Why did Kirk jump off a mountain?

Thanks to the very nice people I work with and the many new friends I have made here in Japan, it is starting to become a country where I do all the things I normally wouldn’t get round to on my day off. It’s a lot of fun to wonder just where the hell will I find myself a few weeks from here because (within the boundaries of physics and finances) anything is possible.

This week we decided to go paragliding, because why not? After climbing a mountain last week and being forced to merely walk down after, it seemed quite fitting that this time I would get to run off the edge instead. As I had never done this before it was of course a tandem flight, which made it a lot more relaxing as I only had to worry about gravity and its desire to bring objects with mass back down towards the core of the planet. Stupid gravity.

Of course before I could jump off a mountain we had to get to the top, which turned out to be an equally exciting / enjoyable / terrifying experience (depending on which of us you asked). Upon a monorail a traction engine slowly pulled the ten of us, plus equipment, up the side of the mountain which at points felt close to being an almost vertical climb. Personally I thought it was a great time, but perhaps not for everyone as there are no belts to strap you in or anything either side of you for the ascent. Perfectly safe though, honest!

Now this is normally where I would describe the joys of slowly falling through the sky with another man strapped to your back speaking to you in broken English / Japanese. Fortunately though as part of the experience I have a video of the whole thing which is in fact online and can be found here

To summarize though, it was surprisingly relaxing and a hell of a lot of fun. If you get the chance I would strongly recommend giving it a go as even if you are scared of heights the decent is very controlled. In many ways it’s like being in a lift with no floor and you can fly really close to the side of a mountain. Just like a lift, right?

In other news typhoon season is well under way, with all of the worlds water falling from the skies in Japan, which makes for an interesting swim to and from work. Otherwise life is good and Japanese living is proving to be very enjoyable. I also started taking Japanese lessons, which proved to be an interesting experience being on the other side of the table but recognizing the teaching format. Again though, very good stuff and most helpful. Especially considering outside of the class most people here seem to only speak Japanese. Weird that.

 

Under the Sea

This week has been a good one for new things.

This is the first time I have been to a beach in Japan, the first time I have swam in the sea in Japan. This is the first time I have been snorkeling in Japan and the first time I have ever sung karaoke. (Because how could I not when in Japan.

So to bring some context into this whole situation; as Thursday was a national holiday here most of the people from my school decided it would be nice to spend the day at the beach. As a person who enjoys having fun I thought it would be good to go to, so I did. While the beach itself was more like fine shale than sand, the sea was beautiful and not too crowded with people.

An area was actually sectioned off for people to go swimming in, keeping us safe and away from boats and jet skis. While from the shore it didn’t actually look all that big a space, once we were in there and snorkeling it was clear that it was ample. I didn’t really know what to expect from the snorkeling, as we were so close to the shore I didn’t really expect fish to be all that interested in coming that close to land, let alone the many people splashing around. Fortunately I was delightfully wrong with my assumptions and managed to encounter small schools of fish at one point, as well as a few loners probably off to see what the humans were doing.

Actually as a slightly random aside I do wonder if fish ever see people in the water and think ‘oh dear, they’ve fallen in again. Best try and get them out.’ And this is why when people film nature documentaries fish will swim up to them.

Anyway, back on track…

There were neons, and zebra-fish, possibly even puffer fish and a whole bunch that I didn’t know the names of but were very colourful, including  a couple that were easily over a foot long. It was a very enjoyable experience and I managed not to accidentally drown when swallowing half the sea at one point. All in all, a good time.

Karaoke is a very different experience here from anything I have ever seen in the UK. For one you have a room for just you and your friends. There is also no song book, just a computer tablet that you can search for different songs and artists. The range of songs is probably what impressed and amused me the most though. From your karaoke classics and modern pop to some pretty obscure 80’s tracks and Norwegian death metal. Yea that’s right, there were tracks from Emperor and Dimmu Borgir on this thing, along with SOAD and Turisas. Naturally this meant that our playlist swung dramatically in direction nearly every other song. The consumption of large quantities of alcohol is also very traditional (I was told) and may have encouraged some of the more extreme song choices at points.

So I have to say, although it can be a little expensive if you buy a lot of drinks from the place itself it was certainly an excellent way to finish a very fun day. Considering karaoke is a very typical way for people to hang out after work I would recommend trying it as soon as possible, especially if you are a bit shy about this sort of thing, as it will help you realize no one cares how bad you are (if you are bad) and it’s a lot more about no one really giving a crap and having fun.

Another Day Older

So as many of you probably already know, I turned 31 on Thursday. While maybe not as exciting as turning 21, or as monumental as 50 it was still a fun year marker. After all, I now live in Japan and have a bunch of new friends out here so it was a very different experience from any of my other birthdays.

