correction about the monks...

It would seem that I was very wrong about where the monks are playing. In my over excitement in reading the address, I mistook the ku [区] for the place name. SO, the bar is actually the other side of Tokyo, in the East part of the city in Edogawa-Ku [江戸川区], in a place called Matsushima [松島]. Apparently, it's 5mins walk from Shinkoiwa station on the JR line [JR新小岩駅徒歩5分].

Still trying to search out when the monks will be back, might even attempt to phone and ask, but will have to spend a lot of time looking up words like: 'buddhist' and 'Monk' in the dictionary first...

Buddhist Monks in Bars...

Glorious news!!!!
Buddhist monks are trying to reach a wider audience by going to a Jazz bars to perform their chants of buddhist teachings [仏教音楽; 祈りの歌]!!! how COoooool is that?! [full article here]

So, I've tried to find the bar: サ ウンド　ミュージック　バー　Chippy (Chippy Sound and Music Bar)
and it's not tooo far from where we live....some where in Edagowabashi [江戸川橋].

Apparently, the last time they played was on the 19th of Dec, and I can't seem to find the schedule for next year :( boooo!

Nikko 日光

To celebrate Ben's visit, we went to Nikko [日光] for the weekend. It's not too far from Tokyo (only a couple of hours on the limited express) and has some nice temples to give you feel of Japan. So, we thought it would be a nice introduction for Benny...

After we got to the nearest train station, we wandered around for a bit to try and find the tourist information centre, to work out where the Ryokan that we booked was...Turns out that it was a bus ride away, but there was a free shuttle or we could buy a ticket on the public bus system...we chose to have lunch while waiting for the free shuttle bus to take us up to our ryokan. We had some Soba [そば] with yuba [ゆば] - tofu skin, sounds horrible but was really tasty....very soft and tender.

After some of the tourist information people really went out of their way to check that we got on to our bus, we spent about 20mins in the bus before we got to our ryokan. The bus wound its way up the mountain, into the snow...

We settled into our room, then went for a walk around 'town'...which turned out to be pretty small... we found a few little temples, the source of the onsen [温泉] water for the ryokans [see photo], closed foot baths, a cafe by a lake (which we had some Umai shou - sweet warm sake [甘酒]to warm ourselves up)

source of onsen [温泉] water for the local ryokans

a poor attempt to dispose of Ben in the (rather sulphurous) onsen [温泉] water

Greg trying to give a temple bell a good whack, about 50yens worth of whack...despite the fact the bell had kinda been tied up didn't stop us.

A frozen puddle on a stone (just to show how cold the place was...)

We then went back to the ryokan when it started getting dark (not before a little snowball fight...) and had our 'traditional' Japanese dinner. In the general tradition of Japanese dinners at ryokans, it was very colourful. We had soy milk based nabe [鍋], which had some tofu making syrup to pour into the nabe pot afterwards to make the remaining soy milk [豆乳] into soft tofu. there was also ikura [いくら] (salmon roe) in a very small cocktail-looking shot glass, the standard rice, fish, sashimi, some unidentifiable green cuboidal substance (which didn't taste of much except the soy sauce that I put on), some fish-cake...and other needlessly colourful foods... Basically, there were lots of small plate of things, which didn't look like it would fill you up, all beautifully arranged which was very hard to finish, because we were very full when we were only about half-way though...

Anyway, after that we tried the onsen [温泉] and then went to bed; ready for a day of walking tomorrow....

So, the next morning we took the shuttle bus, put on by the ryokan, down to the centre of town, from where we started our little tour. The first site (which was just opposite the road from where the bus dropped us off, was this rather famous land mark of Nikko (which name escapes me). Which, I might add, you are not allowed to walk on...


We were actually lucky enough to catch the end of the Momiji season (red leaves of autumn...) [紅葉]...hence the tiny red maple leaves behind Ben...who is standing in front of some stairs to a temple...

At the top of the stairs we immediately ran into a ticket booth, from here we proceeded to buy a pack of tickets for all the major temples in the Nikko area.

Inside the Japanese garden, moss seems to line everything...it's much friendlier than grass....sooo soft and inviting - especially when it carpets the floor...

Making a full 180degree turn we then went into a Japanese garden near the entrance to the first temple along our route... [see above photo] . Just outside another shrine...there were lots of stone laterns, also nicely covered in moss... [see photo below]

We also came across the famous Nikko carving in one of the biggest Temples (over the horse stables) of the Hear no evil [聞かざる], Speak no evil [言わざる], and See no evil [見ざる]. Better yet, there were lots of very weird carvings all over the temple gates and other wooden buildings, which had apparently been designed by a guy who was told to draw elephants and had never seen even a picture of the things...which would explain why they didn't look like elephants at all...
We also managed to find the 'deliberate mistake'; which had been put into the temples to satisfy the Gods, where one of the white pillars of the main gate was put in upside-down...which could only really be seen if you looked closely at the pattern carved on the pillar....


The upside-down pillar was on the other side of the gate you can see further up in the center of the photo...the large thing you can see on the far right (and a bit of one being hidden by some huge trees on the left) just in front of, and on either side of the main gate are drum towers.

