Chichibu

Another 'study' trip organised by the University of Tokyo for their international students! hurrah!

We had about a 2hour drive from Tokyo to Chichibu, a tiny little town sitting on a little plain surrounded by little hills (mountains by UK standards...)

First stop was making soba noodles...which was very energetic...



This involved jumping up and down on then dough, which was great fun. Unfortunately, i think our group was a little over enthusiastic and managed to break 3 of the plastic bags that we put the dough in before jumping up and down on it...





After the Soba making we crossed over the road to the paper making workshop to make traditional Japanese paper 'Washi'...

That's me trying to make washi...not that you can really tell because my stupid hair is in the way...

...actually it's a stunt double...





The outer layer of the wood is used to get the long wood fibers for washi, here being hung out to dry.



ahh the best part of making soba...is eating soba... with nice tenpura veggies...we actually ate the soba we made.




We then got back into the coach and headed to the river...i'm assuming it's Chichibu river...and had a big group photo and scuttled about on the rocks for a bit...



Me and Tatiana on some rock.


Then back on the coach...whence upon a had a nice little nap and then neatly woke up at the next stop where we went to Chichibu festival hall to look at the very ornate wooden carts that they celebrate the Chichibu festival with on the 3rd of December.


After this we walked on to find another little museam...unfortunately everything was in Japanese so we kinda lost out on the cultural significance of it all.

Then a long bus ride home...

there is also some form of PDF slide show available at the website below...
http://gwp01.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/kouryu/students/CultureHistory.htm
where you can play a game of spot the wayway...

Borat...sorry, Morat

Guess what! I managed to meet my first Uzbekistanian person yesterday. He lives in my halls and his name is Morat!!! How cool is that?!?!?! Anyway apparently there are more Uzbekistanis living here...he knows of at least 5...even better!

Tsukiji Fish Market

No trip to Tokyo is complete with out sushi...and the famous fish market is, well, revered for it's freshness so we thought we'd have to go try...SO, despite Quans jetlag we get up very early and head towards Shimbashi...

Unfortunately, living in Odaiba means that we miss the auctions, which start at 5am (i'm told that you have to be there before 5am to get a look in). Anyway the Yurikamome line's first train is at 530...so No Chance!

Anyhoo, we have a wonder around looking for the famed 'Daiwa Zushi' sushi restaurant, where the guide book tells me is the best place for a sushi brekkie.....mmmmmmm....fishies :D

We wondered around for ages and still could not find where the guide book said Daiwa was...I ened up asking this guy at a stall in very bad Japanese where building 6 was (this is what the guide book gives as an address). Anyway, we were blatently in the wrong place, so we eventually wondered back out of the fish stall bit...trying to avoid being run over by the little motorised trolleys zipping about in very tight spaces laden mostly with polystyrene...


A very bad picture of one of the motorised trolly things...

Eventually, after some near misses with some of these trollies, we found Daiwa, along with a very long queue...but i made Quan stand in line...after all the effort of finding the place i wasn't about to leave with out a sushi breakfast! that would be crazy talk...anyway the very carefully organised queuing system was interesting...especially in such a tight space.



After about 45mins of diligent queuing and a couple of minutes of smearing our faces up against the window we managed to get seats at the counter...and then the fun of ordering in Japanese began!

I only knew the word for tuna = maguro, which is great, because i love tuna! but there were different levels of tuna...normal, fatty, and coronary (ie. more fat than fish). But OHMYGOD!!!! the coronary tuna (it's not really called this but Quan was convinced he could feel his arteries tightening after he ate it) was *gorgeous*...aaaaahhhhh...

We also tried some sea urchin...uni...or something like that (I usually end up saying the word for plum instead of sea urchin...which can be interesting). The worst thing was the prawn...not that it tasted bad...it was just the pyschological trauma (not least to the prawn) of eating a 'not-properly-dead-yet' prawn. It was a little too fresh for my liking. And by 'too' fresh I mean that it was having muscle spasms on my little (giri) lump of rice. This was despite it having been beheaded, de-shelled and de-legged. I was trying to wait for it to stop twiching before I ate it. But it kept on twitching too much...and I rather wanted to stop watching...so mr. prawn met a acidic end...

