Happy New Year!

An interesting observation of mine as I walk through the streets of Tokyo or am out clubbing in the nightlife districts of Shibuya of wherever, is that the girls I generally find the most attractive among the native population of this city, are the ones that look the least like Japanese. Quite tall, hair dyed dark brown, or at least another shade of black, and skin at least a bit darker than the ghostly pale skin tone most seem to strive for - those are all attributes that would increase the likelihood of me looking twice at someone. Add a fashion style that says luxury rather than cute or slutty, and that second look is almost guaranteed.

Not that this is anything new. The ethnicities I tend to find the most attractive are, I think, those found in southern Europe, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and South America. So you might wonder what the hell I am doing in a country like Japan in the first place. You might. But doing so would of course fail to take into account all the wonderful things that make this country - and this city in particular - one of my absolute favorite places in the world. So let's stop wondering, and get on with the rest of this post.

Something very interesting that I learned today is that apparently the Japanese word arigatou, meaning "thank you", is a loanword. It comes from Portuguese obrigado, imported around the time when westerners (read: Portuguese) first came to Japan. Who would have thought that?

Anyway, as today is the first day of the new year, that of course means that yesterday was New Year's Eve! And that in turn means I had some great fun with a bunch of my friends. It was probably the most spontaneous and least planned New Year's Eve I have experienced in quite some time though. By the time I left my home for Shibuya at seven forty five in the evening, I still didn't know where we would be around the countdown to midnight.

We started out at the nice french-italian restaurant La Boheme in Shibuya (on the way to which we passed an Apple Store, which made me think of how much I want a Mac again). The restaurant had a very nice atmosphere, feeling a bit "old school" European, with interior walls of stone and everything. It felt somewhat exclusive, to be sure, but the place was actually quite affordable.

As for the food, we ordered in a bunch of pizzas with various toppings, and some tasty chicken as well. This was the first time I ate pizza since I left Sweden. They were considerably smaller than Swedish pizzas, but oh so tasty! I started out drinking wine, but then switched to drinks, finding a very nice, slightly sparkling orange tasting drink whose name I unfortunately can't remember.

Around eleven thirty we left the restaurant, as they had another reservation at twelve. We worked our way back to the large crossing outside of Shibuya station, where we got just in time for the countdown! The crowd went wild, and the new year arrived. Sad to say there are no fireworks on New Years in Japan - I wonder why. After gathering up on the opposite side of the crossing, I opened the bottle of champagne I had bought on my way to Shibuya earlier that evening. Sharing it with about half the people I was there with (it was only enough for so many, but I did have the prerogative of choosing who got a glass), we cheered for prosperity and success in this new year.

And prosperity and success is exactly what I would like to wish all of you out there. Happy new year to all of you! May 2009 be the year when all our dreams start coming true.

That naturally should have come at the end of the post, but as I am not really done yet, that will not actually be the case. Back to my story, we have reached the point where the fellowship start breaking up. For after the cheering with champagne, the group split in two. One half went to karaoke, while the other, with me among them, went clubbing. The choice of club fell on Atom, mostly because I said I wanted R&B and House, and none of us seemed to know of any other club in the area playing that kind of music. Which reminds me, I really should check out some new clubs one of these days.

We danced the night away, went to McDonalds for breakfast, returned to the station and went separate ways. When I exited the station in Ikebukuro I noticed that people seemed to be camping outside of several department stores. I am guessing that means that the legendary city-wide January sale starts today. Worth checking out to be sure, but I am definitely not in the kind of rush that made those sorry ass souls stay out there in the cold for I don't know how many hours this night.

Another interesting flock of people I ran into on my way home this morning was a group that had gathered on the walking bridge across the highway to look at what I think was the sunrise. If it was anything else, it was nothing I could see, and the sunrise was pretty nice, so that was probably it. They even had a camera set up, with some old man taking pictures.

I stopped up there for a few seconds to look at it with them. With one last glance at that beautiful sunrise, I then turned around and continued my walk home.

The Ace of Clubs and a River of Yoghurt

It has been too long since my last post. Too much has come in the way of me updating this blog. I will try to be more dilligent in the future.

Truth be told, I am not really sure of what this post will contain. Several things of interest have happened since the 18th, when my last post was made, but will I remember more than a few of them before I finally give up and click on Publish Post? We'll just have to wait and see.

Almost a week ago now a friend of mine found an apartment near Ikebukuro, one of the larger centers of Tokyo. Merely five stations from school, and much closer to everything else of importance than where both my friend and I currently resides, the location was obviously as good as any we could ever realistically expect to find. And the apartment itself seemed great too. Three rooms, each one six tatami mats large (that's just under 10 sqr meters) with a kitchen and dining area in the middle.

It stood clear to both of us that this apartment would be perfect. However, as expensive as it is to live in Japan, we couldn't afford it on out own. Or at least, we didn't want to afford it on our own. We needed a third person. And so the hunt began. The next morning I immediately called Sakura House (henceforth known as "the company") asking about the apartment. I told them we were very interested, not mentioning the fact that we still hadn't found out third person. 

It wasn't until later, when we were on the train on our way to Shibuya to do some shopping, that I realized I already knew a person looking to share an apartment with someone. A classmate of mine - and yet another swede. (I swear, Tokyo is crawling with them.) Though I would probably have preferred someone not of north european origin, the fact was that the clock was ticking. If we wanted this apartment, we had to act as soon as possible. There was no time to be picky.

