Cannibal Run 7 - A tale of the three f's.

As you can see, both myself and Caroline are setup to contribute to this blog, that's 21st century married life for you.

Condensed history (a la MJ the supposed fiddy kiddler), part ii:
Caroline skipped over what happened in Tokyo (remember two silly bulls) though we were there for most of Sunday, all of Monday and Tuesday and departed on Wednesday. I can't actually remember that much about these few days as most of them were spent in a jet slagged stupor, I'll have a go though. We went to our scratcher on Sunday after noon and forced ourselves to wake on Sunday evening at about 7pm, I was as grumpy as a giraffe with a pain in the neck. We then went down the lift to the hotel lobby (or Robby as they have affectionately named it in Japan) whereupon we noticed that this ginormous hotel had been taken over by thousands of fellow ALTs from the other English speaking nations of the world and the USA. This was ok, most were friendly and we spotted many faces from the Edinburgh post departure orientation. This program, it has to be said, is a bit of an orientation-fest, which is ok though I'm not sure how useful some of it is. Anyhoo, Caroline and I made it out ourselves and decided to see what was in the immediate vicinity of the hotel other than other large hotels. Heading towards Shinjuku station there were a few narrow streets that were brightly lit with neon, flags and other devices to get your attention though nothing phallic, flacid or fleshy. These are the three f's that Tony Blair is going to concentrate on once the three r's are in the bag. Japan is still trying to manage one r (they keep on pronouncing l), chances are they'll nail it on exactly the same day as New Labour lands the three r's (ooh, political). There were all sorts of crap getting sold here, some electronics, camera paraphernalia and other guff in amongst restaurants and the odd Japanese Inn - called Izakaya. We had a deco at what was on offer. I was keen to get a kosher Japanese meal rather than some foreign muck, so we ended up going in to a small place which only appeared to be full of Japanese and sat down. Fortunately, this place had pictures on the menu and we both ordered a ramen set. Ramen is something that we have had in Japanese restaurants in the UK so we thought that we were getting the full Japanese experience in the heart of Tokyo. The restaurant however turned out to be Chinese; ramen is an imported dish from China so that blew my authentic start to Japanese life. I wasn't that bothered. We both had a nama biru, draught beer, and toasted our first meal as a married couple in Japan. The food was ok, and I ate the whole shooting match. Caroline ate most of hers but this was an introduction of a veggie meal in Japan which almost always includes some form of meat. This doesn't bother Caroline too much now as she actually eats chicken and the Japanese grub is slowly whittling away the last foundation stones of her previously veggie constitution (even though she was previously partial to the odd sausage - steady). It wouldn't surprise me if she comes back as a cannibal as they eat any old guff in Japan, more on this later, though I just thought of a great concept for a reality game show 'Cannibal Run'. It's like big brother but rather than vote people out, they just eat them. Burt Reynolds is doing that badly these days that we could probably get him for it though that moustache would take some eating. We ended up having a couple of beers in this joint and then hit the road. On the way out we bumped into another ALT from Canada called Maine (not sure of the spelling). We had a quick chat with Maine Man and arranged to meet up with him later after he'd had something to eat. Caroline and I mooched around for a bit, met another couple of lassies that we'd been gassing to previously, we then met up with the Canadian geezer and all had a couple of ales. That was about it on the first night as we were still bouncing off the ropes following the flight. I hadn't had much kip on the night before we left either as I was frantically ripping CDs onto a recently purchased mp3 player. I didn't realize that it took so long and only managed to get a fraction of our CDs copied which has since been a kick in the stones. This, coincidentally, should be the title of the latest Rolling Stones album which a Japanese English teacher recently lent me. My first nights sleep in Tokyo was bloody hopeless. I woke up at about 3am after going to bed at about midnight and didn't really get back to sleep. I read all of the bumph detailing the schedule of the next two days of orientation which should have been as potent as a pound of poisoned apples that snow white ate, but I was still bright eyed. I then started rereading James Clavell's excellent novel 'Shogun', where the main character John Blackthorne's life paralleled mine as we both wound up on the shores of Japan. Albeit by different vehicles and in different centuries however there were many parallels that I sympothised with, random beheadings for example. I seem to always bug the hell out of Caroline when I'm laying awake and she's sleeping. I try to stay quiet and not do anything disturbing, as it were, though I always get complaints, even about breathing (that's one mean woman...). Caroline reckons it's heavy breathing, like I need to do heavy breathing now that I'm married, not that I did it before I was married unless I'd been vigorously exercising of course. The funny thing is when Caroline is getting annoyed she doesn't just tell me to shut up she uses one of the modern women's secret weapons, the old aggressive barrel roll. Aggressive barrel rolls are a women’s choice of man management in the kip domain. You can tell just exactly how upset they are by the degree of rotation and how much bedding is accumulated by the woman in the movement. The worst I've seen was 7.2 on the slumbalux scale when I rolled into our old flat in Glasgow in the wee hours, completely reeking, after saying that I was only going out for one or two after work. It was fully justified. Post barrel role I spent the rest of the night without any covers, which at the time, due to the booze, I wasn't too bothered, but woke I up in the morning like an icicle, which wasn't pleasant. Back to the beaten path, the next day of orientation wasn't much kop, but I'm beat and will blab on in the next installment. Yahoo...

Here's a couple of rather poor pictures that we took in Tokyo from the Keio Plaze.

This is from our room on the 17th floor:


This is from the top which is 40 odd floors: