A Little Job Update

I've finally sorted out my shifts in my new job as a Babysitter!  I'll be picking a kid up from a British school in the centre of Tokyo, before taking him home to look after him for a few hours before his parents come home, during which time I'll help him with homework, play some games and chat to him.  This'll be every Monday and Thursday, about 6 hours per week in total, which will bring me a nice little income of about £240 a month!  Not bad hehe :)

I really need to get setting a bank account up!

James

P.S. No photo of the day today, I have to get snapping some more with my camera...sorry about that!

フライドチキン - Fried Chicken: A Serious Review

Whilst I know this is not the highest thing on people's lists when they think of Japan and its cuisine, it is something which surprised me in its popularity when I came here.  Fried chicken, generally a fillet, is cheap (generally about 165 yen per piece, roughly £1.35) and plentiful in Japan, and all of the different konbinis (Japanese for convenience store, they sell almost everything you need under one roof, albeit in small quantities, sort of like a petrol-station mini-mart thing, but better) have a selection of yummy, hot, fried food by the check-out.  They have hot dogs and chips and chicken nuggets and all that, but the only thing worth getting is the fried chicken; it's SO good.

My standard fried chicken-eating face

In light of the popularity of this delicacy amongst both Japanese people and foreigners, as well as the competition between konbinis, I thought I would save anyone in Japan reading this the tremendous struggle of sampling each konbini's offerings, by reviewing the chicken of the five konbinis local to me and then giving you a recommendation; how generous am I?!  For comparison, I give KFC 8/10.

5th Place: Lawson 

Quite simply because they're the only konbini I know of that don't sell it!  I'm sorry Lawson, I know I do most of my weekly food & ingredient shop at you, but pull your finger out and sell some fried chicken for 105 yen a piece, like everything else in your shop costs. 0/10

4th Place: Familymart

The only konbini I've been to which sells it on the bone.  It's good to be different, but not when your chicken's dry and bland. 3/10

3rd Place: Mini-Stop

It was a nice twist to see some chicken with a squeeze of lemon on it.  It was a little dry, but the seasoning was alright (maybe a little too much lemon on). 6/10

2nd Place: 7-Eleven

Absolutely gorgeous. Nice sized portions, very juicy chicken, and always piping hot. The seasoning was nice, too. 9/10

1st Place: Sunkus

My definite favourite.  Pretty similar to the 7-Eleven chicken, with all of its positive points.  The deal-breaker is the slightly nicer seasoning, plus the inclusion of a little sachet of extra seasoning, in case you like it a bit more seasoned. They call it consumer choice; I call it an extra point. 10/10

Another thing in Sunkus' favour is the fact that it is on my route home from the train station, and it certainly does the trick after a sozzled evening out in Tokyo, with it being open 24/7.

So next time you're in a Sunkus (or a 7-Eleven), whisper the magic words to the cashier:  "フライドチキンを一つお願いします", Furaido chikin o hitotsu onegaishimasu; you'll like the result.  Just have 165 yen to hand.

James

Photo of the Day

Not the nicest place to put a drinking-water fountain, ICU

新しい携帯電話! Finally a mobile!

So after a longggg few weeks of not having a phone, and all of the associated problems of not being able to contact people whilst out, and running up a high bill on my English mobile, I finally went out last week to get one!  

I met Shunyo at Musashi-Sakai station to go and have a look around the mobile phone shops in the area.  Instead of just going to a network branch, we went into a shop that sold phones from all of the different networks; sort of like a Phones 4U or Carphone Warehouse place.  The cheapest deal was on Docomo, whereby I got a two-year contract, and a free phone.  What most people seemed to get was the pre-paid option from Softbank, but despite the 9,000 contract cancellation fee, it actually worked out cheaper altogether to get the two-year Docomo contract.  I pay 1100 yen a month (under a tenner), which gets me unlimited emails.  The Japanese use emails a lot more than texts, as they're much cheaper!  Another advantage is the fact that you can email computers from your phone, as well.  I know this is a usual features in smartphones anyway, but my new phone isn't a smartphone, just a basic one.  I don't get free texts or minutes with this contract, but that doesn't bother me as I only really intend to use the email.

I got a free handset with my contract.  It's not too bad, though!  It has a 5.1 megapixel camera and an electronic Japanese-English dictionary, among other things.

