updated...

right finally posted the last of three posts on the 'Tiffin Reunion'
and now there is stuff on the climbing trip to Joyama...
enjoy...

Lab on a Sunday...

SO, after my 2 lab demonstrations, Amin and I shovelled out all the sand and cleaned out the box of sand...just in time for the little gathering of everyone who helped with the May Festival Open Day...about 6 of us.

Beer and snacks were provided by Sensei, who also sat down to have a little drink with us to celebrate the days achievements.

Which was great; if only because I found out that Sensei was hoping for more of the Todai students to get infected by the measels outbreak which seems to be sweeping through Japanese University's, which has shut down several large uni's (think Waseda was one of them). Anyway, Sensei was rather dissapointed to hear that the infection rate at Todai was so low. Which i found hilarious, but hey, he's a busy man; if the students are too sick to come in and they have to close uni to prevent spread of the disease then he doesn't have to teach, THEN he can have more time to do the million of other things which are on his 'should have done this last week' list...

May Festival

You may notice it's a Sunday. Sunday is part of the Weekend. Usually on weekends wayway is not in lab, but this Sunday is special as it's May Festival and wayway has to go in and run shake table tests so that people may watch and go 'OOooooooooh'; which would be easier if wayway actually knew what she were doing 1.) with the experiment, 2.) with the shake table.

Apparently every May the University of Tokyo holds a open festival; to celebrate how amazing they are. In honour of this the departments open up to the public to show them what people do in each department and lab. It's all terribly exciting. And I was just allowed to pop outside to scavange some lunch and the campus is positively bustling with people there is a real party atmosphere going on. There are food stalls lining the campus pavements all the way to the tokeidai (the big symbolic clock of Todai) and infront of the tokeidai itself there is some monsterous stage with a full-on light show going on behind and band rocking their hearts out. Over near the pond there is pop music blasting out an aload of people perched on a rather steep grass verge watching a bunch of dancers mill about before their next show, there are queues of people to see the University Choir do a special May Festival Performance. Families with young children, groups of school kids are all mingling about; and i'm not sure why but i've seen several people in fancy dress:
1) humungus transvetite (looked about 40) in a sailor-type school uniform and
2) a guy in a suit with his hair dyed and styled, and makeup to look like a manga character.

It's all very strange.

Definitely not like any open day I've ever been to in the UK. When they say festival, they really mean a festival.

Joyama

It's silly-o'clock again and we're trying to make our way to Shinagawa station to catch the 6:40AM Tokaido train to Mishima...I'm barely awake and once more wondering why I like climbing so much, vaguely contemplating taking up a more stay-at-home hobby, like crotchet or something.


Greg and I find a very tired looking Annalisa ambling up the train station; apparently she didn't sleep since last night because she was up all night at a dinner party (fondue) and when she got home had just enough time to pack her climbing gear and head out to the station to catch our train. When we got on the train we all shoved our bags away then collapsed on to seats to have a sleep. Bill got on at Yokohama, we all had a good little chat to welcome Greg back for his little holiday in Japan, then I got on with the business of sleeping. At Mishima, after a good two hours on the train we had to change to a different line, which was aweful for me because I'd gone into the station on my pasmo card (like the oyster card) and couldn't get out on it. There was a long confusing argument with the station people to work out what we had to do to get me my ticket to get the connecting train. It was all a bit rushed, but we got it in the end. There were some amazing views of Mount Fuji from the train which passed through the flat flood plains of a very wide valley with protuding rocks on either side.

After a taxi ride and a short walk...I say 'walk' I mean a mini trek by wayway standards... and in about half an hour we're at the bottom of the climb, with about 30 other people. It seems that a whole group of friends from a climbing wall have turned out today for a proper outdoor climb. On the bright side we have company at the bottom of the rock and they are all top roping the bottom pitches, so we get ourselves on the multi.

Annalisa and Bill on the 2nd pitch of the multi....this wasn't even the 'small' roof that Bill had been going on about! dammit...I *hate* over hangs...

Greg abseiling (rappelling) off the climb...after he had dropped his belay device off the wall; which, luckily, one of the other climbers had caught.

