Just over five years ago, after falling at the final hurdle in an interview at an ad agency in London, I chose instead to spend 3 months at a language school in Tokyo, so I could finally communicate with my Japanese relatives. Well, 3 months to learn Japanese was pretty optimistic, so I enrolled in a second term...then a third, then finally when I’d got a good grasp of the polite business Japanese, I took a one week informal Japanese course, where the teacher had basically written the script out of a popular Japanese tv drama for us to dissect.

Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuin Japanese Language Institute 2002

The Japanese language has 3 different levels of politeness. One is super-polite, reserved normally for speaking to customers, the second is for people you meet for the first time, or people elder or higher in a hierarchy than you, and the third is for speaking to friends, or people of a similar age. There’s not really an equivalent in English, but in Japanese, it usually consists of an honorific verb ending, or simply putting a “san” on the end of someone’s name. 2 of my good friends Makoto and Isato party with each-other every week, but since Makoto is younger than Isato, he always uses the politer form of Japanese and calls him Isato san.

During my 10 months at Japanese language school, I’d gone the route of the majority of foreigners in Japan whose Japanese isn’t quite up to everyday business level, and taught English to earn some easy cash. The school at which I was teaching was owned by Thane Camus, one of the most famous foreign “talents” on Japanese tv, simply because he’d grown up in Japan and thus was one of the very few foreigners who could speak perfect Japanese. (On this list of foreign “talents” on Japanese tv, he’s at number 10 and I’m at number 18!) The school was also a “foreign talent agency”. A lot of foreigners in Japan also go down this route for some extra cash, basically involving signing up and waiting until a Japanese tv program needs an extra, or a token foreigner to make their show look more international.

After one or two random extra roles, they put me forward for a lead role part in a 10 episode Japanese drama called Hako Iri Musume!, and after two auditions, Japanese prime-time tv had a 6ft 4” wooden actor sounding Australian, trying to speak normally in an American role!? (see the shoeing I got on one of the fan sites here). However, my 10 months of study had stood me in good stead for the part which required someone who spoke bad Japanese anyway, and on the Japanese fan sites this came across as good acting! The actors in the above photo include Fukada Kyoko, Chii Takeo, Yoshida Hideko, Furuta Arata, Tamayama Testuji and Yoshizawa Yu... oh yeah, and clearly the best actor of the lot.. Mark Kenji Condon!

As soon as they started broadcasting the drama, huge crowds of people came to watch the filming which was on a mountain in west Tokyo, and I was getting stopped for autographs and photos whenever I went out - not always a good thing, since every week I was out drinking with my mates, no doubt doing things the press would have loved to photograph. I remember one time coming out of a crowded train station when I realized I’d lost my ticket, and in my drunken stupor, decided that queuing for the machine would take too long and instead jumped the barrier, only to find a girl waiting just beside it with her autograph book open ready for me to sign, and a look on her face as if to say, “Keith would never have done such a terrible thing!!” My character Keith was a perfect gentleman, and some of the fan sites actually had Japanese housewives writing in to ask why their foreign husbands weren’t more like model-foreigner-in-Japan Keith (photos here).

Although short lived, the fame thing was pretty intense, and I can see how famous people can feel so hounded by the public. Just doing everyday things like going shopping would make you feel so self-conscious, with prying eyes following your every move, making merely concentrating on doing your grocery shopping a stressful task.

The tv appearance led to smaller spin-off jobs, including some modeling and event MC work.

My Japanese had slowly been improving, and I made it to the finals of the National Japanese Speech competition in 2003, speaking about some of the ridiculous experiences I’d had during the filming.

As I could hardly read Japanese at the time of the drama, I couldn’t understand my script, so wouldn’t be able to tell if the lines I was regurgitating were reflecting sadness or happiness, so the director would act it out for me, and I’d just copy, leaving no room whatsoever for my own refined poetic license or method acting genius (!) Another thing about Japanese dramas, is that they are incredibly cheesy. Cue the female lead tripping over for the male lead to catch, enormously drawn out romance scenes, ridiculous animal sound effects and long, hovering close-ups wherever possible. Due to the directors’ fondness of close-up shooting, the actors are told not to move at all, leading to a very wooden, puppet like exchange of dialogue.  Well, that was my excuse anyway. Here's a clip of one of the scenes where my character Keith is proving his love for Hana (Iijima Naoko), by standing under a freezing waterfall!

For the kiss scene below, I decided to put in a set of fake rotten teeth, which ofcourse I found hilarious, unlike the impatient 40-strong film crew and lead lady Naoko Iijima...

So, 3 months at language school turned to 5 years living in Tokyo, and a wealth of experiences out in the land of the rising son.

I thought I’d never get tired of the place and its people, and didn’t really, but instead thought that it was about time I found a job where language barriers wouldn’t prevent me from progressing, and besides, I thought Japan was making me far too soft.