The drum tower and the tori (shrine entrance)

Just a small fraction of some of the ornate and colourful carvings which adorn the temple.

a large store of sake casks...

...a couple getting married in traditional Japanese dress...

In the grounds of one of the other temples...people making garlands out of dried rice stalks (hay/straw) getting ready to be hung outside the temples and on gates for some local celebration...

Greg also found a small shrine dedicated to all things French...

and here are some more photos (taken by Greg, obviously...) to give you a feel for the place...

Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas!


I celebrated this Christmas day in a less than normal way; by going on a field trip to the Kawasaki [川崎市]area of Tokyo (it's not too far from Haneda Airport [羽田空港]) - to try and get a feel for the area which I shall apparently be helping with some dynamic modelling for Tokyo Gas....anyway, I was looking for evidence of subsidence or liquefaction...which reminds me: I should really write up about what I saw before I forget...

It looked very flat. Everywhere: FLAT. very little in the way of exciting cracked buildings or uneven land or suspicious puddles. I was a little bit dissappointed. HOWEVER, when I was tottering about on my own, I was accosted by a young mother on a bike, a bike which contained one small child on the basket on the handlebars and another small child on the seat behind her...she asked if I knew where some park was....and as it happened I had a whole district map in my hand (so that I would have an idea of what I was meant to be looking at). I immediately thrust it out at her (with a very proud grin on my face) pointed, to roughly where we were and what I assumed the park that she was looking for. Which, seemed to make her quite happy.

The end.

Happy Christmas...

hello! we're your new neighbours!

So, apparently, in Japan, when you move into a new apartment/house/place you go and introduce yourself to your new neighbours with a present...SO...a good month of living in our new place I finally got around to baking a chocolate cake (in our swanky but not-quite-so-new-anymore oven/grill/microwave). Greg cut the cake, and then we wrapped it and tied a little bow around it, ready to offer to our new neighbours, some of whom we've already run into in the entrance or lift...
(yes, it's very exciting...we have a lift - very useful for moving in...)

We first went up to the 6th floor and nervously pressed the door bell. A little old man tottered to the door and gave me and Greg a look of 'and?......' Possibly because I was standing there with a plate full of weird pink triangles on a plate in my outstretched arms and a huge nervous grin on my face.

We tried to explain that we were the new neighbours living on the 5th floor, and would he like some cake. Unfortunately, he kind of misunderstood my cake gesture and tried to take the whole plate. An awkward moment ensued...where I knee-jerked and retracted the proffered plate and said errr.....NO...ONE* cake.... anyway, after we'd exhausted all our Japanese, by describing that we were from England and France, and didn't speak much Japanese....we were left in a little awkward position where we tried to escape from their doorway as gracefully as possible.

We then moved on to the 2nd floor. No one. 3rd floor: a lady answers the intercom, but a man comes to the door (hmmmmmm...) anyway, we offer cake. The lady who I guess answered the phone is hiding behind the guy I guess is her husband and staring at us, but not trying to attract attention... He asks where we are from....and then asks Greg: 'Can you speak English?' to which Greg replies: 'Yes!'. Hurray! So, yeah, his English isn't too bad. With that over we try their neighbour: nothing. 4th floor: nothing. Which doesn't bother Greg in the slightest; because he has more cake now.


*[one or none!]

Christmas Dinner - PART II

At home. not as sexy as the one in Roppongi [六本木] but food all the same.

Actually, not only did I manage to cook a pseudo Christmas dinner, but also managed to meet up with my cousin who I have not seen since I was probably about 11years old. Who happened to be holidaying in Tokyo....apparently, something she does quite often.... which was cool. We kinda caught up, and tried to find an entrance to a park, which was like a fortress!!!! even tried some rock-salt candy. No, it's not very nice. and Yes, it is very salty.

So, dinner. Managed to locate a whole chicken. No sprouts (sad....I actually like sprouts), we had cauliflower and carrots instead. Some roast peppers and aubergines, roast potatoes, and gravy. Even made the effort to make some mulled wine. Which was not as good as I'd hoped....but it tasted much better today after it had some time to soak up some more of the spice.

Christmas Dinner - PART I

On the eve of Christmas eve we toddled down to the shiny lights of Roppongi [六本木] we headed towards the Mori Towers and then into L'atelier (L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon), a two Michelin star restaurant. It had a great atmosphere, the Japanese waiters all spoke French (and some English) and were not intimidating at all, being very friendly and attentive. The decor was a cool black and red, with various bottles and jars full with food for colour.

Greg's starter: cous cous, with a mango chukney

My starter: Avocado and tomato

I then went onto have a non-dairy option they threw together for me of foie grois ravioli, in a consume (otherwise known as soup) . I really can't remember what Greg had at this point (I was too preoccupied..) maybe he'll tell me when he gets back from his business trip...

