Life in Tokyo
A Week in Tokyo
Hi Everyone,A week in Tokyo is a very expensive and exhasting thing.We have been to the Azabu-Juban festival and had a pretty cool time. The streets of a normal central Tokyo suburb were packed with people and stalls at the side of the roads selling all sorts of food drink (mainly alcoholic) and junk, some kinds of normal market stands selling farm produce like corn on the cob and eggs kind of thing.
Loads of people were dressed in traditional Japanese dress and looked really impressive. Even one of the teachers from school dressed up, although he is married to a japanese woman. I looked like a tourist but I couldn't help staring, it was great.The food and drink were great there was everything from Yakitori (mmmm), there were fish cooked on wood fires and the most disgusting thing I could ever think of salted cucumber. I had some dough balls with octopus in (I can't remember the name) with "Bulldog" sauce they were ok but I couldn't eat it all, I felt a bit queasy at the tentacles. The octopus is mainly red here so it is that bit more obvious what you are eating.
It was amazing that everyone was drinking and pretty much getting drunk heavy chu-hai (rice wine with flavours in lemon/apple/grapefruit) drinking going on but there was no fighting or disturbance of any kind. Everyone crams into the small streets and barges past each other but there is no hassle its impressive. It does take forever to get anywhere though.
Plus the litter situation was crazy they had no litter on the floor and there were proba
bly about 10,000 people in these streets people handing out flyers (mainly in the shape of plastic fans so people were grateful) and if they dropped one flyer they then made a special effort to pick it up. then there were of course many many extra people (council employees) doing extra litter collections and policing. It was all really clean. A good example was when a I went to throw a plastic container in the bag next to the bin, it was full so a lady sat next to the bin came half way to take this plastic off me to put in the bag hidden behind the bin. Everyone seemed to care and was really friendly.There was also traditional dancing to a Japanese taiko drum and music. The drummer was cool. It's a big drum around a couple of foot wide which they hit with a b
ig kind of stick, but it was the hitting on the side of the drum and throwing inbetween the drum beats that was impressive. There was a hard core 20 or so older ladies dressed in full traditional dress that danced around in a circle doing the traditional dancing. I call these dancers a hard core becuase they must have danced for around 4 hours just while we were there making all the actions and then taking a couple of steps forward as part of the dance and making their way round the black sanded courtyard area which is a childrens playground most of the rest of the year. The best thing about this dancing was that anyone could join in, the ladies would show you what to do as you mimic them as closely as you could. I had a go and it was tricky because so many people were doing it and I kept losing sight of the little old lady, but still good fun. 
There were about 100-150 people dancing all at once and made a sight. (dark picture above I know but the man in the black t-shirt is mark, an australian teacher).There was a place for modern Japanese culture in another nearby square but to be honest this was nothing on the real thing a couple of sisters in impossibly short shorts and tight white T shirts singing and dancing around to J pop tunes, they were called Toutou and one of our number managed to get a CD of theirs, they were followed by a kind of Nsync/Black eyed peas boy band with a girl thrown in all in white who we were transfixed and then embarressed to watch so we went to mingle in with the crowds.
I haven't been able to put more photos on yet so I will leave it at the festival for now. I will try to get some of the apartment/sports night/izakaya soon because they are cool too.
Bye for now,
Jenny x