Apart from the amazing view (and company, of course) there were a lot of very hairy black catapillars all over place... I found a few on my climb itself...mocking me and my inability to climb...and there was an entire bush, at the bottom of the climb, completly infested with the things...

After all the strenous climbing, we headed back to Tokyo, with some beers...at the station, there was a very cunning free, open air onsen thing...very convenient for soaking those tired feet! genius...

Tiffin Reunion - part2c [Shibuya]

It’s Monday, so I head into uni and leave Emily to go to Asakusa before meeting the others for a day of sightseeing. I thought I would just go in and work on my presentation that I have to do each term to both my lab [Hongo Campus] and Koseki lab [Komaba Campus] so that they know what I’m doing and to show what I’ve been doing for the past 6 months; which isn’t much…ooops. Anyway, not so simple. At about 9am I get an email from Isobel saying that it’s actually today that is best for returning the tent (I borrowed a tent – *deluxe* apparently, but I never got to try it out so I wouldn’t know – for a climbing trip to Ogawayama; very good Granite I’m told, But the trip fell through; so no climbing.) and Isobel needed the tent back for some running event she seemed to be trying to pull together. I had obviously misunderstood the email she had sent earlier that morning so anyway, I went back to my apartment o pick up the tent then came back to uni for my 430 lecture then left, with the tent, to meet Isobel at Nagatacho. Had a nice but short chat then we jumped on to the Hanomazon line and I headed off to Shibuya to meet the Brits.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to make a reservation with the restaurant, which is always packed. It’s a very popular restaurant and thus a reservation is really the best idea if you want to eat some thing that day; I was shown the restaurant by Amy – an unofficial mentor of sorts; Malaysian Chinese and doing a PhD at Todai as well.

This restaurant is pretty damned hard to find if you aren’t shown where it is. It has a very well hidden entrance which you have to walk through and behind a building to find. From under the small plastic canopy which covers the little walkway leading to the entrance to the left of you train lines are about a meter from you. Then, when you do get to it, it’s literally a hobbit sized wooden sliding door, which even I have to crouch to get through. Once through the door you enter a different world. The calls of the staff shouting orders and welcomes to customers, the smell and sounds of food cooking, and the busy chatter of the guests fills the air. There is a very small entrance area with a big flat-topped stone which steps up to the floor level of the restaurant. There are small cupboards for shoes and from the entrance area you can see the chefs counter with guests seated around. I try to explain to the guy who greets us that we want to eat there tonight but don’t have a reservation. He looks a little sceptical, in a friendly and apologetic way, and has to discuss with a fellow waitress who spoke English, that they didn’t really have space, but if we came back at 930pm we could be squeezed into a booth meant to seat 4. ‘paaaah! That’s fine!’ I say. So, we head off to Tight to await dinner. I personally thing that the wait will be worth it, even though I’ve not been in there yet…

I drop the girls off at Tight, then accompany Ian to Bic Camera so that he can buy himself a camera. He says he needs to replace his because it’s broken…I think he just wants a new toy...So, yeah, we have a little look at the selection, and try and work out how their labelling system for the camera specifications works. We harangue a couple of shop assistants for a while, trying to work out in broken Japanese what all the numbers mean.

Ian makes his choice pretty damn quickly and within about half an hour he’s chosen his camera…we then buy the thing and use some of the points to get a SD card, then head back to the bar.

We get to Tight to find Isabella, Laura and Emily a little tipsy, they seem to have found a new drink of choice…kahlua and milk, and have already made their way through 2 each. Tight is *packed*, which isn’t hard, but is fun to see. There are the most number of people that I’ve seen in the bar, ever, 9 (if I remember correctly). Squeezed into the bar and wedging themselves above the stairs by bridging between the wall and the banisters.

I could tell that Emily was hungry, because she started chewing on the coasters and asked me what time it was every 5 minutes…and when the time was nigh, we trotted off back to the restaurant. At the restaurant, we were led down some stairs to the basement where there was more seating, and were taken to a western-style seated booth, which happily seated the 5 of us. They took one look at us and handed us the English menu; which was great, because it had some pictures of the food too. We started with some salad; which apparently incurred a service fee, and it was tasty! The crispy noodle-like stuff was particularly ingenious, to complement the softness of the veggies, and topped with a lovely dressing. To follow that, we got hold of some, kimchee, fresh tofu, beans in black sugar, jimuchee pancake, and some fried veggies.
I had to take a break from the ordering to eat some of the salad before it all disappeared…then I ordered some Strawberry Shoujuu (fruit wine), as recommended by Amy as well as ebi mayo and negitoro-something-something.