I'm still planning to go again...so any of you planning to visit are more than welcome to request a trip there... ;)

Imperial Palace - Welcoming in the New Year

Yokohama

After a nice little new years in Odaiba we went to Yokohama in the morning in the search for chinese stuff...

A very strange sculpture of shipping containers near the port of Yokohama...

The view of the port of Yokohama... as we were walking along the promenade we watched a pair standing together, one was throwing bread into the air to the seagulls making them catch it in mid air...whilst the other was just grabbing at the birds who were hovering to try and get the food...a couple he actually just ended up hitting away...but then he caught one by the body! The sea gul flapped alot...but calmed down once the other friend (not holding the bird) fed it some bread. The seagull, a bit pissed off, then proceeded to try and free itself by by biting the guys hand with it's beak...when this didn't work it then turned it's head fully around to the guy holding it to try for his face...which was very far away from it's beak but it had a go anyway. Theh guy holding the bird then taunted the seagull by moving his face closer...sticking the cigarette that he was smoking out towards it's beak, which the bird then bit and very quickly realised it was a bad idea.

A very well designed decking area and roof garden to disguise a port terminal.

A bento box full of traditional Japanese new year foods very kindly given to us by a member of YiPings Lab who drove all the way into Yokohama to meet us for about half an hour!

Univeristy of Tokyo

Thought you might like to see where I go most days...
A picture of the outside of number 1 (because it's the best) building on Hongo Campus, University of Tokyo... I'm currently getting my business card made up which will have it's address on it...which is very nice, but have no idea how much it will cost...oh well... My Prof (or sensei) says that it's the safest place to be on campus...founded on rock and with the thickest roof...which would explain why we have rats living with us in the basement...I've not seen them myself but they have said hello to the swedish exchange student. Yes, rather appropriately the geotechnical lab is in the basement. it's always dark...and we can be at one with the mud. mmmmm.....nice.

And this is the old ginko tree that is just outside the building, in it's full autumn glory...golden. this was last week some time...and now it's completely bare...

Christmas Party 25th Dec 2006 Odaiba 11th floor

Yukiko of the 11th floor was hosting a party on Christmas day...she's the once wearing the tiara.
The party was meant to be fancy dress...


Pikacho also made an appearance...

look it's pikacho again!

most people came to the party as foreigners...

Climbing...Yugawara

I woke up at 6:30am...this is not so good as I was meant to have left my room by 6am to get to Shinagawa station to meet everyone on the train...but anyway after calling up some people, rushing out of the house in a panic grabbing some food for lunch and brekkie...I eventually got on a train to Yugawara.


Luckily for me...and not so lucky for anyone else...the train everyone else was on was delayed due to an accident (probably someone committing suicide...apparently the Japanese rail system is soo effecient, and used to suicides, that they can clear a body from the tracks and have the system up and running back to the normal schedule in 2hours... *great*) so I managed to catch up with them...and did some more nice outdoor climbing...mmmmm...



A few photos of the autumn leaves...

Study Tour cont... 1st Dec 2006

IMPERIAL PALACE

Apparently the Imperial Palace is Closed to the public on Mondays and Fridays...so we couldn't go in...but we stood outside instead..

me and YiPing...in front of the bridge...

Lab members doing the 'Imperial Wave'...

View to the Imperial Gardens

TOKYO STOCK EXCHANGE

The Tokyo Stock Exchange

me trying (and failing) to look serious infront of where they floated a company today...

The Shinto Fertility Shrine.

TOKYO SEALIFE PARK

Penguins!!! at the Tokyo Sealife Park...

study tour of Tokyo!!!

ahhh....today I bunked off my one and only Japanese lecture this morning and went on a free study tour organised by the university...it was great we got to go into the Edo museam and the aquarium for free! hurrah...heres a horrendously large photo of all the people who went...