Token Update

Yoyogi Park (Aerial View)














So over the last two weeks I've been busy working my two jobs and enjoying my weekends. My new accomodation is somewhat depressing during the day so I try to spend as little time here as possible.

I tried my hand at teaching elementary (primary) school kids for a couple of days. The first day was disastrous, the second was excellent. I co-teached with a New Zealand guy who was funny; he started randomly doing a beatbox while we were chanting some numbers, the kids just stared at him in puzzlement but he kept going, good on him. The kids are more friendly when they are young. A lot of them wanted my autograph, and some wanted me to sign Ronaldinho's name.

I found a few good places to catch the soccer games in Roppongi, so I caught a few with my lady friend. We also went to a couple of summer festivals. One in Yoyogi park (Earth-garden) which was basically a mass gathering of hippie's selling incense, hemp pants, candles (etc) and some pretty decent bands playing (fyi - Japanese hippies are funny dancers). The other was a street flower festival (asagaya) with lots of great Japanese food like yakitori (bbq chicken skewers) and okonomiyaki (pancakes).

And last night I finally went to karaoke with the people from work for a staff members farewell. We went after going to an all-you-can-eat/drink bbq joint. Karaoke was good value, 2100 yen ($24) for all-you-can drink and entertainment for about 5 hours. We got pretty mashed and I exposed my coworkers to my terrible singing voice. But I killed it with the Black Eyed Peas: 'My Humps' & The Doors 'Light My Fire'. I was suprised by the music that was available; they have songs by Muse, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand etc. Half of the people there were Japanese staff so there was lots of J-Pop singing. I finally see why J-Pop is so popular; fun karaoke music is not necessarily good music and vice-versa. My version of Radiohead 'Just' was horrible.

So that's it. The only thing I want to add is that things have picked up with my special lady friend. She's been upgraded from 'lady friend' to 'girlfriend', we'll see how it goes. Take care.