Over the course of my life, crime has barely affected me. The only time that it has reared its ugly head was when a website that I bought DVDs from got hacked and my credit card details were stolen. The thieves nefariously used it to buy £34 of wallpaper. Fortunately the folks at my credit  card company were able to cover the charges.

Oh, and when I was in Class 5 at school a classmate nicked issue 2 of Total! magazine out of my bag. Playground rules applied so I stole it right back again, only to find that the cheeky swine had written his name inside the front cover.

Japan certainly hasn’t been a problem for me regarding crime. Back home, in the UK, even in my hometown (especially in my hometown) I don’t feel save walking down dark alleys at night. In Japan however, it can be 4:30 in the morning and I could be walking around completely lost in an unfamiliar town, attempting to find the train station, without a care in the world.

The general naiveté stretches to others too. When I go to a Doutor coffee shop to partake in a little Japanese study or a delicious Milano Sandwich. I am always shocked about the amount of people who leave their bags unattended on seats to reserve their place in the café while they go and order. It seems both impudent and foolhardy all at once. In any other country in the world, this would be open invitation for a purse snatching. I’m glad this technique is not used to save spots in queues too, lest it result in some sort of terrible human dominos disaster.

There is the famous story of a Japanese tourist who left his bag unattended in a German train station. He left his bag attached by a chain to a bench and went off sightseeing. Only to cause a bomb scare which resulted in the evacuation of the station and the cancellation of 2 trains. When he returned he was welcomed by a rather large fine (10,000s of euros).

The lax security I’m most worried about though concerns credit cards. I first happened to use my British credit card in a shop called Tokyu Hands, a kind of Japanese John Lewis. I bought my purchases up to the counter and considering the high price of the goods I handed over my credit card.

Which I promptly got back with my receipt.

I didn’t enter any PIN, didn’t sign anything and I was wondering what just happened. I remember being very confused and the shop assistant just smiled and gestured outside.

This doesn’t happen in all shops but in many department stores and supermarkets a quick swipe is all that is required to pay. God help you if the card in question had already been swiped once before, by a thief!

I guess that this lack of signatures or PIN numbers is a result of Japan still being stuck in the middle ages, they still use family and personal seals for most things. But that is another story…..

The only things that I ever seem to hear of getting stolen are bikes but even that isn’t that common considering the amount of unlocked bikes I see. The general lack of security here astounding and it leaves me wondering, Where are the thieves?

While in a small bar, my friend was deejaying and I was just hanging around a bit and listening to drinks being ordered and fun being had. A girl who I vaguely knew came up to the bar and ordered a drink but what she said was a bit strange. She simply said “Omakase”

Knowing that she had spent some time in the UK and she had the spirit of the Liver bird in her I asked what that meant. She told me the meaning was “whatever“. The rest of my time there I became a bit obsessed with the idea that in Japanese bars up and down the land people were ordering their drinks with a dismissive “whatever“.

Only when I got home, looked it up and had a wee conversation with my Japanese teacher that I learnt that really it means something like “I leave it up to you.” It is often said when ordering cocktails in a bar or sushi in a restaurant when you are a regular and the server knows what you like.  Despite the fact I’m not a regular anywhere, I thought I would ask for this in a few places and see what on earth would happen and what would appear on my plate.

Sushi - In my favourite sushi restaurant they took this request very seriously. It may have just been that I had ordered from the sushi chef that never smiles but she asked me my sushi likes and dislikes and dutifully made me an interesting dish.

The squid, amberjack, shrimp and white thing combination was delicious.

Yakitori – At my local chicken on a stick place the omakase request was greeted with smiles and confusion. Eventually the waitress just decided to give me the house recommendation. Which was…

…more chicken on a stick. This one had a nice sauce on it though.

Dessert – At an izakaya I was once asked if I wanted choose from a selection of their delicious deserts. I felt this was a good time to spring an omakase on them. Again there was a shocked look and eventually a very simple dessert landed on my table.

This milk doughnut did hit the spot.

Alcohol – At one of my favourite drinking places they have rather a long bar. After I asked for omakase the barman had an equally long think. He then presented me with this:

It was sake mixed with lime cordial. It tasted quite good but got rather overexposed by the flash.