 

 

A warning screen I don't understand

So I'm glad I can now finally keep in touch with other people in Japan!  It was a bit of a fuss actually trying to buy it.  It's not like at home where you can walk into any Argos and pick up a pay-and-go SIM card for £1.  For a start, you have to be 20 here to get a phone.  Ridiculous I know, but after getting Mum to fax over the photo and address page of her passport to prove she gave her consent for me to have one, I could start on the paperwork, which I won't even begin to go into, as it was hugely boring and typically Japanese in it's pointless bureaucracy.

So yes, if you're yet to get a phone, I recommend you go into a shop where you can compare deals from different networks, as they're generally less biased, and have a good range of recommendations for different deals, depending on what you're after.  They're also often willing to jump on the computer to research anything they're not 100% sure about, which just seemed to be my annoyingly precise questions about data charges and roaming, so fair play to them.

That's all to talk of on the mobile front, but I've decided on another feature of my blog; I'm going to have a 'photo of the day' at the end of each post.  There is so much strange stuff here in Japan (as I'm sure you can all imagine) so I thought I'd photograph anything hilarious I see and stick it on here :) I'll annotate them to try and give a bit of context, too.

Although, I haven't seen anything funny today, besides the picture below, which I found on the internet.  But after this post they will all be photos taken by me in Japan!

James

Photo of the Day

I don't think this needs a caption.

A Night Out in Shibuya

Before I start writing about this, I apologise in advance for the appalling quality of some of the outdoor shots.  My night time photography skills leave a lot to be desired.  

So yes, last night I went out into Shibuya with Melissa, an American girl from my Japanese course, who I also live at Big Rose 21 with, and her friend Alonna.  Shibuya is one of the big nightlife centres of Tokyo, and has what I believe to be the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world; there are plenty of photos and videos of the huge volume of people crossing every minute, so just type "Shibuya Crossing" into Youtube and you'll get an idea of it!

After getting the train from Higashi-Koganei to Shinjuku Station, and changing there, we took a different train one more stop to Shibuya Station.  Once outside, we had a bit of an explore whilst we looked for a place to have some food.  Even just walking around Shibuya is an amazing experience, what with all the neon and the sights and the sounds.  If you picture Tokyo in your head and imagine the big neon signs and bustling streets, that's exactly what Shibuya's like.

On the way to find some food we came across a concentration of 'Love Hotels'.  If you've never heard of them before or you somehow hadn't worked out their function from the euphemistic name, there's a fairly, ahem, comprehensive article on them on Wikipedia.  

 There were tens of them on this one little street, from the predictably named "Hotel Silk" to the more worryingly named "Blood".  The place we chose to eat at was actually at the bottom of this street (although in no way connected to its neighbours!), at a little place where we could sit and have a drink as well as get some food.  On the specials board there was an offer on a sashimi platter for three people which, considering there were three of us, we decided to get!  I'm glad we did; it was delicious.

Sashimi consists of slices of raw fish on some crunchy refreshing salad, with wasabi and soy sauce.  This was the first proper sashimi I've had since coming to Japan, and it was the best I've ever eaten.  The fish was really thick and meaty, and the wasabi was the best I've ever had, too.  It wasn't too badly priced either, nor were the drinks; I had two big glasses of Asahi.  The whole experience was a very nice, civilised way to start the evening!  The only thing I was a bit miffed about was that we only found after receiving the bill that there was a 300 yen entrance fee per person.  I think that's a bit rich, as you're paying them for the food and drinks anyway, which they must make a profit on.  I can understand an entrance fee for clubs and places like that, where you pay for the music and the work of the DJs and all that, but paying to enter a place where you again pay for food and drink?  I think that's a bit cheeky.  

