Tokyo Apocalypse Diary

The rumours are conflicting. Some 600,000 people more left the City today, driving battered cars through the quagmire of people. I saw some guys on crutches dragging their bloody limbs off on the long road South. All they had was a flashlight and a sack of instant ramen. Some of the roads and bridges leaving the city have broken down. There are reports of some exit ways being clogged by bands of uniformed guards. No-one in, no-one out.

All supermarkets in Tokyo are sold out of bread and related products. Some sweet cakes can still be found. Pasta remains in certain places though. The locals seem unaware of its stodgy qualities. The 99 yen shop down the street was sold out of all instant ramen except a suspicious looking pot covered in flame drawings. I had to club an old lady with my bike chain to get to it, but I'm eating it now, crumbling it in my hands and licking up the grease. That could last me another 24 hours.

I've been boiling water and adding mouthwash to it instead of iodine, which is hard to find since the pharmacies were looted. I'm concerned that my sixpack of Listerine "Cool Blue" won't last the week. Milk and dairy products are to steer clear of. The putrescence of the cow population is common knowledge. "So fresh you can hear it moo" is no longer comforting.

What will happen when the food runs out? I've been reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road for recipe ideas. I just opened the window with my head in a paper bag to catch the definite whiff of burnt popcorn. What's going on out there?

The bread stockpiling is a mystery. Not a single egg can be found either. Secret French Toast parties. Probably the brain-addled freaks of the northern sector. It makes me sick to my stomach, but all I can retch up is a green, oily substance that reminds me of when I used to smoke Royals.

On the way back home today the subway broke down and we had to get out and push. All the men in their identikit black suits and the ladies with their shopping bags. The suits are filthy, have been for days, the shopping bags empty. People carry on.

Messages are sent through social networking sites. People who I haven't seen since Kindergarten urge me to flee. Don't they understand it's too late? The poison in my system has to be sated by continued ingestion. Or my organs will collapse. I read it on the BBC.

The wound I sustained during the Quake has start to glow faintly. I used it to heat up my last apple and then sprinkled it with the last of my cinnamon.

Better order pizza tonight.

Quake and Bake - Shinjuku Fallout

I just got back home at 9:10am, 18 hours or so after the Quake, to find the fridge had journeyed to the center of the room and a sprinkling of shelf contents on the floor having bounced off my computer. Working backwards, there was a cold sunshine bike ride back from the station, a horribly packed and painfully slow train journey on the first train, some long waiting, a nocturnal ramble, a witnessing of the insane fallout when an urban machine goes haywire.

I was in Japanese class when it started, leaning back against the flimsy interior wall. I have had a few minor quakes here so was quicker this time to realize it was not a machine dryer on in a nearby room. At first everyone giggled - small quakes happen all the time and are fun. But this was already too much. The earth heaved to and fro like the deck of a ship. It's very unsettling to feel the terra not firma. I remembered the old maxim and placed myself in the doorframe. It might have worked if I wasn't barged out of it as everyone escaped in a mad panic. Outside the sun shone and drivers stood by stationary vehicles. Suited businessmen milled on the pavement. Japanese girls were witnessed without make-up - a once in a lifetime opportunity. Small dogs were comforted. One ran round in very small circles looking like it might explode. A distinct odour of sulphur in the air - was it Japan's geothermal water table or a burst sewage pipe?

Aftershocks bubbled for an hour. Sometimes you thought you'd felt a tremor and had to look up at the buildings' antennae, or the rocking trees to be sure. Phones were inoperable, classes, work, trains were cancelled, some people went bravely off on bikes. Buses moved by packed with people who already knew they had to get out of the city any which way - and fast. The organizational fallout had begun.

Streams of people filled the avenues, haemorrhaging in all directions. Worried faces were outnumbered by ones happy to be off work early. Hundreds congregated outside the many exits of Shinjuku station, trying phones again and again, looking lost. Squadrons of uniformed guards stood in front of every box or ticket gate, patiently answering questions from the onslaught. Every public telephone had at least 20 people waiting to use it. A vindication of old cable technology. In a pub images of destruction appeared on the screen and punters bedded down for a long wait.

In a sushi place I chatted with a guy whose office was on the 38th floor, which had led to chairs being thrown about. He wanted to talk about Premiership football and insisted on paying for my meal as a point of samurai honour. I decided to try make it home.

I bumped into an Israeli friend heading back on foot. He lives one stop away from Shinjuku. My place was at least 3 hours walk away in uncertain directions.

Walking through one side of the massive conglomeration that is Shinjuku station, thousands of people stared helplessly at closed ticket gates, repeatedly asking the same questions of the guards, sitting on the floor to wait all night. Would trains be running later? No. Tomorrow morning? I don't know.

The bus terminal was comical. Every stop bore a queue stretching downstairs through tunnels to curl around the bowels of the station. No buses were turning up. I pulled off a coup by finding a little-known bus stop with a mysterious route direct through to my neighbourhood. But it all turned out to be a cruel hoax.

The patrons of Shinjuku's million tiny bars had the same silent glumness they always have. It was difficult to tell the difference. A street tout from Togo invited me on a little tour of some bizarre places ending up in a weird subterranean R&B bar where he unexpectedly produced his father and brother. I sneaked past the check-in counter of a karaoke place and into a recently vacated booth where I slept comfortably for a couple of hours. By now it was 5:30am - time for the trains to start?

People slept, stood, stared with glazed eyes. Japan Rail's finest were maintaining a solid defensive line against an increasing multitude. Complex messages were communicated via megaphone. I don't know how long I stood there, at the front, watching these bizarre procedures go on. Stretches of yellow tape were stuck here and there. Pieces of paper were moved around. A tiny woman in an air hostess get-up would come over now and again to the yellow hard-hatted guy with the bearing of a lieutenant. A big guy in a suit strode around looking menacing. In their Japanese way, the masses silently waited. Astonishingly, one guy started shouting complaints at a bespectacled guard in a comedy Gestapo uniform. Everyone was quietly enthralled.

When the floodgates opened it was all elbows. My pass didn't work so I kicked my way through the barriers. No-one cared. And up on the platform was Heaven's First Train. Implacable and gleaming, closed doors cruelly keeping us in the cold but nevertheless, magically there. The means of escape. A bedraggled man next to me touched his hand to the metal, softly, with love. Half an hour went by until we could stuff ourselves on and inch along the line at 5mph all the way home. The urban machine was functioning again and as I rode my bike back I was amazed to see people starting their Saturday where they should have been after all.

Hot Springs and Hope Springs

Masks

There's something deeply sad about the city or it might be the winter. On a one-to-one level people are fantastically warm and friendly. As a grand movement there is something frozen and lost. On the train the stares and mouths drooling open. The eyes trained on phones, games. The shuffling, the face masks. It's enough to make you freak at times. Big cityness in all its impersonality.

More inspiring face masks could be found at the Setsubun festival in Shimokitazawa. It is a festival that celebrates the coming of Spring even though it's still plainly winter for another six weeks. Still, it gives you hope. Little children in devil masks threw soy beans at men dressed as devils. The littler ones wept and screamed with fear while their parents laughed. A good way of bringing trauma into normality at an early age. The soy beans were quite tasty and would make a good bar snack. But no-one else was eating them, preferring to lob them at the devils and then crunch them under foot until the streets were dusted in brown powder.

My coat burned to a crisp in a little bar in Asagaya where the barman supposedly plays Beatles songs on his guitar sometimes though that was during the holiday period and now when we were there it was definitely not of a holiday atmosphere and the coziness was provided by small electric braziers which were rather close to the customers, which is why my coat caught fire. By the time the thick smoke had become too invasive to ignore, the barman and some wrinkled regular were already in the doorway beating the fire out with vigour. I used to have a whole coat, and now I have a coat with a hole.



Onsen Mania in Nikko

We went to Nikko famous hot springs area to "take the waters." The hotel was fabulous and our window gave onto an enormous lake encircled by snow-capped mountains. The view from the milky mineral and viciously hot water was a cement wall. There were lumps of snow and icicles around, which were something to look at, but Mayumi was upset. Though not by the food which was elaborate Japanese gourmet style, with hundreds of tiny tidbits such as sea urchin pâté and sea cucumber, roe, sashimi on a plate made out of rock salt, beef stew, a DIY shabu shabu involving big red fish with large eyes and a "risotto" that was basically an eggy-rice soup cooked in the old shabu shabu water. We sat in yukata robes and felt imperial. The whole being naked in the onsen thing is okay. You have a little towel that David explained was a "modesty towel." Still you could catch glimpses of other men's knackers if you so desired. There was an incredibly thin man whose entire back was a bone and had no bottom.

