Turntables on the Harbour – boat party!

On the Saturday night we hooked up with a couple of Chris’ friends from Birmingham who are living in Sydney and headed down to the Turntables on the Harbour boat party (incidentally sponsored by FBI Radio). Good music, a few drinks and boating into the sunset.

Birmingham in the house. Captain Woody and Jameelah.

Top deck party people.

Jameelah and the Sydney crew.

Lotta sporting Captain Woody’s party hat.

Pass the hat.

Hat swap.

Taking in the view.

“Aga do, aga do. Push pineapple, shake the tree.” (For the avoidance of doubt this is a reference to the inflatable palm tree, not the music – which was mostly excellent.)

“Oompah, oompah, stick it up your joompah.”

The cycle messenger fashion craze hits Sydney with horrendous / awesome results depending on your point of view.

Everybody say “cheese”.

Beautiful sunset.

Gardener’s corner part 2.

Right between Sydney harbour and the main business district are the Botanic Gardens which as parks go are pretty impressive.

It’s not just plants either. There are also animals – namely bats – loads of them. It’s not easy to see from the photo but those bad boys were enormous.

Got something to say about life? Say it in 2 meter high trimmed hedges. ‘Sex and Death’.

Can’t live without my radio.

Pretty much the first thing we did after a quick tour downtown was head over to FBI Radio (94.5FM if you’re in the neighbourhood) for Chris to do a guest spot.

Thanks again to Hanna for the lift to the station. We certainly wouldn’t have found it without you!

Deep concentration.

A big thanks to Shantan and Jack for hooking up the show and to John for making it possible in the first place. Keep up the good work.

As a side note, it was refreshing to visit a radio station which is both run professionally and with the sole purpose of playing decent music with enthusiasm. A good number of the UK’s playlisted radio channels could learn a thing or two from these guys.

Home from home.

Lotta’s friend Hanna was kind enough to give us a place to stay for our first few days in town, not to mention a few great meals. Thanks for the hospitality!

Hanna’s place.

The back yard (and the open bush, by which we mean jungle, behind it). Full of Aloe Vera plants which are handy for relieving the pain of sunburn as we found out early on in our stay.

Down under!

Straight out of the airport and a quick train ride lands you in downtown Sydney. Despite having seen Sydney harbour and the opera house in a million films and pictures it’s actually pretty impressive in the flesh.

The harbour bridge. For about 80 quid/1200 kronor you can strap yourself to the railings and climb over the top…

… or for free you can walk across at road level which did us fine.  This is the view!

Tokyo – random happenings.

 Our little neighbourhood.  One of approximately a million streets that look like this.

It’s hard to know how to start explaining what this is. It looks like a scene from Tron, but it’s actually an internet cafe (well sort of). 200 Yen gets you a 2 square metre booth in this place for about half a hour. Inside each one is a leather sofa / bean bag / floor mat, a PC, a TV, a DVD player … and a packet of tissues. Places like this are the only places to use internet in central Tokyo, although people also come here to hang out, watch TV or even catch a quick nap.

Arcades full of these machines were all over the place. We couldn’t really work out what they are. You buy a bucket full of little metal balls and feed them in the machine then sit in front of it as the balls trickle through the machine whilst a video (which could be anything from a cartoon of Terminator to a kids pop video) plays on a screen. Nobody was available to explain.

The lengths people go to to dress up / pamper their dogs was amazing. Just check out this little fella getting his bits groomed – couldn’t be more relaxed. Something for the weekend sir?

… maybe just a collar.

Can I try this on please? Yes, as long as you where this make-up proof Burkha first! No one is allowed to try on clothes without first donning one of these flannel mask things.

Perhaps I’ll just take these 5 toe socks then. Tell me, are suitable for business use? Yes – it says right there on the label.

Eat dessert first – especially when it’s under 500 Yen.

Place your bets.

On our last day in Tokyo we took ourselves down to the Keirin track to check out some multi-coloured track action.

It was just us and the old guys.

We couldn’t really work out how to fill out the betting slips so we chose between us and left money out of it.

The thrill of the chase.

And the winner is …

Dinner – top secret location.

There’s not enough room in Tokyo to put everything where you can see it, so a load of the good stuff is hidden on the 5th floor of some apartment building down a side street that you would never find unless your friends from Tokyo take you there – like this restaurant that Lotta’s friends Eiko and Ikuko took us to for dinner. It was one of the few that allowed ‘foreigners’ (like us) to dine.

Our new friend Laura arrived that day. The weird series of coincidences that explain how we know her is like a soap opera episode. We’ll save that for another time. This is a picture of her eating a tiny fish.

