Free money?

A while ago the Japanese government mentioned giving a cash-handout to Japanese residents to help boost the economy. So far all the information that I could read up on the whole process was very confusing, as no-one seems to know who will get the money or how to get it. However, THIS article by the Japan Times seems to clear it up a little.

Apparently, legal foreigners should be able to get the ￥12000 hand-out by filling in a form that should sent to their registered home address. So, I guess I should just wait for the letter...

Stupid visa...

My 'alien' status in Japan requires me, not only to carry around a special ID card (Alien registration), to renew my student visa after a minimum of two year stay. This is because the maximum length of a 'student visa' for Japan is 2 years, irrespective of how long your course is. SO, despite the visa I got from the Japanese embassy in London saying I have a multiple entry visa for Japan, valid for 3 years, I have to apply for renewal of my student visa after 2 years of stay, as well as apply for a 're-entry permit' if I ever want to leave and re-enter Japan. Craziness.

Anyhoo, as my last re-entry permit runs out with my last visa, I need to apply for one of those too; you can choose between 'single re-entry' (3000yen) or 'multipe re-entry' (6000yen). Visa renewal currently costs 4000yen which is all payable in lovely things called 'revenue stamps'.

Another thing, visa renewal takes 4 to 6, yes SIX weeks to be processed. AND you can only apply a maximum of 2 months in advance of your visa expiry date:

So, my visa runs out on the 1st of April 2009, and I have to get my visa renewed BEFORE it runs out and giving the minimum leeway of 4 weeks, and taking into account the earliest that I can apply for it: I have a window from the 2nd Feb 'til the 2nd March to apply.

I decided to make very sure that I had plenty of time for applicationy stuff, so I went on the 2nd of Feb to be at the office 9am ready to hand in my forms and all the certificates. I was all organised and applied for the re-entry and extention all at the same time (even though the re-entry permit is done on the same day as application... but hey, better to hand in all the forms at the same time right?). So, now I'm waiting for a postcard saying that I can come back with my passport to pick up all those lovely stamps I need to stay in the country. fun fun fun.

How to get to Tokyo Immigration Office

There are several way to get yourself over to the Tokyo Immigration office, but because I have a general dis-like of buses in Tokyo, and am also financially allergic to taxis, I took the Rinkai line [りんかい] train down to Tennozu-isle [天王州アイル], then walked for about 15mins to the office.

So when you get to Tennozu-isle, take Exit A.


When you hit daylight after your second flight of escalators turn LEFT (following the sign to the monorail station)











Follow the next escalators, then at the top turn RIGHT towards the traffic junction (and the monorail station)

















Turn RIGHT at the junction to walk over the blue bridge, called Shinagawa-futou-bashi [品川埠頭橋]





It will generally look like a sea of shipping containers for most of the walk, but follow the road... just after crossing over the river, the road goes under a highway (HUGE concrete thing, you cant miss it), keep following the road as it curves round to the left...














... and eventually you'll see a big square SUNKUS sign over some vending machines, and the big grey monstrosity behind it is the Immigration Office.

TA DA!

5.8M wake-up call...

Felt another earthquake this morning.　It has been a while since i felt one. It was quite nice and gentle, but it did wake me up as it went on for nearly a minute.

5.8M (JMA scale) around 7am this morning.

Gold fishes [金魚]

After seeing all the kids try fishing at the stall near the temple, I thought I would give it a go. 'can't be that hard' I thought...I was terribly wrong. The little paddle that you are equipped with has a surface made of paper, which is carefully designed to disintegrate in water, thus giving you a limited number of tries to get said fish from the pool in to your 'prize' bowl.

With my first dip, the paddle was broken...I guess because I was chasing the fish a bit too enthusiastically - they swim quite fast, dammit. Anyway, after 3seconds the fishing device as useless... so I gave up, and claimed my two consolation gold fish.

fishes!!!

They are now living in a little tub I bought from the 100yen shop, with some pebbles we collected from Brittany. They went nuts when I first put them in. I didn't realise that you had to wait for the tap water to be warm before putting the poor little things in. But they seem much more settled now. So we have fishes.

