Nagashima Spaland: On Fear and Levelling Up

This is my childhood nightmare.

All through the blazing, sticky-moist, dog-star-pooing-all-over-your-shoes summer, Nick was keen on going to this waterpark. Supposedly the best in Western Japan, and world record holder for highest number of waterslides per square metre. His enthusiasm was like that of a small child being offered a kaleidoscope or a playing card smeared in chocolate or any object. I was a little more reserved, for reasons that anyone who has seen me try to swim will understand.

I don't like water. I have grudgingly accepted that I need it to live, but outside of the appropriate parameters I'm not really happy with the whole concept. I don't like water in my eyes or up my nose. When I am in a body of water, I am not graceful, nor do I accept the situation with grace, instead flailing as if fighting the water will turn it back into air and earth. My P.E. teachers laughed and cried and stamped their feet in a series of one-man operas. I can swim well enough to not die, probably. Anything past that gets a bit murky.

But new things are the order of the day. I live in a faraway country. I tried weird fish. (Carp-e diem?) Most importantly, shut up I'm not a chicken YOU are. Off I went to a waterpark!

Nagashima Spaland is comprised of a shopping centre, a set of waterslides and a set of rollercoasters, and the most reassuring thing about the waterpark was that the rollercoasters looked far, far worse. A fear to conquer another day. I approached the first slide with jellylegs. It was the kind where you swirl around in a bowl, before falling into a pool through a hole in the middle. It reminded me of the charity bins you used to throw coins into in McDonalds.

Not pictured: my screams.

"Can I go ahead of you?" I asked Nick. "If I don't do it right now I won't do it at all." When I took a breath and pushed myself down the slide, there were a few nanoseconds of pleasure interspersed mainly with upset and lizard-brain fear. After a few dodgy laps of the bowl I dropped through the hole like a weight. I think my foot found the surface first and through waggling of all limbs I somehow uprighted myself. The lifeguard at the bottom looked concerned.

Two or three more slides followed. I had the same feelings: anxiety, trepidation, small bursts of adrenaliney something that might have been fun. It was on the fourth slide, I think - a tube slide mostly in darkness - when it clicked. I was about a third of the way down when it happened. I stopped being scared. I got it. The lurches in my stomach became exciting, the twists and turns exhilerating. Suddenly I was laughing and not afraid at all. I was enjoying myself. I didn't want the slide to end. I actually said whee. And then I finished and wanted to get right back on again.

This is probably really boring for anyone who isn't me. But in life you generally grow up subtly, imperceptibly. You realise that it's been a few months since you found anything growing in your coffee mug. You wonder when you started being able to dispose of spiders. You gradually care less and less about what people think about you, to the point where you can write an obtuse and barely-read blog and not really worry because you do it for yourself. There aren't many moments where you level up, in an instant. I was lucky to have one. On a waterslide. With my arse squeaking against a dinghy.


After that I almost completely stopped being a chicken, at least about water-related things, and even went on the biggest ride in the park, which goes vertical and causes gravity to eat your stomach. It was a pretty amazing change for someone who's been crap with water their whole life. I even wanted to go back to Nagashima the following week. Everyone else did too. Highly recommended.


Many thanks to Nick and Alyssa for not laughing at my stupid face and brain. Many thanks to the lovely staff member who helped me when I got stuck on a wet mat (don't ask). Many thanks to Nagashima Spaland in general for being great and fun and making me feel warm fuzzy things inside.

Many not-thanks to the one shitty slide I didn't enjoy after my epiphany, not because it was scary but because it was clearly old, poorly-maintained, bumpy and gave me big old bruises on my elbows. Fuck you, slide.

This fucker.

Hokkaido 2: Hokkaidening

After our trip to Hakodate we took a grumpy, overloaded, beige-flecked train to Sapporo where we spent the rest of our holiday putting beer and ice cream in our mouths and then also more beer. We reclined in biergartens. We discovered there is such a thing as a 'standing bar', which is basically a bar where you can't sit down, and also discovered that this is as terrible an idea as it sounds.

Look, so happy.

Most of the holiday involved either lying down or sitting down chewing, so I won't log the whole thing in detail. However, for the benefit of future generations I thought it prudent to sketch out a few highlights:

Log Kit

The first morning back, we wanted burgers. After seven months here, the volume of guilt I feel about eating non-Japanese food is rapidly approaching nil. The mysteriously titled "Log Kit" restaurant squats at the end of Tanuki Street, a covered arcade named for a Japanese raccoon/fox/dog-like creature which features prominently in folklore. You might know it as the thing Mario turns into sometimes.

Log Kit had a TV blaring in the corner and a wall full of photos of people enjoying burgers and chilli fries, including a prominently positioned one with white people in it as a proud show of authenticity. I had a BLT slathered in Japanese-style mayo, which is slightly less egg-like and a little more piquant than Western mayo, for those of you who are interested in mayonnaise.