The procedure is: go in, sit on a stool and wash yourself thoroughly with a high-pressure shower. Try not to think about the history of the plastic stool you're sitting on. Get in the various hot spring baths available. The one outside here was searingly hot and unbearable while my feet and hands were inside. I had to balance my feet out on the wall and use my middle back as a fulcrum to keep from drowning. It was quite effective.

Onsen etiquette seems to forbid chatting with strangers, at least in my experience. And also if there is more than one pool, you might want to move along when someone else comes. At least that's what everyone did when I turned up. But maybe that should be telling me something.

Monkeys and Dragons

The famous world heritage site Toshogu temple had lots of construction and an world heritage-worthy price tag. There was a big black and white dragon swooping around on one of the interior ceilings constructed to give out a ringing echo when a monk smacked two sticks together underneath it which one kindly did for us four times. The snow was deep everywhere and weathered men shovelled it with multicoloured spades. The three monkeys of "see no evil..." fame were carved in bas relief on the front of one temple. A parable of blissful ignorance, if you can get your three monkeys coordinated, which seems a bit of a tall order. Better off giving them typewriters and waiting for them to produce the Complete Works of Danielle Steele.

Mara and I continued to Kinugawa Onsen, a set of concrete blocks in the middle of a ring of snowy mountains. We ate lousy pasta and for the same money got the run of a huge hot springs emporium with eight baths for men and separately for women, including jacuzzis and one freestanding copper tub that I didn't go into because it had been recently vacated by a fat old man. The outdoors ones were something. On a promontory extended into the wide valley, sitting in the 42ºC rock bath, the snow fell thickly all around. I closed my eyes and emptied my head to the rush of the water and the patter of the falling snow.

Hermit Holes

Those crazy little bars are limitless. Going for these bars requires a leap of faith. Scaling stairs that would look especially dangerous and urban in the middle of Hackney can lead to a lush emporium of swish chairs, cocktails and elaborate decorations, or a small dark corridor filled with mumbling men. But how are you to know from the 30 year old battered neon sign outside? Answer: you're not.

Up on a fourth floor up some horrible steps, behind a door with no sign, we found a little red place packed with hanging musical instruments, chandeliers, birds, old telephones, an avalanche of period props. There was enough room for probably five people but our arrival pushed it to ten and the warm convivial atmosphere was an excellently-decorated rush hour subway train that's not going anywhere and doesn't want to. The barman put on some jazz - and then I realized that it was he, playing on an upright piano under the bar.

Then there was that place, Mother's Ruin in Shimokitazawa, with a gigantic dragon-cum-lizard on the ceiling, made of solid gold and threatening to crush the drinkers in case of earthquake. The toilet had handpainted wallpaper showing scenes from the Ramayana or something like that. I had a hot rum with a knob of butter floating in it like it couldn't care less.

Flowers on the subway. Tress in winter dress. Empty branches. Cold frozen ground. Plum trees blossom in the center of the university campus. The days are short and blue and very sunny. The air is dry and originates sometimes in Siberia.

The Information Super B-Road

Going to the immigration office in Tachikawa yielded an important discovery. We are surrounded by LARGE URBAN CONGLOMERATIONS. In ALL DIRECTIONS. And here I was thinking we lived on the outskirts of the city. No, though this terrain is littered with allotments sprouting unidentified fruit & veg, it seems this is just a resting point before more unbridled urbanity.

And these aren't like small suburban centers in London with a few Tesco Express stores and a grubby pub. Each one has a couple of high-rise department stores, several concrete runways and four billion restaurants. I've been into these high-rise department stores driven by curiosity and other basic human necessities. Often they are divided into sub-buildings arranged according to two or more of the cardinal points, each with their own unattractive elevators and a varying number of floors. Some parts of the building go to the 8th floor, some go to the 6th. How do they do it? Vast expanses filled with merchandise and just a couple of scattered people looking as bewildered as me. How do they stay alive? Along with the billion restaurants, shops, tiny bars... HOW DO THEY DO IT? Many times walking the streets you'll glimpse a small window whose immaculately arranged curtain betrays a tantalizing glimpse into some congenial little parlour with a counter and stools arranged for some kind of mysterious eating purpose... The towers above you bear signs advertising all kinds of restaurants on any floor from 3 below to 7 up, bars with names in kanji, and hiragana characters, the occasional English word thrown in to shed no more light on what they are actually like, on how much time, how much money you need to find them all... What are you missing?



A new friend of a friend and his friend and I went on an outing with a charming group of older but astonishingly active Japanese people on their English conversation group outing, one of whom was the friend of a friend's friend's mother. We travelled out the city to a small town whose main tourist attraction was a museum to Japanese film character Tora san. His films are like a Japanese version of Carry On, i.e. cheesy old comedy films that they squeezed every last drop out of. Amazingly the conversation crew was content with standing outside the museum and chatting for a little while before going off to have tea in an exquisite traditional house. My new friends and I rebelled and entered the museum to find ourselves confronted with fantastically detailed miniature models of Tora san's common film sets. His 48 films all had the same plot and involved him falling for a woman only to wind up a heartbroken vagabond yet again. When the poor actor was riddled with cancer the pushy producers forced him to make one more film in which he spends most of it sitting down. Then he died, and so did the film series. Sad, isn't it?

We crossed the river into Chiba, thereby leaving Tokyo. We inched silently across the water's breadth in a wooden gondola crammed with people. Everyone was sunned into momentary silence. The water was still and thick; the dying summer heat pounded us with a large polystyrene mallet. The craggy boatman turned his stick with ancient patience. We were crossing into oblivion and it was warm. On the other side, we climbed up the dock and found various fields rolling off into the distance. What do people come here for, I wondered? We crossed a field and mounted a hill where an old man sat on a deckchair wearing a hat from the Australian Outback. He got up and so began one of the features of Japanese society. Old people with information.



While the young and not actually that young are plugged into the information superhighway, so the over-60s in Japan (who seem to be less technologically savvy than their Western counterparts) are plugged into a kind of information B-road. Weekends are filled with club activities for the retired. Married couples split up and pursue their personal activities, be it English conversation (in this case), rambling, golf, etc etc. As you amble about you will come across local old people who are lying in wait to ambush you and spurt information in your general direction. It kept happening. At a temple a volunteer tour guide approached us and proceeded to spend the entire day following us around giving lengthy sermons, that were translated to me differently by each person I spoke to. When we crossed the river I thought we'd lost him but sure enough when we returned he was there, wagging his tail and panting in his luminous orange "I'm a volunteer" jacket. The old man in the Crocodile Dundee hat awaiting us on the other side of the river, as if in some unspoken relay with Tail Wagger, spoke interminably about the history of the small patch of ground surrounding us. Some said he was talking about an old horse-riding college. Others said he was talking about rice crops after the war. But whatever it was it was long and slow and when we walked away I took his photo and he was embarrassed.

The Five Starbucks of Kichijōji

Kichijōji is an excellent area, let down only by it's gangrenous proliferation of Starbucks. I have counted five up to now, though I'm always ready to spot another tucked around a corner like the malignant boil behind a giant's ear. Time for a lancing.

- There's that one on the path down to the park by the famous yakitori place that billows with smoke and was on TV once apparently.

- That other one on Nakamichi shopping street near the curry stench of Café Montana and the best rāmen place in the world.

- Oh, what about that one on the other pedestrianized street just by that butchers that always has a queue outside it? Opposite Tokyu that huge department store I've never been in?

- And yes, above the station in that classy shopping center near the chopstick shop.

- Ooh, what was the fifth one. What was it. Oh yes, round behind on the other side, near Zara - you know, the one with the huge wooden deck.


So it turns out rāmen is unhealthy. Who'd have thought it? Must be that oily soup.

Signs and Wanders

Japanese conversation is punctuated by shrill and constant expressions of surprise. Mention that it rained yesterday in Britain, or some other statement of banal fact, and you will receive a breathy, Yoda-like "Ah, sodeska?" as if you had just stated the percentage of gay people in the Chinese government or something actually interesting like that.

My personal favourite is a singing gasp that rises in pitch and volume to a teetering precipice of stunned amazement. You might achieve such a reaction from stating that last year you had a cold, or making a shrewd observation like "Ooh look, there's a bird." Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!

