As you learn another language you start to realise that words which are commonly said in one language simply don’t exist in another. Either that or the usage of one word in a certain language is changed.

Walking about Tokyo, getting on with my life, I’d noticed that people tend to say natsukashi a lot. After looking up this word in my trusty pocket dictionary I discovered the definition for this word is nostalgic. That was good enough for me and I went on my merry way.

That definition suited me just fine for the longest time until one school lunchtime the kids were getting exceedingly happy about having jelly served up for the first time in ages. Almost in one voice they all exclaimed “Natsukashiiiiii“. This almost made my brain explode. I could not comprehend quite how any 8-year-old could justify calling anything nostalgic. “They’re eight”, my thought processes were reasoning, “They haven’t had the time to get nostalgic, everything is still new”.

It was that time I realised that natsukashi and nostalgic didn’t so much have a one to one correlation but natsukashi meants something more like, “This reminds me of something I enjoyed once, sometime ago”. I guess it could be something from your childhood anywhere up to 6 months ago.

This month, meanwhile, has been natsukashi overload for me. Recently I watched the live action remake of Ranma ½, which brought back so many memories. I first saw the original cartoon version way back when I was 14 in Colombia, in Spanish. It was the first cartoon I watched that I realised was from Japan and it set me off on the slippery slope that eventually led me to come here. I remember buying a new VCR that could play American videos just so I could import some from the US and watch it in English. I remember buying the comics and being shocked that I spent so much money on something I could read through in an hour.

Watching the live action show, it reminded me about all the silly gender bending humour, the original kung fu panda, love struck doctors, lost piglets and perverted old men. So much so I just had to procure all of the cartoon series and finally watch it through in Japanese and I’m having so much fun seeing it all again. I’m especially enjoying the early episodes I watched in English, way back when, and comparing how they originally sounded to the memories of the English version in my head. The American pronunciation of “Shikoku” still haunts my soul.

After writing this I realise that I have just described something that could be classed as nostalgic as well as natsukashi, oh well. On Friday I ate a saffron cake for the first time in ages, that was natsukashi, I guess.

Remember those old Supasnaps cameras? The ones that had half the film case hanging out and the fold away plastic viewfinder? They were all the rage when I was a kid and I would often take mine on school trips. Unfortunately from a 24 odd exposure roll I would often just end up with 9 photos back from the shop. 1 would be any good, a couple would be blurry and the rest would contain my finger in some shape or form.

My nostalgia for these old things was triggered by discovering the No Finder iPhone app on iTunes. No Finder is a camera app that (you guessed it) contains no viewfinder, just a big red button and some colour options. So you basically have to aim the iPod in the direction of what you want to shoot and hope for the best. This leads to the same sort of unpredictable fun that the Supasnaps camera did in my youth.

I’m am basically a man-child so I decided to go on an outing to a random place and relive my childhood happily snapping away in random directions and discovering the result only after the event. The location I choose was Kappabashi-dori in Tokyo.

Kappabashi-dori is a road near Asakusa’s famous Sensouji temple and is the capital’s go to place for restaurant supplies. The shops along the road sell everything from super sharp knives to industrial fridges to menu holders. Everything including the kitchen sink. The shops are very open to bargain hunters and tourists searching for crockery or unusual gifts. For me however the reason to go was not for the plates but for the delicious plastic food.

If you have ever been to Japan you would have noticed that the most mouthwatering food is on display outside almost every restaurant. This food never goes off because it is not real, it can’t be eaten and only ever touched to give a quick dusting. The fake plastic food is one of the things that Kappabashi-dori is best known for and can be bought from there very easily, as the restaurants buy it or in the form of things like fridge magnets and keyrings.

So below is a collection of photos taken at random, Supasnaps style. I think it came out rather well all things considered but if I had done this with a real camera I would have wasted about two rolls of film or so. God bless the digital age.

I’ll leave up to your imagination quite how many blurry shots I had to edit out.

I don’t think I ever actually finished a game of Warhammer back in the day.

Recently the weather here has been a bit random, raining one minute, boiling hot sunshine the next. So there I was sweltering in my coat, struggling to get to work, sweat pouring off my brow and then I heard a ringing: “Ding Dong De Ding Dong” (to the tune of ‘O Sole Mio‘, obviously).

“Ice Cream!”, I thought, “Just what I need to cool down!”

So I ran round the corner, down the road, following the sound. I felt like a kid again, remember those days? Hearing the ringing from a few streets away, hoping that you would be able to get your pennies from mum before the van goes past.

A moment later, I snapped out of my childhood nostalgia, the jingle was deafening by this point but I could not see any ice cream van. There was however a strong smell of petrol in the air and to my disgust and surprise I realised where the music was emanating from…

It was a bloody mobile petrol tank thing! There someone was, just in front of me, gleefully filling up a jerry can while having his ear drums shattered by the sound of bad and stupidly loud music. My brain really can’t comprehend why they use the tunes which once caused British children to run onto the street with delight, to sell planet destroying petrol. Where is the logic?