I spent much of the day with Inoue-san and Tamie-san at a new year’s party at their apartment in Mitaka, another Western suburb of Tokyo. It took about an hour to get there between two trains and a bus. Imaoka Ato-san (deep in thought using the computer in this photo) kindly agreed to meet me at the train station and show me where to go on the bus and to their door. After hanging around outside for a bit at the station I popped back inside and found Ato-san waiting there for me, of course. We wandered over towards the bus stops and he rang Tamie-san on his keitai (Japanese for mobile phone, also keitai-denwa). She’d forgotten something she needed for the party (don’t you always) so we had to retrace our steps to the station which is in the same building at Kichijouji as the shopping centre. That done, we headed back tot he bus station once again. It had turned a little bit colder in Tokyo today, though it’s probably still a little unseasonably warm. During the wait for the bus, another of the Nippon committee turned up and joined us in the queue, heading for the same party. When getting off the bus we found that another of the Inoue’s friends had also been on the bus so there were four of us at the door when we arrived.

One of my oldest friends amongst the Nippon 200 committee, HIRAI Hirohide (Jack)-san was there already, along with some other known and unknown people (see photo and photo). Fannish parties in Japan are very much like fannish parties in the UK and the US. Good food, plenty of alcohol (some of it good, some of it “ordinary”) and enough soft drinks and conversation. Lots of conversation. I chatted in English and sometimes adding in bits of simple Japanese to many of the others. Joining Inoue-san and the group in the tatami-floored room (photo) made me realise just how little Japanese I do still know, however. I could not follow that conversation at all. Occasional snippets of meaning drifted through to me and some of the gesture language was obvious, particularly the “rude” bits, but still I felt welcome and at ease with the group. They are fans, after all.

New word of the day is kekko, which means excellent, fine etc. It’s also used in much the same way as English in the polite refusal of an offer (usually of food or drink) as in “I’m fine, thanks” or “kekko desu” in Japanese.

We had a bit of a linguistic barrier at one point when Tamie-san tried to say something about the “funny-chair”. I couldn’t follow what she was talking about until she wrote it down – furniture. Still, we did have a “funny chair” in the room – Inoue-san himself. I wish I could understand more Japanese, as his anecdotes, apparently about Japanese fandom in previous decades, had the rest of them in stitches very often.

Oh, and packet number two of the “Bassett’s Traditional Cherry Drops” were duly delivered to Inoue-san, along with a gift from Martin Easterbrook.