How they Fuck you Over

Gently, calmly, so you don't even notice. It's subtle and, dare I say it, almost pleasing? Nothing at all like the crude violations perpetrated on you in Argentina. When you're being fucked over by a monopolic telephone company in Buenos Aires, you have a bird's eye view of your own rough penetration. In Japan it's more like being given a massage by a stranger on a crowded subway. And the subway is a great example. You load up cash on your magnetic card, and as you beep in and beep out, thousands of dollars fly out invisibly and unnoticeably like a gas leak in the house of a coma victim.

City of Water & Peace

Hiroshima is a relaxed paradise of interlaced rivers, trundling trams, friendly folk and stacks of adorable bars. The Peace Park, where the BOMB dropped, is one of those hyper-designed concrete and grass spaces that smooth out the kinks in your soul. It's studded with memorials and through its heart runs an axis from the centre of the wide museum building through a bizarre tubular memorial arch to the awesome A-Dome. A former municipal building whose frame and distinctive dome structure were somehow left standing by the nuclear explosion that occurred just above and to the left of it, it has been preserved in that condition as a reminder, and it is chilling to the bone.

The Museum is a 1950s building and its current contents might have seemed state of the art back then. It makes woeful use of its uniquely powerful subject. It's still hugely affecting to see the debilitating destruction caused through scale models of the city, bottles welded together by the blast, examples of the nuclear shadow and horrific human evidence of the deadly radiation. But the exhibition has poor lighting, antique displays and a 1 minute introductory video whose bellowing soundtrack of voiceover backed by strings accompanies on loop your entire journey round the museum. Put it in a box, guys. Why not phone Spielberg and ask him if he fancies taking a break from designing Holocaust Museums?

Future Perfect

The funny thing about the Hiroshima Museum's exhibition is that it probably looked futuristic once. Which is the case with most of Tokyo. It is like the futuristic city as envisaged 30 years ago by some delirious weirdo in a basement. Except shabbier. It's like the alternate 1985 that Michael J. Fox travels to in Back to the Future II. You know, one where he doesn't have Parkinson's. It's the bricks and mortar equivalent of verb tense the Future Perfect. It will have happened. Or rather some kind of bastardised version: It will have been going to have been happening. R.I.P. Douglas Adams.

For Pity's SAKE

At the Sanjō Sake Festival among banks of crates bearing over 900 varieties of the ol' rice wine, I met RICKY. A gigantic African American 57-year-old with a suspiciously non-specific job in the US Government that has led him to work in various bizarre locations around the world, he regaled me hilariously as we chucked down shots from our tiny cups. Let's face it, most of them taste the same. Even a Japanese guy said that, so I'm not being racist. Finally we learned the word 'karai' (dry), which unlocked the door to the good stuff. Ricky and I met up again the next day to go to Miyajima Island, a beautiful pile of forest and rocks out in Hiroshima Bay. It's covered in deer, oyster vendors and fascinating machines that pump out Hiroshima's famed cakes, which are maple leaf-shaped. Yes, that's right. Hiroshima is from Canada.

Dock this

The London docklands seemed a tiny, perfect concrete adventure playground. Buenos Aires port, once the conduit for a continent's wealth, was reminscent of a couple of scattered building blocks. The Tokyo docks, in their wide inconceivable vastness, lay before us.

Our mission: to collect items shipped from London two months earlier.

Several different subway lines and a monorail that coasts along a riverside deposited us two hours later before the yawning impersonal greyness of DOCKLAND. Giant buildings in the distance loomed like some kind of industrial Mordor. We trudged through sticky humidity, through a landscape not intended for pedestrians. In fact, we were the only ones. Trucks and shiny lorries sped past. We passed large empty parks, tracts of greenery supposed to relieve the desolate wasteland, but in fact making it all the more desperate. Like trying to tackle India's starving children with one bag of doughnuts.

Hours of hunger and thirst staggered by. No friendly bedouins about to toss us a canteen of water. We found ourselves in a dizzying wonderland of multicoloured cargo containers. Memories of The Wire Season 2 flashed before our dilated pupils. Could one of them be filled with dead Ukrainian prostitutes? Chance would be a fine thing. Several attempts to get directions resulted in blank looks or, worse, lengthy, tortuous attempts to answer a question to which it was quickly apparent no-one knew the answer. Awkward silences ensued. In-fighting sparked up. Where would it all end?

And then we found it. Seino Logix. A boxy office wedged in the crevice of a warehouse complex the size of East Anglia. Who were these people? Port handling, cargo collection? Import middlemen? Not sure. We had already paid the shipping company but this was a separate matter, apparently.



Those who have seen Kurosawa's film Ikiru, a critique of Japanese bureaucracy made in 1952, will be surprised that in 2010 the offices look EXACTLY THE SAME. Stacks of papers and dreary resigned facial expressions. There were no computers in 1952 but if there were you can be sure they wouldn't have been changed. Antique IBMs of that nondescript dirty grey colour and gigantic prehistoric monitors. Japan is not the hi-tec paradise envisioned by generations of manga artists. People bustled around fending off all work thrown their way like cartoon ninjas using breakfast trays to repel shuriken stars.

First we were charged US$ 140. More than we'd paid for the shipping. Why? Seino Logix had been kind enough to transport our stuff to their office and issue the paperwork. It's true the paperwork was obscenely copious but printing costs don't really come up to that sum. Well the transportation then - it would have been extremely useful had we not discovered we'd have to transfer it back to Customs ourselves to get it inspected.

Remonstrations and exasperated protests were met with repeated apologies. The Japanese apology, extremely apologetic in tone, actually has "Fuck you" as its rough translation.

Ok, we have to take the stuff that we've paid to have shipped here to Customs ourselves. Fine. It's a hassle, so just give us the stuff and we'll get it over with. No, you can't have the stuff. Why not? You have to go to Customs to get permission. And then come back to get the stuff. And then go back to Customs to get it inspected.

So what are we paying you for?

You'd better pay or we'll torch your boxes of crap and piss on the cinders.

Oh right, sorry.

A whole day passed in toing and froing through the docklands with and without enormous boxes of stuff, convoluted taxis, nowhere to buy food and but a setting sun over a monochrome horizon to elevate the spirit.

Silent labyrinth heralds rebirth

The bewildering whirr of the cicadas assaulted my senses. A Japanese symbol of rebirth, their dentist chair noises made me feel as if I were undergoing some kind of reincarnation operation.

It was my first night and we were hunting in vain and in the darkness for my bike I'd never seen, left in some place on the kibbutz-like university campus by an undefined friend. A guard approached with his torch: were we thieves? We weren't. We trudged away on foot to the apartment we were to stay in for a month. Or tried to.



Much of the area of Mitaka city is a suburban labyrinth of tiny houses with a veiny network of small alleyways bearing a constant stream of bikers and the occasional boxy car. We asked for directions in a faux 7-11 with a chicken logo and after intently studying a map found our destination.

Tokyo addresses are a code of numbers referring to sequentially dwindling areas of importance. Head backwards through this one:

1-29-17 Koganei, Higashicho, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo-to, Japan, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way, The Universe, Infinity

I drew a complex series of lines to represent the route. A tragically-mutilated spider. As we trotted past allotments, the occasional Coca-Cola vending machine, and strange dwellings boxed up and stacked against each other, the SILENCE was oppressive. Where were the people? I imagined scores of locals silently pressed up against screens behind closed walls. The heat and humidity were stifling. It was nothing like anything.

The charmingly noisy streets of Buenos Aires, with a fat man in any direction you look shouting affectionate insults at another fat man. The saturated and bubbling people mash of Thailand. These were all far away now. I slapped at my legs. Small, compact mosquitos feasted on fresh blood.

The apartment was a tiny, stifling cardboard box on stilts. The ceiling and the floor had little to keep them apart. A miniscule toy fan pretended to be doing something in the corner. The bathroom was a machine room with a hose. We lay on a futon gasping in despair. Is this life, I wondered?

The next morning we fled to the university to a splendid campus pad. Reborn in Cicada Land.

Grunt for the Instant Birdie

Sibley House, the location of our modest but fairly (in Tokyo standards) spacious campus apartment, replete with "Japanese style" sliding doors, kitchenette, bathroomcito and large windows, was built in 1957, according to the proud boast of a sign on the façade. The sign makes no mention of when it was renovated. That's because it wasn't. We're not far from the tennis courts, where thousands of rippling youths scream rhythmically in unison. Concealed by dense greenery, it is unclear what they are doing in there. But whatever it is, I'm sure it is less entertaining than the mental images produced by their synchonised grunting.