Ian was enamoured by the selection of food, and proclaimed that the meal just went from strength to strength…then ranted a little about how amazing the sauce on the Ebi mayo was; I said ‘…well…it probably involves mayonnaise for one; on account of the name and tomato sauce…’ on the bright side he still loved it despite a dislike of mayonnaise. The Strawberry Shoujuu, seemed to go down well too, it actually involved real strawberries and had the general aura of something which wasn’t alcoholic. I’m sure this makes it very dangerous.

Time to go home and get some rest I think, they all have an early start tomorrow to get a train to somewhere which isn’t Tokyo. And yes, I’m applying the same kind of geographical ethic I have for the UK: where there is London, and ‘Other places which aren’t London’; Japan has a more complex system of: Tokyo, near Tokyo, and ‘Other places which aren’t Tokyo’.

I *love* this restaurant…something tells me that I’ll be here again…

Tiffin reunion - part 2b [Harajuku and Shibuya]

So, it's sunday the 13th and last night we agreed on meeting at Harajuku at 2pm on the account that I was refusing to get out of bed early on the account of having the plague. What ended up happening was that Is and Ian phoned to say that they would be late; issues with moving bags and checking in at hotels and all that palava. So, we rearrange to 2:45ish...In the mean time, Emily and I happen to pass through the Tokyo International Forum; which has a very cool market on sundays, there are stall selling yukatas, jewellery, Japanese crockery, antiques, handbags...a good way to waste a few minutes/hours. We get a little distracted and end up buying yukatas, which I've been wanting for ages...well since I stayed at a ryokan in Hakone.

This shopping excursion results in some unforeseen lateness, despite the fact that we were going to be early...we eventually get to the craziness of Harajuku station at about 3pm where we find Ian, Is and Laura in the mist of the throng. I then walk them to the bridge outside Meiji Jingu Mae to look at the cool kids hanging out in their crazy clothes and the statutory group of ‘Free Hugs’ placard holding people. Then on to Meiji Jingu and Yoyogi park itself; where I had been told that there was a Thai festival still on…we walked around in to the temple which sent the architects in to a frenzy at how cool the Japanese roofs are, lots of pictures ensued. The temple had a minimum of three weddings that day, we watched three of the processions with their immaculately dressed bride, groom, guests, and ministers.


We then took a little walk around to try and find the Thai festival, but after about ten minutes I decided that it wasn’t actually there. So, we headed to the depths of Harajuku to find the okonomiyaki restaurant that I took my brother to at Christmas.

We order several Okonomiyaki’s (with egg and flour), and a monjayaki (just veggies and some meat or seafood with a little water and starch). As soon as the first one arrives we get on with the business of cooking the thing so that we can eat the bugger. It’s great fun, everyone gets around to attacking the stuff on the hot plate with the spatulas. Emily was forced to defend her okonomiyaki with some spatulas to prevent contamination from the other meaty thing being cooked on the other side of the plate. The vegetarian option was damned nice, but there was a really good Jimuchee okonomiyaki which was rather small, but *very* good…






After finishing with the whole eating and whacking food with spatulas, we ventured out to the main shopping place in Harajuku; Takeshita Street. There are some pretty funky shops down there; very Camden-esque just with more sock shops containing more leg adornment items than you could shake a stick at. There’s the funky dog fashion shop too….with the little outfits for your tiny mutt. Emily and Is are very distracted by the shopping opportunities, and there is ample window shopping going on. We did stop to introduce Laura and Emily to the joy of Japanese Crepes; although the one they bought here didn’t look half as good as the one that Is and Ian managed to get in Ueno park.

After all the walking around we are all pretty tired, and Is, Ian and Laura have to go and sort out their bags and hotel stuff, so they head home from Harajuku but Emily and I drag ourselves to Shibuya on the way home to go have a snoop around and watch the crazy Shibuya crossing. We pause for a coffee at the Starbucks which overlooks the crossing before heading back home.

