Lucky Gym

I have now started my internship, and am enjoying the delights of daily relations with a chair and a computer once again. Things picked up with today's revelation that there's a Subway that only takes an acceptable-lunch-break-length's to walk there, eat and journey back, so that's a fairly regular six-hundred yen that I'll be losing out my pocket every afternoon sometime 'twixt one and three. Does beat sitting in the smoking section at Tully's Coffee drinking bitter black caffeinated hard as nails water and chewing on a hotdog with bizarrely finely grated gherkin atop it. Doesn't beat a cigarette-sucking Japanese man who could have easily lived in three centuries leaning over to you, taking the little milk sachet/pot-let out of your very hands and then prising the plastic/foil seal off it for you with Krueger-esque fingernails before unceremoniously dropping the whole milk/seal/pot in your gasoliney coffee.

But having now left the delights of that particular coffeehouse, Subway it is. Once again, Japan has managed to take something I know much better than the back of my hand and just mess with little details, which completely addled my sleep-deprived (and in a rather Pavlovian manner, expecting coffee with lunch) brain. Subway Tokyo-style, you go up, you choose your filling and bread, which were understandably different from the UK, but, yes, I could deal with that, but then they toasted the filling and the bread separately. And then my sandwich artist put the salad on first. Then the filling, and then the topping. By the time he asked if I wanted a drink with that in flawless English the Queen and maybe even Kate Middleton would have been proud of, I was almost quivering.

On the subject of nervous wreakages, had a minor existential breakdown at the gym. Having now returned to my treadmill overlooking the lights of Shibuya, and once again started up the regular half-hour staring contest with the crows that roost on the roof of the building opposite, I fast discovered that after a week of sedentary browsing and evenings of what I will tentatively call comfort food but really means easy calorific fixes after long days at the office (which from now on will of course be remedied by work-out sessions and McDabstinence), but after all that I could no longer cope with forty-five minutes at eight-and-a-half km./hr. Add it up, calculate the calories burnt or unburnt - the guilt sets in, and you head back to the gym and do the manly thing and then have to head back to your little room and iron four shirts and the testosterone just about levels out

Back in the gym: we - the treadmill and I, connected by the wire from my earphones that seems to link us charging forwards but not heading out over the precipice of the five floors between the sheer glass window and the paved concrete below, along with the five feet of feminine something that I couldn't see in my periphery but was wearing perfume for her work-out, so was worthy clearly of some of my peripheral attention - clocked in just over twenty minutes  before I caught sight of my years flashing (literally) past my eyes: 20:01, 20:02. 20:03, 20:04, 2005, 2006... by the time we hit 20:20 and then 2030 and then 2040 my sweat was running cold as sweat can get before it's not sweat and you're frankly just leaking a little out of fear.

Sometimes I sweat just because it's a hot room and I'm still wearing my coat. I think that's fairly usual. Was such a case last Friday, after I (sort of) blagged my way into the opening reception for an exhibition based around Spike Jonze's new short film, I'm Here. You can watch it online, though I won't patronise with a link, though I'd recommend find it. Like Where The Wild Things Are but with twentysomethings who also happen to be robots falling in love in L.A. It's the invention, the creativity, the ideas that get me. Anyways, fan-boy issues aside, event was sponsored by Absolut Vodka, blah, feeling gregarious, blah blah, met Sonny Gerasimowicz and Meryl Smith, blah blah blah. But didn't meet Spike Jonze, Andrew Garfield, or Sienna Guillory. Admittedly, they weren't there. But then, come Saturday, I did walk in on the (and I quote) 'godawfully pretty girl' from Miila and the Geeks at her little store in Shibiya. 'Cept I didn't realise it was her until after I'd asked her if this tiny little indie record store carried any records by her band, and then discovered who she was. Awkward in my fave kinda way. And she's going to mail me her record. And she invited me to her next gig. And we tweeted each other. 

But on a more realistic note - p'haps even an aside - have now gained a place at a university of choice. Out of five chosen, two offers so far from three that didn't interview, and one rejection from the two that did. Seems my ex-girlfriend (and current girl friend, sorry M) was right when she told me, 'Jamie - you're much better on paper than in real life.' And so I blog away merrily, free from angst and worries, you know.