Another pointless travel blog.

Into Italy, and over the Alps.

2011-10-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Flaking paint and the dreaded blue-and-yellow stars mark the entrance to country no. 10. Italy.

I passed through just a corner of the country, partly as it was the most direct route, partly in order to avoid using the expensive Brennerspitze toll road through the Austrian mountains, and partly for sightseeing purposes as it promised to provide plenty of good views.

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The way to the mountains involves a left turn at Vipiteno/Sterzing (all the places around here have at least two names, because of the shared Austro-Italian history) and perhaps a bit of rooting around in cul-de-sacs before finding the precise left turn you need. But once you're on it, the road then starts to climb and climb, taking you up beyond the forests, beyond the houses, trees, sheep and finally the grass until you finally pop up over the other side of the hill. Here's a picture from the last viewing place before the summit:

Then the descent: the whole process in reverse. The weather can apparently change pretty suddenly on the other side of these Alpine ridges, but fortunately for me I'd picked a good day, one of those where the sky is a never-ending expanse of blue and the sunlight gets under every pore and into your sandwiches.

There were two passes to cross: the Jaufenpass/Passo di Monte Giovo from Vipiteno, and the Timmelsjoch/Passo del Rombo which took me on to my destination of Sölden in the Tirol.

Sandwiched between them is the tiny town of San Leonardo (Sankt Leonhard); the place is unremarkable in itself, but this view towards the Timmelsjoch road turned out to be one of my favourite holiday snaps from this trip:

The early evening sunlight was still pretty strong. However, I was lucky that I'd set off early from Ossiach; after 8pm the pass is closed, and I could potentially have ended up with no means of getting away from San Leonardo.

I delayed my arrival in Sölden somewhat by being unable to proceed very far without stopping to take another photograph. Around every corner was a new, breathtaking panorama of green valleys and white crags.

Tales from the Pear Tree, part 2

2011-10-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

The major tourist attraction in Birnbaum, if it was indeed Birnbaum that I stopped off at, is this little chapel here. I discovered it quite by chance, by walking up the one side road which branches off the main route through the mountains. This road zigzags up the hills, through soft grassy areas and up to some chalets and a church high above the main village centre.

Partway up, I encountered the chapel, and an interesting-looking inscription on the side.

And going inside, I discovered Christmas: a Tyrolean version of Bethlehem, complete with fake snow and distinctively Austrian looking shepherds.

A homely sound-system was rigged up, so that when the button was pressed a keyboard at the side of the chapel played a recording of Lloyd-Webber's "Pie Jesu".

One final view of the hillside, looking across to some pastures and chalets on the far side of the valley. How these could be accessed I had no idea, as there were no roads or bridges crossing the steep lower part of the valley.

More reasons why Austria is great.

2011-10-16T13:32:00.001-07:00

After my brief trip over the Slovenian border, I spent a few more, comparatively dull, days in Carinthia. However, the trip to my next destination proved to be spectacular. To get there, I passed through the more mountainous terrain of western Carinthia and the East Tirol.

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Here is some of what I saw:

These last are from a village somewhere on the way to Maria Luggau. Writing two months after the event, I sadly can't remember the name of this most delightful of places, but looking at the map again it may well have been Birnbaum, one of the smaller villages on this mountain road. Birnbaum means "Pear Tree" in German, a pretty name, if correct, for an idyllic village.

Country #8: Slovenia

2011-08-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

Staying in Carinthia, Austria, gave me the perfect excuse to hop over yet another border. Here's what I found in the village of Podkoren:

Had to laugh at "Despar".

Quirky Vienna

2011-08-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

The more whimsical side of the city:

Mist for me; a lob for you.

Airstream food stall.

Strange alien pods outside the Leopoldsmuseum. They're apparently quite famous in these parts, and even have an online game dedicated to them.

For three euros, you can go into a wooden building and lie in a hammock. I chose to keep my euros this time around.

Weighing yourself in the street, on the other hand, is a snip at 20 cents.

Imperial Vienna

2011-08-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

Let's continue our tour of the Austrian capital with a quick gander at the grander bits.

Here, for example, is the Art History Museum:

What the picture doesn’t convey, however, is that this is one half of a pair of matching buildings, with a typically overdecorated park in between. The counterpart on the other side is the Natural History Museum.

Here's one of the statues which graces the park (with apologies for the gratuitous backsides on display):

The cathedral is a particularly grandiose conception:

Lastly, a grand monument to US capitalism is evidently also to be found in the heart of the city.

Land Ahoyyy!

2011-08-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

Finally back in the land of inedible sandwiches and obstreperous toddlers called Kayleigh.

(Granted, I haven't actually run into any Kayleighs so far, but it's only been half a day).

Anyhow, there is still a lot of backtracking to do and some potentially delicious scenery to upload, so do please "watch this space".

A rant and Vienna

2011-08-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'm actually now staying in a rural part of northwest Germany, near to the border with Luxembourg, and hoping to do some exploring tomorrow. However, I'd like to continue backtracking to last week's activities, in the hope of catching up and writing in "real time" before I make it home.

I'm extremely tired, having had my sleep disturbed for two successive nights by a pair (or was it three?) of boorish bores, who pontificated in shouty voices until the early hours in the last place I stayed in. If that wasn't enough to contend with, one of them emerged to tell me off this morning for closing the door too noisily when exiting the bathroom.

