As I said, I am already exhausted even though it is only 6pm. Recently I have become accustomed to waking up at lucnhtime and having nothing to do -- and silently fretting about my lack of incoming income. Today, therefore, has been a huge shock to me. The good news is that I stand to make 19,500 yen, a pretty good amount and enough to keep me going for a while, and put a little away for that new IPod that I want to buy. The bad news is I was up at 5.30am to star in a Japanese TV program for the NHK network. However, the other good news is that while I was there I met a cute and alluring woman who is supposedly famous in Japan (although I don't know her name.) And the even better news is that she was openly flirting with me whenever we were together. Isn't that insane -- a TV star deciding to flirt with me! That's the sort of thing which would never happen back home!

The program was about the "nenkin" or pension system of Japan, which as in many western countries is suffering strain due to the ageing of the population. It was being filmed in Roppongi-ichichome, in the Samsung offices 20 stories above Tokyo. The building afforded stunning views of the hypermodern Tokyo skyline, a jumbled of strange futuristic buildings and overshot by bands of marauding crows. Cool! In the program I and this fellow Australian dude were playing office workers attending a meeting at a Japanese company, and it was pretty easy -- just sitting at a table flirting with the afforementioned famous babe. Can you imagine being paid for this shit? That's the beauty of living in Japan!

During the morning shoot, I came to realise something about Japanese -- beneath the stoic and reserved exterior, deep down they have a kind of chaotic sense of humour. It is almost a humour of craziness, if I can coin such a term. For example, sitting next to me at the table at Samsung was a famous Japanese comedian who called himself Takeshi, although that is not his real name. After meeting me he tried to practice his English: "Is this a pen or a desk? I can good English speak! Are you tired? Genki! Maybe!" Everyone was cracking up over this, they thought it was hilarious. Takeshi went on to explain that he once went to make a movie called Takeshi Castle, and during our exchange I was able to snap off this quick likeness of him. . However, I have since shown this photo to my students in Japan, and they don't recognise him. Maybe this Takeshi character is a fraud!