Tiffin Reunion – part 2a [Karaoke]

Saturday 12th May, 6pm; I get a call from Emily, who’s gotten in to Narita and gotten the 7pm bus to Le Meridien, Odaiba. So, at 8pm I trot over and pick her up. It’s all rather surreal seeing her in Tokyo; and it seemed an age ago when she organised the whole thing.

We rush her and her bags back to my place then get ready to go out to Shinbashi to meet the other Brits and some of my friends for some Karaoke madness. We are actually a few mins late, but the logistics of getting everyone to meet in front of the statue of a train outside the station is proving a bit of an issue, as I’m bad at describing where it is, and no one else knows where it is. After much calling and emailing, we get everyone together, apart from the UK contingent who aren’t so contactable via phone and were having issues with finding the place too.

Anyway, we then head down towards some large karaoke signs and I let Marie do all the talking. Unfortunately, the whole of the street that we are on don’t do nomihodai (all you can drink, in an alcoholic sense) but we go in anyway, we’re up on the 5th floor in a little booth numbered 53. The room…ohmygod…the room has wallpaper which looks like it’s been regurgitated by a very sick, radioactive animal; there are even some lovely looking luminous lines tracing their way around the walls adding to the effect. We pile into our room designed for about 10 and park ourselves on the little bench which lines the edge of the room facing the very large and looming karaoke machine. There is a low table taking up the rest of the space in the room which is equipped with various karaoke implements: the wireless touch pad used to select and queue your desired song, a pair of maracas, 3 tambourines, two microphones, and most importantly a menu for al-ki-hol! There is also a communication device on the wall (known as a phone) to order your drink. So it’s all good.


So! What to do, you’re stuck in a room with a karaoke machine and several people who don’t know each other and are thus nervous. I was forced to sing first, despite my feeling of DEATH and my lovely sore throat. And I have to say I was AWEFUL. We force a couple more songs while people get into the swing of things. I was trying to convince Is to sing but she was having none of it, apparently some alcoholic lubrication was required. THEN, we made Annalisa chose a song (she was complaining that she didn’t know any of the things we were singing and demanded some thing more from her time!) and that girl can sing, and sing well. I actually thought it was the karaoke machine that had a voice for you to sing along with, but no, it was actually Annalisa singing. Everyone else kinda stopped singing as not to ruin Annalisa’s good work. After a couple of drinks, even Ian and Is got into it, which was good to see. It was hard to believe that we’d passed 2hours in there and was more fun than I thought it would be; which was cool.


At midnight we paid our tab (which was rather healthy actually despite the number of drinks we had) and all hurried to the station to get our last trains home.

My Little Pony

I have a 'My Little Pony' bag. How utterly cool is that?!

I *love* harajuku.

Do you want to see? ....Of course you do!

Takes me back to the day... I remember one of my friends had one where you could crank the head from side to side and it's tail would grow.

Now all I need is a Transformers and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bag and I'm sorted...in fact I wonder if they make shoes in my size with those on them....hmmmmmm...

a quick note...

Just to say that A LOT has been going on the past few days... so I shall be giving a fuller account of Emily's arrival and our adventures SOON!

A shiny new toy!

I've finally gotten around to getting me a very spangly, all singing and dancing electronic dictionary; complete with a little scribble pad, so that I can write in kanji to find out what they mean in English and how to pronounce it in Japanese.

...now you must realise, that when I say *I* got round to buying me a dictionary...what really happened was that I harassed my two favourite people in my lab, who are amazing and not only hold their own languages in their head, but also English AND Japanese...they are my permanent saviours...who I regularly ply with my cake as some form of incentive.
So, this was an arduous task (not for me obviously...for my very kind translators)...which first of all involved trying to find suitable dictionary. So, we looked at all the ones which have scribble pads: Casio Exword and Sharp Papyrus. Then we looked at a massive summary table stating what each model contained.