There does seem to be a particular sort of person in Germany who likes to pretend the rest of humanity is non-existent. It's as though there's a kind of sociopathic "super-Aspergers" gene doing the rounds in this part of the world and preventing perhaps about 30% of the population from understanding how to interact with society. Of course, we've seen plenty of antisocial behaviour in the UK in recent weeks, and I wouldn't claim any kind of superiority for my native country; merely that there, people are mostly aware when they're being obnoxious, whereas here I'm not so sure that they notice at all. It's almost as though one is dealing with a load of overgrown toddlers, who haven't yet realised there are other people in the world with equivalent needs and desires.

Fortunately there are plenty of very nice people here too, but I'm not sure it's a culture I'd want to inhabit, as I'm not the most relaxed person myself and find it hard to tolerate sociopaths.

--------------------------------------------

Anyway, onto Vienna, my destination for a day-trip last weekend. For some reason it cost 9 euros to get there from Mosonmagyarovar and 18 to get back; especially unimpressive was the unannounced hour-long delay to the return train, which made it rather a late night.

I should have (indeed, may have) ordered a return ticket right from the start. Things got a bit complicated, however, as the very helpful lady in the ticket office couldn't speak much German and of course I speak no Hungarian. She seemed utterly discombobulated that someone should be hoping to travel to Vienna, and my question about which station was closest to the centre threw her a bit. I think she'd heard of Vienna, just about, but took some time and a lot of advice from a colleague before producing the ticket and digging out change in Euros from an envelope at the bottom of a sea of bits of paper. They still use the forint in Hungary and there was a notice stating that all change would be given in forints, so this was a kind gesture; however, after all the confusion I didn't like to probe too much about what sort of ticket I had.

Vienna is of course the city where music was pretty much invented. Well, classical music, at any rate. I think most of the musicians were probably either on holiday or on tour during the summer, because I didn't see much by way of concert brochures, or indeed any of the high-class busking one finds in most tourist centres. There did seem to be a lot of piano shops, though.

Given this unique cultural background (factor in that this is also the home of Klimt, Munch, Gropius and the Jugendstil architects, among many others) I was expecting something more viscerally "arty" and was a little disappointed when the fairly lengthy walk from the station to the centre took me through rather anodyne streets that could have been London or even Bristol.

There were a couple of nice touches, however:

a pretty church:

a sculptural balcony:

and this rather rococo statue outside another church:

Mosonmagyarovar, Hungary.

2011-08-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

Moson town centre. It's a pleasant little place in summer, though could probably benefit from some flowers to brighten up the buildings. This is one of those situations where two towns get joined together to the point where they're virtually indistinguishable, à la Epsom-and-Ewell. Magyarovar is somewhere further up the road. I think I managed to get lost in both parts of town on my first day.

Goulash, i.e. lashings of meaty goo. With sliced peach and potato croquettes. Not 'arf bad, neither.

Ah yes, the hollow, staring eyes of the man himself, creator of the punkiest of all piano sonatas.

View from hotel room, out over the river. I was glad of the mosquito nets once night fell!!

Country #5: Slovakia!

2011-08-12T15:10:00.000-07:00

After the mixed delights of Poland and the Czech Republic I'd decided to head a little further south to another unfamiliar corner of Europe. My main focus was Vienna, but being on a budget meant it made sense to stay in either Slovakia or Hungary, as the Austrian capital is wedged up in the north-east of the country and a short hop from the border.

I chose Mosonmagyarovar in Hungary as my base for the weekend, but curiosity got the better of me and I travelled down through the western portion of Slovakia. After a few hours on the road there I can confirm a few things about Slovakia:

1. There are lots of mountains.

2. The motorways are extremely good.

3. At least one petrol-station attendant near Trnava speaks exceptionally good English.

And here are some snaps, to whet your curiosity further.

Up in the mountains. Fairly bog-standard Alpine scenery, really. Villages with chalets, and that sort of thing. All very pleasant, but I didn't see many chances for especially interesting photos.

On the motorway, heading towards Bratislava (though I turned off before I got that far).

Sladkovicovo, in the south of the country. No more mountains here, just red-roofed villages with tree-lined avenues and a generally cosy air.

Oversized picnic-table, next to the Danube.

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Another peek behind the Iron Curtain: Vitkovice

2011-08-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. Of course Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" no longer divides Europe, and the Trabants and bread-lines have been replaced by BMWs and queues of camera-toting tourists.

Nonetheless, there is still Ostrava, and particularly the Vitkovice area, to contend with. Ostrava is the Czech Republic's second (or third, depending on how you measure it) city. I didn't see Ostrava proper, but had plenty of opportunity to explore Vitkovice while horribly lost in search of my accommodation for the night. A slew of weed-covered dead-end streets, dilapidated bungalows and rattly old trams surround the rusting old hulk of a former steelworks which dominates the entire area. There seemed to be little by way of commerce going on, and I was unable to find an ATM in order to take out the Czech koruna which would have allowed me to buy some dinner.

