Osaka to Sendai

OKEY - Im not tired - it is 5am - i guess the morning coffee and then afternoon coffee and coffee jelly drink??? and coffee chocolate cookies had their combined effect. Situation: Japan - the boat from Shanghai arrived yesterday morning after two days and nights at sea. A lot of chatting with other travellers, one nice show in the foyer of the medium sized ferry, some reading, relaxing in the big bath watching the blue sea and tooth ache and catching a cold from the air conditioning - sneeze!
I met a particually interesting polish boy with a Pushkin haircut exactly my age and like me he looked several years older anｄ is going bald but he was really intelligent and had a lot of expereince. He was very Polish and respectable and rough at the same time. My friend Martin used to call me the Noble Brute, this dude was one too, less brutish but more irrideemable. A very interseting man.
We cycled from the port into Osaka and i went to sleep in the house of our couchsurfing host who was out but had left his door unlocked for us - total dude! Lots of impressions - Osaka is very tidy, the locals are not so curious as in china and things are very developed and people generally seem quite sophisticated! Today we worked hard all day looking for places to play music and earn money to go to the sendai street jazz festival - it is about 700km north of here but it costs about 250 dollars to take the train there. You can take a train across the WHOLE of china for 70 dollars! People had been telling us we would make bags of money here but noone who told us that had every tried playing on the street and my suspicions that we would not be instant underground jazz heros seem to be true.
I played about 7 hours of music today in several bars and cafes and on the streets around town - a few people like our music but they dont really give tips - just buy a cd and most dont like the music enough to buy a cd so it looks like i am not going to be able to visit this jazz festival which finishes tomorrow. We all felt a little depressed so we went to a cheap-looking fry up joint. It was good food but it cost 30 dollars instead of 3 dollars each like we had expected. All a bit bummed out, I had just had an argument with a european customer in a bar. We were all depressed and came home with our tails between our legs.
We met a really nice japanese local who took us to several cafes and bars and a ceramics shop to play music and sang along in japanese. He was so funny and like a fairy. He asked if we could play some songs and the bar owner said yes. However after our first song I heard a group of white men laughing and saying - "Go back on the street where you belong!" I was a little shocked. I passed the hat around and they gave me angry looks. We played one last song and I thought - shall I just leave, but no, I went back to their table and said "Excuse me, please keep your negative comments to yourself, there is no need to be so rude!" I was pretty furious, after 9 months travelling around Asia we had never heard comments like that and I hope i am correct in saying that we are playing better than before. Well, I got into a big argument and the meanest man said that if I cant take some comments from the crowd I should not be a performer. I was really angry, I really felt he deserved to be hurt - his friends supported him but one was trying to calm things down. I was very upset and triin was crying for the next 20 minutes so we gave up playing music and went and got ripped off in this expensive restaurant. I am cooler now, as i write the black sky is turning grey up over the skyscrapers of Osaka and somewhere there is a cockeral calling.
I still want to try to go to Sendai for the festival because it may be fun but at the moment i am quite bumbed out by Japan. It seems like I had arrived in the land where all the things I had complained about in china were in abundance: Coffee, a strong currency, privacy in public, orange juice .. well that was about all - but here I loose all the curious, kind Chinese and we are ignored by most people as we perform. No crowd, maybe one or two people watching from a safe distances. And everything is just too expensive to afford. On the money we earn we lived much much much better in China!!! many many times better. I hope this is just a bad first impression if not, I am considering making enough money to get a new china visa and for the boat and giving up on japan totally. I guess I got to visit my brother henry in tokyo but I found myself agreeing with triin that although we did not want anyone hurt, it would be a good thing in our little minds if china had invaded japan and this place was full of uneducated, funny, curious, unliberated and mellow chinese who returned our smiles! I hope my opinion changes. I think it is hard not to visit china and japan and not have an opinion on their common animosity but even with the police control, lack of freedom, sheltered and restricted possibilities of most people in china I like their current culture more than the japanese so far..... I hope this is just a bad first impression - if it was this bad in the first 2 days, I am afraid the next few days will just underline my suspicions.

3 days later in SENDAI

Up in north east japan. Taking express trains through the night at 250km per hour. Looking at the tiny streets below, clean, neatly lined, lights for shops and everything so clinical - all zooming past. We had bought the regional ticket but I allowed myself to be shown to the express train - just a stupid tourist! Despite the fact it is bullet shaped and it arrived at 11pm instead of 7am, Triin did not realise we had taken the wrong train until we were stopped at the barrier at sendai. I did not tell her so she would put up a more convincing protest if we were asked. The guard wanted 100 dollars from us and we showed them our 2 dollars in change, they told us to phone our couch surfing friend to come and pay up 100 bucks so we phoned Autumn who said she would meet us at her metro stop and then we ran. Instead of heading for the metro we ran into the shopping mall, jumped over a gate and a plastic hedge and found ourselves in a Play Station Major Intersection. Electric doors opening into halls full of Pochenko players and a white noise of whirling pinball machines. We bounced from corridor to corridor and fell out of the main exit into the black street rain. I upped my umbrella and hid in a queue of commuters. Although we were under a shelter others had their brollies erected so I did too and looked sneaky eyed behind it eksplaining to Triin why we had run, until our autobus pulled up and we scampered on.
Our couch surfing hostess Autumn welcomed us with sushi and smiles. I am going to give japan a week before I write a comdemnation to the UN and encourage all my chinese friends to invade with their cheap restaurants,　limited education,　smiles and money mad communism. We just harvested some runner beans and cucumbers from Autumns allotment and she is taking us surfing now so I am going to have a day off work.
All the best jimbino
(code name: James)