But anyway, afterwards we went in search of a bar.  Whilst walking down a side street we were startled to see a very excited little Japanese man come running at us from inside a bar shouting "hai, hai, hai, douzo, douzo, irasshaimase, irasshaimase" (yes, yes, yes, come in, come in, welcome, welcome).  After having a look at the menu we thought it seemed pretty reasonable, so decided to stay there!  Then we saw on the menu an option for 飲み放題, nomihoudai, or all you can drink.  Ahh, the Japanese nomihoudai.  They are much more prolific here than in the UK and pretty much the only viable option for a student going out into Tokyo.  We paid about £10 for an hour's 飲み放題, in most small bars it's about £5-6 a pint, so this was definitely worth it.  When Japanese people select the nomihoudai they seem to just get a couple of drinks over the course of the whole hour, which seems a little bit pointless.  Of course, hulking great Westerners like myself certainly get their money's worth!  I had four pints of Suntory beer and a G&T in the hour, which worked out at £2 a drink.  In the centre of Tokyo, the most expensive city in the world!  

It was in this bar that we met a group of drunk, funny Japanese people.  None of them really spoke any English, so it was a great chance to practice our Japanese!

 

My Japanese seems to dramatically improve after a few drinks, or perhaps everything that comes out of my mouth then is just rubbish.  Whichever the case, we exchanged email addresses and agreed to meet up in Kichijoji next Friday night.  I was originally meant to go to Kichijoji with ICU people on Friday night, but everyone ended up being busy, so we're due to go tomorrow night instead!

I'm certainly enjoying my nights out in Tokyo :)

James

Bye Bye, Rhythm & Booze

I have now finished my 18 months with Rhythm & Booze!  Working in an off-licence (or wine shop, depending on who I’m talking to) certainly had its ups and downs, but I’m actually missing it already!  I was quite upset when I got home this evening!

The people I worked with were great, and I got on really well with them all.  I suppose I will miss working there, or at least miss the regular income anyway!  Speaking of which, I’m getting quite concerned about money matters whilst I’m in Japan, but I’ll write another post soon about that whole deal (and the DS thing I promised in my last post!). 

I’ll also miss the staff discount!  The shop was pretty cheap anyway, for example 3 500-600ml bottles of lager cost £5.50.  But my discount meant I could have them for £4.95; always good to keep it under a fiver!  I won’t miss the rude customers, however.  Obviously the majority were fine, but there always had to be the select few to ruin your evening, you know?  Although at least I’ve developed a thick skin after working there!  Every cloud and all that.

I know this is only a short post, but there’s not really a great deal to talk about!  Now I’ve finished working there, it definitely feels like I’m a step closer to going to Japan.  Putting all my affairs in order and what have you. 

I guess I won’t be seeing this view for a while!

Okay folkies, time for me to pop off!  Not doing a great deal tomorrow, just writing an essay to try and get a scholarship for studying in Japan, and then seeing Ayu!  Then on Tuesday I’m travelling down to London to apply for my Japanese visa!  I’ll definitely be writing a blog post on that, so look out for it on Tuesday or Wednesday :)

Oh, and happy August everyone :)

James

A Bit of a Catch Up

Hello again!  So here’s a quick round up of the stuff that’s happened since I made my last Youtube video.  To be perfectly honest I’m quite relieved I don’t have to catch up on all those videos I haven’t done yet any more as I can just write everything on here! Apart from the China one – gaah!

I finished my first year at university!  I can’t believe how quickly it went, either!  It’s going to be sad not being able to see all the people I got to know during the year, especially those off my course and those with whom I lived for the year.  Luckily I’m going to be at university in Japan next year with Green-san, Becci and Sally, as well as the Japanese friends I made whilst they were in Britain last year, so it’s not like I’m going off on my own :)  I’m flying from Manchester to Tokyo with Ash too, so that’ll be good.  We’re both taking our PSPs and Tekken so we can spend the whole flight fighting like the cool kids we are!

During the last term of the year we obviously had exams, which were scary!  But in the end I got enough revision done and was quite pleased with my results, especially in my core subjects.  I got 1sts in Basic Japanese Language 1 and Core German, and 2.1s in Basic Japanese Language 2 and Chinese.  There was a little moment of panic after my BJL2 oral exam, because I didn’t think I’d done particularly well, and in order to go to Japan we pretty much had to have at least a 2.2 to go without any complications.   But in the end it turned out I’d done well enough, so a couple of days after getting results I went down to STA Travel with Ash to book our first tickets.  I got a single from Manchester to Tokyo Narita, via Abu Dhabi for £363 with Etihad.  I didn’t get a return, as I still don’t know when exactly I’d be returning to the UK.  I just hope they let me into Japan on a one-way ticket!!

