betty boop is big in japan. a very good thing.
it's hard to believe that only 2 stops from shibuya (a 25 minute walk), you can walk in rainforested parks.
so it seems my new 'hood is pretty ritzy. it is also full of foreigners, and apparantly meguro-ku (this district) has over 9000 registered foreigners. i've been wandering around, up and down streets and finding nameplates like "miller" and "pradesh" and so on. lots of very expensive cars and people living on the lucrative corporate expat package.
i woke up a few days ago to the sound of a kid chanting and laughing in a sing-song taunt "you can't get me" over and over again, punctuated by the occasional squeal of delight. i lay there thinking, how sweet some kids are playing in the street. it took a few seconds to register "but i'm in TOKYO!!!!". i leapt out of bed to look out the window and saw a gorgeous little blond girl racing around the car in the driveway as her dad washed it (and her) with a hose.
so i know of at least 3 western families living in this street, they are all across the road from me, living in very fancy apartment complexes. here are some pics:
last night i realised sadly that i have not hung out with a single japanese person socially in weeks - pretty much since i left fujiyoshida. how easy it is to live the gaijin life here in tokyo, completely devoid of any interaction with japanese people apart from day to day shopping or commuting. and my new place has cable tv so i watch BBC or CNN or the movie channel or MTV and it's almost entirely in freakin' english. in fact, it's not till i step out the front door that i remember that i am living in a foreign country. i can't wait to start work so i can meet and hang out with some new japanese people, and practicing my limited japanese. i want to start studying again, and my new job is offering free japanese lessons once a week. very cool.
on another tack altogether, i wanted to talk about what an incredible networking tool this site has been. through this site i have made some of my best friends in japan - katherine, kim, matt, seth (who got me into this new house).
and this week i have had the delight of meeting not 1, not 2, but 3 frangipani regulars: the lovely j-ster (who took me out to her fave bar in shimokitazawa); dear ol' "uncle" don (a very sweet 60-something gentleman from my home town of brisbane - he married a japanese woman, has 2 grown kids and knows japan inside-out and is town this week for some family business) and great big teddy bear, rob (a graphic designer from sydney who arrived in tokyo on sunday to live here for a while). last year kim and i also met with frenchman bertrand for lunch, and i am eagerly anticipating all-you-can-eat-indian with the very lovely and multi-talented mint dandy some time soon.
i've been talking to the flatties about this new phenomenon, internet networking (for want of a friendlier term). gabe just moved from a house where his flatmate met virtually all his friends through friendster, who was constantly online. he finds the whole thing a little weird, and i was struggling to explain that my situation is a little different (although really, i guess, it's not so different at all). because it's my site and people are coming to me through that intoduction, i was kinda thinking it was more personal, more real. living in the country, these random communications kinda saved my sanity and made me feel like i had an active social life even though i wasn't really leaving my apartment much. and i don't feel that these communications/friendships are any less valid just because i haven't met the people. although you always have to be aware that it's easy for people to hide behind the keyboard and pretend to be something they are not. i guess i'm even guilty of that.
anyway, i'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
finally, my dear friends justin and evette arrive from australia on monday afternoon so i am frantically scrambling to do what i can to the site before they come coz god knows i'm going to be having way too much fun to go near the computer (and of course, i start working next week too - at least, i think i do... - they're not quite sure). i've been cutting and hacking away whole limbs of the site and putting most of it into the movable type system. a new, slim "about" section called FAQ (cudos to matty mcg), the "writings" section is gone, gone, gone - untouched for almost a year - i figured it was a waste of space. there is a huge new collection of links. a coiuple of the boring galleries are gone, soon to be replaced by a couple of new galleries including "flowers" and "feet", as well as heaps more hanami pics and daily life in tokyo stuff. i'll update the gallery list to the side of the blog page so keep an eye on that.
but now, it's off to the park. ciao babies.
frangipani wrote this on April 10, 2004 2:35 PM