The hotel had something rather austerely Soviet about it too. Sadly not with the prices - breakfast was hardly a snip at 4 euros - but certainly with the attitudes of staff, which ran from indifferent to downright hostile. I shan't rant any further, but this made a big contrast with my experiences in Poland, and indeed with Germany, so far in the trip. I used up my remaining provisions of tinned-tuna-and-Pringles and hot-tailed it out of Vitkovice and over the border to Slovakia early the next morning.

I don't think the photos do justice to the utter miserableness of the place, but here they are.

Rather handsome church opposite the hotel. What this photo doesn't show is the tree growing at the bottom of the spire.

One of the factories in town. The main town square is in the foreground. See how bustling it is? It got busier at night, with local youths and elderlies hanging around looking sinister. And then the kickboxing clubs around the corner presumably started to empty. I was cowering in bed by that point, however.

The town hall, which was genuinely fine, and some flats near where I parked the car. I returned several times during the evening to check on it, and got eyed up each time by strange old men in grey plastic shoes. I decided to sleep rather than worry about it during the night, and was relieved to find it still there the next day.

Derelict building. One of innumerably many.

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Poland!

2011-08-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

A very short post now, to introduce the place where, all being well, I should be working this year. No doubt there'll be more to come on Opole, but I brought my fuzzy camera (see previous post) into action and thought I may as well upload the results.

First impressions were very encouraging. The people seemed genuinely friendly in both Wroclaw (where I stayed overnight) and Opole. Both cities were extremely busy, both with traffic and pedestrians, and the shops seemed thriving. And when I entered the main shopping mall, the first thing I encountered was a large Tescos, where I could replenish my stocks of shampoo and soap, which had been running low since an unfruitful attempt at finding recognisable produce in German supermarkets.

Oh, and the city centre is rather pretty, too!

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Czech this out for a lame pun!

2011-08-11T13:23:00.001-07:00

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Yup, the first "new country" I encountered on this trip was the Czech Republic, and the tiny village of Cinovec, a nice easy stroll from where I was staying in Geising, Germany. I had little idea of what to expect, my only image of the country coming from various classical composers, a mixed bunch capable of producing both this riot of sound and this burst of rather melancholic fresh air.

Anyway, here is Cinovec in all its dilapidated glory. One'd hope the remainder of the country does a little better than this. (Apologies for blurriness; I'd somehow managed to put my camera into "close-up" mode, and it took a long period of fumbling and hissing over electronic settings before I discovered that this was controlled from a simple button on the side).

In case the last two pictures need some explanation, Cinovec seems to have a lot of dealers specialising in garden ornaments. No idea why. Perhaps there are some kind of restrictions on these things in Germany, or perhaps there are punitive levels of taxation. Perhaps German spivs furtively smuggle these things across the border by night, feeding the underground market for giant terracotta snails and D-cupped caryatids. Perhaps if you crack open the clay you'd find a stash of some more noxious materials inside. Who knows? I didn't like to ask, for fear of being taken into a darkened room and beaten unconscious by a pair of masked garden gnomes.

The "German Switzerland".

2011-08-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

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After Berlin, I headed south, to the corner of the old DDR and an area of hills, forests and Alpine-style chalets. I got the impression that they're not very used to tourists from outside Germany there, but it's a pleasant part of the country and could very well become a popular tourist haunt some day.

Here's the village, Geising, where I stayed.

That roof on the left is rather prodigious, isn't it? The volume of the attic looks to be bigger than that of the house itself.

There isn't much to do in Geising, as you can see. However, a couple of miles to the south one comes to this:

Ooo, a border! I wonder what's behind it...

Ich bin ein Berliner.

2011-08-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

Or at least, I was, for three days.

I was pretty excited about staying in Berlin, as I've been fascinated with the history of this city for a long time: a place that suffered the depredations of Nazism and Communism in succession, and then of course there was the small matter of the Wall and the bizarre quirks of geography and politics that resulted. I was seven when the wall came down, and remember the scenes of excitement as "people power" triumphed over the fake "democracy" of the DDR.

The place I stayed in was in the East. It was a strange environment: the kind of run-down. graffiti-covered buildings which in the UK would signal the urban dystopia of Castlemilk, Moss-side, Peckham or wherever; yet the people walking around looked pretty ordinary and well-adjusted. It's as though the turmoil of the last hundred years has lowered the morale of Berliners to the point that they no longer see the point of renovating and redeveloping the area. Certainly on the way into town I passed huge areas of post-industrial wasteland, the kind of thing that in the UK gets covered by glass and turned into "luxury" flats for trendy thirty-somethings with square glasses.

Whether that's a fair speculation or not I don't know; perhaps I was simply seeing what I "wanted" to see, to make sense of the history I saw and now wanted to experience.

Sadly I never did make it to the centre of Berlin to see the Wall or the other classic monuments to Prussian grandeur and socialist nihilism which bedeck the city. I was busy with my job-search for a few days. Then on the last day, it rained, and I got lost.

All in all, though, even on the damp streets of Friedrichshain, I found a place I liked: full of character and atmosphere and still totally authentic; no trendy glasses or fake luxury here.

In the words of another US politico, "I'll be back."