Other than summer, my friends and Mai’s dogs, things I’ll miss about Japan:

1. Convenience stores, which originally came about because Japanese homes aren’t big enough for large fridge/freezer units, but moreover are 24 hour stores stocking everything you can think of, or more precisely, anything you’d most likely require at any hour of the day. Enormous market research has gone into daily buyer behavior, meaning that the small stores are stocked with the exact items an average consumer would most likely require.

2. The postal system, which is so fast, cheap and reliable that there’s even a service where you can have your golfbag sent to arrive on the tee ready for you the next day. Ofcourse, all items can be sent at the 24hr convenience stores, plus they offer a service where the receiver pays the postman for the postage at the door on arrival.

3. 24hr restaurants, which are all over the place, and don’t try and kick you out for buying a cup of tea and sleeping there till your first train. Usually, we’d go to a club till 6am-ish, then all pile into a 24hr restaurant, usually full of the same people who’d been in the club earlier, and watch drunk people try and eat spaghetti bolognese or start drinking wine at 7am.

4. Vending machines, of which there are apparently 5.6 million, or 1 to every 20 people. I used to love being able to buy a hot drink in the middle of the night in the winter, or in the summer a bottle of ice-cold Pocari Sweat (a Japanese sports drinks, with an appetizing name). Whilst I never saw the urban-myth school-girls’ used-panty vending machines, I found this photo of a cigarette vending machine which had been converted to sell them.

5. Manga cafes, which are also normally 24hrs, and used by people as a cheap hotel. You pay about a quid an hour for a private booth, all the magazines you can read and free soft drinks. I didn’t really go that often, but went on my last day in Japan when I had a couple of hours to kill and was cold outside. The private booths are popular for couples for obvious reasons, and I love the way I’m taller than the walls which enclose them.

6. Girls who all dress as prostitutes.

SO, just 6 things off the top of my head, but apart from the last one (well...?) they all revolve around convenience. Japan is truly the land of convenience. But, it’s the kind of convenience that if you never knew about, you’d never miss. It’s not like English people dream of having safe 24 hour stores, or cigarette vending machines on every street, but if you spend any time in Japan, you return to your own country feeling like you’re missing out. Here're some video clips I took recently of some unusual parts of Tokyo including the sex district, a street at club kicking-out time, and the centre street in Shibuya.

In my final few months of Japan, I tried to travel out of Tokyo, first with another trip to see my relatives in Osaka, and checked out Universal Studios Japan too, which was actually much better than I was expecting. There’s a roller coaster with speakers and a music player in every seat so you can choose what music you want, not that you can hear it after the first drop anyway.

Osaka, Japan’s second biggest city is actually quite a lot different to it’s bigger brother Tokyo. Generally, the people are thought to be friendlier, and the way they dress is different, almost like the fashion is a couple of years late.

I took the above photo in camera RAW and adjusted it slightly to get the anime-like look and contrast in the sky.

As with every region in Japan, there is a famous food specific to that town or city, and in Osaka it is tako-yaki, or Octopus balls (not literally, as they’re too difficult to find).

Not necessarily common only to Osaka, but very Japanese nevertheless - some high-class sushi and a horse racing video game.

Summer had been amazing. If I ever come back to Japan for a short holiday, it’ll definitely be in the summer. I don’t think there’s anywhere as fun in the world. Sure, other countries have sun, sea and the rest of it, but in Japan you’ve got all the festivals and huge fireworks displays too. (Not really to do with summer, but a movie clip I  made on Tokyo here).

...and photo of the summer with Atsu, who I’m gonna miss the most.

Atsu arranged a surprise birthday/leaving party for me in September, proper hide behind the door, party poppers in your face sh*t, which was amazing and really touching. (Photos here)

I did some serious biking in my last month of being in Japan, after having pimped my big scooter for the last time ready to have it shipped to Australia. Gui, Louca and I rode our bikes to Hakone, about 2 hours from Tokyo, then up the infamous Izu Skyline, a 35 km toll road leading up 700m into the mountains, a favourite for bikers for the curves and breathtaking view.

For my final farewell party. Isato got together about 30 of us for a drinking/bowling/drinking fest in Odaiba (video here). I would have cried, had I not been having so much fun with them all. (photos here).

For the first couple of years in Japan, I didn’t used to feel comfortable going out drinking with other Japanese guys, preferring to stick with the gaijin (foreign) dudes from my language school. Then I realised after getting home from my leaving party, that I’d spent the past 10 hours surrounded by a group of 20 or so Japanese, and not felt different once. To them I am KENJI. As one of them put it, a gaijin on the outside, Japanese on the inside. It was no longer me and them. I was one of them.

So, after spending a week packing up my stuff, sending half of it to Australia, half of it to England, and trying to empty my room of all furniture, curtains, blinds and even flooring, I was finally ready to move out of my favourite suburb of Tokyo, Kichijoji, my home for the past 3 and a half years.

Here's a video montage that I made about my last month in Japan.

 

...one from my leaving party

 

and some other random clips from my time in Japan.