Koishikawa Matsuri

A matsuri on our very own doorstep. I walked up and down the road wondering what was meant to be going on. There were crowds of people hanging around ｔaiko [太鼓] and portable shrines, I could see about three separate groups, possibly from different companies or micro-neighbourhoods.

They all seemed to be preparing as opposed to actually performing. The kids were in their own little matsuri outfits, with some perched on the taiko kart randomly hitting the drum. Some of the older guys were trying to teach the kids the beat that they should be following, but it's far more fun just to whack the thing...so that's what ended up happening.

Portable shrine carried by small people

Another portable shrine, sitting in the play area just opposite our block of flats. possibly waiting for the festivities to get into full swing.

One of the taikos even wheeled right outside our house, they just seemed to be walking around the block with some kids perched on the kart to make some noise about it. Adults flanked the kart, protecting the group from traffic...

There were even food stalls set up in our quiet neighbourhood. They positioned themselves at the traffic junction closest to our house on the road leading up to the temple just north of the Botanical gardens. The guy at the takoyaki stall looks rather warm - and considering that he's in front of a hot plate with the hot weather, I don't envy him.

Takoyaki is a common snack food, especially for festivals like this - It involves a batter like mixture with some veg; say, cabbage, red ginger and what-not a peice of octopus [たこ] the batter is cooked into a little sphere with the veges and peice of octopus at the centre. Usually you get 6-8 little orbs in a tray, which is then smothered in a thick sweet soy sauce decorated with mayonase and sprinkled with some green dust (I still have no idea what this stuff is) and some katsuboshi [鰹節] (dried fish flakes).

Fishing for gold fish and the multi-coloured plastic version

Trying your luck with a paper paddle to catch little gold fish was very popular. 200yen for children, 300yen for adults and 500yen for a slightly different scoop to try and catch little turtles. Both the scoop and fish catching paddle were made of water soluble stuff to impede the amount of catching actually done. So it was quite a challenge added to the fact that the fish were fully aware of the whole catching situation. There were many different kinds of gold fish, fantails, telescope eyed ones, black ones, patchy coloured ones as well as small turtles a little catfish, shrimps and a miniature lobster.

Stairs to the temple itself

French crepes at the temple!

A little boy looks hopefully at his mum for the chance to catch some pretty fishes. Disappointed at her refusal, he goes back to staring intently at the pretty fishes.

Bonsai

Bonsai [盆栽] - potted plant on our window sill...blissfully unaware of the impending doom.

So, this our second attempt at keeping a bonsai tree. The first one that we bought came from a little flower shop [花屋 - はなや] down the road from the ryokan [旅館] that we stayed in in Kyoto [京都] (link to the post here). Anyway after leaving it with a carer whilst we were away in France and UK, April this year, the moss started dying...then the little pine tree [松 - まつ] started to demise slowly soon afterwards. Greg was mortified, considering that we had spent so long trying to find a nice little bonsai to call our own.

In any case, what is left of the trunk and the moss (which has actually regrown quite well) is now sitting on our larger balcony.

Last weekend we were idly scooting about on our bikes in the general direction of Ikebukuro [池袋] in the search of some form of sunday lunch and mild entertainment, when we happened across a old lady and her equally old husband who were sitting by the roadside opposite Otsuka [大塚] station selling various bonsais. They had normal potted plants in addition to two shelves of trees of varying types and sizes. They even had one medium sized bonsai laden with green cherries, some smaller ones full of red berries and an array of small evergreen bonsais.

The little old lady didn't really attempt to talk to Greg, and instead focussed all her attention on me, assuming that I would be able to 1. understand what she was saying, and 2. translate to Greg. I got the idea that some of the trees were deciduous and others were evergreen. She said the deciduous ones look rather sad in winter. As we had already killed one pine tree we decided against the same kind again, so we honed in on the evergreens. The little old lady was busy telling us the ages of all the various bonsais she had and in the end we chose this one because we liked the trunk and general shape better than its brother.

