We left at dawn with all the Japanese kids, all of us sweating, them in their tight racing-striped tees and platform boots and hair dyed blonde, hair dyed blue. There was a locker room where we all had checked our bags and it really looked like a gym locker room and for a moment I fantasized I was one of them in a Tokyo school. I liked to stand among them, their titters and glances dancing around me.

Roger and I went into a train station and a British couple approached us to chat. They'd been out celebrating his birthday – happy birthday, we said. He'd had "quite a few beers, mate, quite a few tequilas." Turns out they were there teaching English; they lived in a tiny apartment somewhere and had this strange ex-pat life. They were ordinary working-class British, down to earth and fast-talking. We asked them what it was like and the guy riffed about Japan and the Japanese. He was funny and I liked him. He said it was right strange living here, mate. The Japanese do not feel shame the way we do, he noted. For example, they are not the least bit disinclined to stare straight into your eyes for a long while simply because you're white. It happens to him all the time, he said. He'll be on a train and he'll sense something a bit off and look up to find the commuter across the aisle staring intently at him and, rather than looking away in embarrassment upon being caught, unflinchingly continuing to stare, every bit as intently. And also the customs, you have to be careful. It's quite taboo to eat while standing up. Very taboo. Don't eat a piece of pizza or something standing on the platform of a train or walking down the street. And don't blow your nose in public. You may just as well be wiping your arse.

What do you eat?

Lots of noodles mate. You get used to noodles. You have to get used to noodles if you want to live in Japan. Food is bloody expensive but noodles are fucking cheap, mate. And a bit of seafood now and then yeah? But the shop is very strange here too. The way prices are for things. For example you can go into a shop and find a mini-stereo, speakers, CD player, radio, the whole lot, for 3,500 yen. And then you go to the fruit section of the store right? And you pick up a package of red apples, three polished red apples packed in clear wrap on a green styrofoam tray and you look at the price and it's… 3,500 yen.

The girl was quieter but funny too and I liked them both. She had brown hair tied back severely in a ponytail and bright red lipstick and lots of mascara and a sexy sort of form-fitting leather jacket. Roger said are you a Jordy then? She smiled and said yeah, she's from Newcastle, can you tell? And Roger said yeah, you got a Jordy accent.

I took a great picture of the two of them on the train, her head on his shoulders, and then they got off forever and there I was with Roger on our way back out through the suburbs, gray and dewy this time, schoolgirls staring with their white socks up. We got off in a little town near the airport and took a walk, and he wanted to go see a monastery or some fucking thing and I just wanted an excuse to leave him so that's where we parted, him walking down the road, me hailing a cab back to the hotel. I took a shower, numb and nauseous, and took the bus to the airport and flew back around the world.