its a mixed bag of responses you get when you ask a group of people about climbing mt.fuji... a 3776 metre volcano, sitting smack bang in the middle of japan.

our plan of attack was to start climbing at 8pm, and arrive at the summit before 4 am, just in time to see the sun rise, and hopefully beat the massive crowd working their way up to the top... i in hindsight foolishly agreed to this proposal. for by the time we reached the 8th station (2am) at an altitude of 3400m, i was dreaming about the comforts of a soft pillow, a warm bed, and a hot mug of coco when in reality i was hugging a cold, snow covered, volcanic boulder.

i was snapped out of my delirious state by my vibrating mobile... "hello?", "are you still alive?"... jeez, my mobile works at 3400m?! and my friend hands me a cup of hot coco, and then tells me we can get some ramen... If you can get noodles, and presumably order a pizza (whether they deliver is another matter ofcourse) from 3400m, then you can do it from anywhere in japan.

the final 400 odd metres was pure torture... fighting fatigue, burning thighs, and a distinct lack of oxygen. what spurred me to the summit was thoughts of a lush, warm, tropical paradise, full of bikini clad women serving mugs of hot coco, dancing to awesome beats of drum and bass... no wait, thats my thumping headache. and as the final indignity of being overtaken by a grandpa in surely his late 60s sunk in, i tripped and stumbled on the last step. it wasnt quite the tropical paradise island... it was more like "rocks", and "rocks" and more "rocks".

as we waited in the freezing winds (gets pretty windy up there) for the sun to rise, i looked around to see two guys boiling water to make coffee, and another guy sucking hard on a ciggarette. i suppose if youve come this far you deserve to have a smoke and a coffee. the sun finally showed itself to cheers from a bleary eyed crowd, while thousands more were snaking their way up to the peak. i looked down at the poor bastards making their way up, and suddenly realise that what comes up must come down.

Week 2 Post Sydney

the fresh smell of spew, that rancid, acidic vapour mixed in with whatever was had for dinner, greets me as i stumble out of the train... from the smell and sight of seeing half a dozen guys doubled over and wretching, and atleast 2 guys sleeping on the seats, i know my connecting train is long gone. as i walk towards the stairs the guy in front of me doubles over and starts his business. for fucks sake. unable to take the stench i side step the landmines and run up the stairs to see a whole group of middle aged men slumped against walls, and/or doubled over. those who can walk are looking dazed... i imagine this is what a hospital ward must look like after an outbreak of severe salmonella poisoning.

ive had a pretty big night myself. a night out with work colleagues which always ends up at karaoke... you can make a left or right turn but we always end up there.
its not everyday that your GM passes out at Karaoke... he's only had 2 drinks... pretty funny shit, I have my fun by dedicating a soulful rendition of Aerosmith's 'I don't want to miss a thing' sung so close to his face that I thought he'd surely wake up. Its not everyday that I take the piss with the GM but as I get to the last few bars, i realise that i just dont give a shit... I've had a fucking long and exhausting week... so much going on at the moment that i can't tell which way is up. i feel like ive been sucked under by a monster wave, tumbling and spinning, just hoping to be spat out on the surface cos i just dont have the energy to swim right now.

commuting in business class

as i watch the blurry tokyo landscape whiz by my bullet train window, i look up at the time to see that i'm going to make it to work on time though i woke up at precisely the moment i should have been queueing for my 2nd connecting train...

its an extra $8 for the bullet train but it really feels like money well spent when i think about the hour and a half of living hell spent squashed between men who reek of hair tonic, and bad breath. bye bye commuter train, hello shinkansen... i can see that this is going to be the start of a pretty expensive habit...

pretty sweet

what a beautiful city... it really is. looking over the lush botanical gardens and beyond to watsons bay, my eye follows the water to the magnificent cliff face at north head, i can imagine how beautiful it would be looking over bondi, watching the waves crash over the rocks while drinking a nice crisp beer at the icebergs. im standing at the reception area at work, and im already salivating over the thought of my first pale ale... its only been a month and a half but it feels like ive been gone for a very long time. my beautiful view is briefly vanquished and replaced by the dull grey image of my office window in tokyo... i can almost make out the brand of green tea the woman is making in the building next door, and smell the slightly burnt scent of coffee rising from my morning brew.... shit i need a latte, how could i forget... just then my manager comes out to greet me... hold that latte mate, no sugar.

from the daily grind of commuting in tokyo, i find myself in a very candy coated version of sydney... an apartment in the city would be nice... sleep till 8, stroll in to work. once youve had the double glaze, its going to be pretty hard to go back to eating the cold hard crumbly cinnamon donut... but then again even without the double glaze, sydney is pretty sweet.