Greg's second course: Duck in a cheesy potatoey bake (it wasn't described as badly as this on the menu)

My second course: Fishy on some (very tastily cooked) potatoes

Palate cleaning lime sherbet with fruit

My dessert [also not exactly on the menu - but non-dairy...thus wayway friendly]: Pear Sorbet (in a cylinder of ice) with berry fruits

Greg's prepped and ready for his dessert...

some dairy thing, I'm not allowed to eat...

...then it's gone!

After our little culinary experience, we then headed to Shibuya to watch 'Once' ...a beautiful movie....with awesome music.

Custard and Meringue

A first for several things this week: home made custard and home made meringues... MMmmmMMmmMmmmMmmmmmmm *sugar*!

Made some apple crumble and felt the need for custard, so looked up a recipe online....and tried to make it with soya milk....it wasn't too bad, but I did manage to put too much sugar in it (TOO MUCH SUGAR?!?!?!? surely that isn't possible wayway?! - ohhhh but it is.)

Anyway, with the left over egg whites I felt the need to make some meringue: for the first time. So, with the help of Benny and Greg we had a go. Luckily, a friend had donated a electric whisk when we had moved in...which took the strain off our hands a bit. It was all going okay until we baked them, and they refused to crispen up :( boooooooooo! but it didn't really matter, because we ate it all anyway.

Tasty.

プチプチ[bubble packing/wrap]

Just in case you'd forgotten about pointless pocket toys from Bandai (the people who brought you Tamagochi - たまごち) they recently brought out something exploring the true bounds of the ultimately pointless. A game called プチプチ or puchi-puchi.


You know that great packing medium; bubble wrap? well...this little thing simulates the tactile sensation and recreates the audio experience of popping the stuff over and over again. And, just in case that wasn't good enough for you; for every hundredth 'pop' you get a random sound, as a kind of prize.

As it says on the packaging: 'you just can't stop...' [プチプチはやめられない]

You can watch their inspirational promo video here.

(ps. we now have two プチプチ's at home....it's not my fault: they were a housewarming gift....)

A change of address

Okay, so I've been a bit quiet lately...had a bit of a manic month with some crazy experimentation, combined with flat hunting in a foreign language, infused with Japanese Landlords general distrust of foreigners*.

*I'll tell you all about it later...when I've recovered from all this craziness

The gist of it is; we've finally moved house/flat/apartment/shoebox. It's a very nice area, quiet residential, with a 24hr supermarket about 2mins down the road, a bus route running outside our door, 7mins from the Metro, and most importantly (for me) cycling distance from Uni ..... *ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....* saves me about 1 and a half hours a day....bliss.

We^ hired a van for the 23rd of Nov (a national holiday) and had spent the past week packing all the stuff in my room into boxes that we had gotten from the local supermarket. After filling two boxes it started to dawn on me (and Greg) how much crap I had managed to collect in a year.

^I say 'we', what I mean is that a very VERY nice friend of ours - AMY - asked an even nicer friend of hers - K1 - to use his superior Japanese skills to hire a van and then use his fantastic driving skills (he has his Korean Driving license converted to be used in Japan) to drive us and my junk through Tokyo.

It was a hectic day, we had to drive from Odaiba お台場　to Shinagawa　品川, to pick up a load of stuff from a friend who was moving out of Japan and thus donating us a fridge, washing machine, furniture, spare futon and most of the contents of her flat. THEN we were on to Shirakonadai 白金台　to pick up a sofa and some more furniture from Annalisa's apartment. This completely filled the van, so we headed to the new flat to wait for Greg who had to go off to the estate agents to sign the contract before we got to Annalisas...K1 and I carried on to drive to the new appartment, and had some lunch waiting for Greg to finish the formalities at the estate agents: he was apparently quite stuck, as it was all in japanese, until Rei turned up and saved the day...

We got the call from Greg, and then went to pick him up at the station, we also got hold of some lunch for Greg while we waited for him at the station.

Now armed with the keys to the flat (only one - because they hadn't changed the locks yet) we started to unload...we'd unloaded a couple of things and then the van started moving by it's own accord and slowly started to roll towards another parked van! I squealed from the back of the van and Greg jumped in to the front to pull on the hand brake...which was all rather exciting. Basically, we tried to get all the stuff from the van to the lift, then just dumped it in the flat. We then got back in the van to head back to Odaiba to pick up all my stuff still in my room (some of which still needed to be packed)

....it was getting late, and we were trying to wedge my bike into the van....we ended up killing most of my poor plants in the process...then we were back on the road (although I did manage to get us lost - I have NO idea how). We were a bit late in unpacking the second van load, but we did manage to get it all done, leaving me and Greg to move all the boxes up to our apartment...

There were a lot of boxes...

Sgt. Podge

what a great name for a cat...

...found this story about a cat who's been disappearing daily for some feline adventures... click HERE

my first conference...

Was last Thursday, the 1st of November, at a place called Maebashi [前橋]. It was a JGS conference for all the geotechnical engineers in the Kanto province [関東], where the idea was to show everyone else what kind of research is going on in each field.

The conference started on the 31st of Oct, and ended on the 1st of November. There were 3 different presentation rooms, with each presentation + questions lasting 10mins... so, it was quick. I put myself down for a 5min presentation, just so that I could get out of there quicker...

