Of Hawks, Crepes and Karaoke. Plus a beer without the conversation.

So boys and girls, not a huge lot of blog activity lately, have been training for the school 'marathon' which is in 2 weeks time, and last week I bought a couple of small whiteboards which I use to practice new kanji on, I've learnt about 80 this week! So soon I'll be slaying kanji left right and centre! Otherwise I've been fairly busy with university applications, I've been accepted into Te Puni House at Victoria University of Wellington, so well pleased with that! For all of you applying for University in NZ, how have you got on with applications plus Halls of Residence?


Back to Japan, however, this weekend was two weeks in the making. After a previously (failed) attempt at getting a group of us to Kamakura, I decided to shoot for this Saturday. Kamakura is where my AFS chapter went to see Yabusame (horse archery) at the start of October, had such a good time there plus saw so many things that we thought it was a good place to return.

In particular, I was on the lookout for one not-so-Japanese item that had caught my eye last time, an item that really 'spoke' to me, and so my number one objective was to acquire this particular thing. So meeting up with Camille or France and Olivia of the US, we set out on this very important task.

That's right. A bottle for your soy sauce. Shaped like R2-D2 from Star Wars. A unique blend of East meets West.



Upon acquiring this Soy Sauce Bottle of Kings, we went about meandering through the various market streets, coming across the odd temple or two, including this fairly generic one that is apparently the one to go to for easy chilbirth.

I can now easily give birth, good thing too, because if I became pregnant, anything that would make it easier would DEFINITELY be a good thing.


Feeling quite capable of giving birth, we left the temple with the desire of going to the park that our map had directed us to. Walking for a bit longer than expected, turned out we had missed the park entirely, and ended up at the ocean! Woops.

They employ fulltime rakers at Japanese beaches, aren't they quaint? Raking sand all day, every sandcastle enthusiast's dream.

Whilst the beach doesn't compare to, say, Tahuna in terms of niceness etc, we decided it was a very suitable place to eat lunch. How many of you can say you've eaten lunch on the beach of the ancient capital of the Medieval Samurai? Probably not many, if any, of you. Sadly, neither can I really.

We had gone to the convenience store across the road (they're everywhere in Japan, can't go 5 minutes without seeing one) and bought a variety of lunch items such as  yakisoba (grilled noodles), okonomiyaki (savoury pancake) and tonkatsu (crumbed meat on rice), as well as various chocolates and sweets. Making our way down to the beach, we noticed a sign with a sentence in English, but paid it little heed. We bagan eating our lunches when a shadow passed over us. Looking up, we saw not seagulls, but hawks. Continuing to eat, Olivia made a startled noise as one of them passed right above here, brushing her hair in the process. Soon another hawk made a pass, this time at me. Noticing we were the only ones on the beach with any food apart from a drink, I suggested that we move off the beach. Another hawk made for Olivia, this time getting some of her Okonomiyaki and sending it flying. Now with an inedible lunch Olivia made to get off the beach, as did Camille and I, but before we could fully escape, more hawks came and destroyed what was left of her lunch. Having to go back to the convenience store to buy another lunch, Camille and I waited along the promenade beside the beach, but it seems we had brought the hawks with us. Soon the Japanese who had decided (wisely) to eat up there rather than on the beach were getting mobbed by hawks, so with both the beach and promenade lost to the raptors, we decided to eat lunch beside the convenience store, a less scenic but inifinitely less dangerous place!

 Waiting for the next kill/unwary foreigner.

Beware of hawks! If you have food, they will strike from behind. They are dangerous and have sometimes cause injuries. Take care.


A bit of an understatement.

Should read.

DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE TOXIC HAWKS PRESENT. ATTRACTED BY FOOD, WILL STRIKE FROM BEHIND, STEAL YOUR LUNCH AND TAKE AWAY YOUR SMALL CHILDREN. DO NOT LEAVE WITH YOUR PETS, CHILDREN OR MIMES. HIGHLY VENOMOUS.
Anything to highlight the dangers of these birds would be good, rather than a 'Beware of Hawks', I wonder how many foreigners have been killed by these bastards.


