Cropped
Mood:  mischievious
Now Playing: Mr. Vain. Actually!!!


Like the haircut? It's rather butch...

Many thanks to lovely Naoko at Trues Salon, Sengawa (TM) who performed the operation. I love how they cut hair here. It takes all afternoon - you arrive, have a flick through the magazines, pick a style, drink the tea they give you. Then you get a shampoo, then they cut your hair VERY meticulously, and then style it for you. Then they shampoo you again, and give you a massage (head and shoulders...) and then fix up your hair, re-style it and send you on your way. For next to nothing!!

What was particularly gratifying was that Naoko chattered away at me all the way through, and when I didn't understand her questions, she simply asked over and over again until I did. After 1hr 40 mins, we're like, best friends. She told me to come back and not let anyone else cut my hair there, because one of her colleagues drinks. LOL!! Do I bring this out in people??!!

Warring Divas
Now Playing: Old Mariah and Jennifer
I'm sorry - Mariah and J-Lo's feud is pointless. BOTH their new albums are pants. They both have great lead singles, with nothing to follow.

Roll on Madonna's new album. She'll wipe the floor with them.

ALMODOVAR!!
Now Playing: Barra Barra - Strange Arabic rock/pop (wouldn't you know...)
Just having a quick moment for how wonderful Almodovar is. I watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre and Mujeres al borde de un ataque de Nervios yesterday. He rocks my world.

And his new movie, slated for next year, is apparently called "Volver" and is about 3 women who move from rural Spain to Madrid. Cast shall include Penelope Cruz and Chus Lampreave. Hurrah!!

I am falling in love with Louis Vuitton advertising - not so much the product, which is so ubiquitous it's almost common, but the ads are so fab...



I want to dress like that.

Ashes to ashes
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Music from "Trojan Women" by my MA class...
I just had a chat, for the first time in ages, with my mate Franck, the absurdly intelligent chemist from Lille. We were discussing all sorts of things and then he pointed out that one seldom thinks in the present, but one clings to appropriate memories, which can drastically colour our perceptions.

Talk about lugubrious - I don't know what he's complaining about. He's got a lovely partner and they're moving to France together!!

Alas, Tokyo International Players's next season has already been programmed, entirely, so my little (late) idea has fallen by the wayside. This is not the end of the world, as I am still hopeful that I will find a Waseda drama club to join. Although god only knows how...

Anyway - I'm off to learn some kanji.

Did anyone else see/like Eternal Sunshine? People, I'm enthusing about Jim Carrey - this doesn't happen often...

The case is closed... I don't negotiate with love...
Now Playing: Rachel Stevens. She's bloody brilliant!!
Hello people...

Am back in Tokyo over a week now, and not a lot has happened. Well - that's not entirely true...

Have some new friends (as usual...) we now have Alex, a nice boy from Barcelona, via the US and Japan, and Kane, a New Zealander. And the dorm is also full of newbies, the majority of whom I have yet to meet. I'm not really in a mood to have the same conversation 15 times a night "Hi, I'm Conor, from Ireland, I study drama, Waseda University, about 6 months, my Japanese isn't amazing..."

So I've been out having fun instead. Well - I've been out, anyway.

The biggest news of all is that I bought an iPod shuffle. As a way of coping with my grief over the death of the pope.



This is me, out jogging with it yesterday. LOL

Rome was absolutely amazing. Cian, Roise and Hannah, thanks so much for such a fabulous time! We had posh dinners, saw beautiful art and architecture, were in St. Peter's with the rest of the gossip-vultures the night before the pope died, shopped for Ireland, met Andrew Moran for hilarious chats, ate our own weight in ice-cream and generally enjoyed La Dolce Vita on our Roman Holiday. Hurrah!

Since coming back to Tokyo I have been, on and off, in an incredibly foul mood, whose basis I cannot quite ascertain. It hovers between anger, gloom, misery, despair and blind rage, but I haven't quite been able to put my finger on it. Certainly I've been going through the wars emotionally, particularly with the arrival in Tokyo of a certain somebody's someone ELSE, but I think this whole thing is more of a growing pains kinda mood swing, of me doing the unthinkable and actually growing up a little and moving out of my romantic, romanticised imagination and realising that certain hopes and ideas that I have long clung to will never come to pass. And that that is probably going to be ok. Or something.

Anyway, gotta go - Jim is taking me, Ryan (the American who DJs our parties), and Caroline (the Malaysian who has apparently outed me to the entire dorm in my absence) out for dinner tonight at the Park Hyatt - home of "Lost in Translation". It's a buffet and all! We are celebrating the fact that Jim recently got his PhD AND a job in the civil service.

Talk to y'all soon...

