Snoring, Alcohol, and Naked Japanese Men

The long-awaited (yeah-right!) Kobe (ii) post!

Once again, I took the night bus to go to Kobe, this time I wasn't alone! It was meant to be a 4 person trip, but Mr Ron Hurrle and Yuui Sasaki had to drop out. So 'twas just myself and Kristy Jones.

Having booked our tickets separately, we couldn't sit together, so I asked the gentleman sitting next to me if he wouldn't mind swapping seats with her. He was happy to do so, before realising that the person to whom he would then be sitting was a girl. He seemed adamant not to swap seats, leading me to conclude he was shy. As it turns out, the bus company operates a policy wherein male and female passengers who don't know each other are not allowed to sit together... Quite why this is is totally beyond me. Maybe they assume all males have an innate sense of ちかん in them that would be uncontrollable whilst asleep?

In any case, we just knuckled under and tried to sleep. Note the use of the word try. There was a man sitting in front of me wearing a face-mask (a lovely gesture, as he clearly didn't want to infect us with what he was clearly suffering from). The face-mask does not do much to dull the snores. It literally sounded like somebody was juggling chainsaws badly in a nail factory. A lady in front of him eventually took it upon herself to wake him at the next stop and tell him that he was making what is normally a pretty mediocre journey downright unbearable (I could be paraphrasing there, I'm not certain...). Happily, her efforts were a success! I was all for giving her a standing ovation, but I don't imagine it would have sat too well with the other passengers... Though come to think of it, they probably weren't sleeping either.

Furthermore, there is a particular scent that Japanese salarymen in their mid-fifties or so develop and can't seem to wash off. I first came across this *ahem* delightful odour in my part-time job in an English conversation café, and was reminded of this when the fellow next to me finally dropped off and breathed in my direction all the way to Kyoto. Given that the man was too large for his own seat and had taken up approximately one third of my seat, my options for evading the stench emanating from the mouth of that snoring (oh yes, he was snoring too) behemoth were somewhat limited. Finally I had to suck it up, detach my staunch British personality and give him a few harsh jabs in the side so he was breathing into the window instead.

We arrived in Sannomiya more or less perfectly unhappy with such a journey.

The Friday evening was good fun though: alcohol and a good film (everyone should see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, because it's totally rad!) plus Doctor Who afterwards... Massive kudos to Elen for more or less translating the episode to the non-English speaker of the group: I particularly enjoyed the description of Rose Tyler as 前の彼女!

Saturday was the day set aside for Spa World: plenty of onsen, with the odd sauna and a swimming pool to boot! We met a couple of Kester's friends and hit the Spa!

Becoming a doctor notwithstanding, I would be very happy to never see anybody else's penis in my life. Male genitalia aside - it was a very relaxing day! Lots of red-hot baths (some of these were not so fun with my minor sunburn) and a sauna or two. Possibly the highlight of the day was sitting in a bar, stark naked and drinking a beer. It felt ever so decadent. Definitely a place to go again, if I can get the cash together to get down to Kansai again! The outdoor bath was a treat and my first sauna experience was epic fun!

The swimming pool in the establishment was more of a large track for rubber rings, but quite good all the same... However, the main event of that area was the Death Loop! This was a slide that one pays ¥300 to get into. The occupant stands in a torpedo-tube like pod at the top of the slide, and after a brief-countdown the floor disappears and the suicidal idio- *coughsplutterahem!* I mean, the fun loving Spa-goer rockets down the slide at a fair old rate of knots! A direct quote of what I said as the floor disappeared from underneath me was "SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIARRARARARGGHHHGHGGHGHHHHH!"

The evening of the same day was spent in a drinking-establishment before returning back to Akashi to embrace our student heritage and play ring of fire until the early hours.

Homework for today reader (I know it's really just my mother who's given me 1215 page views... Thanks Mum! ♥) - do we think it's a viable business venture to try to set up a Japanese style Spa Resort in the UK, bearing in mind that nakedness in a Japanese onsen is more or less mandatory?

Coming soon: The Speech Contest

Catch up... Part 1

So, after a good long while of having done no blogging, I should probably get a new one out there... As we're currently about halfway through the semester at Hosei, things are getting nice and busy, not least because I'm taking 11 subjects, rather than the minimum of 9 I took last time.
I have also been dealing with a bout of major laziness, which I'm happy to say is cured!

So first off is the Leeds Exam - the bane of all of our lives. Doubtless, had I followed Leeds' recommended revision plan, I'd have been a deal less stressed by the time the exam came around. However, opting for the slightly easier method of not bothering proved to be much more entertaining in the months leading up to the exam. This, naturally, led to a break-down of sorts. People that know me will know that I tend not to sweat exams as much as I did this one.
Perhaps it was the stress of knowing that this exam is basically the thing that decides whether or not we pass the year abroad... Or maybe it was knowing that I'd really not worked hard enough, and that others had been doing the preparation since September (Yes, Kobe-Gakuin, I'm looking at you).
However, the world did not end, and after a relaxing Skype session with the family the night before the exam, I pulled through and even went so far as to feel pretty awesome by the end of it! In the intervening weeks, I celebrated the finishedness by getting rather tipsy at a Hobgoblin watering-hole in Akasaka: cigars and all!
As it turns out, I got 63%, which (somehow) works out as a merit! So provided I manage to get a merit or better on my essay on Japanese culture, I'll have done rather well :D
Nevertheless, I intend to keep learning the kanji from KIC, so by the time I get back to Leeds in September, I'll be majorly on top of them!

What next... FUGU! I ate fugu and lived :D For those of you that don't know (ie. haven't seen the Simpsons) fugu is Japanese blowfish (the name literally means "river pig" haha!) and when incorrectly prepared can be lethal! It's quite the delicacy in Japan, though having eaten it, I can say that it's not the most flavoursome of dishes, and why someone would want to risk death over such things is beyond me... Nevertheless, the setup of the meal was fantastic! Lots of food, vegetables (urgh!), rice and noodles. All around a very cool bowl of boiling water (pun? or just really bad English?) in the middle of the table led to a rather splendid meal, thank you very much :) And the rest of the evening wasn't too bad either - arcade silliness in one's finest suit is always good! Time-crisis 4 was especially fun, though I don't think it'll ever beat the grand fun of the taiko game :D


Perhaps the laziness is not quite defeated... I'll be going now and continuing to catch you up shortly!