Ippoippo

Today I braved the bad weather (cold, wet and windy), to venture down to a place near Funabashi in Chiba. I went to look at the Tokyo Auto-Salon show. Basically its a big car show for people interested in sports cars and tuned cars.

As is typical with events like this in the UK, there was lots of …..

and there was lots of ……

There was also some pretty strange stuff there. There are a lot of similarities between the Japanese and UK car tuning scene. But being Japan, there are some differences too. You certainly can’t escape from the usual outbreaks of かわいーーー, which means Kawaiiii or ‘Cute’ in some of the tuning efforts. I think the only places where I’ve never seen かわい is in the temples here.

As well as adding body parts to your typical sports cars, the Japanese like to add custom wheels (some of them are truly awful) and exhausts to the most mundane of MPVs and mini MPVs (and the mini mini MPV shaped cars). Then you get the strange people who add curtains to the inside of cars. Having said that, some of the entertainment systems they add are amazing bits of technology, though I dread to think what it does for the handling and fuel consumption.

The other thing that makes me laugh is the ‘race queens’ (the girls!). Now, in your average car show, the girls are there as an ‘added attraction’. Most of the men who go to the car shows go there for the cars. But while they are there, they’ll still have a good perv at the girls.
But, it seems that with the Japanese cars shows, a significant proportion of the men who go (I gu-estimate it at around about 10%), appear to have zero interest in the cars whatsoever. They are going to perv at and take pictures of the women only. You could always tell when the girls were posing next to a car, because there would be this HUGE gathering of people with camera’s taking pictures. Some of them were professional photographers, many were amatuers.

The final thing I’ve noticed. It seems that the Japanese car tuning and styling culture is more American influenced than European, when it comes to cheap cars. The European stuff is seen as elegant and expensive. A lot of the Japanese stuff has a sort of ‘Fast and Furious’ feel to it. Yet somehow, it seems cooler here, whereas the American stuff seems tacky. I don’t know, maybe its just me who thinks this.

You can find the other photos in the Gallery.

Anyway, it was a pretty good day, but I am well and truely exhausted. There was a lot of walking, and I was pretty tired anyway from the day before (blame it on the lovely Korean Yakiniku I ate, washed down with beer and then some Korean red wine, lovely )

There’s a suprise. Juan Pablo is blaming someone else again. Its never his fault…………

The BBC have the full story, but this is what caught my attention.

But the 29-year-old is confident of a sharp improvement under the wing of McLaren supremo Ron Dennis.

“My old team Williams said I should be fitter, but did nothing about it,” he said.

“I’m getting a kick out of working with Dennis. They’re motivating me a bit more and I never had that at Williams.”

So lets get this straight. Your saying that it’s up to somebody else to motivate you to get fitter, and thus perform better. You need somebody to tell you to do this!!!!! What are you, 4 years old. What was Williams meant to do about your fitness.

Horrahh. Today I started Japanese class again. My last formal lessons where back in June in the UK.

This time I have private lessons. 1 hour a week will be funded by the company I work for. The other two hours I have will be paid for by myself.

Its going to be good to have lessons again, to help my motivation in learning Japanese properly. I WILL NOT LEARN IT BY OSMOSIS!!!

It was a good lesson too. I had an ability check, and it was good to know I haven’t forgotten huge amounts of what I learnt in the UK. So, I’m not starting from scratch. The teacher was a little suprised about how many lessons I will be having, but I really want to learn quickly.

Anyway, over here, I’m learning with “AZ Japanese Service” , in case anyone was interested. Got my first set of homework too. Just some more verbs to learn.

On Monday, Yuko and I decided to go to Sea Paradise, near Yokohama. Monday was ‘Adult Day’ Public Holiday in Japan. Its when all the Japanese who are 20 years old celebrate becoming adults. The men didn’t seem to make much effort in celebrating, but all the young women dress up in their finest kimonos, complete with furry scarfs because of the cold weather.

Anyway, I digress. Sea Paradise is basically a small man-made island, which has a small theme park, some places to eat, a hotel and an aquarium.

First, the good stuff. Well, it was a little cold and windy, so it wasn’t that busy. The weather was sunny though. The park was very clean and a nice relaxing place for us to be. When we got there, after eating our お弁当 (Obento or packed lunch box) we decided to have a go on some of the rides. The first was a rollercoaster called “Surf Coaster”. Looking at it I thought it would be a easy one to go on. Probably nowhere near as bad as Nemesis at Alton Towers . Hmmmm. The first initial drop, while looking small was quite impressive. It certainly unsettled my stomach a bit.

Next up was “Sea Paradise Tower”, which providied a nice view of the park. I was a little annoyed that I could not take any photographs from up there though. It was certainly a good view. We took a little detour to the Sega amusement centre before heading off to “Blue Fall”.
Oakwood Park back in Wales has a similar ride called The Bounce, or so I thought. Basically, in Oakwood, you sit at the bottom, and you are then accelerated quickly upwards. They bounce you around a bit, having felt 4G forces and going up to 70kmh and 24.3 metres. Then you drop down quickly. I’ve done this before and it’s good fun.

Having watched Blue Fall , it seemed more simple. Basically, they lift you up to a much higher 107m. Then they just drop you! WRONG! They actually accelerate you down at 4G. Possibly one of the most scary rides I’ve done. Thank goodness it was all over in one drop. The other people on the ride the same time as us looked rather shocked as well. The kids in Japan are mad though. They were going back on for more goes

It was at this point we decided we had enough of the rides!
Now, comes the bit I have mixed feelings about. As well as the standard small and medium fish in the aquarium, Sea Paradise Aqua musuem has a number of dolphins and small whales. Now, I’d rather they were free in the ocean……….. but at least here they can’t get hunted by Japanese fishermen for ‘research’ purposes. Then I saw the size of the water tank they inhabit. It’s tiny!!!!! :(
I have to admit that one thing about Japan is the way they sometimes treat animals. They are more like toys and gimmicks to the Japanese. Sure, keep the dolphins and whales, but at least give them a large tank. They also use the white whales in wedding ceremonies that can be performed at the resort.
Its a real shame, because the rest of the fish displays are really good and spacious. But the sea mammals are not treated well.

The one good thing though is that I got some nice photographs of the fish in the main aquarium area.

Also, at the end of the day, we noticed that you can see Fuji-san (Mount Fuji) after sunset, so I got a couple of photographs of that.

Pictures are at this album in my Gallery.