Anyhoo, I'd written the paper whilst in Malaysia, which was fun. And I still hadn't gotten around to writing the presentation... nor was I entirely sure that what I wrote made any sense now. Obviously, it made *some* sense at the time, just that now it made less sense. Which was bad.

SO. There I was dressed up in IRONED trousers and a SHIRT [god forbid] looking like a pillock, and I headed with my laptop to somewhere outside of Tokyo...starting from Shinbashi station [新橋] I then went to Tokyo station [東京] and got on the Shinkansen [新幹線] to Takasaki [高崎] THEN on to a local train to Shinmaebashi [新前橋]. I got to the station and took the first sensible exit out of the station (with a vague recollection of the map - which looked very easy to get to the hall - you know, walk straight for two blocks and it's on your left....that kind of thing]. Anyway, I walked long enough to find out that it didn't look anything like the map. So I wondered in to what looked like a reception for a small University...and asked the people at the reception if they knew where the place was; showing them a very badly written name of the place I was trying to get to, which I copied off the internet. Worryingly, they had never heard of the place, and as this looked like a very small town, it was NOT a good sign. I was relieved to hear that I was at least a vaguely the right address. Just on the wrong side of the station. SO. I tottered back over from whence I came, made my way over the bridge over the train tracks... and now I was on the right side of the railway, the place was much easier to find.

So, I've managed to get to the right building, and following the signs in kanji, I go upstairs to register, which is a bit of a linguistic trauma, as they don't speak English... This resulted in a lot of giggling, which then descended (much to my concern that I had done something wrong) into laughter from the ladies that were trying to 'help' me. So, I do with pointing at my name on the list. I then get a goody bag containing the papers of the conference and a name tag holder thing... and only after seeing a couple of people, do I realise that I'm meant to write my name and University on it...

I loiter until the session before my session finishes, and then sneak into the hall. I see my Lab mates, who blank me... probably busy...

I manage to load up my presentation to the laptop, and then we head for lunch. Which was traumatic....well, traumatic for Ivan, who was displeased with the service at the canteen on the ground floor...and then even more agitated when they finally did serve him and told him there was no more of what he wanted.

When lunch was over, I went back to the presentation room to dissolve slowly in a chair... waiting for my turn. I tried to listen to the other presentations, but it was a bit hard, as they were in Japanese. So, I just looked at the pictures and guessed.. occasionally, opening my electronic dictionary to translate the odd word. Then, 'OOoooOooooh' my turn... So, I attempt to saunter up to the podium...well, laptop. Click on the right document (it's the only one in English) and then START....errrrr....well I would have done IF I could find the start presentation button, which definitely wasn't in the usual place... and everything else was in Japanese!!! I then, stood there like a lemon, waving the mouse about hoping that something would happen...nothing. Then one of the ladies sitting near the front popped up to save me.

I waffled on for 5mins. Everyone looked very confused...probably the same look that I had on my face during the Japanese presentations. Then, questions. From one person (better than none - which usually happens for English presentations)...which I answered with NO skill... again reiterating my 'lemon' status.

After attempting to listen to the rest of the presentations, I then promptly left to try and escape back to Tokyo. Not before bumping into my Professor; who didn't seem too dissapointed at my performance... in fact he seemed very happy. But pointed out 2 things:
1. I had apparently said that I was a 'Assistant Researcher' on my title page; on account of copy and pasting some kanji...OOooops
2. Gals stands for Galileo and hence demands a capital G. I never knew that.

Anyway, I'm still alive. Which is good for me and bad for you.

Note to self

Trying to find an apartment in Tokyo, is not the most fun, on the account of the demand of having a decent grasp of the language.... if this is missing, attempting to find an apartment will lead to a headache...

More on this later... have to move some sand today...

shiny shiny SHINY :D

So. It's saturday, and there's a typhoon coming? so what shall we do? how about walking around Tokyo in the typoony wind and rain trying to find a non-existent kimono and get a new phone?

...yeah, well... I thought it was a good plan...

We wondered around Harajuku in the down pour looking for some possible ideas for halloween costumes (we were thinking of going to the Yamaote line train party: something like the Circle Line...but MUCH bigger...where they have a yearly halloween party in one of the carriages). Anyway, we eventually got to the cool shop, where they sell very very sexy Kimonos...only to find they didn't have any left! grrrrrrr...well... more of a *sniff sniff*. I was sad. No cool and sexy kimono for wayway :( and they won't get any more stock until DECEMBER! Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

So, I sulk away... we have a coffee to warm ourselves up (because our shoes and socks are completely soaked, added to the fact that our trousers have become friends with precipitation and been getting on swimmingly with the whole concept of capillary action). Whilst still feeling unbeliveably sorry for myself about a kimono, or lack there of, I decided that the best way to deal with my current issues was to buy a pair of wellies.

But not just *any* wellies... these are special, magical, wellies. I had been eyeing them up since early this year well before any mention of Glastonbury... and considering the excessive efforts of the typhoon, they were possibly the only thing which would keep my feet vaguely dry....well, from getting any more wet.

ta-da! a pair of cool wellies.