The food was pretty good but the main thing I enjoyed about it was the TV. I don't have a TV in my flat, so doctors' offices and bars are the only places I really get to see Japanese shows. I've seen TV crews out filming more times than I've seen any actual shows. From what I've been told, Japanese TV is actually a little boring - far from its international reputation as OMG CRAZIEST SHIT EVAR, apart from a few good dramas it's apparently pretty mundane and tends to stick to tried-and-tested formulas: show food, interview celebrity, get celebrity to eat food, celebrity compliments food, host does vox pops about food, man cross-dresses for no reason. Nonetheless my lack of exposure to these shows mean they still fascinate me. The show we watched involved two...teams (?), who were either family or dressed up like family (some in school uniforms, older women deliberately dressed as pearl-bedecked powdered matriarchs etc.), who had to sit round a table and guess (?) whether the food they were eating was cheap or expensive (?), and did a lot of strategising about something or other. After the break there was a second element, clearly sponsored, where people had to pretend to order something from a sushi restaurant and an angry woman would tell them whether the restaurant actually served that item or not, followed by a big enthusiastic endorsement of the item. There was a big eel and a massive onigiri and so on. This is what I see pretty much every time I see any Japanese TV.

We also walked past this shop a lot. 

Don Quijote

Tanuki Street also has a Don Quijote, which is something of a cross between Wilkinsons, Poundstretchers, Hawkins Bazaar and the back of a guy's van. There's actually one or two in Nagoya but I hadn't come across any, so popping in here for novelty hats and tin openers and weird underwear was a top priority. My favourite part was the transition between (I think) the third and fourth floors, which takes you via escalator from a cheap-and-cheerful discount snack store to a weird-sex-costume-and-dodgy-discount-electronics sleazedungeon:

Even the hair straighteners in this section looked unsettling.

TV Tower

The central line of greenery which neatly and politely cuts through Sapporo is dominated by the figure of the TV Tower. You can go inside where there are souvenir shops and arcade games and stuff, including the very first whack-a-mole game I've ever actually seen in real life. For a few hundred yen you can also go up to the observation deck and view the whole city stretching away towards Hokkaido's adorably bumpy mountains.

Undoubtedly the best part of the tower was the part where you could buy fridge magnets featuring Hokkaido's mascot animal, the bear:

No comment.

Beer gardens

Blue beer!

Cherry beer! Tasting like cherry-almond bakewell!

And regular beer! You know what that looks like!

Something like this?

Accidental squid

I accidentally ordered some squid, and then, because it was a small restaurant and it was very hard to deflect attention, I ate some squid. It looked like a pork or chicken curry in the picture, but when the curry came I ascertained, from my years of experience in veterinary medicine, that it wasn't either of those meats. My main clue was the big rubbery tentacles. I don't like seafood, and I especially don't like squid. My last experience with squid involved me almost choking after a tragic onion ring/calamari mixup. But since I am now a pretend adult who lives in a different country and pays tax (probably), I swallowed my unhappiness and finished my meal anyway. It was all right. Bit chewy, bit fishy. Anyone who isn't a picky eater will probably look down on me for being so proud of eating squid; for eating a relatively normal meal without blecking and mithering like a child. I don't really mind. My brothers in arms will understand.

Romantei

Hokkaido makes dairy. Cheese, chocolate, butter. Cream. Chocolate. Butter. Chocolate. Cream. I'd read about this well-respected confectioner online, and was able to blindly prod my way through their all-Japanese website enough to roughly discern where it was (opposite the train station...maybe). We reached the right address but weren't sure where to go from there. Nick and I paced between buildings like uncertain cats, sniffing for the scent of chocolate and meowing at strangers. Eventually we tried our luck in the one that looked like a department store. I think I expected some sort of chocolate palace, which I didn't receive....or at least, not right then. I roamed the department store's food hall looking for the big glossy cake shop, possibly contained within an actual big cake. I actually found it right when I was about to leave, in a corner by the door; a humble, unsuspecting stall. But such a tasty stall.

I meant to buy one or two things for myself, maybe some souvenirs for others as well. I actually bought five things for myself. I even bought some non-chocolatey fruit-based desserts which, as we all know, are for chumps. They were also pretty reasonably-priced for something so rich and fancy-looking. Japan supposedly has a high cost of living but apart from a few noticeable things (rent and fruit are the big ones) I'm usually pleasantly surprised by how little people try and rip you off. In London you'd probably have to sell at least one of your eyes for five attractive desserts.

Then we couldn't find a place to sit down and there were no nice parks or benches so I sat on a ledge and opened the box and suddenly all my cakes were gone and there was custard on my face.

The world's longest garlic bread

                                     

Aforementioned chocolate palace

After the Romantei incident I clearly hadn't had enough. We took a subway to the end of the line in search of Shiroi Koibito Park, a chocolate-themed attraction created in celebration of a famous local biscuit (white chocolate, sandwiched between two spongey vanilla cookies, oishii as all-get-out).

The area around the park is unremarkable. Wide American-style roads, a petrol station, some sort of medical facility. Then you smell white chocolate. Then you see the brightly coloured windows filled with bubbles and Rube Goldberg machines. Then you go in, and everything is magic.

Rose gardens, mock-Tudor decor, model trains, creepy animatronics. All the hallmarks of a half-remembered place your parents took you as a toddler. I'm cynical and awful and I loved it. Unfortunately we got there quite late in the day, after the factory tour had closed, but there was a fascinating part where you could watch staff make sweets through a window. No pics of that, felt too weird. I also felt too weird to take a picture of the middle-aged businessman sitting on his own in a child's wendyhouse, so here's one of me instead.

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So yeah. I went on holiday. You don't like it? Well DON'T COME ON HOLIDAY WITH US THEN. Go on, get out of it. Go on your own holiday.