All is right with the world... :-)
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: A New Day Has Come - Celine Dion
Apologies for the delay in sending any kind of interesting news, but the truth is that there really hasn't been much happening here in Japan land.

However, we had a bizarre quake moments ago, which felt rather as if the whole earth had been smacked - one big jolt and then the quivers as it calmed down. And clearly it was the slap in the face I needed to let you all know how I am...

GOOD. Very very good.

Apart from continuing to update and expand the repertoire of scandalous stories that I shall only tell in person, I have been attempting to write a little, read a lot, and work on my Japanese. Alas MSN has a lot to answer for, and I have done little of any of the above. I have, however, virtually given myself carpal tunnel chatting online til all hours to all corners of the earth. One evening last week I had conversations going with Los Angeles, New York, Bangkok, Helsinki, Dublin, Yokohama and a room on the other side of my dorm, in English, Japanese and French. Talk about multi-tasking...

I appear to have become counsellor-general for Soshigaya International House. Something between the Hippocratic Oath and the vow of secrecy taken by priests hearing confession forbids me from relaying the kinds of things I've been hearing about here (don't worry, I'll tell all when I get home... haha...) but I've really had enough.

How do I manage to end up with so many complicated, neurotic women in my life? It's like I have a sign on my head that says "Talk to me! I WANT to hear about your problems!!"

Things came to a head last night. I had been planning for weeks to take all my friends to see Intermission, the fun Dublin movie, in Shibuya, as a pre-St-Patrick's-Day-look-how-funny-my-country-is expedition. Everyone cancelled at the last minute, and I was furious. Grrr!! So I met Paco (new best friend here) for coffee and trash-talk instead.

We have decided that my theme song shall henceforth no longer me "You've Got a Friend" *except for the lovely special people i still love and who GIVE and TAKE....* but for everyone else it's now Madonna's Human Nature. "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on ME"...

Blah blah blah.

BIG BIG BIG NEWS

Ninagawa, the reason I'm in Japan, is preparing a new version of Medea. Now everyone knows that his last production is the reason I study Greek, and theatre, and Japan, and everything. So this is all rather exciting. And I'm writing a posh letter to him to get him to get me involved, too... :)

I was up at an unspeakable hour this morning to go buy the tickets. Unlike other frantic ticket-buying experiences in my past (eg Trinity Ball, or indeed the National Theatre in London) this was a joy from beginning to end. It was all beautifully organised, and regulated. We were all given order forms, and posters, and pencils, and as we filled them in they were collected, and so when we arrived at the desk, we were presented with the seats available in our price range, and a variety of options etc. It was fantastic!

AND I have tickets!! In the middle, the second row!!! I may die of excitement before I see the show. But in case I don't, I bought myself an extra one for the very last performance, at the end of May.... :D

I will arrive in Dublin on March 23rd. I want to see everyone, so get in touch!!!

PS Look at this. Is Madonna turning into Bjork, or the other way around?!

Paris when she tries to sizzle...
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: Culture Club - "I Just Wanna Be Loved"
Paris Hilton is the most loathsome person I have ever Googled. I only did because I couldn't believe sales figures for her book here in Tokyo, and was even more horrified than I thought I would be.

Of course it is easy for me to despise her, being heiress to some $300 million and famous for being blonde and dumb (and let's not forget - easy) but all the same I fear she represents what's wrong with the world.

Remember when Absolutely Fabulous started, and it was so funny because it was a horror vision of what MIGHT happen? And now it's not funny any more, because it happened after all...

I love this...
Mood:  sharp
Now Playing: Car Wash - Xtina and Missy
I love this song so much...

And I love this little pic, too...

Let's do the time warp again...
Now Playing: Little Nell - Do the Swim....
I am ashamed to admit it, but I only saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time last night. I was in pain from laughing so much. It's quite hilarious... Although I have to say that I made a pretty good go of trying to make a costume for the Players Rocky Horror Ball without seeing the film - and I now understand just how good Sylvia Gallagher's costume was!

So how are y'all?? Did ANYONE read the last blog? I realised far too late that I hadn't actually told anyone I'd posted it, so sorry about that.

Life goes on here in Tokyo - it's still amazing and still baffling (and still occasionally a pain in the ass) but all in all I can't complain. Jim, Cortney Caroline and I are going to Atami (about 2hrs from Tokyo) tomorrow to visit an Onsen (hot spring) and have a plum-blossom viewing party. Apparently it's the very beginning of spring, and the orchard we're booked in to visit has thousands upon thousands of trees all in bloom... Pretty!

