Long Weekend in Tokyo

So, I’ve now finally said bye bye Camden, and hello hello Balham, only to say bye bye Balham straight away, and bye bye London, and indeed Europe for now. With my possessions now divided between Balham and Norfolk, I took the flight to Narita Airport to start a three month misadventure into the partly known and unknown.

After a reasonably successful flight, in that it landed, I made my way to Shinjuku to Hotel Sunroute Higashi with my first instinct being to sleep. But, of course, with my flight landing earlier than check-in time, I was left to bumble about in the rain until 2PM.

That out the way, I then did what I have done a lot over the past few days: sleep during the day. Jetlag has hit me badly this weekend on my arrival and my body loves waking up unnecessarily early, only to start to tire by mid-afternoon, leaving a couple of lost evenings already. Waking, the rain was still heavy, so my first day was a bit of a non-event, kept mainly indoors, mainly in bed.

The rain continued on Saturday, leaving my plans to walk around a bit scuppered, though I did buy a coat, which only cost me my soul, being that it’s a Nike SB. To celebrate, I had a couple of pints, which combined with the jetlag caused a near instant death and once again left me needing an early bed, though not before the sun finally came out.

Sunday was a better day, with the sun out and bringing with it a mild attempt at sunburn, or maybe it was just due to my going for a run that my face was so red. On a whim, I went to watch J-League Division 2 side Tokyo Verdy at the Ajinomoto Stadium in a 2-0 win over Thespa Kusastu. He crowd were lively, as ever in the J-League and a nice view of Fuji-san could be seen as the sun began to set. Jetlag was beaten for that day at least, leaving me able to go out for a meal and everything. That can’t be said of Monday, however, in which I woke early, again, and was Tokyo zombied by the afternoon.

In essence, it’s been a weekend to readjust my body clock. I was able to get quite a bit of exercise done, but jetlag kept my level of activity to a minimum.  Hopefully it will be gone when I move on to Okinawa, where I should be able to enjoy the evenings, as well as the rising sun.  

The League of Extraordinary Hooligans

Once, when in a Tokyo hotel, I was wearing my Japanese shirt when I went to reception. Without saying a word, the bloke working reception walked round to the other side of the check-in desk to see what name I had on the back. Unless the tag was hanging out the back and I had Redknapp on me, there was no name on my shirt.

Yes, the Japanese football fans love their heroes. When going to a Kyoto Sanga match in 2008, they had a ‘hero of the day’ interview with the keeper and the players do laps of honour to their fans at the end of each game. A far cry from the lazy players of the Barclay’s Premier League (or PL as Sky will insist on calling it), barely able to lift their arms to show support to those that have spent a large proportion of their earnings to see those that are paid more than they can imagine.


The J-League is the fans’ league for me. The games are quite rough and tumble, and to an often inconsistent standard, with token failed Brazilians thrown in for good measure. But I don’t go to watch the football; I go to watch the fans.


As in England, the hardcore fans of each team go behind the opposing goals, complete with as many banners, flags, megaphones and drums as they can carry. Everyone to a man will be decked in the club colours and will be in the stands well before kick-off, performing the countless songs and choreographed routines that are at their disposal. It almost feels like you will need to audition to earn your place in the end stands, how unified they are; God knows what you have to do to be one of the blokes holding a megaphone?! Each have nicknames blazed across their banners in the club colours, such as ‘Sledgehammer Bros’ (Gamba Osaka) and my personal favourite ‘Hardcore Naked’ (Kyoto Sanga).

Today, I went to my third J-League match to see local boys Tokyo Verdy take on Thespa Kusatsu. 3,008 were in attendance at the Ajinomoto Stadium, which holds 50,000. Yes, times are hard for the double champions from the 90s, now languishing in J-League Division 2 in a ground they share with local rivals FC Tokyo who are currently featuring in the Asian Champions’ League. They’re sort of the equivalent of West Ham, except they play in an Olympic-like stadium…wait a minute…

But in a stadium only 6% full, there was a noise constant and loud enough to cause tinnitus. The continuous chanting, banging of the drum and megaphone rousing lasted for the full 90 minutes, rarely letting up. Even the small number of Kusatsu fans, who’d made the relatively short journey, still were able to sound like an opposing army preparing for battle across no mans’ land, despite their side’s 2-0 defeat.





