ben griffiths
an insight into the mind of a genius

Archive for April, 2004

Credit Card Fraud

Tuesday, April 13th, 2004

Posted by Justin

Got a call from dad around 8am… said i’ve been spending over £1000 on my credit card from betting. Argh, someone’s obviously gotten hold of my details and gone crazy. Managed to cancel the card but now I’ve got to rely on hard cash. ARGH

Dear theif,
When I find you (and I will), I’m going to set the LEEDs boys on ya - you’re a dead man!

regards
-JUSTIN

BACK TO TOKYO

Monday, April 12th, 2004

Posted by Justin

The Shinkansen is a beast! Think of Apex Twin’s video ‘Window licker’ The limo just goes on and on… well replace that with a train and multiply the length by a million billion squillion…. Well that’s what it seemed.
We purchased ‘unreserved tickets’ so finding the right carriage was quite a mission.

Reached home around 8ish and after a nice shower and MSNing - met up with the team in Shinjuku. Ben found out that CODE closed at 1am – (I’m glad cause hard house sucks). We were very hungry but Blanco demanded western food! As I was too tired to disagree, we made our way to Roppongi’s Hard Rock Cafe and went for a good old typical american steak (jap style). This may seem suprising, especially to my singaporean and malaysian friends but this was the first Hard Rock Cafe experience but I’m glad to say an enjoyable one.

We left the restaurant around 1am and faced the dilema of where to go. As Roponggi is Seiko’s home town, she knew best and we did a bit of bar hopping but I knew where we would eventually end up - the Lex Club argh.

The Lexington Club is purely aimed at westerners, the previous experience was great as the club was packed with sexy european models letting down after a hard days work of shooting. I was warned about going on weekends and so it was not suprising that on occasion we weren’t so lucky. Replace the models with meat head american marines - not nice!

It didn’t matter - we were with good company, good friends…
Except that everyone was too tired and too drunk. The night was one to remember due to a variety of incidents.

1/To start off the night Tdo fell asleep.

2/I was hungry and went off to find some snacks.

3/There’s always at least one old man at a club isn’t there. On this day there happened to be some old japanese business geezer, he was dancing like mad! He was definately making an impression with the ladies including a bit of pole dancing. There were a few situations where we thought he was going to have a heart attack. (Check the gallery)
The second old man was British, he had a pony tail and Ben and Chiacky decided to point and laugh at him. Turned out he was the owner of the club! Check Ben’s journal entry cause at this moment in time, I was eating away at a noodle bar and snacking at Lawsons. When I came back I saw Ben sitting outside looking miserable - ‘I got thretened of being kicked out and i’m not allowed to go near Chiacky for the rest of the night’, I couldn’t help laughing as it was quite a funny story.

4/When I returned around 3am I couldn’t find Seiko or Rie. Called, but either their phone was off or no reception - just heard the sound of an automated japanese woman. I was hoping to depart for the fish market at 5am but everyone’s stuff was locked up and seiko had the key.
4.30am - Rie came back to the club and told me Seiko was over drunk. Thats what happens with an open bar. Made our way to another club just around the corner on the 3rd floor of some skyscraper. We made our way though the fire exit where we saw a very paralytic Seiko. Poor girl, I think she wanted to vomit but couldn’t. Wasn’t long until she did on her trousers, her shoe, my hand. Oh well…

The owner suggested we’d take her down the spiral death trap stairs but no the lift was a must. Eventually made it outside where the fresh air did her a lot of good.
6am - Dropped seiko back home and made our way to the station.
@ Yoyogi station had a Curry Katsu at the noodle bar and went to sleep around 9am after a bit of gossiping.

THE CAPSULE STORY

Monday, April 12th, 2004

Posted by Justin

The clubs in Osaka didn’t impress us and decided to hang out and at a restaurant for a few hours. The streets of Osaka were filled with ganguru boys in suits and a fair amount of modified cars. Did quite a bit of ‘picture book’ shopping (by request from the boys back home) and decided to head back to the capsule hotel at around 4am

Returned to the capsule hotel around 3am, fell asleep very comfortably but an hour later the boys from Leeds returned and probably woke up the whole floor. They weren’t drunk, just typical northerners. Loud, no consideration – damn pissing off.

Apparently their mate had pulled and there were only two of them.

Asshole1 - ‘WHAT A GREAT NIGHT’ blablabla
Asshole2 - ‘LET WATCH SOME PORN’
one of the guys went downstairs and got a video ticket

Asshole2 - ‘WE’VE GOT PORN’
Asshole1 - ‘YEA! WE GOT PORN’

The bastards then turned up their tv’s on full volume and proceeded with their entertainment.