Billet Station No. 1: Rehna

2011-08-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Having finished the course in Hamburg, my next task was to find work. This was a bit of a challenge for me, as I had absolutely no idea where to go or where to look. I had a vague notion that Eastern Europe might be the place, but, reflecting on this vague notion, it eventually dawned on me that Eastern Europe is made up of a lot of countries, some of which are quite large in their own right.

And sadly I am not the most decisive of people, so choosing a location and motoring determinedly towards it was never going to be my way.

However, as we live in the charmed days of the all-powerful internet, it's possible to get a job without actually putting on a tie and going to an office. I had a few contacts lined up, a couple of interviews, kindly facilitated by Skype and Starbucks, and freedom to travel pretty much anywhere within reach of a Wi-fi connection.

My first destination was this guesthouse, close to Schwerin in North Germany. I had booked it quickly through a website while looking for somewhere fairly cheap and not too far to travel, so didn't expect much.

It turned out to be the most idyllic place, an old farmhouse at the end of a hugely long lane, with total peace and seclusion, a gorgeous garden and a very interesting library. The owner creates the most astonishing meals using ingredients from the garden, each plateful surrounded by edible flowers and petals. And the peppermint tea consisted of actual peppermint boiled in water, an experience everyone should try at least once in a lifetime. There were flowers everywhere in the house too, and I found out later that the owner in fact runs a photo agency specialising in pictures of gardens and flowers.

Oh, and there were some beasties there too. Namely chickens, turkeys, three little pigs as in the story, and a tea-drinking cat.

p.s. I don't know why I can't get Google Maps to work properly. It won't zoom in or out, and directions? You can forget about those... So this lo-tech edited screenshot is the best I can do for now.

I am now a certified language teacher!!

2011-08-05T10:54:00.001-07:00

This means I can theoretically teach English anywhere in the world. Except North Korea, I suppose, and potentially Libya, Iran and Luton.

For those who aren't into the language-teaching business, this means I studied and taught for four weeks, leading to a qualification called the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) which is accredited by Cambridge University. It's not taught by the University itself, but run by a load of private English schools right across the world.

That's how I ended up in Hamburg; I thought it'd be more fun than teaching in the UK. Secondly, as I wanted to work abroad I thought it'd be more useful practising my teaching on a monolingual, monocultural group of students instead of the mixed classes you find in Britain.

Four weeks doesn't seem a long time, but it's a very intensive course and one is pretty much forced into learning a heckuva lot in those weeks.

That might not sound very much fun, and in some cases it probably isn't; however, if it's done well by the it's certainly manageable, and even quite rewarding in its way. Everything came together for me in Hamburg, with a very supportive group of fellow trainees and excellent mentors who very firmly emphasised the human aspects of teaching over the mechanics of planning and presentation.

There's also a lot of flexibility in the kinds of lessons you can teach. I was able to get in stories about evil mothers-in-law, deckchair pilots and unusual holiday destinations which kept me amused, and hopefully interested the students.

Still, it was a major relief once the final lesson was done and we could all go out for a final, droopy-eyelidded, celebration.

I decided to try a Hamburg speciality on this occasion, which occasioned some gasps of admiration (or pity) among the others. This is "Labskaus", with a side dish of "Rollmops" and pickled vegetables. Labskaus is made of shredded beetroot and potato, with some kind of mincemeat skulking at the bottom. It's essentially a kind of beetrooty shepherds' pie, and tasted very pleasant, but seems to have acquired a bad reputation in Germany on account of its odd colour and its traditional association as a dish made from sloppy bits of leftover veg.

"Rollmops" sounds like a kind of floor-cleaning product, but is in fact a bit of rolled-up pickled herring, similar to what Danes and Swedes put on their toast at breakfast.

Backtracking

2011-08-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

I realise I've been neglectful of my blogging duties once again. I've been too busy getting lost between random towns in Central Europe; on the other hand, those towns and the spaces between them may be interesting. I'll let you be the judge, dear blogosphere.

Okay, so let's dive in the flux modulator and going back three weeks to the end of my Hamburg jaunt...

Stand by for next post.

Ich möchte ein Currywurst.

2011-07-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

For several generations of kids growing up in Ballymena, our only exposure to the felicities of the German language was through a textbook called "Deutsch Heute". It was an unremarkable enough book in itself, the covers of the various levels being a kind of olive green, beige and a particularly nauseating orangey-brown.

Nonetheless, there were two words in the textbook that enthralled and entertained every kid in the class. Any time there was a school trip to Germany or an exchange involving our Teutonic neighbours, these words would be wheeled out amid much cackling and chortling.

One was "Durchfall".

The other was its nemesis, or perhaps progenitor on occasion, "Currywurst".

I have no idea what the German kids would have made of this imbecilic devotion to the basest of biological urges. All I know is that both words stuck in my memory long after the depredations of time and distance had removed all other traces of this language from my memory.

Anyway, I digress.

Recently, I finally had the chance to try out the fabled curried sausage, and here it is:

Honestly, I was a little disappointed. It's just a sausage with some curry-flavoured ketchup on top. The sausage itself isn't made out of curry, as I had always assumed it would be. Nonetheless, it was a good meal, satisfying both stomach and curiosity.

And no, before you ask, no Durchfall resulted.

On the mean streets of Eppendorf...

