Yoyogi

Today’s Podcast Location

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This week’s podcast was recorded by the fountains in Yoyogi park in Tokyo with Karamoon and myself. Here are some of the topics we talked about with some useful links.

1) The Learn Japanese Pod Facebook group, Mixi community, Twitter and the Forums.

2) Useful websites and blogs about Tokyo: Tokyo Heels which can be found at Tokyo Weekender

3) Tame goes wild

4) Tokyo Marathon

5) Japanese Pod Get Together.

This is a great chance to meet new people, learn some Japanese and hear some traditional Japanese music for free. This event is being held in conjunction with The Japanese Lounge at The Pink Cow on 7th December from 7pm.

6) Baird Beers Tap Room

This is a micro brew pub with some awesome little beers just off Takeshita Dori in Harajuku. The “Yabai yabai” beer is excellent.

7) Oriental Bazaar

8) Kiddy Land

9) Japanese Language Proficiency Test

Other topics included were
Yoyogi Park, Harajuku and Omotesando.

Tags: Fun Friday, harajuku, Japan, Japanese, japanese language proficiency test, JLPT, karamoon, kiddy land, omotesando, oriental bazaar, tame goes wild, tokyo, tokyo in heels, tokyo marathon, tokyo weekender, weekender, yoyogi

Friday, December 4th, 2009 Fun Friday Comments

Fun Friday: Namaste India Festival in Yoyogi Park

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Today I checked out the Namaste India Festival in Yoyogi and took along my ipod recorder. I bumped into my friend Ady who took the pictures in this post. I’ll be posting some of my own pictures up soon. Here are some pictures and thoughts on what happened today.The food was amazing, the smells intoxicating, the dancing amazing and the music more jolly than a herd of elephants dressed in saris crashing through a Bollywood set. It was great to get my India fix and as an Englishman, I need my curry, it has become the national dish or after pub grub in the UK now.

I mentioned during the podcats that there were 100,000 people which I think was an exaggeration. Probably more like 20,000, oops. Suffice it to say it was packed out with people queuing for food, chatting and slowly

getting drunk by the food stalls.

I also claimed in the podcast that Indian restaurants in London give you free papadoms and condiments whereas the ones in Japan don’t. Ady corrected me on this saying that you can get free appetizers but it probably helps if you are Indian.

I’ve noticed that Indian culture has become gradually more popular in Japan in recent years. The numbers of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have been increasing. When I first came to Japan more than 12 years ago there weren’t as many Indian restaurants as there are now. Now there are not only small run family restaurants but big chains such as Samrat. Japan just became that little bit more delicious.

Ady taught us a little Hindi and how the grammar is similar to Japanese. Perhaps that is why many of the Indian people I have met here don’t seem to struggle with picking up the Japanese language quickly. I won’t tell you the Hindi my mates from London taught me from my school days. It wasn’t something your grandmother wouldn’t want to hear.

All in all it was a great festival and even better for bumping into Ady and my friends.

It’s still going on tomorrow (26th September 2009) so if you have a chance check it out. Lola Kutty would be proud.

Here is a video of Chadha, an Enka singing Indian who has been in Japan for 30 years. Ady told me he was popular about 20 years ago but has now had a bit of a come back. Who’d have thought…

NOTE: At 14:05 you will hear a woman shouting “Alex!”. This is Lola Kutty, an MTV VJ and very funny woman from southern India. You can check her out here.

Tags: bollywood, Fun Friday, hindi, India, indian, indian food, Japan, languages, Learn Japanese pod, lola kutty, Namaste India Festival, papadom, saris, tokyo, yoyogi

Sunday, September 27th, 2009 Fun Friday, Podcasts Comments

Rainbow Over Tokyo

Today I saw this amazing rainbow in Yoyogi next to the NHK hall. It stopped us in our tracks and hypnotised us to pull out our Twitter connected mobile phones and snap away. I was standing near the outdoor stage listening to some DJs spin which they are still possibly doing now.