Fool of Suprises.

Today's edition is not written by a stupidly bored guy sitting at his desk. No, today's edition is just written by a stupid guy sitting in some internet cafe in a large, strange city at 2am.

It all started after school. Fridays... the day of promise. This weekend, the excursion is to Osaka. Yes, I am keeping true to my "get out of Toyama as much as possible" scheme. Chances are, if you have half a brain (i.e. you know the difference between 'your' and 'you're'), you will know at least these two Japanese cities: Tokyo and Osaka. Osaka is a big city. It's basically joined onto Kyoto and Kobe to form a carpet of population across the middle of Japan. Enough geograpy. (Please, don't quote me on this, its not like I'm a teacher)

The main reason for coming to Osaka is because my brother happens to live there. Another English teacher in my city was coming down too, so I caught a ride. I tell, you, although I am stuck in some seedy internet cafe in a strange metropolis, I do feel very lucky to be alive. I'm not saying my friend is a bad driver. No, exactly the opposite. For 3 1/2 hours, he navigated the highways in his barely road-legal pathetic excuse for a car, amongst the insane kamakaze Japanese drivers who were obviously trying to kill us.

So we arrived. I met my friends' host family. They were very nice. Too nice infact. I blame this whole situation on their niceness. The plan was to go to my brothers' place tonight. They all looked up the train times on the internet and their cellphones, discussed it in detail, and gave me a foolproof itinery to get to my destination. First, they took us out to a bar/restuarant.

So that was all good and well. The time quickly came for me to leave. I apologised/thanked them (in Japan there is little distinction between a thank you and a sorry), and went to the station. The foolproof plan turned out to be proof that I am a fool. The train I was supposed to catch was right there... The sign was not what I expected it to be. I watched it go away and waited for the next one. Normally this is fine, but not when you are planning to catch the last train...

So, naturally, I missed that train, and I found myself in a large district of Osaka, lugging my bags aroundm wondering what the hell I was going to to do until the morning... My first thought was a capsule hotel. As my Tokyo experience told me, they aren't so bad. However, the guys at the convenience stores knew of none. I came across a building with large writing in English "NIGHT INFORMATION". It was night. I needed information... The guys inside told me they were closed. This seems to happen often in Japan. They apparently don't like to lock the doors,instead preferring to make an awkward situation. Still, I asked them if they knew of a capsule hotel. Perhaps it was just a way to get rid of me, but they said there was none...

The saviour came when I saw this 24 hour internet/comic cafe. I paid about 30$ new zealand (US20) for 5 hours in a room with a computer, TV, and most importantly, a big comfy leather couch. It is much cheaper, and more fun than a stupid Capsule hotel. The night hasn't turned out so badly after all. And now, I will finish with a quote. I don't have a source, I'm sorry.
Nothing will ever be foolproof; they will always make a better fool.

Sorry to be all suspenseful about how the festival performance went. I made a late starting lineup change, opting for a different song that had less risk of public humiliation on the account of my voice. It was much easier to sing.... the drawback was that the song contains more than three chords. Infact, it contains six! This proved to be my downfall, as during my performance, I played the wrong chord, and stopped. I'm not much of performer, so I wasn't really aware that you are supposed to pretend like nothing happened. Not me, I apologised, and started again from the chorus. A "do-over"... How childish is that? I then managed to "do-over" my mistake, stopping in exactly the same spot...

But overall, seeing the song was about 4 minutes long, I played probably 3 and a half of them without a mistake. If I was a professional basketball player, and I shot over 80%...

But that's not why you called. Today, I want to recount the adventures from the previous weekend. It was a long weekend, and that is a good opportunity to leave Tonami. The buses to Tokyo were all booked out, so it was time to enter the mysterious world of the JR train sytem... Leaving Tonami at 6pm, changing onto a full express train... The trains really do move, it is just unfortunate that between Toyama and Tokyo are these little things called the Japanese Alps. Anyhow, after an hour or so, all of a sudden, the train came to a halt. With my rapidly improving Japanese, I was able to pick out a lot of the announcements that were to follow. The first announcement was a very hesitant Japanese man. He struggle with the following words: "human body accident".

If you have been to Japan, you'll know exactly what this means. The explanation goes, that because of the Japanese fighting spirit, of always working your hardest, never saying your own feelings and always being submissive to your superiors, many people throw themselves infront of trains. I had heard this story many times before, and I might have possibly been on a train before that had to wait for the tracks to be cleaned up after such an accident. (just at that time, I couldn't understand the announcements).

This time, was a little different. The next announcements told that the police were coming, that this train was now a crime scene. From the train windows you could see all the emergency service vehicles, and workers walking up and down the tracks with torches. They really couldn't put humpty together again. It was all pretty unbelievable. It ended up being a 90 minute delay, which in effect, made us miss the changeover onto the bullet train to Tokyo. Luckily, JR held it up for us, and I did end up making it to Tokyo.

However, by that time it was already midnight. That night I wanted to try the infamous "capsule hotel". You may have heard of these. Because of the crazy land prices in Tokyo, they have these hotels which cram as many people as possible into the available space, which ends up resembling a coffin. I didn't feel like I was in a coffin, as much as one of those liquid filled pods in which the robots on the matrix breed human beings. It was odd. However, once inside, it was more like a high tech tent. There is a radio, a clock, a pair of slippers, some PJamas, Towel, and even a TV (with the option for pay-per-view... We all know what that means...). In the morning, they also provide showers, so in all, I will not dismiss capsule hotels.

Anyways, it was a fantastic weekend, yada yada yada... I'm sure you'd rather hear about how I was brought home by the police...

Disclaimer: the following story is completely out of chraracter, and I do feel very stupid. I am also not advocating alcoholism. But its really quite a funny story... No really useful braincells were harmed in the making of this story.

So it was a sunday night, just as I arrived back in Tonami. I had a day off the next day, so I was rather keen to go and have a few drinks. However, there was absolutely nothing open. Every bar we went into was closed or closing. This called for drastic measures... There is a karaoke place a reasonable distance from the town centre, but they are known to be open until late, and they have all you can drink... Yes, the infamous, reckless all you can drink. That was the end of me. Next thing I know, Im being woken up by 4 policemen. I am sitting against the side of a buliding alongside the main road. It is 8am, and probably half the population of Tonami saw me sleeping there on their way to work. Poor lady who worked at that building. She arrives, and sees an enourmous foreigner sleeping right by the door. She calls the police, who decide that 2 police officers wont be enough. Anyway, I go into the police car, which was the moment I realised I had no shoes on. The officers were very nice though, and they gave me a ride home.

I feel completely stupid about the whole thing, especially because noone at work has said anything, and I'm sure word must have spread. Also, do you know how hard it is to find shoes my size around here? I have no defence, except for that, usually all-you-can-drink places have very watered down drinks. I have decided though, as an act of redmption, that for the next month, I am giving up drinking while in Tonami.

I have trips lined up for the next 2 weekends.