I also noticed that the hawks only passed me once, and not at all Camille, preferring instead to go for Olivia. Why this is I don't know, but perhaps Japanese hawks don't like Americans? Or on the contrary, they REALLY like Americans. Guess we'll never know.

Following the trauma of the beach, we moved back into Kamakura proper to meet Fernanda, from Chile, who's school has a half day every Saturday. As we'd more or less done Kamakura by now, and also wanted to get away from those damned birds, we went to Fujisawa, with the goal of finding a purikura and karaoke place.

As we went through Fujisawa searching, we came across various bookstores selling Manga (Japanese comics), and we spent what seemed like an hour looking through books that none of us could understand. It ended up with Fernanda and I sitting outside away from the noise waiting for them, expressing our confusion at how people can like reading books that they cannot, well, read.

An example of Manga. I just don't get it.

Eventually parting with the manga shops, we set ourselves on our true mission, that was, purikura and karaoke. Purikura can be found in any Japanese game arcade, which are commonly 4-5 floors high, very noisy and smelling of a unique blend of tobacco and lollies (you can smoke in gaming arcades, and often the prizes for games, particularly the 'claw' variety, are candies), so all we had to do was follow our ears and noses. Sure enough, we were soon at the door of a red building with a smoky, sickly sweet haze and booming music from a hundred different arcade games.

As per usual, purikura resulted in us having crazy wide eyes, superbly white skin and really cheesy stamps put all over us.

Just down the road from the arcade was the Holy Grail of our mission objectives-Karaoke. Booking ourselves 2 hours of crappily-singing-bad-songs-really-loudly, we belted out Taylor Swifts 'You Belong With Me', Avril Lavigne's 'Complicated' 'Justin Beiber's 'Baby', as well as a variety of really (REALLY) bad Japanese and Korean songs. Whilst none of us are going to get on our respective nation's Idol, or get a Grammy award for our talent, we had a good time.

 Can't go wrong with Taylor Swift!

 This song makes your ears bleed.

Camille bowing her head in embarrassment, Fernanda staring vacantly at the lyrics, Olivia suppressing the desire to cut off her ears, and me gritting my teeth in pain. That's karaoke in a nutshell.

Deciding to end the day with dinner, we went to a family restaurant, ordered 'Kare Raisu', Curry Rice, at a very cheap family restaurant that had a chocolate fountain with an ALL YOU CAN EAT DESSERT BAR. Sadly we only noticed this as we were leaving, but we've made it a mission to go back there and have dessert for dinner. A wise man once told me 'Eat dessert first, you never know what might happen.'  Take these words to heart, people, and eat dessert first sometime.

And so with Curry Rice we ended our day of adventures. Or so we thought.

Walking back to the station, we were approached by an obviously foreign man who asked us in English, 'Excuse me, do you live here?'

Flattered that he thought we lived in Japan (which admittedly we do), we asked him how we could help him, being the kind Officially Registered as Living in Japan Aliens that we are, and he replied in a most peculiar way.

"Do you know where I can buy a beer but not pay for conversation, if you know what I mean?"

I still don't know what he meant, but I'd really rather have a conversation but not pay for the beer, however that's just a personal preference.

Unfortunately our knowledge of beer establishments was limited to ones where you have to pay for the conversation too, so we were of little help to our Russian sounding friend. Though we were flattered he assumed we live in Japan, must mean we don't have that tourist look about us.

Minus the conversation.