So, the magical boots made me happy again... so happy, I decided the best thing to do was to torture myself with the Japanese language and try to cancel my current phone contract and sign up to a new one, with out the help of a fluent Japanese/English speaker... Hmmmmm! FUN! I think not.

Thus, we head off to try and find an AU shop, to cancel said phone...which involved chasing a very small goose, but we got there in the end...the whole canceling thing was nice and easy. I even got hold of my MNP number (which was effective immediately) for a small handling charge...taking one step closer to shiny shiny.

'That wasn't too bad!' I thought...

HA!

Back into the rain to find the huge Softbank shop of shiny-ness...the whole shop was shiny. mmmmmmmmmm shiny. With in a minute of us setting our now sodden-squishy feet in there we were approached by an eager shop assistant...who quickly discovered that my Japanese was utter tripe. But she kept smiling and being overly helpful. She guided us through the phones... with some great use of universal sign language to get across things like: 'has TV, no international roaming' and 'has no TV but International roaming'. Most of this was pointless, because I was hearing: 'this phone is shiny and new, and this phone is shiny, new, and looks pretty. This phone resembles the common brick because it carries an amazing camera and 3x optical zoom, while this phone is a very cool colour and very shiny' ... etcetera etcetera. After seeing more shiny things than my brain can usually cope with in a day, I chose a セクシー shiny camera by samsung....possibly because it came in a funky colour. The turquoise blue was practically irresistible...

It is most definitely a sexy phone. And I forfeited the ability to do international roaming with the thing, in favour of having a TV (thought it might improve my Japanese - failing that, I can use the antenna to duel with people in the street).

After finally choosing the damn phone I wanted...it got steadily worse. The explanation of contract agreements and special offers is complex enough in your own language, let alone in a foreign one. So, yeah, it took a while.

Greg was patiently sitting beside me (still soaking wet from the knees down, with his shoes making a lovely squelchy sound everytime he put his foot on some thing solid) and translating things about contracts, that I seemed incapable of understanding...It was all very tiring... and it was past 8pm by the time we had exhausted the whole contract business...which was kinda sad, as we were kinda thinking of trying to head for the Yamanote line party thingy..definitely no time to head home and change...and we weren't really in much of a going out state after our little open air shower...

The sales lady had pottered off to get the contract sorted... and came back with some 'presents' for us... I got some weird magnet clippy things...a stainless-steel mug - tiny but cute...and best of all a free 1gb microSD...and some promise of 5000yen cashback after I slay a dragon...or something like that...haven't quite figured it out yet...I'm sure it will be fine.

After the humungus effort of getting my new shiny toy, we gave up on the idea of the Yamanote line party (maybe next year eh?) and opted for dinner...which was nice - the company was excellent, as always...then went home to dry off... which all turned out rather well actually. Greg found out later that this years Yamanote line party was a bit pants... on the account of the gaijins (the people who went to the party, aka. foreigners) acting like dicks... They apparently managed to get the train stopped at Shibuya station for about 20mins because they were busy pouring beer on the natives...hmmmm well done there.

The upside down fish

My aunt has 3 fish tanks... with various fish in them...but there is one fish which I find fascinating: and that is the 'upside-down fish'.

Normal fish

The 'upside-down fish'

At first I thought he was dead. He/she/it was lying motionless at the bottom of the tank (strange), belly-up (can't be good). But then it twitched....flapping it's little fins...as if to say hello. So, everytime I came back from somewhere I'd have a look in on the upside-down fish. He sometimes moves himself around the bottom of the tank and one day I actually saw him make a break for the top....which was weird to watch, as he swam, upside-down, in a flurry of activity to get to the top and then quickly sank back down again. From time to time the other fishes in the tank say hello to him... I came back one time, to most of the fish huddling around him.

An unusually productive day...

Unlike the rest of my life, I've been rather productive today! hurray!
SO, what did I do?

Morning...I slept through it , and yes, that's productive. Considering the silly get-up time I had yesterday. So, eventually got up at 9 something to get changed for breakfast with 婆婆 (grandma) DIMSUM! Then came back to mope about a bit, before going out again to buy stuff. We went to the market to get some Gula Melaka (coconut sugar), fresh coconut creme, 酒 餅 (basically yeast cakes), 豆腐花 (a lovely soft dessert made from soya beans - tofu fua)...

Stall in the indoor market selling stuff made from dried coconuts...the guy on the left is smelling the coconuts before grinding them to death...and the product goes into the machine on the right...which squeezes out the coconut creme...nice.

豆腐花 stall (tofu fua)

We dropped some of the stuff back at 婆婆 (Grandmas) house, and then went back to Aunties to have lunch.

For a moment my day got a bit more complex. We were kind of planning to go to 婆婆 (grandmas) house to make Kaya and rice wine, but as I had been cutting some Pandan leaves from behind aunties house, my mum started chatting to her neighbour, who also said that she knew how to make Kaya. So, mum thought it would be better to make the Kaya at aunties house.

