A small town lad

You'll be pleased to know that the blog bus didn't go down in fiery ruin as expected, leaving me tapping out my last few pithy jokes at the bottom of a gorge in Nishiwaki. I lived on for at least another prosperous few days of travel, beer and in time, a desperate need to not do anything any more.

Tokyo, I'm sorry - we're just not right for one another.

The blog bus shuddered to a halt near the conference centre and I walked bow leggedly out towards my lift, who drove very similarly to the bus driver; fortunately I had a seatbelt this time. We got to the audio-visual room and I set up my presentations nervously, expecting a montage of errors and technical difficulties superimposed over a ticking clock. Strangely, everything worked perfectly so I had plenty of time to have a bacon sandwich - always a good decision. We had a short meeting with the other helpers which could be summarised as "let's all watch Mike with mild interest for a few hours", then I set about boring everyone into an early grave. They all turned out to be interested in what I had to say, which for a high school teacher is an alien experience, so the first couple of hours passed no problem and I made it to lunchtime unscathed. Before long, my last presentation had concluded and I realised I had been talking non-stop for about five hours and fifteen minutes. People had stopped laughing at my "you must be bored of listening to me by now" jokes some time previous, so I decided to shut up for a while and drink a lot of cans of coffee. As soon as the day ended, I smiled benevolently at everyone as I rushed out the door, packed myself up in my box and was shipped back to Kobe in time for dinner. "How was it?" Mum asked, having just made it back from Hiroshima herself.
"Good," I said, capping off approximately six hours and forty five minutes of talking. We had our eighteenth all you can eat, all you can drink dinner of the trip and headed back soon after to finish packing for Friday - a bright and early trip out to Tokyo.

We got on the shinkansen without any lunch which was probably a very bad idea given that we didn't get in until 1pm, so by the time we had made the four hour journey the energon levels were dangerously low. We met up with Mum and Dad there and headed towards our hotel in Shibuya, checked in and dumped our bags; by this point it was 2pm or something and I think all of us were ready to turn to cannibalism (or perhaps that was just me). The last straw was asking someone where McDonalds was and just being utterly ignored, which was something that had never happened to me in nice-as-pie Kobe. Not even Burger King could pull me out of my funk by this point - I was already dark about Tokyo and I'd hardly been there an hour.

Thankfully at dinner (all you can eat #19) the antics of the table next to us cheered me up immensely - "He is crazy Keiji," said one of them, pointing to his very ill-looking friend. Every couple of minutes they'd hand crazy Keiji a drink and start singing a song which concluded with him downing it - eventually he graduated on to a pitcher of water and then an entire pizza (with chopsticks). Finally they handed him something especially unpleasant-looking and said intriguingly "Last show". I'm not sure what it was, but he had to run off immediately afterwards; it was probably not something you wanted to drink all at once. "Please enjoy Japan," crazy Keiji said, trying not to throw up, before his friends towed him out of the restaurant. On the way back we saw a good few other people (not) enjoying Japan - sprawled out in the street throwing up everywhere with their unsympathetic friends.

The next day was Tokyo Disneyland - the first stop was of course Pirates of the Caribbean, joined by a starkly more-realistic-than-the-other-puppets Jack Sparrow. I'm always amazed by how happy your brain is to believe you're outside on a starlit night given the right visual cues - going from mid-morning sun in Tokyo to the darkness of a misty swamp in New Orleans is obviously not a big mental jump. We headed through the caves past skeletons, into a besieged town and through the dungeons, then back out the other end to the dulcet tones of Johnny Depp singing "A Pirate's Life for Me". We finally made it into the Haunted Mansion after an unsuccessful attempt last time, where the paintings aged and stretched out long, holograms danced around, eyes followed you around the room and generally a lot of things happened that you wouldn't expect from a ride older than you. We spent the next week waiting for a ride on Space Mountain which broke all the rules of the universe for how long a single line can be. It was kind of worth it though - rollercoasters in the light are for pansies.

Dad and I had a go on Big Thunder Mountain next, a runaway train that spent the whole time being utterly predictable (start going down slowly, brakes come off, hurtle down, hurtle up, repeat) but still managed to make everyone smile. The level of detail always blows my mind, even while you're waiting in line - little steam engines pump away, seagulls squawk from the lake, the eyes of paintings follow you around; it's almost enough to take your mind off the immense wait for everything. That was until we got to Splash Mountain and heard someone say they were a single rider. We tried the same thing and were instantly ferried to the front of the queue, past what had to be 500 people and a 100 minute wait. "I just don't understand," Dad said, grinning as we went on a second time. "why doesn't everyone do this?" He jokingly asked a single rider next to him on the log how long he had waited for the trip - 90 minutes. He didn't have the heart to break it to him. After several hilarious photos from the splash-down, we decided to do the teacup rides (Mum suggested bringing rubber gloves next time to improve our grip of the wheel and spin even faster) and Peter Pan's Flight (shut up, it's awesome) then call it a day. We managed to snap a few pictures of the light parade on the way to the gate and beat the crowds back to our hotel. When we got back into Shibuya we introduced Mum and Dad to the miracle that is Saizeriya - a shockingly cheap Italian chain where the only thing cheaper than the pizza and pasta is the wine. After too much of all of it, we turned in for the night, promising a quieter day Sunday.

We went out to Harajuku and Shinjuku the next day, finding very little in the tank and instead opting to hang around in air conditioning and places with iced coffee. Girls dressed in outrageous goth maid outfits, midriff tops and vampire teeth (seriously) wandered around in the meantime, making us wonder if they had sweat glands to speak of. It's all a bit much for me really - I like the idea of places like that but when I actually get there I find myself wanting to leave quite quickly. We headed back fairly early and spent most of the afternoon napping in the hotel; as dinner time approached, I sat staring out the window in bemusement at the horizon-to-horizon buildings.

Tokyo is kind of Japan for people who don't like Japan I think - a bit grizzlier and more self-aware, which I reckon is the product of being saturated by horrendous people from all over the world constantly. Kobe is innocent, fluffy and friendly by comparison - I think if I lived in Tokyo I would have to wear blinkers to stop my inner horse being spooked by just how excessively big-city everything is. You get harassed by people trying to get you into their place, everything is grungy and everybody seems to have much more important things to do than whatever it is you want - I feel it kind of loses that friendly Japanese-ness in its quest to be ever more Tokyo-ish. Maybe you get used to it, who knows - I've never spent long enough there to find out. That's not to say I didn't enjoy myself while I was there, mind you - they do damn good sausages and who am I to argue with Krispy Kreme?

We bid farewell to Mum and Dad and hopped on the shinkansen early in the morning to close the book on a fun but incredibly tiring visit. They wanted a nice relaxing holiday and I think that's what they got, but even those seem to take it out of you. For that reason, the Mike and Lisa tour company is officially closed for the summer. I solemnly swear to stay in Kobe, eat only plain things and not drink beer for quite some time.

I might even last the week if I'm lucky.