On Christmas eve I decided to go to the Tsukiji fish market, the biggest wholesale fish market in the world, but to catch it (i am hilarious) at it's most swinging best is to get there at 5am or just after. The trains don't start till 5:07, finishing at 12:30am, so its necessary to stay up all night unless you're a complete masochist. I talked to Andy, who is another teacher from Glasgow and who's pretty funny, and he wanted to come along. I also called my friend Miki who is a staff member at a school I teach, and her husband Jared from Guelph and they were down. So Andy and I met Miki in Shinjuku station at 12:30, and we caught the last train to Roppongi Hills, a big club and bar district where foreigners are hired to stand outside strip clubs and entice you to come in, and where Jared was soon getting off work at a French restaurant. We were already tired so the 3 of us went to a really swanky cafe that we found out served 600 Yen coffees and was playing “Suffragette City”. I didnt want to make Miki feel uncomfortable because even though I was too tired and cold to leave, I know she makes less than half what I do, and she's been temping at a grocery store over the holidays till school starts. So we left and found a really shitty chain-coffee shop called Almond that was playing, “All I Want for Christmas is You”, and the coffees were 630Y! But we stayed until Jared showed up with Julian, his sous-chef boss from Paris, who was kind've a dick but likable too. Jared said they hang out just to spite each other. He took us to a Prince Arthur in Toronto like bar, with staff in Christmas outfits everywhere. It was really uncomfortable at first because I usually hate those places, but Andy and I started drinking and then started dancing, and he dances like me which means he gives a shit about not giving a shit, and it reminded me about Allison and Carla and Me and Jeff dancing after the Jamie Lidell concert. My goal was to get us to dance with the 45 year old Phillipino woman with the short haircut and practical warm white sweater and golden wrist bands who was grinding with her daughter and all sorts of other dirty dancing with her, and it was obvious that her and her daughter came to Japan for the daughter's eighteenth birthday, a trip for the ladies, no dads sorry, and her daughter wanted to go clubbing and was like, “aw ma, you can't come with me”, and her mother was like, “listen, no daughter of mine is going out in the big city alone. You don't know what those Roppongi dancers are like at all.” “But you'll embarrass me”. “No, I'll show you the time of your life and make sure those guys treat you right”. The argument was settled. And sure enough some boy band Tokyo drifter started on the mom in earnest. She was getting more action than the daughter. I managed to get her to come dance with our group for about 10 seconds. So against all odds, Christmas was awesome so far. Eventually we went to a quieter warm bar with about an hour till we could get to the train. Miki was tired and seemed to be regretting the adventure. Andy was starting to get obnoxious with his constant loudmouth criticisms. But it was a nice time of the night. We went out in to the cold morning and hopped on a train. The market was really intense. Its just such huge business, giant tunas, people driving through at top speeds on scooters and forklifts, old women who look like fish setting up their stalls, old fish dealers on cell phones making deals left and right, coffees everywhere. It would have been impossible without Jared as a guide. Andy found a dirty santa hat, and a photographer took a rapid series of photos of him at an auction that we had to sneak in a bit. He will be on a gallery wall soon. The market is such a great contrast to see against rapid Tokyo, which can seem very streamlined and advanced and hyper-convenient when you remember to compare it to home. Its neat to recognize Tsukiji as a huge business, thousands of dollars on one tuna, but its messy and dirty, and people have to get up at 3am and have to know about pulleys and sales and how to make 30 pounds look like 40 pounds, and cigarettes out of every mouth and blood on shoes, and it supports the whole hungry city on its wet backs.
So we went to a fresh fish restaurant, it must be 7 now, and fresh raw fish is really great; I hadnt realised it would make so much of a difference. Miki was cranky and I think for her this part was the end of a movie. She looked at Andy and asked him, “Why did you come to Japan?” in that suspicious way that Japanese people can ask a foreigner, an alien, without ever being satisfied of the answer. I respected Andy for refusing to squirm and saying, “I dont really feel comfortable answering that”, and then she asked both of us, “Why are teachers lazier than staff?”, and she obviously always resents teachers for making more than her and working less, staff working 9 hour days and then clocking out and working more because ECC cant know they're working overtime. And teachers are mostly here to have fun and travel not to make a living. So it was really uncomfortable. Before we left I found out from these New Yorkers at the table across from us that Oscar Peterson died. In the Christmas sun, Andy and I were delirious and kept this running joke that got perpetually funnier. Something along the lines of how we could be giant dicks back home: “You call that a courteous construction worker? You've obviously never been to Tokyo”. Apparently there was a guy in Andy's teacher training group who identified himself as an “international traveller” and when asked where he still has to go said, “well, i havent seen all of Africa”. I fell asleep on the woman next to me on the train back to Big World 21. I slept till 1:30 when Jill called me on the skype and we opened our presents to each other over web cams, which was really great. I called my parents until my calling card died, and it was hard to stay in check, but dad did it for me by making me laugh by asking, as he does every time I talk to him, whether I am eating well.
Then, cherry on the fucking cake, Clinton Hupple from Hockley Valley, Ontario calls me as he is in Tokyo, and I went out to meet him and his girlfriend Laura in Shinjuku station at nine. Which is a great meeting spot I picked, and so we looked for each other for an hour in the biggest station in Tokyo. My friend Brent was there with his roommate J, and because they were with me looking I bought them ice cream as we had not heard from Clint for 25 minutes (he had to call on a payphone), and figured he had given up. But he called and we found them and they hadnt finished their ice creams so we looked like pretty bad. We met with Brent's girlfriend Aya at a bar that makes foreigners sit downstairs because one of my bosses made a wreck of the place a few years ago. Drinks were 198Y! It was great to hang out with Clint and Laura and really everyone. So I stayed longer than I should have and I had to run to catch my last train at 12:30. I got home at 1:15 and ran into a nice man from my building who on the usual winding path home told me that it has been here long before Tokyo was known as Edo, which in the stars and my buzz put a nice touch on Christmas. I then woke up at 5 to go help the filmmaker.
I went to a village called Nazawa Onsen last week to enjoy its many free hot springs. Watching the old villagers "eeee"ing and "oooo"ing the whole time, I realised that no one ever gets used to the searing heat no matter how many times you go in, or how long you keep your legs in hoping to become acclimated. 