Much aggressive grunting comes from restaurant staff too. The other day I had my first experience in a rāmen bar, down a Kichijōji side street. Three white-uniformed rāmen ninjas bellowed and stood to attention as I entered. It was lunch hour peak and once I'd sat down at the long bar, every stool was taken. This was not a place for lunchtime socialising. Solo diners sit, bodies contorted and faces parallel to the counter, 2mm from the soup, whereupon they slurp and snort their way through the giant portions at a frankly incredible rate. I tried to order the bountiful chicken my neighbour was ploughing into. They gave me the pork, possibly sniffing my Jewish ancestry. The soup had the kind of moreish comfort quality of pulverised chicken fat. I scarfed down about 3/4 of my portion in the time it took for a complete turnover of the entire restaurant clientele. While I ate I observed the staff dynamic. One hung near the door for no apparent reason. The giant middle one took orders and barked them to the final one, who had a more skivvy-like aspect but a cooler way of carrying himself. He stood above a huge boiling vat with suspended noodle containers. It was about 35º and yet he was cool as wasabi lipgloss. The soothing sound of gushing water was punctuated by spurts as the giant middle ninja sprayed the floor with a gigantic hose. As I stood up I braced myself for the deafening scream.

Speaking of rāmen, I'm addicted to the instant variety. Similar in concept to the Pot Noodle, yet thousands of miles away in distance, you can buy a bewildering variety in the supermarket. I have no idea what any of them are but make my selections based on shape and colour, animal instinct and other arbitrary factors. As a budding physicist delights in his discovery of the boundless possibilities of matter, so am I constantly amazed by the sheer range of things that can be made to appear with the addition of boiling water. Today I opened a bowl-shaped packet to find a yellow polystyrene cube lying seductively atop the dried noodle blocks. Stirfried egg. After the requisite four minutes I peeled back the foil to discover three rice paper discs with a yellow bird cheerily waving hello. Obvious concerns about the nutritionary value of such food barely managed to temper my childlike glee.

The Land of the Rising Barometer

The unbearable stifling humidity of Tokyo is taking me by surprise. Actually it's taken everyone by surprise. A rednosed besuited wag on Saturday afternoon alleged that it has been the hottest summer for 133 years. Other more trusty news sources have backed that up, partly.

Apparently the autumn is shrinking to nothing. Sub-Saharan heat will dissolve rapidly into Antartic cold. The word 'temperate' keeps bobbing up in my memory like a table-tennis ball in a green pond.

I have walked the deserts of the Holy Land. I have moisted the depths of the Thai rainforests. And nothing has come close. Even the gasping exhaust-fuelled February peak of Buenos Aires is like a temperate day in an English garden in comparison to this.

Japanese men dab at their sweaty faces with small, charmingly-designed towels. I have one, blue and white, bought for me by a certain someone.

Women JOG in the NOONDAY SUN in long tracksuit trousers, long sleeves, visors and GLOVES. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

I'm confused. I feel as if I've entered a parallel universe where I'm a 19-year-old Japanese boy from the provinces just starting out at the International Christian University in Mitaka. Living on the campus might have something to do with it. The thick forest hangs outside my window, the cicadas keep their cement mixers and pneumatic drills in motion, their little hard hats occasionally falling to the soft earth and rotting there in the warm soil. The ICU campus is an isolated world in an obscure suburb of Tokyo, a petri dish of wildlife, wild intellectual stimulation and wild times, baby.

Adolescent students arm themselves into brittle factions. Sporty jocks laugh heartily and scream deafeningly, while jumping up and down repeatedly. Girls caked in make up and wearing charmingly-designed shoes (of varying models), charmingly-designed socks (of varying sizes), hair spraying forth in fountains and marvellous hilly eruptions, group together and totter awkwardly around, giggling nervously. American students wait for their moment to amaze other 'gaijin' (foreigners) around them by nonchalantly babbling away in perfect Japanese...

In short, it's a campus. And one quite different from the awkward labyrinth where I spent my own freshman year back in 1999. Now I'm older, larger, less cynical and more... secure? This feels more like the setting of an American college movie, transposed slightly. In any case I can look upon the herd with distance, and enjoy it. Identity crisis aside.

+ 4 YRS

Falling away like a grainy cord binding dangling blurry photos, grains of time grow to immense planet size proportions and I hop through anti-gravity up the ROPE OF SAND...

The Seventh Plague

The only extreme weather conditions these houses are built for is extreme hot. When the hail started we were at first amused by the heavy tapping on the openable plastic roof slats. We ran out into the street and rejoiced, until golfball sized lumps of ice almost concussed someone. We cowered inside. The plastic roof slats groaned and creaked. All of a sudden, like the moment in the horror film when the house's defenses are breached, I saw a huge lump of ice drop straight through the roof and crack against the stone floor of the patio. This was the catalyst. Huge gaps started yawning. Several holes opened. Itay and I took an executive decision - OPEN THE SLATS!

We turned frantically on the long metal poles, and a thick rain of ice clouded vision. All furniture was shifted out of the patio, and we stood at the doorway, watching the huge lumps of ice cloud the floor. Out in the front, two car windscreens had been smashed. Everyone was crowded in doorways, laughing and looking on in amazement.

Afterwards the street was a chaos. The branches and buds from the trees carpeted the pavement. Water overflowed pipes into the road. And everywhere, windows were smashed - house windows, flat windows, car windscreens. One car had 4 huge holes punched in its back window. I interrogated old people. One man said it sometimes happens in San Luis. An old woman said Mendoza. Another old woman who had just slipped over told me she'd been in the city 50 years and never seen anything like it.

Itay was elated. 'I love extreme weather conditions.'
I was temerous. I had honestly thought it was the end of the world.

Pasan el tiempo y la lluvia - fugaz fugaz la vida

Well it's been a while. And now I am writing on a computer without a comma - so I have to use many hyphens or just keep going going going in an endless dribble (no change there I suppose).

Got to catch you up with the events of the recent past, drop by saccharine drop.


LA FAMA DE MARINEROS

Just hitchhoke 12 hours and 1000 kms from El Calafate in the South of Argentina to Comodoro Rivadavia also in the South because the country is so enormous. Hutchhiggled with a truck driver called Fernando who would've been 28 yesterday if he hadn't forgotten his own birthday and who has been driving trucks since he was not joking 12 YEARS OLD but might well now change his job - significant in the context of 3 generations driving trucks in his family which began with his grandfather in the 20's (the truckdriving not the family) - because his wife chucked him out the house a few weeks ago on account of being tired that F is never at home and the general reputation of truckdrivers - family in every town that is (la fama de marineros he put it) which he admitted was partly true though he loves his wife and 3 little kids and her throwing him out was perhaps a conscious gambit to make him see things more clearly i.e. what is important because she called him 3 days ago inviting him back and now he understands how much she has suffered in the 10 years they have been together and the last while apart has been tough for him losing the desire to eat the ability to sleep and the compulsion to smoke (cold turkey from 5 packs a day) consequently when he picked me up on the outskirts of El Calafate and I tearfully said goodbye to my trusty and temporary dog Maya Fernando had been driving for 3 days without sleeping though seemed pretty compus though at times he went serious downtime like I think fish when they sleep but don't sleep just sort of drift all this he told me throughout a 12 hour journey through the IMMEASURABLE FLAT EMPTINESS of Patagonia from broad sunny day to bloodbath sunset to star stapled night a 12 hour journey consisting of 2 hours guitar playing 20 mins composing a hate letter to Blunt about his You're Beautiful song 4 hours sleeping 2 hours staring in silence 30 minutes translating a Metallica song into Spanish for F and the rest chatting about all the above and much much more and when he deposited me on a dusty layby (Labi?) opposite a service station in Comodoro Rivadavia I stood and shivered and felt moved by this peep through a glassy night into someone's life as Fernando roared off at last back to his wife and family.


SEÑOR SUBJUNCTIVO MEETS TARZAN

Someone today thought I was Spanish AFTER hearing me speak - a major achievement.

This notwithstanding the fact that 3 people have accused me of speaking Tarzan Spanish. After all the work I put into using the subjunctive!

People raised by monkeys and the English cannot normally comprehend the subjunctive mood. I've decided to start using it in English by altering my volume:

It's not possible that Hitler LIKED marmalade.

He's moving the wheelbarrow so that you DON'T HURT yourself when you climax.

