at best? Still, there was a guy taking our photos for the hospital newspaper. Apparently those photos are on their way to me, hmmm.

Then what happened? Oh yeah, we had lunch with all the hygiene people (Otsuki-sensei's department) and honestly, the food was pretty good, I'm still not convinced about miso soup though, and the pickled are absolutely awful. But nevermind.

After lunch, we got introduced to our various professors, Sam & Tom went off to their gay specialties and I got sent to Fujita-sensei in anaesthetics and got to wear the awesome blue scrubs.

Words cannot describe how amazing all the anaesthetic department are, I have to fight off a bit of a man-cry when I think about how nice everybody is. All will make sense when I catch up with this thing.

After meeting a fair few anaesthetists and seeing some shizzle go down, it was back home, buzz Sam & Tom's doors and head to Harow's for some discount burgers and whatever else we could find.
Then bed, in all honesty I was still completely knackered from the previous however many days of travel
And I was in at 0730 the next day.
Boo.

うどん ＆ わくわく

Day two
Right, so I can't be arsed Japanifying names anymore and the novelty has pretty much worn off, since I'm doing all this from memory for the time being.

So yeah, after an amazing sleep, Kyoko, Yoko & Toshihiro from the ESS (dunno where Yugo went) showed us around Nakasho, we had udon, which was pretty good (Sam's had cocks in it apparently).
Then we navigated the ticket machine and got on the train to Kurashiki 「倉敷」then a bus (no idea how we would have managed this without the ESS) to the depato (I think it was called waku waku).
There I bought underpants, and we had fun not knowing what anything was or possibly could be, followed by wasting several thousand yen in the arcade (You's Land). I say wasting, but it was actually amazing; we had to throw balls at things, that's about as good a job I can do of describing one of the games.
We got some amazing photos with the ESS in a weird photo booth thing, very Japanese. I'll try and get them up on here when I can.
A quick bus & train back to Nakasho followed.
Then we had a burger in some obscure restaurant that was "famous". I've found out that 'famous' is used very liberally in Japan, the burger was still good though.

A quick tour of ハロウス (Halow's) followed, then another super sleep before meeting the legendary Takemi Otsuki at 0840 Monday morning (we'd been told he's a famous rockstar).

インターネット : ヘビーローテーション [2]

Day 1.5
Onboard VS900, surrounded by Japanese people, saying 男根　「だんこん」at every oppurtunity, the slow realisation that we were going.to.Japan started to hit, it was all very exciting.
Because I'm an absolute legend, I got given a first-class meal, サムーさん　＆　トムーさん　had to make-do with the peasant food.
Big smiles.
Then we started to sleep, トムーさん watched Black Swan, サムーさん got to level 81 on tetris and I beat the whole plane at the trivia game.
Winning!
The lights came on, we roused our bleary-eyed, greasy-haired selves and began to land at Tokyo Narita, local time 0930 on Saturday June 11th.

After a somewhat sweaty trip through Narita, being fingerprinted and photographed, it was onto the bus to Tokyo Haneda, after our first purchase, mine had the vitamin C of 70 lemons, always nice to know.
The bus to Tokyo Haneda was rather uneventful, but we did see Disney Land and many baseball stadia.
Then we arrived at Tokyo Haneda.

During lengthy sweaty queueing, we saw a sumo wrestler. An actual sumo wrestler! Sadly I do not have a photo of him as he was rather large and may have hit me or shoved me enthusiastically, whatever it is they do.
There was also a fat woman crying because her dogs had to go in the hold. It was funny because she was so fat.
We met a very happy man in a shop where we saw our first weird Japanese food: green tea and white chocolate bagel. Little did we know that this would be just the tip of the iceberg.
After watching the same advert of a sweaty old person on the phone for a few hours, we boarded JAL1685 to Okayama.

Not too much to say about this flight, we slept for its entirity, but we did get all the announcements in Engligh purely for our ignorant selves.

After landing in Okayama, just a quick baggage collection separated us from our taxi to Kawasaki Medical University, or so we thought. Then we met rockstar-sensei and gaylord-sensei who would be accompanying us for the journey, so very nice of them.

About an hour in the taxi, feeling just a teeny bit exhausted, sweaty and generally quite nasty was all it took to get us to our accomodation. Turns out we're living where the doctors live, but they've been kicked out of our floor so we can tear up the joint.
More people came to greet us: the ESS [English Speaking Society], does what it says on the tin - ゆご、よこ　＆　きょこ, who showed us such technicalities as how to turn the gas off and operate the air conditioning.
However, they neglected to explain the kettle (explanation/rant coming soon).

Not much time passed, then the one&only おつきーsensei arrived in his passion wagon to take us out for dinner. Turned out it was at a place called Da Bra, funny name #1 of the trip.
He then took us to the supermarket and bought us milk and whatnot out of his own cash, what a lovely man. He also gave トムーさん　his microwave from home, awww.

Then followed the best and most-deserved sleep of my life, total awake time: 40hours, screw you timezones!

インターネット : ヘビーローテーション [1]

So we finally got internet

And I can post on this thing now, so let's get cracking.

Day one

トムーさん　turned up at 4am on Friday morning, bleary-eyed and stubbly to be greeted by my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed self with something of a collection of luggage all ready for the off to Newcastle airport.

Off in the taxi we went and through the usual bore of check-in, security checks and concealment of crisps about our person to hurry up and wait. Our time was brightened by spotting Ms. Emma Aveyard across the way and it turned out she would be accompanying us to London Heathrow, a pleasant surprise.

After a brief look around the lego shop and donning our Japan shirts, a short trip to the arcade improved things more than words could ever describe:

That's right ladies & gentlemen, say hello to アレクスーさん, the official mascot of Japan 2011.

So onboard BA1321 we went, トムーさん thought we were getting something lovely and bacon-y, alas, he had mis-read BA.COM and we had to make do with potato and tomato.

Sad face.

After landing at Heathrow and being reunited with our luggage (and my passport after I left it on the plane, oops), we navigated the gargantuan mess that is the Heathrow underground system.

We made it to T3.

Then we found サムーさん, who had lost his voice, hilarity ensued.

More luggage checking, moving metal into different bags and confirming identity followed, then we had oh, only about 6 hours to kill. In a terminal in the process of being refurbished, surrounded by Chanel, Bulgari & Paul Smith.

After many crosswords, a Boots meal deal, countless aimless wanderings of duty free and some more crosswords, passengers of VS900 finally got called to their gate. Win.

An introduction

Greetings!
As many of you will know, I'm heading to Japan this Summer to go and play doctor.

So I've made this here blog so you can see what I've been doing/seeing/drinking, who knows some  of it might even interest you.

Or maybe you've been to Japan, or know somebody who has and there's something I really ought to go see while I'm there. If so, let me know!

Thanks for reading, and come back from June 10th!