I realise now that if you put all these things together it would have made rather a pleasant light dinner. I may have to try my hand at omakaseing a whole meal.

In my life no one has really pointed out that I look like anyone famous, except some random internet face anayliser saying I look like that bloke off American Pie.

When teaching kids they always ask and point out the same things about me, “You have a big nose” they will say, “Why do you have blue eyes?”, “You have big shoes, where do you buy them?”, “Your hair is curly, let me touch it”. Such statements are often said to me in quick fire style. As a result, I expected people to come up to me and constantly compare me to random western celebrities with big noses (which is all of them from a Japanese point of view) but it never happened.

This was until, after a delightful meal, the waitress lent over and asked me, “Are you Chado-san?”. Neither me or my dinner guest had any idea what she was on about and wrote her off as a loony. Some time later, in a crowded bar, a guy came up to me and said “You’re Chad, aren’t you? Don’t deny it.” I denied it and he spent the rest of my time in there giving me ‘I know your little secret‘ faces until I got weirded out and left.

Curious about who this Chad character is I googled for him and found this:

This bloke is called Chad Maren and he does not look like me. He comes from Australia, has become a comedian in Japan and he does not look like me. It’s impressive that he came here, became proficient enough in Japanese to get on TV and be funny but he does not look like me.

At all.

Let’s look at this scientifically.

See! Nothing alike. In fact, I would wager that Mr. Chad looks more like Jerome off Robson and Jerome than me.

I also don’t look like Jerome.

When high school kids start shouting “Hey Chad!” at me from the opposite train platform of Futamatagawa station they are just deluded. Or have bad eyesight.

You may or may not know that I bought a Super Famicom recently. The nostalgia kick is immense and great childish fun. I have lots of things to say about my SuFami experiences but don’t want to clog up this blog with all that stuff. Due to having quite a lot of free time at work, I’ve made a brand new website.

I introduce to you to SuFamiThoughts.com, please come and have a look. If you want to contribute let me know.

This may be a controversial title but please allow me to explain myself.

There have been a couple of times when I’ve been talking to Americans, who in general are ever so lovely people, and they have complemented me on my “excellent Japanese pronunciation”. Any good feeling I have at this moment is instantly countered by the follow-up comment “British people usually have such terrible Japanese accents”.

My internal reaction is “Say that again?” with a surprised look. Americans, who can barely speak English properly let alone Japanese, telling me this sends me up the wall. If this had only been said by one person I would have shrugged it off but I’ve had it said to me on no less than 3 occasions.

As someone who grew up watching anime, I have seen a fair few English dubs in my time. Most of these were produced in America (a lovely place) and as long as they stuck to normal English words everything sounded fine. However, as soon as Japanese words, names or places were uttered, things turned really unnatural. The way I’ve heard words like sakura, Shikoku and Tomoe mangled still sends a shiver down my spine. Ever heard the American dub of Dragon Ball? They can’t even get kame-hame-ha right.

I remember one time I was walking around Harajuku with another American friend (lovely bloke whose Japanese is miles better than mine) and he pulled me up on my pronunciation of the word “kanji”.

“Kanji?! Kanji?!”, he was saying, “It’s pronounced ‘khaan-ji’”.

At this point a kept my mouth shut, bowing to his superior Japanese ability but what I should have said was “か is pronounced ’ka’, you fool, not ‘kar’. I’m talking about chinese letters not about driving and certainly not about Star Trek characters.”

I have always considered the notion that British English (well Estuary English really) and Japanese pronunciation of vowel sounds are fairly similar. Many times have I listened Japanese podcasts warning me about pronouncing the Japanese word tomato as “tomato” and not “tomayto” with a shrug. The Japanese pronunciation of that small red fruit sounds far more English to me than the American pronunciation.

And maybe this is the problem, American English sounds a bit odd to me but to the same extent I’m sure British English sounds strange to our American cousins. So when we speak Japanese with a British twang it may sound odd to American ears and vice versa. I’m also sure that when any native English learner of Japanese tries to speak to a Japanese person they find our accents pretty odd. This has been confirmed by the amount of times I’ve tried to order a hamburger (sorry, hanbaagaa) at McDonald’s only to be given a blank stare by the guy serving me.