There is little silence, few moans and groans and even the losing team will get a nice send off. Sod the mascot racing, each J-League team should put forward their fans for a battle of the bands style showdown. There’s even a respectful applause from the opposition when a chant draws to a close. That’s what this league’s really about. Fans here support their club; we just watch ours in England (and sometimes Wales).


And what's more, you can take beer in.

I've Never Seen The Wire

‘Now, normally when you see a special about jail, it’s on regular TV and there’s a lot of shit they don’t show. Oh, not the HBO jail specials...’ Chris Rock

Let’s say someone tells you they’ve just seen the greatest film of all time, and then that film turns out to be ‘Top Secret’ starring Val Kilmer. Whether or not you actually like the film, you will always walk away disappointed by the fact that you have not seen the greatest film ever made, despite Val Kilmer’s performance.

The audacity of hype often makes seeing something irrelevant, as however good someone says something is, the reality will get nowhere near to touching the excitement that your imagination will create. ‘The Hunger Games’ is not going to be the ‘film event of 2012’; it’s going to be shit.

I often found myself watching HBO’s ‘Oz’ late night on Channel 4 in the late 90s, when the channel was still reasonable. So, when mutterings among friends mentioned ‘The Wire’, a show that features many similar cast members as ‘Oz’, I could see myself believing that it might actually be ‘one of the greatest TV shows ever made.’

But, having never actually seen it for myself, I left it at that; what I can’t see, can’t entertain me. But as the name came up more and more, I decided that it probably would disappoint, never having heard a bad word said against it. I didn’t need to see it. I can sit comfortably knowing that it is one of the greatest television shows ever made without ever having seen it, much like how Christians treat their relationship to ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera.’

But maybe I should.

So, waiting for an adequate moment – say, quitting my job – to sit back to watch 60 episodes worth, I proceeded to borrow the box set and let the inevitable disappointment enrapture me.

I was soon disappointed to discover I had not been disappointed. Probably the first time since I first saw the whole first series of ‘Peep Show’, I actually wanted to watch as much as possible, putting off silly chores such as sleep to get through the first few episodes of the first season. A lot has been said about ‘The Wire’ being more novel than television show, and that is exactly how it works: every second has to be taken into fully understand what is going on and follow the many characters and each of their individual storylines.

With so much detail put into even the smallest regular characters, each is realistic, with charm, flaws, personal problems and an inability to speak clearly. Also, the fact that main characters can go missing for a few episodes if not relevant to the main storyline gives it an edge over many shows which serve more as a vehicle for overpaid celebrity. The cast, as well as the viewers, are in this for the long haul.

The creators/writers and many cast members having actually been part of homicide in Baltimore also adds to the realism, with former child murderer Felicia Pearson playing a hit-woman and Method Man playing a man with an actual Wu-Tang Clan tattoo, as well as Brits playing various degrees of convincing Maryland accents.

Much can be said about the level of depth, the multi-layered storylines, the social comment, the believable characters, the focusing on every aspect of crime, and I’m sure many others can do it better than me. But, with the understated nature of much of what takes place, for once you feel you are watching a television show that is about telling a story.

I easily missed ‘The Wire’; it being shown on random channel FX and at a not-exactly-noticeable-time on BBC Two, but perhaps that’s a good thing. There was not as much publicity that I’m aware of as doled out for other hour-long US drama series; the hype came more from people that had seen it and liked it (and not just on Facebook), with claims of it being ‘the greatest’ coming after people had seen it, rather than before. 

Every 14 Days...(8)

The If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One EP (Stewart Lee)

After his last book, ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate’, in which he annotates transcriptions of his three stand-up DVDs to date, Stewart Lee follows up his ‘LP’ with an ‘EP’ of his most recent live DVD along similar lines.

It’s an interesting approach to the autobiography, adding stories behind the routines to document the real-life events that inspired the falsified anecdotes.

To read, it is horrible; constantly switching between footnotes and the main body, confusing as to which page you are actually meant to be on. But for the diehard comedy purist, it’s an insightful work to inspire another viewing of the DVD. However, what’s most interesting about this book is that it was first published in 2012, yet I bought it off the man himself in December 2011.

Days to read: 4

Days per book: 15.7

Bye Bye Balham (Richard Herring)

Essentially, this book is pointless.  The numerous unsold copies that haunt the writer’s basement –hindering both players’ shooting angles in his Me1 vs. Me2 snooker podcasts – are testament to this. Any pathetic human, such as me, can log-on to www.richardherring.co.uk and click on ‘Warming Up’ and read the blog that he has kept every day since 25^th November, 2002. Coincidentally, the same date that I started this little reading adventure (well, actually 26^th November).