In GRAMMAR: THE MOVIE Señor Subjunctivo is a translucent figure - the bastard son of Mother Tongue - forever twisted and gibbering in the shadow of his half-brother Juandicativo.


HATE LETTER TO BLUNT

Dear Mr. Blunt

You might be happy to know that I have heard your song played repeatedly in some of the most isolated parts of the world. But you shouldn't be. Actually you should be ashamed and embarrassed because the song represents an insult to the human brain and irrefutable proof of your hateful and aberrant taste.

Just because you saw a girl in a bar who you wanted to fuck and couldn't doesn't mean you have to whine about it in appalling clichés.

If I were you I would be unable to show my face in public. The enormous success of the song worldwide gives me less faith in humanity than the creation and proliferation of atomic weapons.

I can only pray that the song was a deliberate cold-hearted bid for fame and money and that you do not believe it has any artistic merit.

Get fucked
Prawn D. Subsidio esq.


THE SEA AT NIGHT JUST DEFINED

We swung round the bed and I noticed a strange quivering greyness by the side of the road. I peered to discern what it was and my heart gaped a split of horror. The sea lay there, threatening me with its enormity. I felt chastened and shakened. It had been a glimpse into the cold animal fear of Infinity, which is the most human of creations.


WHAT YOU NEED TO DANCE THE BAMBA

A bit of style;

Another little thing.

(Up up)


ICY SPIDERS

Hatchhawking the 120 kms from El Bolson to Bariloche should have been easy.

Walked hours with backpack and Carlos the Valencian with one of those funny Spanishy lisps to the service station at the exit of the town.

Many truck drivers said no.

Eventually a toothless farmer travelling with toothless wife, toothless daughter and toothless baby motioned us up on top of the cab.

We put our stuff in the back with sheep sand and climbed up 4m high on top of the truck.

Exhilerating - the icy wind froze our bones but the snow covered mountains were alive and gloriously present.

Stopped - we're here. 75kms not Bariloche. The Toothless family had arrived at their destination which happened to be in the middle of nowhere.

Cursing hoisted bags and walked, folorn thumbs out to one passing car every 10 minutes.

A 4x4 with an open back screeched to a halt and we delighted climbed aboard. Drank máte, ate biscuits.

He screamed off round the mountains bends covered with treacherous ice.

The police stopped him and told him to slow down. He slammed his foot down.

Fear started like a pissy trickle: the bends were bendy and the ice was icy. Serious drop to our left.

Wheels locked. Car spinning 360 degrees all over the road. The tops of trees over the drop approaching, metal barrier flimsy.

He wrestled the car to a halt in the silence. We are touching the barrier side on.

I hadn't spilt the máte. The gentleman was bloodless. We continued to the lakes.

Lunatic Schemes and English Dreams

WHAT IS TO COME?

Itay is now in Buenos Aires and we are full throttle looking for cash, Holocaust survivors and a German translator for a lunatic mission to the end of the Earth. We have CECILIA, Argentine filmmaker and possibly a top English sound technician who shall not be named until he fully plants his steiner of ale down on the project table. I cannot give you all the details now - I don't want to spoil it! I've told the fishermen not to say anything either.

Madcap project number one - What is to Come - has caused me to split my blog efforts. See the dedicated project blog at www.getjealous.com/whatistocome.


TWO MUSIC REVIEWS 1: FRANZ FERDINAND

'Too British' said Diego, 26 when I asked him if he had enjoyed the concert. What does that mean? 'Too perfect,' he replied. 'There was nothing missing, and I like things missing.'

We were outside the Luna Park in the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand's preliminary assault on Buenos Aires. Of course the real show for them would be supporting the mighty U2 in front of 100,000+ at the River Plate Stadium, but here was a chance to see the Archdukes of British pop-rock in a more intimate setting.

And the Luna Park, opened in 1934 as a boxing ring and thereafter scene of many a high profile gig, not least the final episode of Maradona's TV series, is just that. It's like a warm, friendly barn. But perhaps that was just the vibe of the crowd. Profile: vast majority in their 20s with a smattering of kids, older yuppies and the occasional old rocker; pockets of goths seasoned with a punk or two; a strong gay contingent and a healthy dash of extranjeros. Before the show people milled around chatting and smoking in a cocktail party atmosphere.

The band exploded onto the stage at 10 o'clock, a stylish and wonderful sight in front of a Lichtensteinesque pop art banner showing a woman, hand to mouth, calling out 'FRANZ FERDINAND' in a roomy speech bubble. The four, plus extras, were impeccably dressed, and each brought a very definite personality to the stage.

Alex Kapronos, lead singer and rhythm guitar, clad in tight red shirt and black velvet trousers with red pinstripes, appears a combination of David Bowie and a young Michael Caine. Straight-backed, tall and blond, he stalked around the stage imperiously. Nicholas McCarthy (lead guitar and piano) had a muppet-like zeal about him, while bassist Bob Hardy was like a fuzzy blond bear, a tranquil counterpoint to the frenetic energy of the other two. Drummer Paul Thompson was a Beatlesy mop of hair at the back bouncing around.

Also bouncing around were the crowd. In Britain serious 'moshing' is reserved for heavy metal concerts, but crashing around in a churning mass of headbangers holding up fists with first and fourth fingers extended in the Universal Rock Sign Language for 'Awesome', I realised that Argentina is truly a nation of rockers.

Kapronos tried 'Muchas Gracias' and 'Que Tal' and then resorted to English barely discernable even to the English speakers in the crowd. He introduced the band one by one halfway through over a thrumming groove, repeatedly bellowing 'Do – you – want – to – know – his – NAME?' until even the more reserved spectators were yelling 'YES! YES!' with childish glee.

When the inevitable global smash hit 'Take Me Out' was played on the hour mark, the backdrop changed to 4 stately pointillist portraits like Warhol in monochrome. The band really stepped up a gear. Warming up the crowd with an expert touch, they dipped their heads and guitars frequently into the ocean of grasping hands.

Franz Ferdinand are more a band of the groove than the virtuosic solo. At times they cut to one musician following the riff, to be joined one by one by the other band members until the whole unit thumped it out together. If there is one criticism it is that the sound was overloaded, so much so that at times the song was lost in distortion. But this might have been the effect they were going for, being a band of body music rather than head.

They played for a solid hour and a half with a ten minute break. The finale was a breathtaking odyssey of peaks and troughs. At one point no fewer than three people were drumming at the same kit, electrified by strobe lighting, while Kapronos and McCarthy raced around the stage holding their guitars aloft and standing up above the people urging them on. When they finally wound up the last number, the crowd were left panting while the band members performed a neat bow together. Visually arresting, entertaining, stylish and with body to boot. Too British perhaps, but can you really have too much of a good thing?


SUBTE

The BA subway-metro-tube is called the Subte and is a bustling marketplace of blind people selling marker pens and demonstrating their use on a cd, little girls selling stickers that they place on every passenger's lap before coming back round to deal with any buyers, folklorica musicians from Salta playing tiny banjos and panpipes, at least one fantastic sax and piano (full size, don't ask me how) duo, beggars, wisecrackers, lone men selling Computer magazines, biographies of the Argentine Presidents, pharmaceuticals, glasses cases, marker pens, newspapers, cakes and biscuits, marker pens, keyrings pocket torches penknives batteries plug adaptors sweets chocolate school textbooks stickers with voices worn out through years of hawking to a stripped wooden gurgle that scrapes through the endless babbling mash of commuters.


TWO MUSIC REVIEWS 2: MEDESKI MARTIN AND WOOD

Groove Clawing, Pipe Squeaking and Tube Blowing – Jazz at its Freshest

The NY Jazz Trio stormed the Teatro Gran Rex for the Buenos Aires jazz festival showing us vibrant professionalism at its peak.

No-one was expecting this at a jazz gig. Ten minutes after the New York trio had finished their encore the floor lights were up in the Gran Rex but the capacity crowd had refused to disperse. They were very much still there, and producing an insane ruckus. Rhythmic clapping, whooping and the traditional Argentine crowd tune that is chanted in such situations and which can be roughly translated as 'Give us more! Give us more! Give us more!'.

How could they refuse? Medeski, Martin and Wood, contemporary jazz legends, came back on stage blinking in sincere surprise at the feral appreciation of the crowd. They took up their positions and started funking a flagship number when something truly extraordinary happened. Chris Wood, tall angular bassist, disconnected his double bass from its moorings and planted it on the lip of the stage plucking mikeless with his hands clawing a groove. Band leader Billy Martin was next, emerging from his fortress of a kit with his hand shoved up a bizarre percussive pipe that produced a variety of farmyard squeaking noises. Finally John Medeski appeared from behind his banks of keys with a handheld melodica keyboard that he powered through a long rubber tube curling into his mouth like a Arabian hookah pipe.