Some of the dictionaries are aimed at school children; to help with learning kanji, some are for Business and some for learning languages. Different models have different dictionaries and in general the more you pay the more inbuilt dictionaries you get with your electronic thing of joy. There is also capacity for expansion; which can be either through installing a CD via your computer and a USB cable, or via a SD card - however, there is only one SD card slot, and the SD cards tend to be double the price of the installation CD's.

This is all lovely, because...should I want a Chinese dictionary on my device or upgrade to bigger. better dictionaries, the capability is all there! hurrah!
I love the way the Japanese think these things through!

Anyway! After spending a good afternoon of two very patient peoples' time trying to find a dictionary with good Japanese to English/English to Japanese dictionaries and Chinese dictionaries, we all decided that the Casio Exword XD-SW9400 would be the one for wayway. Which was all entirely groovy and which led to trying to find it for a sensible price online. When we did find one online for free postage and everything, it was out of stock... *sob*


A couple of days later, Friday night 9pm, it's suddenly in stock! [yes, I was probably a bit too enthusiastic with the checking of the website] where by I tried to take on a Japanese Internet ordering web page, and failed. I didn't think it would be that hard but there are a million ways to pay for your goods; at the combini, through a bank transfer, through the post office, in cash when they deliver...some methods cost more than others. The cheapest worked out to be doing a bank transfer at a cash machine [which I'll get on to later!-god this has been complex]. But I, in fact, saw none of this... all I saw was a space to write my name and details...SO, I called in the calvary...well Lan and she was her amazing self and did it all for me while I was at home on IM and she was in college. She sorted it all out for me. GENIUS.

So, Monday; I go to the Mistubishi UFJ ATM and click on the 'English - yes I'm stupid and can't cope with a Japanese ATM' button, BUT it doesn't have the 'bank transfer' button! The last time I had to do this whole bank transfer thing, I luckily ran into a friend who was with her Japanese tutor who was showing her how to do it, so helped me to do it too. Anyway, I ended up going all the way to the actual bank and got one of the people to talk me through it in Japanese; whereby he pointed at what I needed to press and I did what he said. It was all over in 5 mins.

By the time I get back to my desk, I've got a confirmation email from the people I paid, saying that they got my money and they shall deliver today or tomorrow.

Sukoi!

It was handed to me a couple of hours ago and I've been trying it out, and I think it's pretty damn good, it's been happily recognising all the kanji I've put in so far; even though I'm convinced that my stroke orders are all over the place. Unfortunately, the manual is, obviously, in Japanese...I guess I could use the dictionary to work out what the menu says to work out how to use the dictionary...but sounds just like just the type of thing that would blatantly bring up a 'cyclic reference error' in Excel... anyway, I much prefer just mucking about with it...If I'm really enthusiastic I'll take it someone who would know better about these kind of things and see if they can point out some neat tricks on it.

climbing excursion

So, it's Friday the 4th of May; Green Day, and what better way to celebrate than getting up at 5am to go to Yugawara for some climbing.

The train is packed by the time it gets to Odawara, and apparently Rei could hear annalisa and I and our animated conversation from a whole crowded, moving and rattling, separated-by-a-solid-glass-door carriage away. ooops.

Today is no ordinary climbing day, we have a very special guest: his name is Max, and he's 6 years old. He is the son of another climber, Mark; and it would seem that they feed their son on amphetamines, because he is the most hyperactive entity that I have ever encountered. If only we could harness the energy, the worlds impending energy crisis would be solved. Unfortunately, the best we could do was put a child harness on him to stop him; but we'll work on it.

This is Max, at the calmest state he mustered all day, staring wistfully into the distance, just before he started saying how easy all the routes were.

Rei belaying

Yugawara in the summer...


Annalisa at the top of a 10b (I think) looking very happy!

Annalisa decending, with the hyperactive monkey dancing up a 10a.

After witnessing people disappear round the corner to some harder climbs, Max got route envy, where everyone elses climbs looked far more fun and interesting than the ones that he had been climbing; and insisted that he climb the easy looking routes that we were struggling on. So, we tied him in and hauled him up. This 'climbing' lark is soooo easy he thought, i don't know what these weird overgrown people are talking about*...

Max the 'ridiculously photogenic' Rupert smirking on a 10a

Rei leading a nasty 10b

Mark was telling us how they think the grades at Yugawara have gone up one notch, due the the severe erosion of the surrounding soil; which makes you start a good meter below the intended height of when they set the climbs.