2011-07-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

Time Travel

2011-07-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Ah yes. Germany. The country where mullets and leather trousers were in vogue until at least 1995 (the date of my previous visit here). It's nice to see that fashions have moved on.

However.. what's this?? Is it a time-warp? Have I been beamed back to 2009, before the great Woolies crunch? Or is this the undead of the retail world; a kind of mouldering, gooey cadaver of a shop making its horrifying way back onto our high streets?

A nocturnal sequence of sub-Freudian psychedelia.

2011-07-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

Analyse this.

The initial scenario is: I'm on my way through the south of England on a train, surrounded by rolling fields and buxom milkmaids. I glide along towards my destination (which I never become aware of explicitly, but I'm convinced it's somewhere near Letchworth). However, I become subject to increasing anxiety as I realise I may have missed the place where I was intending to change trains. I decide there's nothing for it but to keep going.

Eventually, the train crosses over a stretch of water and enters some flatter country with small, red-roofed villages and few stations. It also picks up speed quite considerably. I become positively agitated at this point, suspecting that we have somehow crossed into France. An inquiry to a fellow-passenger confirms this. However, I try to maintain an unflappable exterior while wondering how on earth I missed this international connection and what I ought to do about it.

A little while later, we pull inexorably into Paris. Deciding that the only way forward is to explain the situation and pay for a ticket back to Angleterre, I head towards the ticket booth, only to have my wallet and coat snatched by one of an army of shaven-headed, pickpocketing kids who inhabit the station.

At this, I dither rather more than I hope I would in real life, and try to summon up the courage to approach a gendarme. Apparently he has seen what happened and has been able, somehow, to retrieve the wallet, but unfortunately not the cash I had brought - even though it was all in Sterling and therefore of limited use to a feral pickpocket.

At this moment, I happen to spot the kid who snatched my things, surprise myself rather by karate-kicking him in the head, and promptly wake up.

Other stuff happened.

2011-07-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

Anko-no-mochi is returning to the "blogosphere" after some considerable time away. We left our little tale hanging in Lake Toya, Hokkaido.

Stuff has happened since then.

2010 came and went, for instance.

I spent some final, wonderful, months in Niigata.

I returned to the UK.

I took a chunk out of my front tooth by biting a fork.

I worked in a warehouse for the first, and most certainly the last, time.

I bought my first car and systematically scraped paint off each of its corners by reversing into the garage walls on four occasions.

I went for a year without actually eating my namesake, mochi :(

I tried mead, currywurst and Roquefort cheese.

I wrote three more haikus.

And I left the UK again, for what I continue to swear is the final time.

Probably forgotten some details there (help me out, folks!).

Quite a lot happened, really. It just happened on a different side of the world.

Anyway, here is a cute picture of a donkey.

Hokkaido - Lake Toya (1)

2009-10-18T02:01:00.000-07:00

This lake, the venue of a G8 summit a year or two ago, was extremely peaceful and seemed to have been neglected by tourists. I cannot understand why, as it is near Sapporo - a major city - and surrounded by spectacular scenery.

Perhaps the un-Japanese-ness of it puts people off to some extent. It looks like nothing I have seen on Honshu, the main island of Japan and the extent of my travels before Hokkaido. Indeed, I was reminded particularly of Lake Orta in Italy, a similarly Utopian tract of nature, and a rather more lively one during the summer months.

This is one of the cruise ships that takes visitors out to the volcanic islands in the middle of the lake. It looks more like a cake than a ship, but appears to glide across the water without too much difficulty. Owing to the lethargy of my travelling companions, I was disappointed to miss the outward cruise on this ship, but upon reaching the island realised that the scheduled half-hour stop meant we‘d have an opportunity to travel by cake on the return leg of the trip.

The town of Toyako Onsen. An ‘onsen‘ is a public bath - perhaps something similar to a sauna but with water, though I‘ve never been in a sauna so can‘t compare the two - and the town is full of such institutions. The hot water is laid on naturally, courtesy of the steamily volcanic landscape in this area. Behind the town you can see the volcano, Showa Shin-zan, which apparently sprang up pretty much overnight during the 1940s and has been growing gradually ever since.

A shrine in the middle of the lake.

Out and about in Sapporo - 4

2009-09-04T23:25:00.000-07:00

With the TV Tower as an inevitable backdrop, the evening‘s entertainment came in the form of a brightly-lit construction. What was it? A merry-go-round? An open-air concert?

In fact, before we could even see what was going on, the sounds of shrill singing and flute- and drum- playing had announced the presence of a performance of traditional festival-type music.

These sorts of things go on for a matter of hours, the music continuing seamlessly despite constant changes in the performing line-up. One singer or drummer simply slips in and takes over from another. All the while, members of the spectating crowd filter in and out of the circular dance which takes place below. Not wishing to miss out, we did one 360 degree turn. And fun it was too.

This was the scene further down the park, where the famed Beer Festival was reaching a climax on its last day. This is the side of Japan that the guidebooks do not mention; casual, chaotic and very noisy. No chance of drinking anything that wasn‘t beer, though.

Out and about in Sapporo - 3

2009-09-04T23:11:00.000-07:00

View over Odori Park, from the Sapporo TV Tower.

This is only the fifth-largest city in Japan, but its proportions are impressive.