Asshole1 ‘THIS IS GREAT’
Asshole2 ‘YEA! ARE YOU WANKING OFF? I AM’

Disgusting, how can you and your mate do that simultaneously and next to each other. Eugh. The funny thing was that they were opposite Ben. Their canvas door was open so Ben could see them. Poor ben

I was so tired, I just kept waking up and falling asleep again, Ben said he was up all night! His personal description of the event was quite horrifying. Aparently he could see the silhouette of one of the guys (being directly opposite his pod)

I got up at 9am after only a few hours of sleep, Ben noticed Asshole1 had left his keys outside his pod. Couldn’t resist opening the guy’s locker and behold, a digital camera, wallet and all his clothes.

Since we have a conscience and would never steel, the contemplation was whether to:
1/fill up the locker with shampoo
2/clean the toilet with the guys toothbrush and record the process on his camera
3/hide his clothes
4/tear up all his cash into hundreds of tiny pieces

looking back now — we feel we could have done better!

Well for the rest of the day we walked though street malls that stretched for miles. I’m afraid to say, that Osaka is minge town - try as we might we did not find any talent. In particular, the japs in Osaka are deceiving. They’ll dress up very nicely and drawing attention away from the face. Long distance/short distance syndrome – hopefully Blanco will describe in more detail

Headed back to Tokyo at around 5:30am to be in time for CODE in Shijuku.

The (sadly) unforgetable experience

Monday, April 12th, 2004

Where were we last…. Ah yes, in the internet café about to go to out in Osaka. Well we did, but there were only very sinister (well I thought so) Hip Hop clubs, so instead we spent a good few hours in a restaurant instead.

If there’s one thing bad we have done with this holiday, its use the nights to their full potential. But I am not too impressed with the nightlife here, it seems to be nightclub or nothing. Would love to just go to a local pub and sit with a drink, rather than be hustled into some expensive (for here) bar.

So yeah, we went back to the capsule hotel (and found it! Go us!) by about 3 I think, to get some much needed sleep for our 9:30am wakeup.

It was so nice and peaceful, nothing to bother us… however in the next capsule, Justin had decided he wanted to look through the photos of the day… So beep, beep, beep, beep (every photo change, argh!) – this didn’t go on for too long though, and it went silent again….. until he decided to read his new books, which were all in bags wrapped in cellophane….. lol… I didn’t want to say anything, so just tried to sleep… and eventually I did :)

Until about 4am that is, when the guys from Leeds came back.. (mum you may want to skip this next part…)

They had obviously had a good night as they wouldn’t shut up about it, and made no attempt whatsoever to be quiet. Not even the stupid drunken whispers, just full on shouting across the capsules. This went on for about 20 minutes until they decided they wanted to watch some porn… but couldn’t get it working, so one of the monkeys was sent downstairs to get the keycard, which he did and proclaimed this to the whole hotel that it only cost him 1000yen… woopie fucking do! Ok, so not thinking it can get much worse… when they start to discuss how much they want a wank…. Eek! No nononononononononono…. This is shouted loudly across the bay, until they work out how the stupid key card thing works and finally get the TV on. Silence again (kinda, tv quiet) then one of them turns it up… so now we got loud porn blaring across the room….. before finally…. the noises start…. I will say nothing more, however I am now traumatised and never ever want to speak of the matter again. Case Closed :(

Decided against showers the next day, figuring we could have them at night, so got up about 9:40 to be out the hotel and to go shopping in Osaka (in the massive mall, where Justin was sure to be wanting some clothes!) Cue many hours of shopping and walking around, including however a trip to the Sony Showroom Centre where we got to try out all the new gadgets, including the robot dog thing, which is imho a much better replacement for the real thing.

Had to get back to meet Chiakiy and Tdu, so made sure we caught the Bullet back from Shin-Osaka at around 5:30, getting us back to Tokyo for 8pm, just enough time to head home for a shower, clean up and back out to meet everyone (including Seiko) at Shinjuku station to go to Code (supposedly one of the greatest Tokyo clubs, playing hard house and trance) – however when we got there, we found it closed at 1am (wtf?!?) and no one except me was willing to pay 3000yen for 3 hours.

This meant a trek back to the train station to head to the good old favourite Roppongi, to find something to do.. First eat though, where we went to the Tokyo Hard Rock Café (which had a live band playing at the time, and very good they were too!) and I was finally able to order large quantities of meat :) They had rather unfortunately run out of ribs, but could still do me a nice big chicken… hurrah!

