It's getting near the end.

Too much is happening. It's crazy.

Since getting back from the Scooter trip last Tuesday every night has been an enkai of some sort. I have now officially said goodbye to my Koto teacher, my Thursday English conversation class, my school, the town hall, all the ALT's in the prefecture, some teachers and tonight is the taiko group.

It's a pretty strange scenario. I find myself going through waves of feeling really sad about going and getting quite sentimental, and at other times emotionally empty. Very strange situation indeed. I'm sure I will come back in the future and I'm hoping that some of my Japanese friends will come and visit me in England (hint, hint!) But it's definitely the end of my Japanese country life experience. Something that, to be frank, will never happen again.

Have been having some trouble uploading. Will try and upload some enkai photos.

Scootering adventure part 4 - the fourth and final installment of the crazy world of going around Japan on a 50 cc scooter

Well we did it...kind of. We managed to get as far as Awaji-shima, an island just north of Shikoku but couldn't go on. The highway bridge which connects Awaji to Shikoku being our last and ultimately unconquerable obstacle. But we had some great experiences along the way (forgetting of course the infamous Tsuruga Toilet man - see earlier posting).

So the story begins... we set off to Tsuruga by car on Friday and arrived only to find that John's scooter seat was missing and my ignition key was gone. Eh? What the hell is going on? We were surprised to find that both of our scooters was still working, so what on earth were the Tsuruga thieves thinking? Why didn't they just take the whole scooter and then they could have all the parts they needed, battery, indicator lights, spark plugs and so on. Instead they choose to nick the seat and the ignition key. Oh well. We told the local Tsuruga police, who were friendly but rather useless. Our names were taken down, our gaijin cards were inspected, as were our scooters, we were asked where we were from, laughed at, and laughed at even more when we mentioned that were heading southwards to the mystical island of Shikoku.

It was several hours before we were on our way having made friends with the Tsuruga Harley Davidson garage who fixed us up with new seat and got our scooters roadworthy for a pricely sum. We were heading over the mountains towards Lake Biwa by sunset. Pretty breath-taking. The traffic was scarce and there was a rainbow over the lake and the rice fields looked greener than green. It was a great feeling to finally be back on the scooters like crazed oba-chans.

We carried on for a good fours hours until we made it to the south of the lake to a city called Otsu which was within spitting distance of Kyoto, and then headed to an internet cafe for the night.

The next morning we were up at four and away before light to arrive in Kyoto at dawn. It was pretty breath-taking and an experience that will be difficult to forget. The streets were empty as were the temples. It was like Kanazawa times ten. We relaxed outside a few empty temples, deciding what we wanted to see and then went to see them. We rolled into Maruyama garden only to find that it was the morning of the Gion festival, one of the biggest festivals in Japan. We decided not to stay, enjoying instead the peace and quiet of the empty stalls and the morning sun.

By ten in the morning we were ready to head on. We had stayed in Kyoto for about four hours, seen everything we wanted and were itchy to get back on the road.

Kyoto - Kobe
This was the most tiring and demanding leg of the journey. We always knew it would be. We would be leaving Kyoto, going round Osaka and heading into Kobe. All were major Japanese cities and probably not the best places for a couple of country bumpkins on old scooters. The heat was also stifling. I felt compelled to keep moving because at least there would be a breeze. Stopping at traffic lights frazzled my arms and hands and by the time we rolled into Kobe five hours later I was heavily sunburnt despite applying a huge amount of cream.

The scenery itself had been hugely uninspiring. Rows and rows of pachinko parlours, supermarkets and conbinis. We could have been driving through Toyama. The only difference being the sheer volume of traffic. By the end of this stretch we had both become masters of weaving through the traffic and speeding to the front of traffic jams. We were also becoming part of a growing number of young and crazy fellow scooterers. Albeit not as fashionable.

Our stay in Kobe was brief. Brief enough to see Chinatown, look at some shops and buy a long sleeve shirt so my arms didn't catch fire from the sun. By dusk we were in the smaller port town of Akashi and getting on a ferry across to Awaji-shima. By 9 that evening we were sitting in a rotemburo (outdoor onsen) admiring the impressive Kobe night lights and the impressive suspension bridge (under which was our home for the night).

Awaji-shima
John's guidebook had said that this place was meant to be a bit industrial. What a load of shit! This place was the countryside. Sumoto City was small, and there were expanses of just rice and onion fields. From here on it was easy. The roads were small, the traffic was non-existent and there was plenty of time to swim, relax and scooter casually without the presence of a juggernaut bearing down on you. The only hitch being that we couldn't get across to Shikoku. There's no denying it was alittle disappointing, but Awaji-shima was a good place to be stuck in. So we were happy. John and I started becoming very nostalgic at this point. Patting ourselves on the back for getting this far. Just looking at the Asahi and Nyuzen town licence plates on the backs of our scooters brought it home how far we had come. It was amazing that our scooters had survived. We had ridden them for hours everyday and we had never had any trouble.