I remember taking a radio apart as a child (probably a shared experience among the majority of adult males) and the machine‘s intestines looked something like this:

Perhaps more than in the UK, a Japanese city does function in some ways as a huge machine, with humans following a hidden set of rules as they bustle to and fro keeping the whole thing in operation.

Out and about in Sapporo - 2

2009-09-04T22:41:00.001-07:00

Toilet entrance - with a surrealistic twist.

A Sapporo icon - the Clock Tower of the old Agricultural College, which was founded in the nineteenth-century by American missionaries and educationalists.

At first, I assumed this was a girly pop band, decked out in the exaggeratedly cute outfits that remain in vogue among twenty-something Japanese female entertainers. Disturbingly, they turned out to be primary-school children.

Another Sapporo icon, and essentially the centrepiece of the city, is the TV tower.

It‘s not quite got the kudos of the Eiffel Tower, but together with the strip of parkland which it crowns, it still gives the city centre a feeling of importance and grandeur that is notably missing from other Japanese cities such as Niigata or even Osaka.

Out and about in Sapporo - 1.

2009-08-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

Grand entrance - to an office block.

This must be the local hangout for politicians.

Sticking with the political theme, this Bill Clinton-like figurine appeared to be rather smug about something. As I found out later, the root cause of this smugness, あかひげ (or red beard) is a product designed for middle-aged men. I shall explain no further, except to note, gnomically, that it has nothing to do with red beards.

This rather eccentrically attired young lady is doomed to operate a sewing machine for all eternity. Is she really a dummy? I wasn‘t able to make her laugh, but that doesn‘t necessarily mean much. At any rate, the advertisement in this case is, blandly enough, for a shop selling sewing machines.

I‘m not sure about this one. Maybe it‘s the new, virtual, successor to office workers. Maybe it‘s the not-quite-space-age headsets and laptops. Maybe it‘s a piece of conceptual art.

Hokkaido - day 3

2009-08-20T07:16:00.001-07:00

Daisetsuzan National Park, in the wild and mountainous central region of Hokkaido. This picture shows some of the rocky outcrops on the way to the top of Kurodake, the highest mountain in the area where we stayed.

We did reach the top, by way of a cable car, a chairlift, a hefty wad of cash for the use of such facilities, and a mingingly wet and squelchy walk of about an-hour-and-a-quarter. Because the weather on the summit was so foul, I took no pictures there, so the sole proof that I ever went to Kurodake are these snaps, of tree roots and mysterious inscriptions glimpsed along the way.

Our home for the night was this surprisingly comfortable hut, kitted out with an electric light and some futons, but most importantly of all sealed against the bugs and numerous flying or flitting things that swarmed through the rest of the campsite. Having said that, an incontinent moth did render part of my towel unusable for the rest of the holiday.

Hokkaido - day 2 part 2

2009-08-20T07:12:00.001-07:00

Hokkaido - day 2 part 1

2009-08-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

The port of Otaru, taken by a zombily shaky blogger at about four in the morning.

Seven hours by car and we come to Wakkanai, the most northerly city in Japan. It‘s not an overly prepossessing place, but the distinctly unsultry summer weather makes a welcome enough change from the overbearing humidity of August in Niigata.

We set up home in - get this - a free campsite, situated in the hills above Wakkanai. From this vantage point, amazing views of Russia are to be had, unless it‘s too foggy.

It was foggy, of course, although I am quite sure I did spy something in the distance that looked like it wasn‘t either fog or sea.

Onwards to Cape Soya, the genuine tip of mainland Japan. A concrete monument, replete with piped music and a tacky gift shop, marks the spot. When taking pictures, however, one has to be careful not to pick up on the inevitable tourists sneaking behind it onto the damp rocks which REALLY ARE the furthest north you can go.

Hokkaido - day 1

2009-08-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

On the Sea of Japan, going up the west coast from Niigata to Otaru, with idyllic skies and an incredibly calm sea.

Sadly, the staff decided that the tiny waves shown in this picture presented a real and immediate danger to passengers and ordered us inside. This is what the sunset looked like from my vantage point in the third floor lobby.

Fireworks of Niigata Festival

2009-08-20T06:18:00.001-07:00

A veritable cornucopia of shapes and colours.

The final firework display was designed to resemble the Niagara Falls, and executed from one of the city bridges.

Dramatic skies over Niigata.

2009-07-08T04:17:00.001-07:00

Taken back in May.

Yet more pictures of Kyoto - 5

2009-07-08T04:07:00.000-07:00

Fushimi Inari Shrine is a large area of forest, containing pathways big and small. The big story here is the number of ‘torii‘, those red thingies that usually come in ones and twos but here occupy almost every metre of the route.

The word ‘Inari‘ refers to the fox, represented here in a number of different ways, some more elegant than others.

Yet more pictures of Kyoto - 4.

2009-06-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

Day 3 and the entrance to Fushimi Inari Shrine. There was a distinct feeling that something was about to happen, with people standing around idly or criss-crossing the road expectantly, and officious police frantically gesturing at each one to stop whatever they were doing and do something else, or do the same thing in a different spot, or indeed keep doing the same thing but do it ever so carefully.

Then a figure attired in pipe-cladding and a nineteenth-century fireman‘s helmet appeared, and one realised one was in the midst of something potentially interesting.