We were told to put some water in a plate and pop the bonsai on to the plate of water to water it. Watering from the bottom up. I am hoping that this one fares better than the last one.

more manners

A new Tokyo Metro Manners poster! hurrah....but not quite as good as Augusts contribution [see the Tokyo Metro Manners post]

Tokyo Metro Manners

In what is often perceived as the most polite cultures in the world (outwardly at least), Tokyo Metro [東京メトロ] is trying to improve the travelling environment for all who use their subway trains by improving peoples manners. They decided that the best way to do this was through a poster campaign which seems to be taking an exaggerated and slightly comical look at bad manners that people tend to have taken to on the metro. The posters highlight annoying bad habits which are deemed unsuitable for the Tokyo Metro environment, and they suggest, should be reserved for the comforts of your own home. Each month has brought out a new poster:
The first poster appeared in April and asks that you share your seat with other people, by displaying a young man taking up several seats to read his magazine and munch on his snack, surrounded by open cans. The May poster, shows a lady putting on make up on the train; which is apparently another no-no (personally, I think, if you can put on make up on a moving train it's a skill not a public nuisance - but is guess it's more a case of you taking up lots of elbow space to do certain make-up-manoeuvres)

June is slightly more comical; with a lady acting out an array of emotions on the phone, and suggesting that no-one really wants to hear the ins and outs of your life on the train. July shows an old man taking a similar pose the young guys he is sitting next to, the young man is busy appreciating music, while the old man is busy trying to block out the sound with his fingers in his ears...

Augusts poster is, however, genius. Changing from the heading of 'Please do it at Home' they have now got 'Please do it at the beach' - in keeping with the summer time. Some guy dives for the closing train doors but is caught as they shut. Although, I'm not entirely sure if he's meant to look as though he is swimming or diving for a volley ball or something...it's hard to tell. Looks great anyways.

more from the OFF series...

Ok, I stand corrected: there is definitely MORE than just Hard OFF. There is also:

GarageOFF [ガレージオフ]
Car assessories, like stereos, seat covers, spark plugs...stuff like that...

OFFHouse [オフハウス]
Household goods, such as furniture, white goods for the kitchen and sports equipment...like golf clubs (how this classifies as house, I don't know...)

ModeOFF [モードオフ]
Clothes


HobbyOFF [ホッビオフ]
capsule toys, hobby stuff (like skelectrics and Gandam), cards, toys, collectors items, and novelty (who knows what that means...)

BoxShop [ボックスショップ]
space rental...basically storage...

Book OFF - recycled books, CD's, DVD's games and consoles

Apparently Book OFF also has a 'sister' shop called Hard OFF, which specialises in hardware, anything from bicycles, pots and pans to air cons and printers. Book OFF, however, focuses mainly on books and although the smaller shops only really stock Japanese books, the larger ones can have a small selection of foreign books. Despite what their name suggests, they don't only do books. We popped into the Mejiro [目白] branch a couple of weekends ago, after having a personal tour of the neighbouring Gakushuin [学習院] University. The first floor was not very interesting, on account that is was jam packed with Japanese books that we are unable to read. The basement floor below, however, was a different matter. There was a trolley full of nearly new consoles, including the Wii (I think it was priced at 21000yen) and following the shelves around, there were games for the DS, Wii, playstation etc. at very reasonable prices. Around the corner there were Box sets for foreign TV shows; CSI, Sex in the City, Buffy, Ally McBeal...which at some point morphed into movies (foreign and Japanese alike) and music. The music section was pretty well stocked out, with a decent range of genres and more or less half price compared to the RRP in mainstream music shops.

Unable to resist, we bought ourselves some barginous CD's. I was pleasantly surprised at their immaculate condition, having half expected some kind of scratching or signs of use there was not a mark on them.

List of shops in Tokyo, HERE. There are lots, 142 to be precise.

