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My First Trip To Japan 04

From Osaka we traveled a couple of hours north to Fukuoka…

...where we met up with illustrator and all round top fella Simon Oxley. He took us out for lunch time soba. My stomach said thanks.

I stayed in a traditional style Ryokan Kashima Honkan. It was really woody and nice. My room was in fact three rooms and had a little woman who came it and delivered some green tea through-out the day (even though I wasn’t there most of the time). There was no wifi in the rooms so I sneaked down in the middle of the night to use the broadband connection found in the reception area of the ryokan, thankful that I had brought an ethernet cable with me (top travel tip for you there).

I contemplated buying this panda balaclava but thought better of it.

On the way back south from Fukuoka to Tokyo, where I intended to spend the final week of my trip, we stopped in Hiroshima. The weather was bright but chilly. Delicate flakes of snow drifted lazily in the whirling wind. The Atomic Bomb Dome was unsurprisingly chilling, as was the generally very good museum dedicated to the bombing. The area around the site felt otherworldly, I didn’t really feel as though I was there.


The first full day in Tokyo we went to Asakusa to meet Kana, a friend of a friend who became a good friend. Along the way we bumped into this street performance. Everyone crowded round taking photos, high waistlines and catchy j-pop sang by minors is a heady combination, hats off to these plucky street buskers!

Kana took us out drinking and then my recollection of events, places and times began to get blurred. This place, with the cool lion / monster jug (filled with some kind of potent soju) was an Okinawan restaurant. They had a fake wooden snake there that scared me, before I realised it was wooden of course.

It was as we reached the top of the Tokyo tower when Kana confessed her fear of heights, she probably should of mentioned it earlier. The view looked like this, all Bladerunnery and cinematic. The skyline looked like an airbrushed matte painting from an age before CGI special effects.

At some point in the week we hung out with the great chaps from FewMany and Wonderwall. Here, in a Tofu specialist restaurant, Noa and Ryosuke laughed their way through the Japanese guide book that had been our bible for the previous few weeks travel. I felt like the tourist chump I had always known I was.

Akihabara is the electrical goods and geek area of Tokyo. I spent a good afternoon weeping over the many mint condition Nintendo relics to be found in the multistory, neon-clad, nerd parlours, that reach to the skies. At the bottom of one was a Mr Donut where I saw a guy reading a comic book with six donuts all for himself.

There was also some cutting edge technology to be found in Akihabara - I think these were wrist watches.


Another friend of a friend who became a friend was Mayumi. We started the evening with her suggestion of devouring a tower of raw vegetables…

...then everything went blurry again, as signified by the above image. I know we left the restaurant and met a slew of drunken Dutch people and then walked down a road filled with cats and drank in a tiny Russian bar filled with gold trinkets and then got into a taxi that smelt of oranges and then met a huge penguin called Dudley… no, I can’t really remember what eventually happened, but I did wake up with dried kidney beans in the turn ups of my jeans.

The last night I spent in Tokyo was also the party for my exhibition at FewMany. Next door to the gallery, on the top floor, was the party. It was a very laid back affair although I think you’ll agree this buffet was quite posh.

The next morning we had to get up early to get the limousine to the airport. It wasn’t a limousine though, it was a coach. Goodbye Japan, I hope I will revisit you again soon and eat more of your onigiri.

01/01/09 in Exhibitions