Anyway, I started pounding down the pandan leaves in the stone pestle and mortar to make the flavouring for the Kaya. Ani (the indonesian maid) very kindly strained everything out for me while I turned my back :)

The process had begun.

We started breaking the eggs into a pan and whisking them...at that point everyone decided that they'd come into the kitchen and watch. Which led to everyone else deciding that they knew best how to make Kaya...I had 4 different people telling me to do completely different things... which was fun. Anyhoo, eventually all but one (my mum) of the 'cooks' left me to it... so we were there stirring, and stirring, and stirring...more stirring... and then some more stirring...the stirring continued for a while... we added the coconut and the stirring continued some more. Mum took over the stirring while i went to get ready for swimming, and by the time I came back down she'd already added all the (melted) gula melaka, the pandan essence and had finished making the kaya. Nini (my cousin) had already vouched for it's niceness.

With the Kaya done, we headed off to the Hyatt for their swimming pool. The swimming pool actually looked out over the beach, which was very clean, shelly and sandy. We thought we'd by-pass the pool and head for the beach. The sea was lovely and warm...with gentle waves lapping the beach...after drinking enough of the sea water, we went back to the pool for some less salty and sandy swimming. Spent most of the time pushing my little cousin around the pool in his rubber ring...and loosing swimming races.



We washed and then went back to aunties house then went out again for dinner...which was an array of crab, fresh fish, and other delicious goodies.

After dinner we went back to 婆婆 's house to try and make some rice wine...which everyone else (three of my little cousins, my aunt, and mum, wanted to watch too...then we had some exercises with 姨婆 (my great aunt)...which was hilarious.

...and now I have to pack to get down to KL

Post 101

Wow... reached post 101...nice

a quick one.... might add to this later... but about to leave to send my brother off to Singapore for a short visit.

Got up at 4:30AM this morning *craziness* to climbing some hill in Sungai Lembing...for the sunrise. up early, physical exercise and NO BREAKFAST... Quan was a little cranky (no coffee = death!). We nearly started our decent because we thought the actual sun wasn't going to make a photogenic appearence (it was already light and not sign of the big yellow thing) when it popped up. Which resulted in lots of shouting from my mum and aunts to make sure that a good enough photo was taken of the occasion.

If this sharp climb wasn't enough we went to Panching to a Karst cave to have a little look at a buddha. This involved lots of stairs, but wasn't half as bad as the one we did in the dark for the sunrise. after the cave we took a little detour up to a little view point higher up...where we got to glimpse some monkeys! hurray! I made a good attempt at tryin to coax them closer for a decent photo. Quan and I spent a good length of time trying to take a decent photo, much to the annoyance of all 5 people who were waiting for us at the bottom. In an attempt, I can only presume, to make a faster decent, Quan, cunningly, to take the 'faster' slimy green route down from the thing that we scrambled on to...the route I had made a point of avoiding on the account that Quan had just witnessed me slip on some of the stuff about 2 mins earlier.
[Okay... sent Quan off now...and back at aunties place]
Where was I? hmmm...slimy green slide. yeah...so, he'd done this lovely fall...well slip, and he'd obviously very quickly managed to make the whole slipping thing stop. But was now in an awkward position where he couldn't really go back up because it was too slippery and couldn't go down without sliding. So he slid...down the lovely slide. I found it hilarious.

Somewhere in between we managed to pack in a museum and a suspension bridge thing...oh yeah. And finally Breakfast!

But that wasn't the end of the day... we went shopping for stuff. and then had dinner with my aunts and uncles again (yes, stressful, I know! such a hard life...) sent Quan off to Singapore (not before saying goodbye to everyone).


Tomorrow, hopefully, will spend some time with 婆婆 (well technically 外婆...but hey...) . Quan spent some quality time with her today, and she went on about him needing to find a wife. Apparently, 28 is a good age to be married. :P hahahahahahaaaa poor Quan! She also said that he should get married in KuanTan (she'd even consider travelling to KL if pushed) because she ain't going over to England for no wedding...

Chinese Doctor, Kuan Tan

In the midst of our hardcore shopping mission today we managed to pop over to the Chinese doctors. Last time I was here, it was over 5 years ago... my aunt took me here on my mothers orders and she translated my epidemiological issues to the old man sitting behind a big wooden desk in a cold, dark walled room, covered with photos of University degrees and framed certificates. He asks vague questions about what is wrong with me externally and takes my pulse...while he's chatting away to my mum, my eyes gaze around the room. I notice a small TV monitor on his desk. I can see my brother and aunt on the screen, showing them waiting in the shop... looking at various 'wonder cures' which adorn the shop.

After taking my pulse, he takes a up a pen sitting at the front of his desk, held up-right in it's pen rest, dips it into one ink well, then the other. He pauses momentarily, with the pen poised above the white and red-lined prescription paper. With a flourish of his hand stroke, he writes my prescription. Each stroke is beautifully written, with the pen held just like we were taught in calligraphy class at Chinese school. Each stroke was perfectly and expertly placed. When he'd finished, it looked like a work of art.