Design Festa 2008

Design Festa, 17th - 18th May 2008, Tokyo. Apparently, *THE* biggest art and design show in Asia. We had bought our advance tickets from a local Lawsons (a convenience store) and went down to Odaiba [お台場] on Sunday morning.

We approached Tokyo Big Sight by the most expensive line in Tokyo called the Yurikamome [ゆりかもめ] (well... that's what we used to complain that it was when I lived on the reclaimed bit of sea which can only really be reached by this line...) symbolised by a little seagull (a kamome) - 10 or 15 years ago none of this used to exist...it was just a conveniently shallow bit of sea, that Tokyo absorbed because it has run out of space to expand inland, due to the surrounding mountains...and anyway they've been doing land reclamation for centuries, back when they just used to ram huge beams of wood into shallow sea water...and repeatedly dump sand and material, until they could walk on it...then build on it...Techniques have advanced a little since then... I have been told that the material used to 'reclaim' (not that it really belonged to humans anyway) the land, was mainly taken from metro and trainline tunnelling projects. Reducing the need to waste lots of energy transporting loads of sand pointlessly around the country. ANYWAY...I get distracted by the engineering...as you can probably see, Tokyo Big Sight is a strangely shaped building... looks like four upside-down pyramids on pillars. The entire complex spans much further off into the distance up to about 2 stories in height in what seem like HUGE event spaces. It is damned impressive when you walk through it after a series of lectures or meetings finish... it looks like some kind of human-making-factory (might have mentioned this before...hmmm then again, maybe not...did mention the building here though). There are several other equally strange looking buildings in Odaiba - namely the Fuji Television Building.

I really don't know what the humongous saw is there for...It was one of the first impressions of Tokyo that I received...

There was quite a queue of people, and we had gotten there EARLY! The thing opened at 11am and there was a line of people waiting...Mind you, it doesn't even come close to the mob that we saw when there was a anime and manga event here a year ago. The horde of people (mainly males...) stretched back to the train station about 8 people wide...and the train station is about 600m away... Our little speck of a queue was nothing compared to that one...none the less, as we saw most people head straight for the first floor, we decided that it might be nicer to go straight to the second floor, where we were hoping it would be quieter.

We walked into 'West 3' and it was rather dark. the other half of the hall was properly lit, I guess this side was in darkness to allow people to see the video projection which was aimed at one of the walls. Ignoring this there was some great art work hiding in the dark...Unfortunately, the DARK meant we couldn't get a good photo of this stall, but this lady (Monchi Hoshi) - who can be found here...and her shop here...- had amazing artwork, a kind of meld of the the bold and crisp forms of art deco and the oriental. Original designs seemed to be printed on cloth for hanging and smaller items, like bags. She also had a couple of beautifully etched and stained mirrors on show.

One guy had built a city out of card board, placing little lights and lots of detail through out the mini installation, drawing you deeper and deeper into the miniature world he had created.

There was a little store FULL of tiny frogs, in dispersed with the odd tadpole and a duude mixing music with the sounds of a game boy.... Here you can see he's hooked up three of the things to his mixer. The sound he made was great to listen to too, and drew him quite an admirable crowd.

After 2 hours we had managed to make our way through half of the second of two floors of the festa. We stopped for lunch at one of the food stalls...and then after a short break, we soldiered on to the rest of 'West 4' and eventually made it down stairs to 'West 1 and 2'...which we whizzed through.

The guy above sketching, was drawing with silver pen on black paper, using a similar idea to fractals... each chunk of art work that he had (there were three that we could see) was a magnified section of one of the other drawings. Some of the lettering was written in mirror form, some had meaning, some other writings had no meaning. He was very friendly, and Greg managed to have a nice little chat with him...

One guy filled his stall with one huge canvas/drawing board, and was just sketching through out the show, everything in pencil. The great thing with the whole show was that many of the stall holders had personalised their stalls by painting and sketching on the screens that separated them from their neighbours.

There were also some super-heroes wondering around...but I couldn't work out why.

I leave you with a picture of one of the many stalls which sold mini postcard versions of their artwork....