HAHA! the monks are back...

...continuing on the monk thing...(where they are singing in jazz clubs: see here, here and here) they are playing at サ ウンド　ミュージック　バー　Chippy (Chippy Sound and Music Bar) on Wednesday the 13th of Feb...

Hurrah!

"Japan mulls language visa tests"

An article in the BBC news website (full article here)

Despite my laziness and general lack of any natural talent for languages; I would have to say that I'm in agreement with Japan's Foreign Minister, that foreigners should have at least a grasp of the Japanese language before living and working here (for long-term visitors)... it definitely would " improve their quality of life". You try living here and getting on with your life without a word of Japanese...

However, I fail to see how it will stop terrorism OR illegal immigration.

I do however, find the closing paragraphs hilarious... and typically* 'Japanese'

"Last year an opinion poll carried out for the government found that more than half the foreigners who live in areas where they mix with Japanese people would like more opportunities to interact with them.

But only one in 10 of the Japanese living in the same areas wanted to talk to someone from abroad."

ie. the foreigners want to talk to the Japanese, but the Japanese don't want to talk to foreigners...HUZZAH! (the same is probably true if you swap the word Japanese for British)

*'typical, as in stereotypical... in a highly prejudiced manner... it in no way reflects the behaviour or outlook of the Japanese I ever get to talk to , at any length. Bearing this in mind the only Japanese that will talk to me are 1. the open-minded, want-to-speak-to-foreigners-and-would-like-a-more -rounded-society types, and 2. able to speak English.

...Earthquake Early Warning System...

The JMA (Japanese Meteorological Agency) [気象庁 - きしょうちょう] - I was actually looking up the weather forecast for the next few days, and got heavily distracted... (but in an educational way...) - and saw that they have something up about their 'Early Warning' System.... I was just having a peek at how much warning they were able to give, just in case they'd managed to somehow miraculously come up with a way to predict earthquakes before they happen - I live in optimism...possibly a slightly deluded optimism...ANYWAY...I was a little disappointed (but not particularly surprised) that the warning of a strong tremor is zero seconds, or to the order of 10's of seconds if you're lucky...

Update...

Sooooo.... I've been slipping with the whole posting thing lately: but I've finally found time to
1. catch up with blogging
2. wrestle some photos off Greg...

and just so that you know I've now finished posts on:
Kurobe Dam - Part1 (September 2007)
Kurobe Dam - Part2 (September 2007)
Nikko (December 2007)
Christmas Dinner - Part I (December 2007)
Christmas Dinner - Part II (December 2007)

click on the title and it should link you right to the entry.

...I'm still working on the one about our new year trip snowboarding in Naeba...

Pilates!

Today my legs and my sides ache. Why? because: yesterday afternoon I finally got my arse into the Uni gym to try one of their classes. Access to all the classes run - including yoga, savate, aerobics, etc...is all included in the gym entrance fee.

I definitely used some muscles that I didn't even know I had, whilst attempting to hold some of the positions. Mind you, I was probably doing everything wrong because the instructor was Japanese, and giving the lesson entirely in Japanese...So, I spent most of the time looking at the people beside me seeing what they were doing - with limited success...

Will try to go back next week, to build on my 'core strength' ...see how long I can keep this whole gym thing going for....

Naeba 苗場 [01Jan-04Jan]

Our destination: Naeba 苗場 - an apparently trendy place for young people to hangout and look cool skiing/snowboarding.
Purpose: snow-based-fun&frolics

It's 930pm and we're at the West Exit of Shinjuku station 新宿 and we just about had time to find a cafe to have a hot drink before we met up with Rei and her friend at the bus station...we spent a good hour standing around waiting for the bus to turn up....which happened around 11. The bus was a glorious pink, and it's roof was covered in snow (good to know, as we wanted snow), in addition to the pinkness of the outside of the bus, the lighting in the bus had been designed by someone who seemed to want to spread a message of happiness to the world, but had mistakenly thought that this could be best achieved by multi-coloured lighting... The Overnight bus trip itself would have been fine, if the bus didn't stop every hour for fifteen mins and turn on all the lights, just to really make sure that you knew it was stopping.

Anyway, we got to Naeba at 5am, whence upon we had to try and find our hotel...called White Palace...which was appropriately painted brown (Amy pointed this out to me...I wouldn't even have noticed the irony of the name...). Reception didn't open to 8am, so we napped in some chairs in the foyer/smoking-room-of-lung-death. There were several other Japanese (who'd been on our bus) napping on the floor too....which was kind of reassuring. At 7am (maybe they pitied us and got up early for our benefit) the reception sprung to life and we managed to get our ski wear hired (apart from Greg and Akiko who had to go to a completely different shop to get kitted out...not a good enough range of shoe sizes apparently...). By 930 we were on the hotel provided shuttle bus and heading to the main mountain...

Me in some snow...

After scoffing some breakfast we managed to get on to the beginner slope and Greg tried hard to teach me to snowboard. This mainly ended up being, Greg sitting around on the slope for most of the day watching me fall over in slightly different ways...and over the next 3 days I found MANY different ways to fall over while my feet were firmly strapped to a plank of wood. Some methods involved my neck....which my neck was not very happy about, many involved my knees, which had so many bruises they gave up the concept of individuality and decided to create a merger, to form one very large bruise over both my knees...

We had wondered where Amy and Rei had gotten to, as we'd lost sight of them when we got to the ski lifts....after we got down we found that Amy had basically refused to go any where on the slope and had gone for the safe and non-bruise option of having a coffee.

We did stop for lunch, and then we disbanded again to go on our separate slopes to do our thang....or in my case: try not to die.

When it came to dinner time, we all met up near the entrance of the ski resort and waited for the shuttle bus to take us back. We had time to have a nice hot shower and get out of our ski gear before heading to the dining room.

I ate a lot. I was hungry...all that falling over business is hard work, OKAY!?

After dinner there was still time for night skiing! and very conveniently there was a slope just behind our hotel, which even contained some jumping slidey obstacles for the more experience skiier/snowboarder...meanwhile, I was busy imitating a falling leaf and floating down the slope.

Anyway, this was the routine for the next two days, which my body was not very happy about...We did however, manage to get Amy on to some snow, after she bought herself a sled...

And here are some photos of the night skiing to round it up...

more monks...

from the schedule they have up on their website, the monks are performing TONIGHT!!! ...abit short notice for me....and unfortunately I can't see anything else for the rest of this month...hopefully they will put something up about Feb soon...

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...