Laura brought these pink flamingo lensed glasses with her – they pretty much stole the show.

 Liamski.

 Eiko and Laura.

Chris.

 Lotta.

The food was excellent. This is an omelette full of noodles. Presentation is a must.

It might be controversial to say it, but black people are something of a novelty in Japan. It’s not as if the Japanese are running over trying to touch people’s hair, but they’re not shy to ask if you’ll pose for a photo with the obligatory two fingers pose. Liam is a good sport and kindly obliged. We all got in on the act.

Fix up!

OK, this could get nerdy so if you’re not interested in reading bicycle themed rantings, skip to the next post. I (Chris) was pretty excited about visiting the home of Keirin racing and witnessing first hand the whole Tokyo fashion bike thing.  It’s not all as you’d expect though.

In the same way that people in Europe and America are getting all excited about their NJS compliant Keirin bikes, the Japanese are going nuts for high end Italian techno bikes – the first bike store I could find was a Colnago outlet in a fancy mall. I bought a new cycling cap and looked at some carbon rims with pictures of turquoise turtles and fishes on them. Somebody needs to sack the Colnago art guy.

I took more photos of bikes on the street than was really necessary – most of them were unremarkable. This one I quite like, although I have to wonder why you would spoil a perfectly decent Keirin bike with riser bars, or mount a top tube protector without drop bars or put it in a position that wouldn’t protect the frame even if you did have them. Funny thing fashion.

This sort of sums up fixed wheel bikes in Tokyo – brightly coloured velocities and a Supreme spoke card. Part of me thinks it’s fashion gone wrong and part of me secretly likes it. If only I’d got a picture of the guy with the white aerospoke and matching BMX bars on a Keirin frame (you heard it here first).

Side note – considering how fashion conscious this lot were, there were surprisingly few people riding brakeless. I even saw a bracket attached to a Keirin frame to accomodate a rear brake … oh and most of couriers I saw were riding regular geared road bikes.

Breakfast of Champions.

Getting up at 5.30am to go to a freezing cold fish market and eat raw fish may not be everybody’s idea of a good way to start the day, but we’d by lying to say this wasn’t one of the best breakfasts we’ve ever eaten.

This bloke may look like one of Santa’s little helpers but he cooked a mean fresh eel Teriyaki and Sashimi tuna…

… and did his best to teach us a little bit of Japanese and show us some traditional writing. “Onikashimas” or something like that. We weren’t great students but we tried.

Tokyo Beach Party!

It may have been man made, desserted and freezing bloody cold, but it was a beach and it was the first beach of our holiday – time to celebrate!

It also had a replica statue of liberty which was put there to celebrate “French Year in Japan” if that makes any sense.  Apparently the New York one was built in France.  You learn a new thing every day.  (Edit – Lotta already knew this and we’ve since been informed that so does virtually everybody else in the world – except Chris.) 

Tokyo from above.

We took these pics from the top floor of the Government Building in downtown Tokyo. Neon as far as the eye can see.

The next day we took this from the top floor of the Tokyo Meridian hotel. A quick tip if you want some good view photos – skip paying good money to go to a viewing gallery when you can pop to a top floor fancy hotel restaurant, decide you don’t like the exorbitant menu and grab a few pics before you leave.

Gardener’s Corner.

The next day we checked out the Imperial Palace Gardens, which were pretty impressive …

… except for the fact that you’re not actually allowed to go anywhere near the Palace. Maybe we were a bit lost in translation …

… although we did meet this cool guy with a great vintage camera.  Japanese people love taking pictures and having their picture taken.

Self portrait, which might make up for the fact that we failed pretty spectularly to take any decent photos of the actual gardens.

Jazzy Sport party at The Cross.

Our second night in town and we managed to score another guest list, this time for Jazzy Sport’s club night celebrating the release of Ray Thought’s album on the Jazzy Sport label. This place kind of reminded us of Plastic People in London – very small but great music on a good sound system and a cool bunch of people. A big thanks to Ray for hooking us up with some free records down at his store in town, not to mention putting on a decent show. His DJ, Grooveman Spot, is one to look out for.

Our mate Liam was also in town so we got busy with the Cuba Libres.

Lotta and Liamski

Praise be.

Just around the corner from the hotel where we stayed was Asakusa buddhist temple.

Unlike some of temples we saw last year in Hong Kong and China, which seemed to be tourist attractions as much as anything else, tons of local people come here to pray every day.  It’s also an excellent place to sit and eat supermarket Sushi.