He'd prescribed me enough for 4 days, while they concoct the rest of my prescription. Instead of the usual bag of herbs (it looks like organised compost material) that I take away and boil for hours, they now give me a concentrated liquid dosage and some weird plastic capsules... which is much less hassle that the method I'm used to.

We come out of the consultancy room, to find my aunt and brother looking at some weird 'cure-all' miracle thing, some kind of fungus which infects caterpillars which usually burrow into the ground to metamorphise...But the fungus kills them and uses the energy from breaking down said caterpillar to help it to grow. So, in then end you get some fungus which has filled the space of a caterpillar that it killed and some shoot growing where the head would have been... Lovely! Anyway, it cures everything and makes you live longer. Poor little caterpillar.

Malaysian Mosquitos

I seem to be better at exterminating Malaysian mosquitos than Japanese ones...4 died today...May they tremble in my presence...

Little Greg goes to Kyoto

Imperial Palace, Kyoto

cable car up to Mt. Hiei

one of the temples up Mt. Hiei

Mosquito tally III

HA! make that four.

But, this last one had actually bitten me TWICE! and it was full of my blood when it died...it popped like a little bloody balloon.

DEATH!!!

'Dance Party 2007' - TIEC

...I like it when they do parties here, and this one was particularly swanky. From our dance floor there was a wall of glass which overlooked the Odaiba skyline, as a melody of lights danced across the ceiling and into the night. The Big illuminated Ferris wheel was a lovely backdrop to some deafening dance music.

I was pleasantly surprised by the turn out. But then again, we were all loudly reminded through the dorm PA system that there was a massive party going on tonight... and all the posters and RA's (residential assistants)constantly reminding you, meant that it would be pretty hard to forget.

A huge projector beamed very well timed and choreographed pictures, adding to the atmosphere...there were some very cool looking tables to perch against and put your drinks on, which looked like upturned cones, with lights in the center... very trendy.

The RA run bar was set up in a much better way than the last party, looked far more professional... some people had really put a lot of effort into the night, and I have to say the venue (in the Hesei Plaza) was a much better choice than the ground floor halls in B block that they used for the last big event. Drinks were their usual cheapness of 200 yen for a standard drink... and 300yen if you want a 'special cocktail' mixed for just you.

Best of all it's all free...

Getting home was not an issue...which is also very nice, for a change.

Ode to a Sadistic Bouldering Wall...

Our university has a very convenient sports hall and gym, known as Gotenshita Memorial Arena [御殿下記念館], not only does it hold a swimming pool, as small roped climbing wall, but in the gym; with all the running machines, exercise bikes, yoga balls, horse-riding simulators (yeah, I know, sounds a little obscure, but it's very popular in Japan, free-weights, training equipment, there lies a small bouldering wall. Oh yeah, and the whole complex lies underground. In particular, under a football field (soccer or サッカー).

Now, the Gotenshita is very good value for money. You can either pay a day ticket; 500 yen (if you're a student of Todai [東大] OR, get your arse down to a photo booth, then go to the office and buy a one year pass for 8000 yen, or a half year pass (the price of which escapes me for economic reasons). So, your 40quid gives you the equivalent to unlimited access to the gym, sports halls, showers, swimming pool, climbing walls (IF you're trained to use them - or in my case, just chat to people who are allowed to use them and have key access and get in anyway), and training sessions in a variety of activities, such as: Yoga, TaiChi, Savat, Aerobic Kickboxing, Pool Aerobics....the timetable is pretty packed, and I can't really remember any more off the top of my head. Anyway, it's a great facility even if it's a little dusty and the architect had an obsession with concrete...but hey! I doubt I can get access to these kind of facilities anywhere else, for that price.

Enough about that. What I really wanted to talk about was the evil little bouldering wall in the gym room. When I first arrived and I enrolled to use the bouldering wall, I had a little play during the entirely Japanese induction, and the easiest few routes were a piece of piss... so, I'd usually warm up on the slope then head to the over-hanging part and play with that. Some really interesting problems. After a few months, for some unknown reason, the routes seemed to be getting harder. Odd, i thought. I've been climbing pretty regularly, AND my technique is getting worse?!....ahhhh crap!

Found out that periodically they change the angle of inclination of the wall. bastards. There's a rather innocent looking winch to the right wall of the bouldering wall, and a suspicious inclination marker taped onto the side of the wall. For the past 4 months or so it had been on105 degrees. which was not too bad, as the less-over-hanging side of the wall was definitely still do-able, and the over-hang was just more challenging.

I come back after several months of not bouldering, and try a few things I know I should be able to do, and fail a bit. Weeeeell....haven't been climbing for a while... that's why....errrr NO! I was more suspicious, when I tried climbing the routes I knew were easy, and they were really strained too. WHAT?!?!??! SO, I had a peek at the inclinometer thingy. 115degrees. 10 degrees extra was killing me!

I'm SOOoooooo going to have to practice my over-hang technique.

...what is Yakitori!?

Okay... it's occurred to me that I haven't exactly explained what Yakitori is.