That‘s when a load of people wearing blue came down the street with a large object, and brought it up towards the entrance to the shrine. Had we stumbled upon a filming session for some sort of sci-fi drama? Had I fallen asleep after reading too much Edward Lear? Had there been something white and powdery in the omelette I‘d gulped down before getting on the bus?

Priests carrying didgeridoos followed on..

..as did kids with drums, various consignments of Boiler Men, and these Human Cuckoo Clocks, with the local branch of the Orange Order hot on their heels. Unfortunately, the police stopped me before I could get a picture of the Scrooblious Pip - dashed bad luck, that was.

After all of this, the thing the blue people were carrying was deposited near the entrance, and the crowds started to disperse, satisfied with the year‘s (for surely this can be only an annual event?) dose of psychedelia.

An omsquomblious morning indeed.

Yet more pictures of Kyoto - 3.

2009-06-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

View through a gate at the Golden Temple. Not much in this picture isn‘t green.

Eccentric English at Nijo Castle; odd translations are remarkably easy to find in this part of the world, although as far as I know the Japanese really might say ‘No Scribbling‘. Oddly enough, my desire to scribble, which had previously existed only as a faraway notion at the back of the mind, was somewhat increased upon reading the notice, and I might actually have followed through had I not unwisely omitted to purchase a can of spray paint prior to entering the ‘No Scribbling‘ zone.

Meanwhile, the parking place outside is presumably available for general use, except in the event of an ‘emehgency‘, in which case the ambulance or whatever it is will have to find somewhere else to go.

Yet more pictures of Kyoto - 2.

2009-06-13T07:32:00.001-07:00

Day 2. The morning routines of a troupe of firefighters might not seem to be an obvious tourist attraction in itself, but we were nonetheless fixated for quite some time as various manoeuvres were carried out on various limbs, with various levels of enthusiasm.

The figures at the left and right of the group are an interesting study in contrasts, one going for the minimalist approach and the other showing a level of keenness that is just a little unnerving.

And here, one supposes, is what the exercises were in aid of. This was snapped somewhere in the north-west of the city, during routine perambulations in search of the Golden Pavilion.

Duly tracked town, this monument to bling proved to be a magnet for digicam-wielding culture-vultures from near and far, and not of any major interest, or indeed of any great vintage, the real Golden Temple having been burned down by an eccentric monk fifty years ago.

Now, that conflagration would have made a great photograph, but on the day nobody obliged us all by repeating it, so all I could do was try my best to compose an artistic shot by hiding the building behind a tree. I‘m not sure it really worked, but maybe it‘s still worth recording the attempt.

Yet more pictures of Kyoto - 1.

2009-06-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

Day 1 (the first full day) began with a return visit to Nijo Castle, the gardens of which were looking typically lovely, if not by any means as peaceful as the photo seems to suggest.

Then on to Arashiyama out on the western periphery of the city, and up into the mountains.

The particular cultural and enriching experience we were seeking consisted not of a garden or a building, but of the small, hunched, grandpa-like figure to the right of the next picture.

These short-tempered little blighters are the monkeys of Iwatayama (Stone Field Mountain, I think is the translation) Monkey Park.

Determined to get the best use out of my two-day bus/underground pass, I headed back into town and to Heian-Jingu, a very large shrine, but with a genuinely peaceful garden, and several ponds full of koi, the oversized goldfish which are one of the major Japanese contributions to the global trade in ornamental fish (a subject of which, however, I remain proudly ignorant).

Being only early May, everything still looked green and lush at this stage.

Thumb wars.

2009-05-28T07:16:00.003-07:00

The after-effects of an altercation with a paper-cutting machine. I had no idea those things were so sharp. They don‘t often make much of an impression on paper, so I end up using scissors a lot of the time. But on Tuesday, I unthinkingly flicked my thumb upwards when removing the worksheets I was chopping up, and found a big slit going through one side of the nail.

The school nurse bandaged it up nicely, and everyone was very kind. I went to the clinic to have it checked (a process which involved filling in a form about all my past ailments, waiting in reception, waiting on a hospital bed, assuring a seemingly interminable chain of nurses that I could indeed speak their language, watching the doctor remove the nice bandage and watching the nurse replace it with a rather less shapely one, declining the chance of an X-ray, and paying about twenty quid to not have this X-ray, as opposed to 35 with)

It seems like things (thumbs?) should get back to normal at some point fairly soon, but in the meantime I‘m quite enjoying the invalid status afforded by a bandage in such a conspicuous place.

Another haiku

2009-05-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

An Ulster summer...

Sounds of marching bands with drums...

And breeze blocks being thrown.

Some haiku - 1 (more to come, I suspect - this is fun)

2009-05-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

Student activists:
dreadlocks, protests, no more war,
new suit, shave, Deloitte.

Terrorist alert!!
Put all explosives in bags,
Sealed, for inspection.

Supermarket wars.
Last apple juice - we raced - you won,
But I‘m first to queue.