We found an empty campsite right by the beach and amonst some trees. It was pretty perfect. We spent the rest of the night drinking and talking like the tired obachans that we had become.

The next day we woke to find the weather had turned. Huge clowds loomed in the distance. So we decided to have a relaxing day of scootering around and if the weather didn't improved then we would head back to Akashi and find ourselves an internet cafe for the night. The weather didn't improve and so after feasting on one of the best steaks I have ever had (honestly this is no joke!) we were back in Akashi and looking for the final resting place for our beloved scooters.
We couldn't take them home. It was like abandoning an old friend. We stripped the licence plates and left our key in the ignition hoping that maybe some kindly passer-by would give them a new home and maybe a good retirement. We had used them, basically abused them, and then got ourselves rid of them. I can't say we were very proud of ourselves.

We did however try and find them a new home with the daughter of a Japanese bar owner who seemed pretty genki. But when we told her we had to strip the plates and that John was thinking of taking the seat off and giving it back to the Tsuruga Harley Davidson garage, unsurprisingly she passed on our offer. Also she wouldn't exactly have been the most stylish of individuals riding on either one of those scooters in public.

But that evening in Akashi in that small little Japanese bar was a perfect end to a perfect holiday. We were plied with free beer and food and the owner nursed John's scooter wounds like only his mother would. We stayed for hours recounting our stories and shooting the shit before heading to the haven that is a small booth in an internet cafe.

And that was it. The final installment in the scootering sage. An uneventful train ride to Tsuruga, a stop at the Harley-Davidson garage and a quick omiyage giving and then home.

My days out here are nearly over, but I feel content that I've seen as much of Japan as I can.

Scootering adventure part 3

The countdown has begun. I only have eight working days left until school breaks up. EverydayI'm teaching a final lesson. I only actually have three more days of teaching. It's all going alarmingly quickly and very soon indeed I shall find myself out of Japan and somewhere else. The real world is a-knockin' at my door.

But there is one more treat in store. John and I are doing our final leg of our scooter trip. At the moment our scooters are (hopefully) sitting in a bike shed in front of Tsuruga station waiting for us. If they are there then John and I plan to scooter on down to Kyoto and beyond and fill our boots with as much scooter riding as possible. I think now it is fair to say that our original plan of scootering down to Kyushu is out of the question. It's just too far and there is too little time. Also it would mean driving through some pretty ominous tunnels alongside the Sea of Japan, that neither of us are pretty keen on.

If, in the likely event that they are not there then we have decided to just carry on down by train and maybe get a little bit of camping down in Shikoku. Make it more of a relaxing holiday.

Bento Album Release Party

Bento Album Release Party
Originally uploaded by asahimaku.

Well that's it. It's all over for the Bento Boys. It started out as a little off-the-cuff drunken whim and then went from there. Last Saturday Rob and I got Bar 135's in Uozu for the night (well, up until the England game that is!) for our Album Release Party and attempted to pack the place with as many punters as possible. It was a nice way to draw a line under the whole project.

But we also had a little surprise up our sleeves - the first and last Bento Boys live performance. An idea that had only come into effect the previous night whilst round at Rob's house in Unazuki after a couple of beers and a yakisoba down at Gosaro.

It all went well on the night. Having consumed enough alcohol to not care about shouting down a mic at a crowd of people standing merely centimetres away, it went swimmingly. We also managed to sell about 50 CD's - which ain't bad.

But selling CD's of course was never the most important thing for me or Rob. We pushed ourselves to complete an album because we wanted to do something properly. Something by which we could both remember our times in Japan. A souvenir really. That was our only objective. We did it for ourselves and if other people like it, then that's a bonus.

I can honestly say that listening to any of the songs on the album conjures such strong images in my mind. Each song has so much personal meaning attached to it, most of which aren't anything to do with the lyrics. Like a familiar smell it will always take me back to the good and bad times I had in Japan, probably more so than the umpteen photographs have.

I can think back to the long and cold winter days back in February, holed up in my apartment waiting for the weekend, when we could thrash out the next Bento track over a couple bottles of wine. What a great thing making music is! During a time when I really had no idea why I was still in Japan or what I as doing, the Bento Boys was something I always looked forward to. It was not an escape as such, just something that could make light of the bad times and laugh at them. It's probably why on half of the tracks the music is quite dark and melancholy and yet the lyrics are silly. Laughter is the best medicine. And what better way, when one is feeling shit, than to have joke about it.

But I am not saying that the Bento Boys is just something that has been conceived from misery. Without trying to sound too pretentious, for me it will bring back all the emotions of the good and the bad, the rough with the smooth. Most of the photos I have are usually of happy times with friends, of excursions, famous sites, or interesting Japanese things. But the Bento Boys album for me has everything - the happy times and the crappy times. It will be the one of only a handful of things which I will make absolutely sure I don't forget when I'm getting on the plane home.