Basically, it's various bits of chicken meat on skewers, barbequed over glowing charcoals. Much like satay, but without the sweet sauce brushed over them whilst cooking. I think the meat is usually marinated before cooking, not during. The main flavours are:

Shio [塩 - しお] - salt,
Tare [たれ] - a sweeter soya sauce marinate...very nice, and
Miso [みそ] - just like the soup, also based on soya.

Sometimes vegetables are skewered between the chicken, sometimes it's just different parts of the chicken; thigh [momo - もも], heart, skin [kawa - かわ]... and so on.

Despite Yakitori, meaning grilled/barbequed chicken. It's not always chicken. Last night we had a Nabe; a kind of Japanese hotpot, there are many variations within Japan alone. There was also, pork, skewered and barbecued.

Yakitori [焼鶏]

Oh. My. GOD!

I have been to, possibly *the* best Yakitori [焼鶏] restaurant EVER!!!!

My Japanese friend, Koya, is leaving for America next Thursday, for ten months. So we were having a little goodbye party, close to Hongo Campus. It was a truly international gathering: Japanese, American, a Japanese that had lived in a lot of different places in American, Chinese, French, and British. The food was excellent, and it just kept coming. Of course, it being a student gathering, it was Nomihodai [飲みほうだい] (all you can drink). But that wasn’t the thing which made this particular Yakitori fanTABulous! It was the absolutely awesome waiter, called Kojima [小島]. Who, had a rather high pitched voice. It was Awwwwwesome! I really couldn’t tell if he was putting it on or it was actually his real voice. He was the *best* waiter EVER! Super-duper nice too. I could have taken him home and wrapped him up.

But then, we also noticed that all the other waiters seemed to have high pitched voices too. However, NONE of them were as good as Kojima’s [小島]!!! He RULES!

We spent most of the night planning how to excuse Koya’s ‘surfing’ into a civil engineering related research topic. I was all for correlating the amount of surfing that Koya does to reduction in Global Warming…I could tell that people were a bit sceptical at first, but I’m sure they’ll come around…

Another visit of this Yakitori is definitely in order.

Aaahhhhhhhhhh! AND! Not only did we have an awesome waiter, but they taught me a new Japanese ‘thing’. A way of sending people off, or saying ‘goodbye’: involves rhythmic clapping. Can only really be demonstrated. I shall endeavour to recreate it for you. I’m going to bring it to the UK with force! It will be Amazing!

Kurobe Dam - Day 2

...That night there was another bug... this time it was one I actually recognised... a nice yellow centipede. Which was pretty damned fast, and really wanted to go to my bedroom (BAD!). We spent a while trying to bat it to go downstairs and hopefully outside, but it managed to squirrel itself into the stairs and refused to go outdoors.... Anyhow, it was better than being in my room....

Mr. Centipede

We were reasonably free in the morning, so we had a little wonder around looking at more engineering stuff (or if you were Greg...the pretty scenery, while laughing at the engineers taking photos of very dull looking things)

A heavily engineered river bank...

A waterfall, also highly engineered; ie. it was so constrained the river was in a pipe....

A steel-arch type bridge thingy....

Then we grabbed a quick lunch in town and met up with the rest of our group at the train station to make our way up to the main dam...We took a special little train up the valley, it was tiny and powered by a orange diesel engine at the front.

A cunningly disguised water control tower...looking suspiciously like a western castle...

Our little train making it's way up the single track...

The final stop ended up in a tunnel, and then a big metal door and no more train tracks....We got off the train and the train headed back to the main station back at the bottom of the valley. The big doors turned out to be some huge industrial lift...which took us up a good few hurndred meters. Getting out of the lift there was a second train waiting...we could fit about 6 of us in a carriage and we sat in it for a good while no seeing anything out of the windows but concrete...

inside the lift

Just outside of the lift....and Yamada-san 山田さん (assistant technician) looking particularly unimpressed...

Inside the tunnel train...taking us further up the valley...

the train eventually emerged from the tunnels onto a chunky looking steel bridge, to the right was a small concrete dam...but it was mainly nice to see the sun again....We definitely weren't taking the normal tourist route...it was the workers entrance.


We then got into a shoddy looking counter-weight cable car...which went up some vicious gradient...

View up the shaft which the counter-weight cable car was trying to get us up...

We had a bit of a walk through some tunnels before we reached a gated entrance to the control center of the dam. We were eventually let in and led to a huge board room with a scale model of the Kurobe Valley and the dam catchment area. It was an awesome model with also opened out to show you a cross-section of the dam too :D

We were also taken down to the turbine rooms, which was noisy (much the same as the dam I saw in Greece), but still cool, have a video of it somewhere....

The Turbine hall...the turbines with lights on are working....obviously, the number of turbines they operate depends on consumer demand...

sexy photo of the turbine blades...

At some point we must have emerged into daylight again....after wandering around in dark and cool tunnels for a while, and we ended up at the top of the dam. And it was drizzling...

mmmmmm.....concrete....

I have to say that Greg has more photos of the trip than I do....but I think you've seen enough concrete for now...