Max up a tree.

Max proved hard to keep in one place, and unfortunately, I was a bad example to the child. I scuttled up the side of the climbs; along a route which is actually scramble-able to a different lot of climbs. I tied myself in to a tree so that I wouldn't inadvertantly slip off and maim someone with my excessive mass and velocity, and so that I could lean over the edge and take photos. The second time I did this, with some apple for a snack, Max saw me and followed blindly; this wouldn't have been so bad, but he wasn't shoes OR a harness. I had horrible visions of him flying off the edge...Mark tied in Max's shoes and harness into one of the top ropes that we set up and I pulled them up. Max was then shod and harnessed, I then tied him to a tree, which is probably how he should be. So, we watched the climbing from the top, and then when Max got bored of this I untied him from the tree (error!!!) at which point he bounded off higher up the slope. Which meant I had to scuttle after him, before he threw himself off a rock out of sheer curiousity. Conveniently, there was a loop in his harness which acted as a handle so that I could restrain him from running off the very steep edge of death and doom. Energetic is an understatement, I was busy wishing for a very strong leash to attach to him to keep him in a more manageable radius and prevent him doing himself damage.

'Oh look! I can see Mark!' proclaimed Max

'Hang-on, isn't he your father?!' I retorted in mild surprise.

We finished our day of climbing by cooling ourselves in the river; which I had not been to before and was pleasently surprised by the existance of a pretty, fast-flowing stream.

Max busied himself with his death-defying feats, leaping from slippery rock to rock, which eventually led to him taking an unexpected dip in the river. In turn this led to him standing around in his knickers for the rest of the time...then a father's dilemma of whether to have a half naked child on the train or a shivering but decent child on the train back home.

A lopsided photo of the river.

*Entirely speculation

Tiffin reunion – part 1

So, Isabella and Ian arrived on the 2nd of May (at least that’s when I thought they got here) there was some emailing and I arranged to meet on weds evening in Shibuya, so that I could show them around a little. I sent very precise directions (well I thought they were…they were probably crap directions) via email of how to meet at the infamous Hatchiko statue.

I turn up just before 7pm, and Shibuya, as usual, is jam-packed with bodies (live ones) but it’s not so hard to find Caucasians in Japan, they kind of stick out. I find them hiding behind one of the large planters beside the Hatchiko statue. I scream at them as a form of greeting (a traditional Tiffian greeting call). I haven’t seen Is in ages! So, it’s entirely full of all types of coolness that I see her in Tokyo!

The first thing we do is the main crossing, which is a veritable melee of people trying to get across the road. We weasel our way to the front of the amassing crowds waiting to cross, so that we can get the full effect of the crossing. I must say I was a little disappointed as you usually get a full on wall of people coming at you and it never looks like anyone is going to get past anyone else, but somehow the opposing walls of people meet, mesh and get to where they want to go.

We have a little tour of the main street then we look for dinner. We end up in a little Japanese eel restaurant (I had no idea it was an eel restaurant, I just thought it was an izakaya). The waiters quickly work out that we are English and send over their best English speaker! Very sweet of them. They really make an effort. There is a moment where they nervously ask if it’s okay that they only sell eel and that we can only stay 2 hours. There is some great sign language going on, where the waiter tries to describe their restaurant with something that looked suspiciously like a rendition of ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’. He was actually trying to point out that they sell all parts of the eel; the head, body, tail, the internal organs, and everything in between. Luckily, Is and Ian aren’t fussy eaters, so it’s all good and we order our drinks. Then comes the harder bit of ordering, as the entire menu is in Japanese (including the price, but to be honest food in Japan is very reasonable and luckily I can read the Chinese numbers, so it’s not really an issue) I ask what the waiter recommends, and he says something, then I stare blankly back; obviously, nothing has gone in, but hey, this is just yet another culinary adventure for me, and it’s been how I’ve been ordering food most of the time in Japan, close your eyes and hope for the best), pause for a moment, then smile and nod ‘yes please, we’ll have whatever you just said’, nicely rounded off by a big grin.