The crowd were trendily dressed and largely bearded and male. Jazz. The only beard on stage was of scraggly haired Billy Martin, who had managed barely more than 'Muchas Gracias' into the mike but sang in español for a Cuban salsa number, which was the first time Medeski played the baby grand piano at the back of the set. The mix was rich and full, coming principally from the range of keys that were occasionally used with a plucking jazz guitar sound. MMW did their lunatic versions of the mainstay styles and rhythms, touring through an organ drawl trip waltz that homaged Kind of Blue, Ray Charles-esque rhythm and blues, shuffling backbeats, breakbeat electronica and even a soft jazz version of Hendrix's Hey Joe, but each track held its atmospheric aesthetic intact, and their personality came through in their versatility. The show stopper was Chris Wood, who provided a more intense groove on electric but always impressed more with his acrobatics on the upright bass.

Having played for two hours in their respective zones of their stage, the unforeseen finale saw them in a row at the front of the stage, bobbing in unison. They played a cheery blues that with the thick bass, the squeaky whooping of the pipe and the tinny melodica sounded so fresh and divine that one would have liked to throw up two spoons, a cat and a toy car to see what they could come up with. This last feat felt like something they had improvised as a special treat for a particularly deserving audience, and the audience stood or sat, heads bobbing, mouths open at the compulsive synchrony of three musicians at the peak who are tight as they could be after fifteen years, without having lost any of the electricity that has deservedly made them into contemporary legends. It was breathtaking. The crowd were overawed, with those who could not contain their whooping (I confess) shushed angrily by those who puritanically wanted to hear every note. The roaring continued after the trio had left the stage, but when they came back on to bow a final farewell, everyone knew that they couldn't ask for one drop more.

(published in the Buenos Aires Herald)


DECISIONS

I have decided to miss the one year deadline to claim my return flight to London. This is not purely out of dedication to the travel blog. It is born out of a selection of good opportunities, madcap schemes, a raw animal fear of returning to the murky whirlpool of London, a wish to claim the irreality of 'travelling' as a species of real life.

I know that to all of you at home it must seem like I'm having such a good time that I am never going to come back. This is partly true - I am stimulated, growing stronger in my selected areas, freer perhaps, but- this does not change the fact that I love you and miss you all, family and friends. Painfully sometimes. Come and visit me. US$500 from Spain.

I also miss London, green and merrie Englande, seen now through soft focus. At times I feel like an alcoholic Catholic priest dying of malaria in one of Graham Greene's colonial outposts. And the roses just aren't the same. Here they are wild scraggly things, like dogs in a desert. Skin and bone. I deliriously recall the fat buttery things weighing down bushes in an English garden.

¡Cómo me gustaría saber tu piropo preferido!

CHANGE OF PERSONNEL

So Ana Cláudia went back to Brasil taking her maracas and her irrepressible loveliness with her and Pablo vanished in the night in the general direction of Ecuador with his tranquil charm and ipod and the Americans Pat & Tony with whom I had enjoyed the puppet party (c.f. blogpost Tengo un cocodrilo) turned up on our doorstep at 9am clutching their rucksacks, considerably ravaged from two months working as farm labourers and hitching round Argentina, much like a latter day Lenny and George. Patrick set about baking bread and Tony began a serious spell of TV watching that would last some days. He was like a starving man given free license in the Harrods Food Hall.

We have now succeeded in capturing Chilean Italo, who has long hair and a flute, and a German photographer called Katia. We maintain the even gender balance and the musical aspect. We will also improve Spanish listening comprehension markedley because the Chilean accent is gloopy and impenetrable.


ACCENTS

I can now recognise the Columbian accent - a melifluous walk in long grass. The Ecuadorian is low and twisted, and the Chilean like trying to have a staring match on the teacups at the funfair. Mexicans mocking, and Argentines like Italians. Sometimes I am told I have an Italian accent, which I hold as an improvement.


HUMAN FETCH AND ANIMAL PIROPOS

Reading in the Plaza Republico de México surrounded by the leafy and succulent area of Belgrano with its preponderance of large houses and Renault Clios, I slowly became aware of a bizarre scene in front of me: a man was playing fetch with his son. In my life I have seen fetch played with perhaps 500 dogs of various breeds, a handful of cats and even with one particularly talented rabbit. But I have never before seen it played with a human being. Nevertheless the boy, who appeared to be around 12 years of age, seemed to be having a whale of a time. He was running backwards and forwards collecting the stick with a big eager grin plastered on his face. I wondered if he was retarded. His panting adrenaline-fuelled smile made me wish I exercised occasionally, in the same nebulous way one might wish to travel to other galaxies. I read my book, occasionally glancing up at the incongruous tableau. Does treating your son like a Labrador amount to child cruelty? Perhaps it would do us all some good to be more In Touch with our Animal Side.

Argentine men are well in touch with their animal side, especially in the Buenos Aires summer. The season is a hot brick on your forehead, a stroll through the desert in a suit of armor, a smoggy well of screeching days and relentless nights. While waiting for the storm to break, people stagger around flustered and gasping, hot blooded and exuding pheromones. Argentine men are renowned for being pushy at the best of times, but at the height of the summer the flow of piropos is like a flood of treacle in the streets.

I am being slowly initiated into the world of the Piropo. A piropo is a chat-up line. Points given for originality, humor and persistence. Piropos can be used anywhere, but are most usually fired at women in the street. Thick skin is a necessity for the piropero. Unless he is a virtuoso, 95% of women will walk on by. But the 5% who smile make it all worthwhile.

In San Telmo’s buzzing Plaza Dorrego, Josh and I sat on a low wall playing chess and practicing piropos. He mostly stuck with his old favorite:

How I would bite you like a grandpa with no teeth.

This engendered quite a few laughs, especially because Argentine chicas just don’t expect piropos from gringos. I tried a lyrical number:

How your eyes mix with my soul.

The sublime poetry was lost on my audience. At this point Francis arrived. Have you ever seen dust motes in a streak of sunlight? They continue swirling around until they find a surface to cling to. Establish a base in Plaza Dorrego, and all the motes collect around you. Francis was first. He is from Angola and speaks 5 languages. His style of piropo was rather aggressive:

Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola!

This usually resulted in a disturbed look and a quickening of pace. More chess was played, more beer was drunk and before we knew it we were surrounded by a mass of Argentines, Chileans, Brazilians and Dutch. Every group of females that walked by was subjected to a cacophonic torrent of piropos, ranging from the simplicity of Francis’ approach to the postmodern:

How I would love to know your favorite piropo.

In England the only men who give comments to girls in the street are madmen and construction workers. Yet in Buenos Aires all men do it, from builders to businessmen. And how do the women feel about it? That depends on the tone and quality of the piropo. If done with a smile, everything can be acceptable. Even playing fetch with a 12 year old boy.

After sitting awhile in the Belgrano plaza I finally realized the father and son weren’t playing fetch at all. They were actually having a competition to see who could throw the stick the farthest. This looks very similar to fetch when you only see the turns of one person. And thus is it possible that a dog playing fetch is just curious to see how far his owner can throw a stick. Give those animals some credit.

Errata

Jeanette's name is actually spelt with two 'n's. Jneanette. And she doesn't come from OHIO, she comes from IOWA. Or was it Idaho? Ah, who fucking cares.

Porteño Hothouses in the Screaming Summer

VIENE QUEMANDO LA BRISA

Yesterday was hot. Today it is 35 degrees, but yesterday was hot. People stood gasping at the foot of buildings. Even the pollution couldn't stir. Walking past offices gusts of air conditioning reared up against the stagnant heat, thought better of it and returned to their marble staircases. I felt like I was wading through hot sand. Sweat poured from every orifice and immediately evaporated. The city is a desert at times like this, the cloying mass of people insufferable. Everywhere you look people are rising battered bottles to their lips, sweat coated throats scraping to absorb the vanished liquid.


CRIMSON BLEATINGS

At the stroke of midnight on 24-5 December Buenos Aires erupts in fireworks. From the ninth floor I saw them. You could pick out the posher areas from the grandeur of the flares. Every year at least 30 children lose their noses. But my, was it pretty!

Argentine New Year's Eve usually consists of a family dinner followed by dancing in the streets.