Left there about 1, and went to a nearby bar. However Justin and crew weren’t too happy with it (and it was 1000yen a drink!!!) so we left shortly after entering to return to (and to J’s dismay) the Lex Club around the corner for all you can drink for only 2500.

It was really packed, a lot more than normally, especially with all the American Marines about, so not as much fun. We spent a lot of it sitting down in the sofa area by the dance floor, meaning we could get up and dance if we wanted to. We kept laughing at this old white haired guy who was going around checking everyone out, like dirty old man, until he came up to us and proclaimed that he was the owner of the club and if we didn’t stay away from Chiakiy, he would have her thrown out and call the police!!!

The jist of it was he would not believe she was not a young prositute!! (lol.. I guess that’s really rude, but quite funny when you look back) Something about too many marines here and it would all kick off… wtf?!?! Kinda put a dampener on the evening, until we sneaked away to the opposite side of the club where he didn’t seem to go. Phew.

If you look through the photos, you will see a really old guy… Haha that guy was funny, he must have been about 50 or so, but was properly drunk and really getting into the music, even trying his luck with some of the ladies. He took a liking to Chiakiy (who was horrified) so we spent 30 minutes or so dancing with him. He was properly mad, getting up on the stage and waving his arms about … hahahaha….

By this time, we had lost Seiko ages ago, and as we had to leave to get to the fish market, we needed to find her. However she was no-where to be found, and her friend was gone too. To make matters worse, all of Chiakiys stuff was in her locker, so we could not leave either until Seiko was found. We waited around for ages until her friend came back and asked us to come with her. I’ll leave that for Justin to tell, as I don’t know the full story…..

Home, sleep then oversleep and sleep some more (J had gone out sightseeing with Seiko by now, me stupid, just stay in bed) until I had to meet up with everyone later on in Roppongi to go to another club called Yellow. We paid our 3000 to get in before remembering we were supposed to have brought in some alcohol with us as its very expensive… a large sign on the door said no re-entry… so we thought we pretty much mucked that one up.

Luckily however, I was in my cunning plan mode, and taking Chiakiys phone, I stood next to the doorman, pretending I was on it, talking to my ‘friend’ who I still had his key for, and that I had to meet him at the station. This worked, so I was able to run to the Lawsons up the road to purchase some 300yen bottles of whiskey. On the way back, I got lost and had to ask directions. Not only did they 2 guys walk me back, one of them then gave me his demo cd!! I like the people here :)

Back inside the club, gave the whiskey to Justin who knocked it back in about 5 minutes… hahahaha…. We then had Chiakiy falling over saying she had drunk too much of it. After asking Justin why she was so drunk, he wasn’t sure as she had only had a tiny bit… lol… funny, she kept falling everywhere :)

I left the club early to go home, just not feeling right and then basically slept through until about 7 or so Sunday. Went with Chaikiy and Seiko (Justin stayed at home to revise) to go to a 24 hour family restaurant called Dennys (http://www.dennys.co.jp) where I had a lovely steak with the nicest bread roll you can ever have J I think Justin is glad he didn’t go as he would have been so disappointed!

This left me with nothing to do for a while, so I went into the arcades, managed to nab a Taito ashtray (cool!) and play my favourite game Final Fight :) For the first time ever I finished it, yay! I have photos to prove it :P and yes, I am the B in first place. I didn’t have time to put in my full name, but that B is me!!

Had to wake up early to go shopping this morning (Monday) so went to bed at a relatively good time……

Tired now, there is still Monday to write, but I am hoping J will fill everything in there, I’ll try to add a bit more tomorrow :)

Sayonara!

Travelling across Japan on the train known only as “Bullet”!

Thursday, April 8th, 2004

Ok, we have done a lot since the last entry, travelled miles across Japan :) Am now sitting in an internet cafe in Osaka, but more about that later,

Despite getting up late on Wednesday, we were determined to get to Kyoto, so went off to Tokyo Central to get the Shinkansen (sp?) which is the Bullet Train to your normal people. Shock horror, it cost us 70quid each, one way, but we wanted to try it so coughed up :)

The train was so clean and smooth, i don’t know what a Eurostar is like, so can’t compare, but to normal British trains it woops their asses! Whole journey took just over 2 hours with no problems, we even managed to get off at the right stop.