‘Bye Bye Balham’ is the first six months of the blog in published book form, looking back at the words he wrote from 2008, adding information here and there. But, being that there is no porn on his website (sex porn, anyway), I have little to no interest in spending too long on his website (or any website for that matter) and so would much rather read the words on page than on screen.

Perhaps, though, the only reason he decided to publish this as a book in 2008 is that he knew that in January 2012, I would be spending a lot of time journeying up and down the Northern Line to and from Balham appreciating the irony each time.

Days to read: 16

Days per book: 15.7

TV Go Home: TV Listings the Way they should be (Charlie Brooker)

Completing the trilogy of comedians that wrote the pile of books I have to get through (can anyone guess what I got for Christmas?!), Charlie Brooker’s TV listings mockery was next on my chortle-sphere.

I’ve got more and more into Mr Konni Huq’s BBC Four shows over the last couple of years, and having enjoyed much of his screenplay writing, I thought it best I read some of his paper book writes as well. ‘TV Go Home’ is essentially the RadioTimes written by a man angry at how shit most television is, with falsely created TV shows to put an ironic spin on how most of television works, as well as hit-out at Shoreditch-based media types.

My balls did hurt in parts with laughing at some of the sheer outrageous and absurd ideas he concocts, though many programme premises are – this is a man who had the idea of the Prime Minister fucking a pig made into a commissioned programme. But as an overall read, it’s not one to sit down for long sessions with – having been based on a magazine – and thus, I hang my head in shame, Stewart Lee, it makes a great toilet book.

Days to read: 10

Days per book: 15.5

The Perfect Fool (Stewart Lee)

Wow! Those books I got for Christmas written by TV funny men (Richard Herring just wants to be on telly!) just keep coming!

A novel, I hear you cry. Indeed yes, a novel based on the Native American concept of the ‘perfect fool’: where a member of society plays the role of the fool in order to work as an example to others. Here numerous ‘fools’ each live out their equally ridiculous lives (in Balham and other such places) with seemingly no conclusion in sight, before they all meet in the deserts of Arizona.

This is stand-up Stewart Lee’s sole novel to date and starts as quite a struggle of a read. While outshining the works of say, Chris Moyles, the initial chapters feel rather conceited as Lee tries to use too grandiose a writing style to distinguish his work as literature among the throngs of pulp fiction. However, sticking with it, this soon becomes less of a problem as the story develops.

The various characters require some leaps of faith in the reader to make them believable and some of their actions towards the end seem a little out-of-place. But much like his comedy, this does raise some interesting points, whether you think it’s good or bad and raises Lee above some of the more foolish titles on the shelves…such as the works of Kipling. You are shit Rudyard!

Days to read: 9

Days per book: 15.3

Screen Burn (Charlie Brooker)

Part two of making my way through the books of Charlie Brooker is ‘Screen Burn’: a collection of works from his column of the same name the ‘The Guide’ in The Guardian. Now, the problem with reading this is that you have to cast your mind back to the years 2000-2004 and much of the television that was broadcast over this period. This is, however, the time when I was at University and staying in of a night to while away in front of the ol’ radiation king was not top of my list of priorities.

While much of the book is undeniably funny, with various social comments and guffaw-inducing remarks about popular culture, a lot of time is spent wracking the brain as to whether or not you can remember, or have even heard of, the various shows to which he is referring. Though, while some quick references may pass you by, the entertainment value is higher than most books as you read the pages of a man condemning the very thing he loves.

At 360 pages, this can become a little tired – with each article only around two pages long – and repetitive; never really able to get into the book in a long session, making it not really one for a long journey. But it was never intended to be anything more, as the writer himself describes ‘one easy-to-read-on-the-toilet package’. Are all his books toilet books?!

Days to read: 16

Days per book: 15.3

The Muppets

A rag-tag bunch of fluff-headed goons, bouncing and flailing as if their limbs are being manipulated with rods, yelping confused babble at each other through flapping mouths…but that’s enough about <insert your football team of choice> this current campaign. (Unless of course, you’re a Watford fan who can neither read, think nor have any concept of anything bar their own faeces.)

