Parking Problems

With space in the city at such a premium, Tokyo car owners have to resort to ever more ingenious ways of conjuring up a place to park.

Like this:
Which, you have to admit, is a bit more imaginative than merely paving over the garden.

Shinjuku Gyoen

I was up early enough to have the taste of last night's beer in my mouth as I boarded the train for Shinjuku Gyoen. A five-minute walk from the planet's busiest railway station, it was here I used to come to escape the worst of the summer heat. Here too, four years ago, spread across the grass with an illicit can of beer and the Daily Yomiuri, where I made up my mind to come back to Japan.

The park's at its best in autumn: bare trees in a tangle of knots, white daffodils by the glasshouse, red leaves fluttering to the ground like discarded bus tickets, picnic mats and rice balls, twisted maple trees reflected in the water, a couple walking arm-in-arm in matching koala face earmuffs. I found a sunny spot, lay down on the grass, and breathed.

Tokyo Beach, Sunset

What I Like About Sunderland

Is no matter how painful it gets supporting Newcastle there's always a reminder that things could be worse.
Much worse.

To The End

I've reached that time again, the time of lasts (the last class on a Thursday, the last time I'll be stuck in work till half past six) and goodbyes, the time of moving on. To Spain, perhaps. Or Germany. Or - who knows? - Libya or Italy or any of a dozen other places. For now, all I'm sure about is where I won't be, and that two weeks tomorrow I'll be back in England, getting up late, drinking warm beer, shivering in the damp.

That Special Time of Year

As if it wasn't a miserable enough experience living in Peterlee the rest of the year, you'd think they'd be able to manage better than this sorry display of Christmas cheer (and if the council won't then surely it's the perfect opportunity for Orange - operators of a local breeze-block and box hedge sweatshop - to re-invest some of those extortionate roaming charges of theirs).

I mean, even my back of beyond, edge of the mountains university (foreign population five, of whom less than a fifth are actually Christian) has made a better fist of things.

Well, kind of.

Dogashima Spa

He had a pale blue towel knotted round his head and teeth like the tombstones in an old Jewish cemetery. When he spoke, it was with a flash of gold on the right hand side of his mouth. "Motorbike?" He turned suddenly, with a splash. "No, bus. Shimoda." "Alone?" "No, one more. Other side," I gestured towards the fence separating us from the women. He laughed, turned back to his friends, and resumed a conversation about fishing in a gale.

I moved forward a metre, to the very edge of the continent. Through the fence posts, fifty centimetres and a cliff face away, Pacific rollers were breaking on the rocks. The pool was shaped like a circle drawn by a child, big enough for twenty if everyone stood up, and enclosed on two sides by a wooden fence just about the right size for a tall man on tiptoes to peak over the top. A tuft of grass had grown from the rock, a metal standpipe gushed hot water. Straight ahead, across the ocean, were the mountains of the mainland, as drawn-out and lumpy as a boa after lunch. Lying on my back, all I could see was an endless blue sky and pine trees blown backwards by the wind.

Things Move On

Like all good fads the Banana Diet has run its course. As usual, some people are quicker to catch on than others. In the local Shop 99 there are stacks of the things in three different sizes, four for 50p.

Saturday Night, Minshuku Otsuka

During the night the wind picked up. The paper doors rattled, cables blew against the side of the room, the sound of traffic on the road below was masked by waves thudding against the torso-shaped sea defences and what was left of the beach. I turned over on the futon, my feet spilling onto the tatami mat. Someone was puking in the toilet down the hall.

December the First

Another beautiful day in Japan. Students lie stretched out on the grass, as dry as hay and now more white than green, or gather on staircases, talking with their coats unzipped. A crow sits on a flowerpot, and the mountains are printed against the sky. Maple leaves have turned yellow and blood-red, spilling through the near-bare zelkova branches like a lava flow stopped in mid-air. Above the campus, clouds blow past like smoke.

It'll rain tomorrow. Bound to.