I went to a cosy little flat in the centre, ate hake and drank viciously strong caipiroskas, caipirissimas and caipirwipers mixed up by Ana Cláudia and Fabiano from Brasil. We stumbled out into the heavy night and onto a private bar called 878, in a large house behind a locked door. I took something small and square and brightly coloured and the balloons started to look like marshmallows. Finally I could fit through the tiny door into the exquisite garden! Jeanette and Columbian Harry fell asleep frozen in snogging position. A Canadian cured me of the hiccups with a clever spoon and cup trick. I forced myself out into the open as the world was whirling around me. We tried to go to a factory party but I couldn't bring myself to enter anywhere with gates. I watched trees sucking up life from the soil and spraying it into the sky. Golden butterflies assailed my senses. The sun awoke roaring and poured its molten lava onto a windless city scarred with debris. What few cars buzzed the streets driven by wired clones. And 2006 will hold more exultation and pain, weeping pails of laughter, bright peals of bitter tears. As long as we taste the extremes, we know we're ALIVE-


MI CASA ES SUE'S CASA

San Telmo is the Hackney of Buenos Aires. Incidentally an entreprising graffiteur has painted the words 'Malos Aires' in strategic points around the city. Very witty I think, though a trifle negative. The barrio is filled with tango dancers, street musicians, artisan fairs, cheap parrillas (grills upon which the famous meat is slapped by lean greasy men while you sit at a plastic tablecloth dipping hard bread into chimichurri) and old crumbling town houses with high ceilings and open courtyards.

One of these crumbling houses has become mine for the next two months, along with Jeanette from Ohio, Ana Clàudia from Brasilia and Pablo from Ecuador. Personnel subject to change. It is a house to fall in love with, leaning up against cracked walls weeping and licking the paint. The spacious airy living room (buenos aires) yawns out onto a long and narrow balcony. Original Argentine art adorns every wall. Sombreros are scattered in every cranny. And the crowning splendour is the roof splayed wide in a huge terrace. The bedrooms enter onto an open air courtyard, so you can be doused in warm summer rain journeying from bathroom to kitchen.


LA FIESTA

Our house warming party consisted of 4 people (most of them over 50) until about 1am when 200 people I had never met arrived bearing cachassa and wide grins. One of the crazy Irish amigos turned up with sad tales of cocaine and whiskey addiction driving his group asunder. Mara sparkled exquisitely. I played guitar in the gorgeous rain gushing through the open middle of the house. Tourists chatted in Spanish for 10 minutes before realising they were both American. Argentines played folk melodies and collapsed in hallways. I'd like to think every South American country was represented. All readers are invited to the next one. Simply present a printout of this blogpost to guarantee entry to the VIP area (my room. It's a little bit dark but I like it like that).

I feel a real resident now. And I can understand 75% of what most people say (as long as they have subtitles flashing across their crotches). All I need now is 4 or 5 pedigree dogs, some plastic surgery and a therapist.

Seasoning

TO THE KIKES

Happy celebration of the lasting properties of kosher oil in times of strife (and the one time we managed to fuck over the big dominating empire) by lighting candles on the days we remember and eating 5 or 6 slightly cold glutinous doughnuts at one sitting out of a combination of sugar addiction and a need to express somehow the inexpressible intricacies of a cultural identity divested of any substantial religious belief (or is that just me?), while pretending the festival is a little bit more important than it is just so we don't feel too left out of the Christmas thing. I've always preferred Pesach, much more glamorous, and who can beat a whole platter of symbolic foods and the visitation of a dead prophet midway through dinner?


TO THE CRISPIES

Happy birthday to your saviour. Christmas in Argentina is not quite the hurricane of commercialism that it is in England. I imagine that's because they have much less money to spend on useless crap. It's frankly glorious for me to be able to walk into a shop, café or restaurant and not be subjected to the same 14 Christmas songs as every year that aren't even any good anyway. Out here people have their Xmas dinner on Christmas Eve, often an asado (Gaucho style barbeque) with present opening at midnight. The day itself is usually a chilled affair with immediate family. I told many Argentines that English people tend to go out and get trashed in the pub on the 24th, then get up really early, eat a 6 hour lunch and drink constantly before falling asleep in front of the TV.


TO THE ZOROASTRIANS

I am not sure quite what you do to celebrate the death of Zarathustra on Zarathosht Diso (26 December), but I hope it involves presents and that you get nice ones. I'd also like to register my delight at how many Z's your religion involves. I've always thought a lack of Z's to be a terrible shortcoming in most religions today.


TO OTHER FAITHS AND ATHEISTS

Look, just eat the turkey, okay? Who's going to know? And if there's a shadowy presence lurking by the doughnut bowl, who'll raise the alarm? Not I. I too have seen Darkness's gory visage and know. Plus there's more than enough to go round.


EL AÑO NUEVO

Amazingly, omitting that little wiggly line on the N changes 'new year' to 'new anus'. Having just been informed by my marketing people of the recent success of a face transplant in Paris, I hope that 2006 may finally see a successful anus transplant in Rome. I also hope that none of you be the guinea pig. Though they probably have more advanced ways of doing keyhole surgery these days.

Tengo un cocodrilo en mi bolsillo

It was the same night as the puppet party that my bag was stolen from under my nose by an urchin selling Jesus cards in a restaurant called Hipopótamo next to the infamous Parque Lezama that forms the boundary between culturally happening and slowly gentrifying San Telmo and the rough and ready streets of La Boca. The only night I have seen fog in Buenos Aires, hanging like a dream over the hilly park, griddled with paths and studded with bizarre classical statues. My bag contained all my books and notebooks, numbers and letters and writings worthless to no-one but me and future scholars. I would like to hope that the penniless kid who nicked it was prompted by the contents to commence a life of letters but it is far more likely that the contents ended the night garnishing one of the numerous piles of rubbish propping up lampposts in every corner of the slippery city.

I was very upset, but the puppet party was the perfect antidote. Set in a courtyard deep in Boca territory, the partiers were a brightly coloured selection of street performers, clowns and puppet masters who put on a great show among heckles and crates of Quilmes beer. There was some bad onstage chemistry between compere straight man and clown wearing a toaster in front of his face. A complex war story involving a soldier running slow motion armed with a large elongated chicken was particularly entertaining. When the sun started smacking the city with its cheery hammer I was wandering in a stupor with an American clutching my guitar. On a previous night in the same area I had been accosted by a wiry old man who yabbered at me in dense Porteño slang and showed me his (possibly artificial) gun while asking 'Estoy ladrón? Estoy ladrón? (Am I a thief?)'. I think he was just looking for love, but I had none to give.

Un Manga de Boludos

SOME MEAT INFORMATION

Vacío, which also means 'empty' is a flank steak and my current favourite.

Asado, no translation, is a kind of barbeque where the meat is cooked for a long time over smouldering coals to ensure it is cooked all the way through leaving it tender as a lover's caress on a Spring morning.

Lomo, or loin steak, is a popular choice, sometimes snuggled under a blanket of ham and cheese (sorry mum). Lomito is the same but thinner.

Morcilla is a squidgy blood sausage delicious when mashed onto crusty bread. It has the gutsy consistency of intestine and the rough charm of a peasant farmer slapping your ass as you mount his donkey.

Tira de Asado are short ribs (not a medical condition). Tenacity required when penetrating fat to the juiciness within. Just like everything.


WHAT WERE YOU SAYING?

My lovely friends Portia and Itay left Buenos Aires to pursue the elixir of eternal youth in the Patagonian mountains. Portia gave me an early birthday present of a new bag and a bottle of champagne - I had trouble deciding which one to drink and which one to put things in! I was extremely grateful for the new bag as the French Exchange style rucksack inherited from Jazmin had entered the final phase of zip dementia. It was painful to dispose of such a trusted and long-serving slave, but sometimes loved ones are better off 'put out to pasture' to save them bothering themselves and others (sorry mum).

I am hoping to move hostels and find an apartment soon, but leaving The End of The World (TM) is bizarrely difficult, like reading the works of Samuel Beckett in a public toilet.

Teaching English in businesses means sitting around chatting about football and politics while being overly pedantic. So nice when one's job is also one's hobby. A plastic cup of ludicrously strong & sweet coffee lubricates. One of my students is indescribably boring. I just fix my mind on what I'm going to earn out of the conversation, which reminds me of being at a cocktail party with media executives.

I went to a party in an exquisite house. The people were painfully overcool and the DJ operated in a different time zone. Balloons manipulated the wind in their bid to escape the confines of the roof garden.