Much as it is now Alex McLeish’s Villa, it is now Disney’s The Muppets: the all-conquering, worst example of child exploitation ever now taking over from the Jim Henson label, the great Villa manager of the late 1970s. So, does this new branding disappoint? Well, the jokes are terrible and the songs worse…so business as usual for the Muppets then.  Having said that, while the songs were generally the boring parts of the previous films, they’re a little bit too frequent and bad here.

Having co-written the script, Jason Segal hogs far too much screen time, turning it into a vehicle to discuss the size of his own anal sphincter. In terms of cameos, some are good, though many are just thrown in for mere seconds of screen time, though honourable mentions must go to Whoopi Goldberg and Tony Blair as Kermit the Frog.  

But generally, while okay, this just isn’t as good as the previous Muppet films, falling way short of The Muppet Christmas Carol: The greatest story ever told.

Whose Film is It Anyway? Contemporary Japanese Auteurs

Another year, another Japan Foundation themed film programme. The theme this year is that of narrative creativity, looking at various Japanese auteurs and how their work is very much a reflection of their own personal vision. 9 films made up this year’s programme, though due to my commitment to watching Millwall-Derby (a shitcunt of a 0-0 bore) and Villa losing again, as well as comedy watching commitments, I only made it to two of the films on offer, with the ones I saw more down to schedule than preference.

The Dark Harbour

Sad and lonely fisherman, Manzo, finds that his usual pulling technique of putting on a leather jacket and sniffing a rose has failed one time too many, and so tries an organised party with city women in which introductory videos of local males are shown to entice knicker-dampening. His video fails, though leads him to discover a strange woman and young boy that have been hiding out in his house. Out of loneliness, he invites them to stay, leading to an unusual relationship developing between the trio, though ends as abruptly as it was started.

Largely a comedy about the patheticnessness of men seeking sex, the first half of the film is mainly laughing at poor Manzo as he looks for love. The second half, however, is a sadder period as the unusual relationship begins to break, though never dwells on things for too long. Takatsugu Naito’s film is largely gentle, never winning huge laughs nor shedding too many tears, though does enough to win itself a second date.

All Around Us

An ambitious piece, ’All Around Us’ charts a couple of a ten year period as they come to terms with the death of their infant daughter. Along the way, various major events that took place in Japan are featured in an attempt to show how the couple’s journey reflects that of Japan’s over the years. While her husband remains relatively stoic, keeping his feelings very much to himself, Shoko struggles to cope with the death at times, falling into a state of depression, though eventually they overcome their troubles as time passes.

Himself having suffered from depression, Ryosuke Hashiguchi looks at the various ways in which different people cope with loss while those around them get to grips with the changing times in the nation. This requires some strong performances and the cast do enough of a job to deliver, as well as the always reliable Susumu Terajima in support; and shades of Hana-bi feature towards the end, as Shoko uses the flowers surrounding her to inspire artwork in overcoming her depression.

‘Sleep’, another film featured, I had previously seen in another festival, looking at another strange family set up as the mother seeks revenge over the man who raped her. Though sadly I missed the remaining six films, including the supposed highlight ‘I Just Didn’t Do It’. The programme now moves on to Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and other such places you would never wish to live.

Nippon Konchuki

First seen around 50 years ago by the eccentric old Japanese gent sat next to me (who mysteriously managed to lose his cap inside his own bag at the end of the film), ‘The Insect Woman’, to give it its English title, charts the rise and demise of Tome from her birth to middle-age in post-war Japan. Born a bastard (or bitch, if she’s a lady), she forms an unusual relationship with her father while growing up in a small village out in the sticks. When becoming a woman, she grows more rebellious, giving birth to her own bastard daughter and becoming further shunned by local gossip, and so moves to Tokyo to take her childish rebellion to the world of prostitution, whoring out anyone she meets.

Made in 1963, director Imamura Shohei creates a quirky film full of subtle humour, with its tongue firmly in its cheek. With a controversial back catalogue behind him, this film is full of naughtiness and shows a modern woman not afraid to throw herself into anything in the hope that her daughter will not lead a similar life to hers.

Taking on social taboos, the influence of this piece can be seen in the many later films tackling women fighting alone against society’s pointing finger, and for that, the digital re-mastering is justified 49 years on. Full of humour and entertainment value, this is an important work in the career of an influential Japanese director whom passed away last year: a friend of my fellow eccentric old Japanese audience member.