Friday, 28 May 2010
Yokohama, Japan
Taxi driver to the station is wearing white gloves and a peaked cap. Taxi is spotless. Not exactly what I’m used to when I get a taxi from Nottingham home late at night.
Yet another sleek and slender Shinkansen Nozomi bullet train to Tokyo. Like a white snake speeding gracefully through landscape whizzing by at 300km/hr. Plenty of long tunnels through the mountainous region. Paddy fields and factories sit side by side. Approaching Tokyo can see the snow capped volcanic cone that is Mount Fuji.
Arrive in Tokyo bang on time after about 900km and four hours of rail travel. Now to find my way to a commuter line and the train to Musashi-Kosugi in Kawasaki between Tokyo and Yokohama. It being a Friday night, make my way through the hordes of office workers going home for the weekend. All the men are wearing dark suits, white shirts and plain tie. Every woman I pass is exceptionally good looking and young. Kings Cross on a Friday night it is not.
Am to wait in Musashi-Kosugi for me old mate. We’ll call him Al. Quietly minding my own business when there’s a loud clap in my ear. Which scares the life out of me. Turn around to find Al doubled up in laughter. It sets the tone for a cracking weekend. We used to work in Jordan together (the country not the model) eight years ago and then again in Qatar last year. We’ve not seen each other since a very boozy night in Doha over a year ago. Beer will feature heavily in this weekend’s activities. And laughter.
Al’s flat is small, about 35m2, which is typically Japanese as space is at a premium here in the city. Al’s toilet is also typically Japanese. Except. This one is a deluxe model. Plays classical music whilst you do your thing. Handel’s Water Music. Probably.
Time to try the local food. Okonomiyaki. Oh wow. New discovery. Think omelette with cabbage and sauces and other things and you’re in the right ball park. The table has a metal cooking plate in the middle. Waitress brings beer (obviously) and a bowl of raw ingredients and mixes them up with one egg to bind it all. She then turns it out onto the hot plate to cook and forms a circular ‘omelette’ for us. She returns every so often to turn it for us. It’s like men doing a barbecue really. The wife prepares all the food, brings it to the barbecue and the man cooks it before handing the cooked food back to wife to plate up. There’ll be a few men of a certain vintage nodding, agreeing and laughing as they read this. The leftie feminist females with no sense of humour will be grumbling as they read this.
Additional sauces and fish flakes and herbs are also sprinkled over the concoction. However. Omelette is not the easiest food to eat with chopsticks. I can assure you. Really tasty. So much so. We order another.
In search of more beer, walk through a gambling arcade. Gambling for money is apparently illegal in Japan so they gamble for ball bearings which are then meant to be swapped for a prize on the premises. What can happen though is that the prize is swapped outside by the mafia. The arcade is full of people and the noise is incredible. Ball bearings clattering into trays and the music of the machines. Behind each seat are boxes full to the brim of ball bearings. Which I presume to be the winnings.
Down a side street are a series of what can best be described as garden sheds with little lean to extensions. Each is full of about half a dozen locals eating at the kitchen table being cooked by the owner. A single 100W light bulb dangles from the roof. There’s a real buzz about the place. An excellent atmosphere. Loving Japan.
Of course. When in Tokyo where should two Brits go for a beer. Yes. That’s right. The Tavern English pub.
That’ll be a pint of London Pride and a Marston’s Pedigree.
That’ll be £8 per pint!