So, we sit and chat about stuff and things. I get shown the ‘itinerary’ that Ian carefully prepared, in CAD, of their whole 5 month trip. I am suitably impressed. There’s even special time dedicated to the ‘Tiffin Reunion’, which had been lovingly hatched in Tiffin blue, the colour had been carefully recreated using Is’s expertise.

The eel is amazing. Succulent and delicious, we also have some weird salad type veg; spring onions, cucumber, carroty stuff in some eccentric dip, which you couldn’t quite pin down what it tasted like. It looks like crunchy peanut butter but starts off tasting almost spicy, then bitter and sour with a lemony type kick. A very interesting assault of taste on ones taste buds, and a nice way to round off a new culinary experience.

I then take them to TiGhT. We get there and it already looks full, but I poke my head up and the barman sees me, I mutter something about it being a bit busy in bad Japanese, and he asks how many people I have. Just 3, I say. He say’s ‘come on up’ and gets everyone else in there to shuffle up to make some standing room near the mirror. We spend a good fews hours there, with the lovely eight sea mountain sake that I tried last time.

The time came to leave after a good chat and we arranged to meet up the day after, for a little sightseeing.

1pm, Ueno park, Exit 1 of Metro Ueno station. It’s a gloriously sunny day and everyone is out relaxing and enjoying the first day of an extended holiday. Is and Ian, aren’t there as early as they were for Hatchiko, so I start getting paranoid that they are lost in Tokyo…but they arrive at about quarter past and I take them back to a more appropriate exit so that we can have a look at the Ueno market, Ameya Yokocho.

We walk a little way down the street and straight away walk past a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It’s lunch time so we go in. We have some good sushi. There was some awesome slightly seared salmon which just melted in my mouth! Gorgeous! I nearly melted too. After our sushi interlude we continue the business of looking at the market, we have a quick walk through, and it’s packed. There are people selling meat and fish, tea, and intermixed are cheap clothes stalls. We wind our way out on to the main high street and I drag them into Yodabashi (an electronics store) and show them sheer superiority of the variety of goods on offer in a standard electronics shop. Including a jocky machine (hopefully pictures to follow).

After this eye-opening insight we head over to the park itself. We stroll in and very quickly find a Buddhist temple, the architecture was well appreciated by my companions. Who proceeded to spend a good 20mins taking photos of the roofs. More of a stroll took us through the temple and towards a lake. There were quite an assortment of food stalls throughout the park, some even sold takoyaki (I’ll go into this in more depth some other time…but, basically, tako: is octopus, and yaki: is a form of cooking where the food is cooked on the flame, which in this case is actually a dimpled hotplate.).

We behold the sight of the lake, which is crawling with floatation devices in the form of rowing boats, pedal boats, and pedal-powered swans/overgrown ducks. The swan/duck contraptions were also in possession of large bowties around their necks. Classy. It was obviously too much to resist, but we had to rent a swan/duck. I was in the middle of the thing; in charge of steering, and Is and Ian were in charge of pedal power…well, I say Is and Ian, I mean; Is was. It became apparent that Is was doing most of the pedalling and Ian was just being lazy. We cruised around in our Duck-mobile, accosting the other vessels and occupants. Is (and Ian) managed to speed past a few people for a laugh; an excellent past time. I was in charge of waving manically at people. We were not the only ones to be enjoying the boat rides; there was a very cunning seagull who had chosen to travel in style and was perched on the head of a swan/duck.

After our little laucastrine gallivants, we walked to the edge of the park, from where I was going to walk them to the University of Tokyo to let them have a little walk around. On our way, we did find a really cool looking pre-fab shop which induced much photography from our architecture tour. And then there was the sudden realisation that there was something else in Ueno park that they really wanted to see. The building of the museum of western art was apparently a must see. So we ended up heading back from whence we came. Powering it through the park to try and catch get in to the museum before the 5pm closing time was a little bit of a mission. Especially as the park is rather large, and I didn’t really know where I was. But we made it. There were actually two buildings very close to one another. The first was rather oppressive; it looked as though it was wearing a large sombrero, and the second was elegant http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/nmwa/index.htm. It was surrounded by several art works and looked like a very well designed gallery. There were really simple, clean cut lines and a sweeping glass front at ground level. We snuck inside, which was a little disappointing, as the lighting for the space was rather poor and the whole space felt a little dull and dingy, despite the huge glass wall which surrounded a good two sides of the space.