We boarded the last train of the night together to go to our respective stations, and just after saying farewell to Fernanda when she disembarked at Zushi, the train stopped suddenly. The next stop was my one, so looking out the window I noticed an obvious lack of station and an abundance in gravel and train tracks, so said 'Hey, this isn't Chigasaki', as Olivia and Camille were saying goodbye to me. It turned out there was an earthquake quite close to the Tokaido-sen (line) which we were boarding, so they had to check the tracks or something. So waiting in the train for 20 minutes, finally got to Chigasaki and from there boarded my local train to Shake where I made my way home late, somewhat fearful of anything with wings, and sore in my throat from singing songs loudly and badly, but also after having an awesome adventure with my AFS buddies Camille, Olivia and Fernanda.

That was Saturday.

Sunday saw me rise at 8.20 to the frenzied knocking on my door by Midori, saying I was going to be late for my 9.08 train to Shinjuku, Tokyo, where I was meeting my American AFS friend, Claire. Hurriedly eating breakfast, packing my bag and getting changed, I rushed to the station in time to board the train to Shinjuku. Midori said I was going to be late. Turns out she was a little wrong. I was early. In fact I was an hour and five early. Forgot to carry the one in that equation I guess. So arriving in Shinjuku station (the world's busiest, by the way, 3.6 million people use it everyday, that's nearly the population of New Zealand!) I had an hour to kill. Rather than browse the station shops that sell the same stuff at the same prices to people who look the same, I decided to go exploring the immediate vicinity, do a wee 'recce' if you will, to see what there was to do.

Having found a few shops of interest and familiarising myself with the network of streets and how to get back to the station, I went to the other side of Shinjuku Station to where Claire's train arrived. I hadn't seen Claire since we parted ways at Tokyo Orientation over 2 months ago, so was really good to see her, and well pleased when one of the first things she said was 'you're taller than I remember'.

Walking through the streets of Shinjuku, we came across a park, something you don't really associate with the concrete jungle that is Tokyo. Intrigued, we paid the 200yen entrance fee, and walked around. Note, when I say park, I don't mean the local sports field where you go to watch Saturday rugby. This park is HUGE, it kept going and going, all manner of birds, plants, spiders (bloody big spiders too) and people going about their business. Picnics galore, children playing badminton or tag, Japanese men wearing utility jackets and belts with massive cameras taking photos of leaves and other nature stuff, young couples holding hands on the park benches, everyone seemed to be at this park.

Leaving the park (which was well worth the $3 entry fee), we went looking through the shops that lined the street, lots of clothing and random bits and pieces, fun to look at, not necessarily what you want to buy. Claire found something for her friend's birthday, and then we went (can you guess) to do Purikura. More massive eyes, pale skin and cutesy stamps galore.

Walking through the streets, catching up on the past two months, life death and the universe, whilst looking at the giant skyscrapers of Shinjuku, the time flew by. Had crepes for lunch (cream cheese and blueberry for me) and more meandering around, seeing what could be seen, the time to depart soon came around. Walking back the to labyrinthine network of gates and passages to Claire's platform, we parted ways once more, but with the promise to meet up again soon!

So with the day mostly over, I too headed home, stopping briefly to buy a series of Danish pastries to share for dessert, and a bag of Oreo cookies for the train ride home, then began the 1.20 journey from Shinjuku station to my front door.

An excellent weekend with friends in 3 different cities, 1 Huge, 1 Big and 1 Small, plenty of adventures had by all, good times galore, and a new found hatred/respect/fear of hawks.

The school marathon is on the 10th of November, and the week after I'm doing a 40 minute presentation on NZ life, culture and school, plus Nelson, to my grade at school, and then doing the same that weekend at my AFS meeting, so busy writing that as well as gathering photos for the presentation. A very busy fortnight ahead, but after that, I'll be having more adventures to places like Tokyo with friends, looking forward to it! Also, as of Friday the 29th of October, the number of days until I return home to NZ are in the double digits. On Thursday they were in triple digits, now it's only double. Time flies, spend it wisely whatever the situation. My words of wisdom for this blog. That and beware of Hawks, they are nasty.

Hope everything is going well for you in your part of the globe, Sayonara for now!

Toroi, Under the Kanagawan Sun