When we got there though, we wondered why we had bothered, it was exactly the same as Tokyo, just a lot more cheap looking… to say we were upset is a bit of an understatement, we were distraught that it had cost so much, but were determined to make the most of it. To save ourselves some extra money, we decided not to bother with a hotel but to rough it instead, meaning we could go straight out.

Walked around for quite a bit until we decided we would catch a train to a station which looked like it was near some shops. Now, something you should be aware of here… there is JR Rail which is the overground and Subway (which is obviously underground) however the ticket machines look (sorta) similair so of course we bought the wrong one. We only realised this after we had then gone onto the JR platform, so headed back to the ticket office where we were actually given a refund!! (lets see that in england!) and told which ticket to buy.

Dont ask why, but we again bought (the same!!) JR ticket but this time went down to the subway. It of course didn’t work, and we were sent back up to get another refund (boy did we feel stupid!) before we could finally get our tickets! lol…

Sanjo was a lot different from the city part of Kyoto, with more bars and nice scenery (though still pretty city based) however it did make us feel a lot better. Went to an all you can drink for 1500yen and tried to make the most of it, but got turfed at 12 as everything shut!!?!?!

This of course left us with nothing to do but wander the streets and try to find somewhere to sleep. No mean feat when its freezing cold and pouring with rain! doh! After trying to sleep on a step to the metro, justin got fed up and insisted we had to move on….

Only place left open was a Karaoke bar, so we proceeded to sing the rest of the night away (and cheekily sit in the foyer for the final hour when we ran out of money :)) - Left there at about 5:30 to walk down the canal for about 6 miles and watched the sunrise :)

Wasn’t sure what else to do, so went back to the main Kyoto station to look around. Its a massive building, but we weren’t actually sure why… We saw an escalator, so got on it… then at the top was another one… and another… and another… it just kept goind up and up until we were on the roof. We don’t have a clue what the designer was on when he thought up this place, but boy did he have a good idea… The place is amazing, the most amazing piece of architechture you will ever see! I hope the photos will come out as it really is awesome to look at… if ever you go to japan, you MUST go to Kyoto just for the station if nothing else!!

We were absolutely knackered by now, but stil thought we must find the cultural but of Kyoto, as there must be more than just city… We jumped on a train to Higashiyama.. and there we found it… The most beautiful part of Japan we have seen yet. Amazing, and hopefully captured in all the photos. There were shrines and temples and everything just looked… WOW!

There was even a Zoo, which we went into to have a look at the animals. I think it was good, but can’t really remember as when i sat down to have a rest… i just fell asleep. Justin can to find me, sat down, and fell asleep too!! lol… we realised now it was time to head to Osaka (if anyone tells you they are far apart, they’re lying… they’re only a 2.50 train ride from each other) - justin caught up with some sleep on the train whilst i had to stay on guard to make sure we didn’t miss our stop.

You think the buildings in Tokyo are impressive, head to Osaka. They are even more so (well the few we have seen so far) massive clean structures, that really give the place a futuristic feel. Even a huge ferris wheel that goes around one of them! - mission one was to find somewhere to sleep (boy did we need it) so headed to tourist information where they directed us to a local capsule hotel (Capsule Inn).

Findind the stupid place though was more than easy, even with the help of 2 maps and countless locals (one who even very kindly walked us around the whole area to find it!) it still took a good 30 minutes to get to it!!

If you don’t know what a capsule hotel is, imagine basically a load of pods, the length of a person, and high enough to sit up in stacked one on top of the other. You are allocated one of these, we you basically just go to sleep. Single sex only so no bring backs,. though the leeds people who rudely woke me up by shouting outside (they have no doors, just a blind) claimed he would be able to get someone back. I hope not as the sound proofing is pretty bad…

Slept there for a few hours, then headed out after a shower and teeth brush to find some nightlife. After walking about 5 minutes from our hotel, we hit THE shopping centre. This is pretty much underscribable to put the whole picture.. but basically it spans over 3 and a half miles!!!!!!!! There are arcades EVERYWHERE and anything you could ever want clothing related. Its called the Ebisubashi Shopping Street (which becomes Shinsaibashi Shopping Street further down) - but if you just head to that you will find the rest… believe me!

Eating wasn’t a problem, but finding a club proved hard. So hard in fact that we had to log in here to look them up :) That done, and this entry filled in, means we can finally leave and go get wasted in Osaka :)

Can’t do too much though as have to be out hotel by 10am tomorrow, and then sightseeing, before heading back to Tokyo to go a HardHouse/Trance night at Club Code in Shinjuku - HURRAH!