I then discovered that my University ID card got me into the exhibition for free, which was nice because we just wanted to look at the design of the building.

We walked into a three storey high gallery, which centred around two cylindrical concrete columns which stretched up to the intersection of roof beams. Some of the roof beams were exposed from the presence of a very interesting sky light; a pyramidal cut out from the ceiling with a isosceles triangle as a base, with the glass panes to let the light in on the face of the pyramid with the shortest base length. It looked amazing. We stood in awe for quite a while. The rest of the gallery took you through the building, moving from room to room there was a different style, but they all flowed very well with out ever coming across as a box sectioned into different rooms. Even the cladding was well chosen. Hopefully I’ll be able to steal some photos of the building from Is. Eventually we were ushered out by a rather menacing group of black-suited curators. Actually, it felt more like we were being herded out of the exhibition; quite a sight to behold.

After being expelled from the museum, we wondered into the park again, towards the zoo, where there were some food stalls and a very small fun fair for kiddies. There we found a Japanese crepe van, where I enforced the idea that they should try one. If you’ve never come across Japanese crepes, they are a delectable melody of sugary-goodness, possibly Death. My friends chose wisely; opting for a strawberry, custard cream, fresh cream and chocolate ensemble; in this crepe-shaped sugary-goodness/death there was: a strip of chocolate cake, piped custard, piped fresh cream, a very succulent looking redder than red strawberry, and strawberry ice cream. It was then expertly folded in to a sixth and placed into a paper holder garnished with some stick of pastry, a stick of chocolate shavings and two spoons (after some gesturing) inserted then handed over to a very wide-eyed Isabella. I had some lovely cinnamon dough stick encrusted in my favourite food-group: sugar. We sat and savoured. Well I sat and savoured my non-dairy-death dough stick, whilst Isabella and Ian fought to eat their crepe the fastest. Ian then proceeded to try and paint his lovely white shirt in the excitement, much to Is’s amusement.

Once the indulgence was over and Ian had made an effort to clean himself up, I dragged them down the back streets of Ueno towards Hongo and my University campus. After a little trek I managed to find the perimeter wall of Todai, but failed dismally to be able to find a way in, which didn’t involve scaling the wall. So we kept walking around, in so, passing a very cool house with a very nicely placed spiral staircase which was in full view due to the glazed wall. We managed to drag ourselves away from the coolness of such a house and finally got to one of the more vehicular entrances of the University. I then led them through the campus showing them the old style Japanese kendo training room, our very cunning underground gym with a sports field on top, Engineering Building 2; which has a newer building trying to eat another building with the nicest roofed court yard that I have been in (except for, possibly, the British Library), our very cool central library; complete with stags head and chandeliers in one of the ground floor reading rooms, and Akamon.

I dragged the jet-lagged pair to a cheap izakaya near campus where we sample some more Japanese food via my random selection method. Some yaki-undon, tempura fish, kimchee pork and eda-mame later I’ve apparently found Is’s and Ian’s repletion level so we drag ourselves out of the izakaya and I show them to the train station.

All in all a very interesting sightseeing day for all.

Golden Week

This week has been ‘Golden Week’, practically the only time where Japanese are on holiday. One crazy week, during the year, where they all go on holiday. Apparently, that’s why you get the snap-happy Japanese tourist. They pack themselves off to Europe, and any other holiday destination and cram it all in in a week. They do speed tourism!

Anyway, the 29th of April is Showa day. Which this year got moved to a Monday as it fell on a Sunday, so it got ‘compensated’. Then the 3rd (constitution day), 4th (green day – I wore green) and 5th (children’s day) are also holidays. Interestingly enough, and in line with the whole Japanese work ethic, if a national holiday falls on a Saturday it doesn’t get compensated! Shocking.

I’m liking this whole Golden Week thing. The weather has been happy and sunny, which is especially nice because it had been having a bit of a temperamental phase where it would start off lovely and sunny then have some horrendous rain storm later in the evening.