a month in...

its only been a month, but acclimatising to the intensity of this city has cast a blur over my memories of sydney. gone are the comforts of nice pubs, beer o'clock, and open spaces... they seem a distant memory now, replaced by the smoky haze of dingy irish pubs, knocking off at 7 on fridays, and driving down main roads as wide as a suburban drive way... life was getting too intense and a little cramped, i was ready to be unleashed...

i found myself on the first train on saturday morning, after another night of clubbing in work clothes. no book in hand. praise the lord. and backed that up with a night out at "ageha". which is a massive club out on the tokyo fringes. freeform five were good... not great, the dirty electro sounds being farted out of the awesome sound system was lost in translation... but the most entertaining part of the night was "saturday vibes", a reggae/hip hop mash up pool party packed with wanna be home boys and grinding gosford skirts.. thats right this club has a pool... the dj/mc were absolute rubbish, fuelling the crowd with shit japlish rap, and providing me with plenty of laughs... if only someone fell in the pool with all that bling bling.

so ended my first weekend of letting it really rip in tokyo... feel like im ready to take on the hustle... if only for another week.

golden week

Having trouble deciding when to take your annual leave, and wish that everyone would just holiday at the same time? Well I hope not, but if that's you then you should move to Japan. For others, please keep day dreaming about that next holiday to "insert exciting exotic destination of choice here" with "supermodel of choice here"... topping my list at the moment is Heidi Klum, and I dont really care where we're going.

Standard annual leave is a massive 10 days in Japan. Worst still, its actually pretty difficult for an avg Japanese worker take leave in big blocks... there is a bit of an unspoken rule about asking for 2 weeks leave... you dont ask. Unless you dont want your job. To make up for this injustice, they have a shit load of public holidays... 15 to be precise, 5 more than you would get back home. The crem dela crem of the public holidays is called Golden Week... a smorgasboard of all you can eat public holidays crammed into a meaty first week of May. hence i worked 2 days last week... Now who could possibly have issues with a 4 day weekend? Why would I rant about this...

A lot of Japanese companies take the opportunity to shutdown during G week, and many people take up 2 days leave to essentially take 9 days off ... a golden deal in anyones books, but then you got to ask yourself "what happens when a 100 million people holiday at the same time?"... its a frickin nightmare. planning to escape overseas... well theres 50 000 people waiting at Narita airport queuing to get out... plus it'll literally cost you an arm and some internal organ you probably hadnt planned on parting with just yet. forget the leg, that wont get you far.

Domestic holidays... not much better. During G week, middle of bum fuck no where japan is everyones hot holiday destination. you simply cant hide in this country... there are people everywhere.

so some people just take it easy, stay at home, catch up with friends, sleep, eat, and drink. not the most eventful G week but definitely relaxing BUT for some reason Id rather forgo G week and increase my annual leave, and use them whenever it suits me... not when people are busy forming queues, especially if Heidi and I can only get away during G week!!

People here dont seem to mind tho, its just the pack mentality they have. You do everything together all of the time. You generally dont stray, and if you do they see you as being "kawatteru"... which means different, but not in the "same same but different"kinda way but more like in a "yeh, he's you know.. well different".

too good to be true

it was one of those stories that defied belief... one of those stories that are believable but yet so unbelievable that it gets labelled "only in japan".

i first caught the story on smh, and received a few emails from friends alerting me of the story in the morning... im sure many of you have already read the "baby sheep sold as poodles" story in the herald and had a great laugh. i know i did. i was in stitches... which moron would mistake a sheep as a poodle, it just sounded too stupid to be true. the problem is that anything sounds believable if its followed by "only in japan". any story that might be worthy of making it as an april fools hoax story could, and will happen in japan... i know im a sucker for these stories. ive been fooled so many times its unbelievable... L plates on yumcha trolleys, yep i believed that one too...

so i started to do some research... not to disprove the story. i wanted to see a picture of the sheep that was masquerading as a poodle!! but after some googling, the story sadly turns out as a hoax... for those of you who know the story, the movie star who made the alleged statement was misquoted in the story... she just said that she had a friend who bought a poodle off the internet, and it was delivered by mail... it was a fabricated lie told to get the banter going... she mentions something about the dog not eating dog food, but that's about it...

now, never let the truth get in the way of a good story... but in this case, the SUN in the UK who published this story first has got it wrong, and i wonder how many stories that get published are just rubbish...

smh updated the story to confirm the hoax... but they just updated the html to the original story.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/unusual-tales/baaking-mad-japan-scam/2007/04/27/1177459927942.html