{"id":361,"date":"2011-11-14T07:57:46","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T07:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/?p=361"},"modified":"2011-11-14T07:57:46","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T07:57:46","slug":"awesome-on-tap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/?p=361","title":{"rendered":"Awesome On Tap"},"content":{"rendered":"

My brother \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who has his own experience of what it’s like to live in a foreign country \u00e2\u20ac\u201c asked me a very good question in an email recently. Wondering how I was finding life in Tokyo, he asked “Is it utterly alien and unsettling<\/strong>, or are you enjoying the change of scenery and weirdness-on-tap?<\/strong>“<\/p>\n

The answer, of course, is both<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

On Friday in Tokyo it p!ssed with rain all day. I spent the afternoon feeling cold and homesick, and even got as far as wondering if I’d made a mistake in coming here. But then I pushed myself out for a walk and took this picture:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is Shimokitazawa<\/strong><\/a>, where I live. This scene is five minutes’ walk from the house I’m currently sharing. I’ve been here over two weeks now, and every time<\/strong> I’ve gone out in this neighbourhood I’ve discovered something<\/strong> new and amazing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This weekend there was a festival in another cool Tokyo neighbourhood, Koenji<\/strong><\/a>. There was live wrestling (with a gaijin<\/strong><\/a> baddie-!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6an astonishing street performance by an orchestra of young players and cheerleaders\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and an incredibly unsettling shop dummy with a rabbit’s head:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(The sign around the dummy’s neck says Don’t Touch. I didn’t want to.)<\/p>\n

To finish with pics for now, here’s some taiko<\/strong><\/a> drumming that just happened to be going on right there in the street the next day in Shibuya<\/strong><\/a> as I was walking past:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There have been times when I have been scared, intimidated, infuriated and baffled here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not<\/strong> by the place or the people, I hasten to add, but by myself and my reactions to being so far out of my usual element.<\/p>\n

But I wouldn’t want to miss a moment of it. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

More soon,<\/p>\n

Sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My brother \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who has his own experience of what it’s like to live in a foreign country \u00e2\u20ac\u201c asked me a very good question in an email recently. Wondering how I was finding life in Tokyo, he asked “Is it utterly alien and unsettling, or are you enjoying the change of scenery and weirdness-on-tap?“ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}