I feel scattered but vaguely stationary. The weather is the black and pleasant hammer of moistness. When eating you need an entire toilet roll to absorb the sweat.


BOCA JUNIORS 2 2 UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICO

I have never been so high up at a football match. People pinioned themselves to the fences to see better. Boca were terribly shit in the first half. In the second half they scored and the stadium become a whirling maelstrom. Then the Chilean Catholics retaliated with two goals, and their 15 or so fans bounced around obnoxiously waving for some reason a French flag. I learnt some nice phrases like la concha de tu madre and hijo de puta. The man next to us was like a puta machine, bellowing it every 15 seconds and soaking half the stadium with a high powered jet of saliva.


CON PACIENCA Y SALIVA EL ELEFANTE SE COGE EL HORMIGA

With patience and saliva the elephant fucks the ant. This well known Argentine phrase says more than a little about national priorities, as well as conjuring up some hideous mental images.

Can you believe the Falklands happened?

SAVE THE BABIES

The tyre was still rolling past us down the deserted street when the police collared them. Pulled their car round in a U, and waded out of it the way fat men do. Three boys, non-specific adolescent age. Mara pulled me over to a good spot right next to them to watch. I was appalled- in England we usually just emulate the badly traumatised and deeply sociopathic; edging by looking slanted up through furtive eyes to decipher what's happening. 'Are we just going to watch!' I asked with the thrill of the fairground. 'We have to support them,' she said. Two more people had marched up and taken position as well, the dreadlocked woman standing defiant arms folded. I realised we weren't watching but taking part.

Bizarre really, for me anyway. I'm usually on the side of the adults in England, despite barely being one myself. Can that be true? After all my youth work? But in Argentina with its tender wounds of military junta and highly corrupt police force, we had to be there to look out for the kids.

The Officer McClusky figure sidled up to 'You cannot mess with me' dreadlocked woman and attempted to justify himself.
'Did you see what happened?'
'I just got here.'
'They were rolling a tyre down the road, it could have caused an accident.'
'They're just children, leave them alone.'

Four more police cars appeared, presumably out of boredom. Mara called out 'Hey - they're just kids playing!' A warning and the kids were sent on their way through the chaos of the squadron cars. Before they went they turned to us and saluted. 'Ciao chicos!' People power against the draconian security forces. I felt like a Paris student in 1968, it was breathtaking.


END OF THE WORLD AND SUPERPANCHO WONDERLAND

In its favour it has jazz chequered flooring, an ingenious mural showing a continuation of the room into a parlour filled with sophisticated cocktail-drinking silhouettes, and a free pool table. Against it, the bathrooms are an enduring symbol of urban squalor, the kitchen a theme park for cockroaches where the cutlery drawer typically contains just one dirty teaspoon and there is no cosy lounge area. On the first day I arrived with a trio of Ozzie girls I'd met in Santiago, I intended to leave the hostel at once.

I had a nap at 5pm and woke up at midnight to the sound of severe racousness echoing in the gymhall acoustics of Downstairs. Drawn like a dung beetle to a pile of steaming ordure, I happened down to find an exuberant and chatty mélange of Israelis, French-Canadians, Chileans, the inevitable English and many more. Before long I'd been introduced to the local 24 hour shop where decent wine can be bought for 50 English pence and large bottles of beer for 80p. Soon after that I brought down my guitar and unwittingly lit a powder keg of enthusiasm. I decided to stay at the End of the World for a while.

Another night I found myself at a festival of Balkan music at the Armenian Institute, and then all of a sudden (in the immortal words of Jonathan Richman) I was dancing in a lesbian bar . We emerged into the sunshine and dined extravagantly on Superpancho hotdogs (effectively free at 1 peso 25 each) and beer at our local 24h pancho house. Opera Bay is a superclub built to emulate the Sydney Opera House, with a wide open portion overlooking the spectacular mouth of the estuary, betoothed with sparkling skyscrapers. And when Susannah the brazileña tried to make me understand the word 'tile' in Portuguese as we walked down the street, I turned to look at her mime on a wall. I began to walk again and collided forcefully with a large metal box. For a few days one cheek was permanently rouged and my nose resembled that of Robert de Niro in Raging Bull.

The hostel is situated in San Telmo, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires close to Downtown whose mention inspires a look of disgust on the faces of middle aged Jewish women (naturally I am beginning to insinuate myself into the network). It is an historic area with narrow cobbled streets and good bars peeking out from behind enormous piles of festering rubbish.


SANTIAGO IN A BLUR

I had flown straight from New Zealand to Santiago, Chile. I found a converted mansion in which to stay, called the Casa Roja. I played much guitar with large groups of Argentians, and met a lovely Uruguaya called Evelyn with a killer wrist on the ping pong table. 4 hours Spanish lessons with an española called Ahinoa ['Hey what's that girl's name?' 'Ahinoa.' 'Yes, I know that's why I asked you.' etc] fed me some much hungered for culinary vocabulary and pulled me through some juicy prepositions.

The culture shock was thrumming on the streets. Not only had I jumped from Western to Latino, from 1st world to 3rd, but from depopulated NZ with its vistas and mountains and inalienable relationship with the land, to a big dirty South American city with curtains of smog and millions of people. I loved it, of course. Everywhere were people lounging and chatting. Everywhere were couples really going for it in the street. Everywhere were stupendously gorgeous and exotic looking women. I could live with this, I decided.


EL ACENTO PORTEÑO

I am learning Spanish, but inevitably the Buenos Aires bastard of the Argentine variant. 'LL' and 'Y' are pronounced 'SH' instead of 'Y' in Spain-Spanish, and there's a different groovy informal 'you' form. It's quite a sexy little spin off, also used in Montevideo, as Evelyn the Uruguaya taught me. The pronunciation is Italianate and highly dramatic. All sorts of plosive squirting noises are employed as conversational enhancers. Taxi drivers are hilarious. An affectionate BA greeting:

¡Che boludo! - Hey asshole! (use with discretion)


OVERTURES OF GREASE AND HANDSLAPS

I am putting out mucilaginous tentacles to find food. I have put up signs offering lecciones privadas con profesor recibido en la universidad de Cambridge. In life I have barely started to abuse my Educational Privilege. I attended a meeting of the Jewish gay, lesbian and transexual club to find contacts. The room was full of men ranging from upper youth to lower old age. I brought Itai and Jeanette from my hostel; Jeanette was thrilled to be the only female, and not Jewish at that. We mingled and watched 3 fairly arresting Israeli short films on gay themes. In one a scorned woman fakes a coma to stop her lover leaving the country. Another had a large-eared teenage boy exploring his sexuality by orchestrating meetings between other men on his computer. I chatted voraciously, working the room with an empanada in one hand and a plastic cup of diet coke in the other. Received a few potential leads. Then I attended Conversation Club at Hillel House, Jewish student hangout and pulled out a bunch of flyers. I searched myself for shame and found none.


BA OVERVIEW

There is a glut of dogs in prime pedigree, being walked ten at a time by dog walkers who are some of the highest paid workers in the city. I saw someone tie up a bundle of dogs outside his flat and go inside, presumably for a nap or to watch TV for a few hours. Cushy work. An enormous muzzled hound cocked his head at me to say 'I could do this man's work, and you'd only have to pay me marrowbone.' Or he might have been assessing my nutritional value.

I have made good friends round the pool table. I am platonically sharing a room with a crazy Portia from Blackpool. There are some people, like the camp and ebullient Pablo & Ivan double act from Chile, who appear to live at the hostel indefinitely. I might have sunk into that state of being, at least for now. My boss (for my 4-6 hours teaching a week) is a loquacious entity named Sandy 'La Teacher', who talked continuously through my interview without inhalation only to say after an hour 'so you didn't ask about money' not that I hadn't been waiting for a nanosecond pause to introduce the subject.

The coffee is excellent, and the unbridled carnivorousness of the nation is only matched by how eagerly they all smoke in every space, public, private, children and old people welcome. I experienced an election, when the whole city was closed down. My private lessons were a good opportunity to grill a variety of people about politics. The broad leftist only-credible-option Peron party got in again, but there were significant gains from a pro-business magnate called Macri.

Graffiti is more political. Music is more political. People have more style and finesse, even those working in McDonalds. People my age are forced by financial necessity to live either with their parents or in bunkbedded dorms. But food and drink is cheap and plentiful, and music crashes into the smog refracted sunlight of each new day.