I suppose the worst part of finishing my first year at university was moving out of my house.  I really liked my room, and the people I was living with, and just everything about it really!  Well, I suppose if you’re being picky it could have been a liiiittle bit closer to the university, but I was fine with the twenty minute walk in the morning – it gave me valuable time alone with my iPod!  Seeing as I just worked out how to embed Youtube videos into these blogs, I might as well post my January video about my residence!

I really liked that house – look at the size of my room!  Lots of the rooms at that house were that size, and it only cost about £3400 for the entire year, self catered.  My room felt empty once I’d moved out!  Even emptier than when I first saw it, strangely enough.  I got this video on my phone the day I moved out;

I finished my exams on the 1^st of June, and had a little end of exams BBQ a few days after, which was nice. I didn’t really have any plans between then and going to Turkey with Ayu and a couple of friends at the end of June, so I just split my time between my home in Otley, and my student house in Hyde Park.  It’s only a 25 minute drive, which makes it easy enough to spend a lot of time at both.  Other than that I did some extra shifts at work, so that I’d have some more money for summer.  I couldn’t see Ayu until she’d finished her exams on the 27^th of June, so I had nothing better to do!  I went for Turkey for a week, and it only cost £145 for flights, transfers and an apartment for a week!  I was very impressed!  We were in Side, a lovely old historical town full of ancient architecture and ruins.

After that I had about ten days back in Otley, most of which I spent seeing Ayu and doing more shifts at Rhythm & Booze (yes that’s the ACTUAL name of the shop in which I work), before going to our holiday home in Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, with my parents and Ayu for a week, for my dad’s 50^th birthday.

That was really nice as well, but the weather was a bit dull for a few of the days.  It’s sad thinking it’s the last time I’ll get to go to Robin Hood’s Bay for over a year :(

Anyways, I’m tired of writing for the time being, so this will have to be enough for this post!  Tune in tomorrow where I’ll excitedly tell you about my new DS and moan about the Royal Mail sorting office at Sheepscar and a woman on eBay. 

I bet you’re wetting yourselves in anticipation.

James

A New Start

Well here we are, boys and girls, another corner of the internet which I have now decided to inhabit.

I did have a blog on here (or maybe livejournal, I'm not sure) a few years ago, but I got bored and decided to make my videos on Youtube instead.  However, after realising just how hard it is to make decent, regular Youtube videos (or for that matter, decent Youtube videos at all) I remembered how I would simply pop on here (or livejournal!) of an evening and splurge all of my thoughts out.  I suppose it was theraputic more than anything, and much more appropriate for little updates about my life than watching me mumble in front of a webcam for 5 minutes.

So here's the deal upon which I have decided; I'm going to keep the Youtube channel, but only have it for videos where I'm actually DOING stuff!  Such as my Berlin video, my student residence video, and the ghost stories one.  I'm not going to have any more where I sit talking about "interesting" developments!  They will be left for here!  I'll upload the occasional picture to help illustrate a point as well, you lucky people.

I hope to post these fairly regularly!  I presume that, having come to my page you know me and the fact that at the end of August, less than a month from now, I will be going to Japan to live and study there for a year as part of my German & Japanese degree at the University of Leeds.  I was going to post regular Youtube videos to talk about the sort of stuff I was doing there, but now I reckon it's probably a better idea to do that via this blog instead.  I'll still post videos where I'm out and about though!  And before I go I WILL finish the China video!!

Talking of which, I can't believe it's already been a year since I went to China! I went with my girlfriend Ayu, and stayed in Shanghai and Xi'an at her relatives' houses for a month, and also travelled to Sichuan whilst I was there. My China video will show you a little of how much I enjoyed it!  Whilst I was there I had a little notebook, in which I wrote down some of the sort of stuff I was doing every day, just a few words.  It's been really nice to flick back through it and see what I was doing a year ago to the day!  For example, under the heading of 28th of July 2010 I wrote;

Ill again :(

Ayu etc. did Karaoke

I stayed at home with laptop!

Watched Casino Royale

Ate Hotpot out

Lost Ayu!

I would very much like to go back to China soon :) As I learn how to use Blogspot, I'll add some links and stuff to my Youtube channel and Twitter page, but before then this will have to suffice! Keep checking, I'll add another post soon!

James