Once again I am forced to announce that the people I work with are just lovely. Having known me for a whole two weeks they bought me a cake for my birthday, and then we went to a bar for food after finishing work for the day. They really didn’t need to do this, and even though I’m not really a big birthday person I really appreciated the effort they went to.

The day after I visited another friend in Zama, where we spent the day walking around a nature park and became slightly confused by the myriad of pathways. Fortunately as they were all giant circles in one form or another we were not forced to build a rudimentary camp and survive off the local wildlife when we could no longer escape.

There will also be many photos of this wonderful place just as soon as I have wifi for my phone again. Unfortunately my tourist sim card has run out so I need to sort out a more long term solution, but now that I have a bank account all is possible, so you can expect a mid week update on this post with all the pictures once it’s done.

Forests are very interesting places.

We feature them in so many of our stories and typically they are rather magical places, homes to a great variety of creatures and fictional beings. They are also very polarized places in our collective minds. Either they are wondrous and contain the secret to defeating evil kings, sometimes loaded up with magical items or just sage advise from mystical beings. At other  times they are evil dark places, holding only death an misfortune beneath their haunted leaves. Princesses are poisoned, killed or lost in them. Wicked creatures lead travelers off the safety of the path to become lost forever, while others are homes to powerful but evil magicians who are a little too trigger happy on the curse front.

And I can really see both points of view. During the day time it was a wonderful place to be, full of life and joy. The sunshine filtering through the trees and dancing across the floor as they moved in the wind. There were some really wonderfully bizarre creatures too, easily mistaken for something not of our world for its weirdness. Then when it slowly became darker the trees blocked out what little sunlight remained entirely, the birdsong would echo ominously around the woodland and without clearly marked paths it would have been very easy to get lost there.

This leads me to the conclusion that a lot of our fairy tales were probably written about the same places just at different times of the day, which really goes a long way to show you how important perspective can be when you form an impression of something. Now it feels like I have accidentally stumbled into some sort of morality story, but I suppose worse things have happened from a tangent.

A Day in the Park

Day 4 of Dave in Tokyo and once again I enjoyed use of the effective train system. While I couldn’t tell you if they were on time or not, as I’m not in a rush and just get on the next one to turn up that’s going in the right direction, they are regular, clean and cheap. Or at least cheap compared to other capital prices. I also love the pricing system. 

For example, today I went to Shibuya (the other side of Tokyo, go me!) and to get here cost me ¥170 or £1.30ish. Now when I want to return, guess how much I’ll pay? That’s right! Exactly the same amount. Not ¥300 for a single and ¥340 for a return. Nope, each journey costs exactly the same amount because it is the freaking same journey. Not that I’m at all angry about the illogical pricing of return and single tickets in the UK. But seriously guys, sort yourselves out.

Anyway…. I came to Shibuya today mostly to go to the park. Yoyogi Park specifically, so of course it decided to rain all day. That being said I have an umbrella and short of a tsunami (Which yes, I’m aware could be something that actually happens here) I’m willing to get out and see new places while I can. I’m pleased to say that as always it was totally worth it. It’s massive and full of trees and the sounds of corvids, while the only sign you are still in a city is the very tips of the tallest buildings around just poking up over the foliage.

The rain has actually made it pleasantly cool to just wander around, while the sounds of fountains everywhere are very relaxing indeed. 

Deep in the other side of the park is a Shinto Shrine (I don’t have any photos of the shrine itself sorry as it is still in active use and it seemed a little rude to take photos of people praying). Although they are currently rebuilding the main entrance after it was destroyed by a fire, it is magnificent while demure, one of the grandest buildings I’ve seen since being here yet fitting into the surrounding woodland perfectly with its own wooden construction. It does help that the woods are also spectacular here and are the perfect setting for such a hidden treasure. There is also a pair of married trees inside the shrine, which according to the notice next to them are a symbol of happiness in marriage, the two growing tall and old together.

To give you an idea of the shine though, here is one of the entrances:

I also found godzilla today, though he is smaller than I remember and apparently trapped inside a building. So I guess that’s a good thing for as long as that holds. 

You also might have noticed that I have realised I can add pictures into the body of the blog too. So um, yea…

Awkward sign of the day; Stumptown – Boots and reconstruction (I’m guessing this is a shoeshop and cobblers rather than some sort of bionic leg shop)

The air that we breathe

As promised in my last post, this one will be starting with (lets call it what it is) a rant.

Once again the word artisan has reared its head and been slapped all over a ‘product’ that should make any rational thinking person despair over the state of all things before buying a first class ticket on the next flight to Mars and giving it a good go at starting over.