So I called my classmate and asked him if he was interested. Getting a positive answer, I called the company back as soon as I could.  A third call would prove necessary for formality later that evening, after I'd gotten home and filled in an online form at their website, but after that second call, the apartment was indeed ours for the taking. And during the third call, I could swear the person I was talking to was flirting with me. All in all, it was a good day. I even did get some shopping done.

The next day we went to Sakura House's main office in Shinjuku to really make it official. The final contract has yet to be signed,  but the deposit has been paid, and the apartment is ours from the last of october. So that's when I'll leave Matsudo City in Chiba Prefecture for the (metaforically speaking) much greener pastures of Tokyo proper.

Speaking of pastures, I discovered something quite unexpected a few days ago. Until that time, I hadn't really been any further away from the center of Matsudo than the location of my guesthouse. I had seen no reason to. The city had enough of that small-town feeling I usually dislike so much as it was, without me having to seek out its even more outlying parts. But then one day when I was up on the roof, getting some clothes I had hung to dry there, I looked out over the parts of Matsudo where I hadn't yet set foot, and I got a real urge to go out and explore them. This might not have been so unexpected - I am nothing if not adventurous.

So out I went, out on my quest to find something new - somewhere along the way buying a Coke in one of the several thousands of vending machines spread throughout Tokyo with surroundings. After something like ten minutes my jaw completely dropped, and I stopped in admiration.  I had found a river, bordered by the most wild-looking greenery I had seen since coming to Tokyo one month before. Walking down toward the river, the place really started to feel like a scene out of some roleplaying game, like the serene little village you always run across at one time or the other throughout the adventure.

In truth I had known that the river would be there. It had been part of what I had set out to find. But seeing as I'm this close to central Tokyo, I had kind of expected it to be bordered by ... well, stone or concrete or ... anything but wilderness, actually. Instead I had found (if only just a little bit of it) true nature.

I stayed there for more than half an hour, letting all of it flow through my senses. The urge to learn how to ride that has surfaced within me this past year really struck me with full force. It was like I could even feel the horse standing before me.

But let's not linger any longer at that subject. I still have much to talk about. Like yoghurt.

When I realized a few days ago that I didn't have any breakfast for the morning after, it was already to late to go to a real department store to do anything about it. So I improvised, thinking surely they must have some kind of yoghurt in one of the convenience stores bordering the way I was walking from the station to my home. And they had. Sure, it was dringking yoghurt, but surely it can't be that liquid, I though. Surely I would be able to eat it with my cereals. I was wrong. Utterly and severely mistaken. This thing was as liquid as milk. And while I do love the taste of milk to my cereals (be it something I haven't had since I came here), there is something quite disturbing about "milk" with a strong taste of yoghurt.

The next time I have forgotten to buy my regular kind of breakfast (like today...), I will not be quite so adventurous when it comes to finding a replacement. So tomorrow I'll just buy a couple good old onigiri instead.

Food brings me to drinks, which brings me to the next subject at hand. Clubbing. Tokyo is of course the clubbing capital of the east, featuring a great many night clubs of different varieties. With that in mind, it would obviously have been next to impossible for me to have tried out everything on offer so far. But I do feel I am at least on the right way.

This weekend I went to three clubs all in all. All of them in Shibuya. One may not really count though, as I left it after merely 15 minutes. That one was Gas Panic - which is a chain owning several clubs in Tokyo, mostly in Roppongi. I've been to two of them before, and now this third one. The thing is, I hate Gas Panic. Really truly hate it. This Shibuya branch was even worse than the ones I had visited before.

It's hard to put my finger on exactly what it is I so dislike about the place(s), but it probably has something to do with the horrible interior design, the crappy DJs, the chaotic feel of the place, as well as the fact that almost everyone inside are gaijin (and most of them probably tourists). Further, there're usually so much people you can hardly move - let alone dance - and they have a rule saying you have to have a drink in your hand at all times or be kicked out. I suppose the main reason why people go there is because there is no entrance fee. As if that would ever make it worth it.

Considerably better were the two other clubs I paid a visit to this weekend. First of them was Atom. With three dance floors - playing R&B and two kinds of trance respectively - it was definitely a club in which I enjoyed spending my time. While it may not be the club with the most exclusive air - the guards were all big, black guys wearing red t-shirts, jeans and sneakers - but the place definitely had style. The entrance fee was 3000 yen, with one drink included, and the price of most of their standard drinks was 500 yen.

The other club, the one to which I went saturday, was called Womb. Somewhat hard to find, tucked into an extremely soundproof old warehouse or something on a backstreet in the middle of Shibuya, with no sign at all of its existance other than the three guards and the few other people standing outside, it really looked like the kind of place you needed five different invitations to get into. Which was the reason we walked right past it the first time around, not expecting it was really the place we were looking for.

Once we got in - which was not as easy as it would have been had we not had a girl in our company who weren't quite as old as she were supposed to be (clubs in Japan apparently require you to be 20 years of age to enter, unlike the 18 that's standard in Europe) - we were unfortunately told that the main dance floor would not be open until 4 am. I don't know if that's the way they usually do it or if it was just a one-time thing due to some problem. Either way, it did mean the smaller dance floor, the one on the bottom floor, was pretty cramped for most of the night.

The interior design of the place was really interesting. Falling somewhere in between the look of a warehouse and the place of worship for some spiritual cult, it really spoke to me, despite my usual preference for more luxurious surroundings. The music they played was unfortunately limited to techno, a genre for which I hold no particular love (I prefer R&B and house when clubbing), but dispite that I managed to have quite a good time. It was just unfortunate that we lost half of our group to some other club before the night had hardly even started.

Entrance at Womb was 2000 yen, with most drinks landing at between 500 and 800 yen a piece.