Final Destination: London.
Status: Arrived.
Mood: Happy.
Yeah, I'm back in England, and I already made the mistake of trying to push Shift + 7 in order to get an apostrophe. That'll be a habit that will take a while to shake. Prepare for many "I&ll"s and "he&d"s. But I came back today. But before I get to all of this, I'm going to talk about what happened after the last entry at the Mac store, which feels like last night, but was actually about 40 hours ago.
As I left the store, Emma had made friends with new people, though they'd gone by the time I came out. She thought the air conditioning was too high, so she uttered the immortal words "I'll go wait outside in the hot". It put her in a friend making mood, so as we wandered looking for dancing places, a group of gaijin asked us places to drink. We gave them a direction, and they went it, but we soon bumped into them again as somehow we both made a circle. We chatted with them for a while. The main dude was Canadian, and the main girl was from Nottingham, and it was strange to hear a different English accent at long last. We led them in the direction of Pure, as it seemed alcohol was taking their fancy that night.
Emma and I decided to spend the last minutes before returning to sleep/England just waving to people on the bridge, seeing who we can get to respond. We should have played it long ago, it was great! We got some smiles, some waves, and eventually one guy came up to me and told me he loved me. Bizarre. But after he'd moved on, more people came. Some shook our hands, it was amazing. The Love dude came back, shook hands, and with his friend, clearly drunk, we chatted. His friend, dressed in a striking green top, spoke to me. He didn't have enough consciousness to speak in English, so he spoke very fast in Japanese, in an accent I later found out to be from Gifu, where they use strange, different words for complicated sentence parts, like... pronouns. But I managed to see past the fact that he called himself a house and we talked about the American dream and how it applied to Japan. He then found it fun to take me arm in arm with him to find girls. He'd break out a new cigarette each time he came to a group, and asked for a light. The second group he came to, as it turned out, were tourists from Shikoku, and the one girl was so excited to be near a gaijin that she started chanting it and jumping around. I told her I was German, and didn't speak English, but as it turned out, she didn't speak English anyway, so I told her I was actually English. We went to a quiet and atmospheric little bar. Our group (consisting of me, Emma, the two drunk male friends and the three accosted females), was the only patronage there. It could pretty much only fit us anyway. The reason I was happy about it was that I held a conversation with her (the excited-over-the-gaijin girl), entirely in Japanese, for hours. Occasionally we needed translating help, but we spoke fine. She is a Kimono teacher, and said that when I return, she'll teach me how to wear one. She also insisted on giving me a gift of a tiny fan and facial grease removing wipes, which I tried to refuse, but ended up being charmed by the eccentricity of it all.
After the bar closed, we found we were too poor for karaoke, so we had to part ways, but not without phone numbers and emails. I ended up completely satisfied with my trip, as it was another perfect end to an evening, with fun, with confidence building language training, with weirdness, and with another example of how Japan is just nice without good reason to be.
I slept well. Albeit for about four hours. We approached bed at about three and woke at seven. Well, I woke at seven, Emma was showering at six thirty and getting ready to leave. Due to myself not being energetically motivated, I slumbered out of the door packed at eight, the time we were meant to be at the airport. The train left at 8:18 for the airport, and took about 50 minutes, meaning we were over an hour late for check in. Not that it mattered, as KLM had overbooked our flight by 150 seats. It seems KLM are eager to take bookings and money but not actually have the flights to back it up. But unlike in Amsterdam, they were very apologetic, and pretty much upgraded us to a direct flight that left two hours later and arrived over an hour earlier. We were put on a Japan Airlines flight, and we had time for a final teriyaki burger, and time to cart around the extra hand-luggage that I had to carry due to Stuart's extra clothes. But at 11:50, we boarded the plane, and I had huge problems, as someone was sitting in my seat, so I made my way to the back and put my luggage in an overhead at the back, and the seat they found for me was booked and oh it was a mess. After a short wait, they went and moved the person in my seat one along, and the person in their new seat to the back. I ended up sitting next to the person who was in my seat, who, as soon as I saw her writing, I knew was Korean. She seemed shy, and we didn't speak much for most of the flight, apart from occasionally sharing sweets and gum. I decided that I might as well be friendly to someone coming to London, so I asked her about her trip. I wasn't quite expecting that she would be quite so friendly. It seemed she was shy of her language skills, as she didn't speak much English, and everyone spoke to her in Japanese. We spoke for pretty much the rest of the flight. Emma joined us briefly and chatted, and we discussed what to do in London, and pretty much there and then decided we'd spend it together.
She came back to my house with my family, which with the unexpected appearance of my mother, made it quite a squeeze in the car back home. After I hugged Becky hello and did the usual brief and rushed formalities, I drove Emma and Mi Juang to our actual house, and she seemed to love just looking at England and the weird things all around. I drove her to the station to get to Victoria, gave her directions for Clapham Junction and changing, and arranged to go around art galleries tomorrow.
I'm really enjoying friendliness and new found friends at almost every corner. I'm scared of the soon to be overflowing Inbox, seeing as how many times I have given out my address, and how many photos need to be sent to me.
I'm feeling good, I'm happy about this holiday, it was perfect. And taking one look at England, I want to go back to Osaka. I missed everyone, but I seriously feel like Osaka is more suited to me, it's just a nicer city. The vending machines are cheaper, and the ticket machines work, and it's cleaner, and there are so many fewer thugs in Japan. I'm worried about Mi Juang's safety, as she's just come from the world's safest country to London on her own for a tour. I felt so safe in Japan, it felt right. Well, only a couple of years. For now, I have a comfy chair and internet, and I'm really happy with the last month. All is well.
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