I am of course referring to bottled air. Now I don’t mean the sort that divers and astronauts use, because that’s pressurized oxygen and I don’t begrudge them having that when they are floating in space or somewhere under a few hundred tonnes of water (anything else is fair game though). Recently a couple of people have decided that bottling English country air and shipping it to China for £75 a pop is a great way to make money. Now not only is the concept of trapping air in a jar by waving it around outside for a while nothing more than an over dramatization of pretending to create something, the fact that they are trying to sell it as a national product is somewhat insane. Sure there are different pollutants primarily present in different areas of the world but one of the fun things about air is that it moves around the planet reasonably freely. So while the air in your jar might have been captured in England like some sort of theoretical Pokemon, by this point it has been breathed in by a few billion lifeforms and chemically altered so many times that if it owned a passport and they still did the thing with a stamp you would be hard pressed to work out where it started off. Further more, unless you are planing to perform a chemical analysis of each and every bottle of air (which is at no point filtered before being sold) you have no guarantee that the single breath you might get out of it is any cleaner than the stuff you get for free by simply being alive and living in an oxygen rich environment.

So well done, you conniving thieves. You have managed to find a product that takes almost no effort or skill on your part to make, and sell it to people in a part of the world that are currently experiencing air pollution on a level that makes the London smog look like a Center Parks advert. Sure,  you could argue that it is the rich and gullible who are only effected by this but that’s really not the point. The fact that we are still struggling to live in a world where people’s go to reaction when they see someone else suffering is ‘how can I make money on that’ is disgusting.

Sadly the only solution I can offer at this time is when you see someone in pain, don’t be a #@$&.

The longest wait

Despite how busy I actually am these days, between work, university, attempting to learn Japanese and painting tiny plastic toys, I still find that the bigger picture manages to really drag itself out. I believe it is mostly because I am waiting for my visa to be approved, so every time a new email notification pops up on my phone I immediately drop everything to see what it is (much to the despair of my manager and to the detriment of anything I was previously holding), only to be disappointed by spam, pictures of my very recently born nephew or university results.

So maybe the last two things on that list are not so bad, but it is a little frustrating that when you know full well there is no reason why your application would not be accepted that it can still take up to three months to be approved, and then I still need to wait for the paperwork to arrive from Japan and take it to the embassy in London to have it converted into a full visa. If only the Japanese government would just accept my cover letter stating that I’m pretty great and will be no trouble at all, I feel that their whole visa process could be sped up by maybe as much as 3000%. So if you happen to be reading this, Japanese government, it might be worth considering. That is, after all, one heck of an improvement in speed and literally nothing else.

Jumping topics almost entirely, I took the proverbial leap and bought some Malifaux crews. One for me – The Hired Swords, and one for a friend – The Guild’s Judgement. The plan is I am going to paint them both and then give one to my friend as a birthday present. This means not only will I be a great friend but they will have to play the game with me, and so I become less of a great friend and more of a cunning blackmailer through the power of gift giving. The game itself looks like a lot of fun, but I actually mostly bought it for the models as I’ve been eyeing up the Hired Swords (in a normal, art appreciation sort of way) for a couple of months now. A quick browse of the Wyrd forums also reveals that at least back in 2011 there were people in Japan playing the game too, so with a little luck it could also be a nice way to break into the gaming circles over there. Yea, that’s right! I managed to make even this a little bit about Japan. As an aside, this means you can probably look forwards to pictures of the things I am painting, as well as updates about my experiences with the game. Unless I suck at it, in which case I’ll just pretend it never happened.

Time never does seem to move in the way we want it to, either too quickly or too slowly whenever it is the most inconvenient for it to do so. It’s almost like it is a concept that can not only be used as a measurement but is also deeply rooted in the personal perception of the beholder, who incidentally are very nice people and give a great live performance. (As well as being quite difficult to find on youtube to demonstrate that they are a heavy metal band, rather than some nonsensical surrealism about time being a great live performer.)

Tune in next week for more waiting around for a visa, painted figures and a discussion / rant about people who sell bottled air. Don’t forget to listen to our podcast too, it’s pretty great and features me, your good pal Dave.

 

Title image originally found on Gaijinpot.com. This post was written by Enigmatic Dave.

 

 

 

Introductions

 

The observant among you will have noticed that this is the first post of a new blog. As such it feels appropriate to provide a little more information than you might find on the about page.

So my name is David, although I am more commonly known as Enigmatic Dave in this world of digital personalities. I’m an environmental management student working in a game store who records a weekly podcast about the hypothetical with a few friends. Together we are the 3 Parrots Podcast (links can be found throughout this site) and we aim to entertain, educate, confuse and provide at least a couple of terrible terrible puns.

This blog is a bit of a side project for the 3 parrots, as you might have guessed by the name of this site, where I will be discussing things I find interesting and inviting you to join me in my upcoming adventures in Japan! I’m also hoping to rope in the other ‘Parrots’ from time to time and have them post updates of their own, so you have press-ganged authors to look forwards to as well.

Let the adventure begin! (Also blogging, that will begin now too.)