My adventures in recent weeks included a visit to the big new year Sumo Tournament (it's SO much better on Eurosport, since they edit the extremely drawn-out Shinto ritual out of it) and an afternoon at Cirque du Soleil's Alegria in their big top, constructed in the gardens opposite Yoyogi park and the Meiji shrine we visited on Christmas day. Cirque was absolutely wonderful!

My Japanese languages have ceased for the (inordinately long) spring break, and, you'll be delighted to hear, I am coming home at the end of March!! So book your appointments/coffees/lunches/dinners NOW to avoid disappointment!

Just kidding - am dying to see you all. But get in touch anyway!!

Happy New Year! (Well - I'm early for Chinese NY, at least...)
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: There'll Be Some Changes Made
Hello hello,

Sorry it's been so insanely long since I blogged, but there it is.

I see my last update was December 16th, the day before my family arrived in Japan for Christmas. They came for a whole three weeks, which ended up being far far longer than I would have imagined. But I think I showed them a good time, and that's the main thing.

Soon after they arrived we went to visit a friend of theirs in Tsuchiura, which you probably won't have heard of, since it is a small town with hardly any redeeming features. None, actually. We faffed around doing precious little there for a few days, and then came back to Tokyo (THANK GOD) and got ready for Christmas.

Amid the barely-happening shopping, we went to see the Kabuki, which was a triumph, all told. We got to see Bando Tamasaburo (the most famous onnagata working today - and the best) and the whole spectacle was just wonderful. Next time round, though, I hope to be a little closer than the VERY back row...

Christmas day itself was kinda surreal - we had been to mass (...) and ended up going to the beautiful Meiji Shrine (to the emperor that ushered Japan into the modern world) in Yoyogi before going to Shibuya for a look around and dinner. I was really nervous about finding somewhere to eat, since I KNEW that the one question that everyone would ask them when they went home was "what did you do on Christmas day?!" and I absolutely refused to allow them to go to McDonalds, considering how bad that would've made me look. Thankfully we found a nice Italian restaurant, and all was ok again.

Admittedly, they ate a lot of McDonalds when they were here, primarily because they often refused to even try Japanese food... :S

On St Stephens Day we headed for Kyoto on the Bullet Train. Kyoto was just marvellous, and I loved it there. We stayed in a traditional Japanese inn one night, complete with very posh Japanese food (bleurgh even for me) and saw as many of the temples, shrines and sights as we could cram in. Definitely somewhere not to be missed!!

New Year's Eve was spent in pachinko (slot) parlour, with the Hawaiian's brother and cousin, since Dad had a bad cold and stayed in bed. At 11.45 we headed for Starbucks, opting to start the year as we mean to go on.... Perhaps the most surreal New Year of my life!!

After their last few days visiting various other parts of Tokyo and the surrounding area, my tour group departed on the 7th, and while I was sad to see them go it was also a relief! But it was a good holiday, all in all.

Immediately after their departure, a variety of very "interesting" things happened, but I'm far too discreet and mysterious to reveal any details herewith. If you wanna know, you're just gonna have to email me - my name at gmail dot com (new fabulous address) to find out more!!

Apart from all the scandalous activity, I also saw a load of cool movies (from A Home at the End of the World to Raise the Red Lantern to In the Mood for Love and Zatoichi, again....) and I have begun, belatedly, watching Desperate Housewives, which is hilarious.

I'm hopefully going to be partially involved in a Noh Opera version of the Scottish play (very exciting, but can't reveal anything about it yet) and yesterday I was completely blown away by the awesome wonderful fabulous "Alegria" by Cirque du Soleil. Talk about full circle - I first heard the cd for this show nearly 10 years ago in a drama class with Marina Donnelly - little did I dream that I'd ever see the show, and certainly not in Tokyo!

Alas, things will be changing here soon - my Japanese classes end temporarily in a week's time (until the beginning of APRIL) and several of my friends will be going home to their respective countries. As a result, we are having lots of "must do this before leaving Japan" experiences - everything from visiting Tokyo's amazing futuristic landscape built on islands and shit to bowling to eating in extremely cool Japanese-style bars... That said, there are a variety of new interesting people who will doubtless feature in future episodes, including a half-Brazilian flamenco dancer obsessed with Riverdance, a Japanese boy called Kenji who worships Mariah and X-tina, a hysterically acerbic French scientist called Franck, his boyfriend Yoshi, and many more besides :-)

But this Chinese New Year brings in the Year of the Rooster - a special year for all of us born in 1981 as it's a new beginning of a new cycle of 12 years, and who knows what they're going to bring. (Blah Blah Blah I sound like a Hallmark card...)

Happy Birthday to Theodora, Hannah, Emily, Roise and Aidan - hope you all got lovely presents!!

Please please email me and tell me your news!!