More from Kyoto - 2

2009-05-09T22:46:00.001-07:00

Oh goody, the pictures are in the correct order this time, because I put them in backwards. This is day 2 of the spring vacation. I was determined to track down some really good cherry-blossom this time, so I could gloat to everyone in Niigata that I‘d seen it a full three weeks before the flowers start to do their stuff up in these northerly climes. I got the tip-off via an internet friend that Doshisha University was definitely the place to go, so I headed out with a confident spring in my step. And here is Doshisha University, on a quiet Friday morning:

I didn‘t find any cherry blossom at all, but still enjoyed walking through this completely unexpected outpost of Victorian academic architecture. After a meal of fried rice and sweet potato, served by a hunchback in a Winnie-the-Pooh apron, I made for the town of Daigo, largely because it lies near the end of one of Kyoto‘s underground lines and I had bought a two-day-pass which I was anxious to use to its fullest capacity. I headed towards the temple of Daigo-ji, and.......

Woah, cherry-blossom at last!

Many other people clearly had made the same discovery. The only question remaining was what to DO with oneself having now tracked down the magical pink flowers. Of course you can‘t go picking them, and climbing the trees is probably also frowned upon.

Well, in Japan, the solution to existential problems of this sort is to shout ‘Hai cheeeeezu‘ and take as many photographs as one dares.

Which I did.

I also found this chap dangling from a leaf, and as I didn‘t know his name, title or rank I snapped him. After later consultation and a bit of help from Google Translate, I found out that this is the ‘exuviae‘ of a cicada. What this actually is, I don‘t really know, but the people giving the advice seemed to think it‘s quite rare to see one, and moreover that these things are quite valuable as they‘re used as medicine in China.

If I go to China, I‘m going to try not to get sick, I think..

More from Kyoto - 1

2009-05-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

For some reason these pictures have loaded in back-to-front order, but I‘ll roll with it anyway as life‘s too short to worry about such things.

So we begin the story at the end of Day 1 of my spring vacation. I had gone to Arashiyama, the western point of the city, and a rare outpost of ‘real Japan‘ once you get away from the icecreams and the bustle of the area‘s main street. We tracked down some cherry-blossom before we left.

The cherry-blossom is in the temple of Tenryu-ji, which is renowned for its fourteenth-century garden.

As you can see, I was unable to shake off the large plodding female figure who follows me around Japan and insists on walking into the foreground every time I try to take a picture.

This is the garden at Tenryu-ji.

This isn‘t. This is Kyoto. The picture is taken from Kiyo-mizu-dera, one of the most famous Kyoto attractions. It‘s a temple, and has some sort of relationship with water, hence the ‘mizu‘ (water) component in the name. March in Japan is still pretty much winter, although March in Kyoto is significantly kinder than March in Niigata.

This is Kiyo-mizu-dera. It sits on stilts, built into the mountainside. It was very busy even during the week I went (a week or two before the ‘real‘ crowds arrive for the cherry-blossom season).

2nd post of 2009

2009-05-08T03:47:00.000-07:00

So, hello again; yes, it‘s been a long while. I‘d like to stress, if I may, that the long silence from this end is related to having had too much to do, rather than having had too little to say. Nonetheless, it was remiss not to have said anything at all, and I will now do my best to remedy that in the precious seconds before inner emptiness makes the further postponement of dinner an impossibility.

Well, last term finished, and the new one has begun. Various things have changed; we now have an English textbook at school, but any thoughts I had that that would make life any easier have been well and truly squashed in the past few weeks as I try to come to terms with a system where the English textbook is written in Japanese but the person teaching it is required to use English at all times in the classroom. Also, out of seven schools, five have been changed and one has been downgraded to a once-a-fortnight school; though, fortunately, my favourite school merely got moved from Tuesday to Thursday.

In between terms I went to Kyoto, as a picturesque alternative to doing nothing at all, and I‘m just back from another trip there, this time with a friend. I had the chance to revisit familiar places and get acquainted with some new ones, and had a good time. Pictures will follow soon, I promise...

I can now speak a lot more Japanese than when I last wrote here, and seem to be getting to the point where new words fit with the old ones to make complete sentences. I had my first complete conversation back in March (with a 7-year-old, I must admit), and today passed another milestone when I managed to read a message on the school photocopier sufficiently well to know what the problem was and how to fix it (I might also point out that these photocopiers have a repertoire of approximately 7000 problems to choose from, and are adept at finding a new one each time I go to use them, so guessing the nature of this one was no mean feat).

Right now I am getting a craving for something unhealthy and full of calories, and at this point, dear blog, we must make our farewells for the moment.

またあいましょうね

Back in the saddle. Februaries. ‘Flu.

2009-02-05T05:25:00.000-08:00

It‘s been a long holiday from blogging, but, alas, my real vacation lasted only two weeks or so. The term is a month old as of right now, and it‘s hard to remember what a holiday feels like. Not that I would complain or anything; I actually do quite well for holidays, discounting the small matter of most of them being unpaid and therefore a convenience for my company rather than an out-and-out luxury for me.

Nonetheless, this is perhaps the most depressing time of year. One is supposed to make a new start after all of the empty glitz and excess of Christmas, but usually I feel like I‘m only just beginning to settle into the old year, and don‘t really feel like a change. And for some reason, both in Japan and in the UK, we insist on beginning the new year during the period when the weather is at its most misanthropic. There are few enough reasons to get out of bed, without all this tripe about it being 2009. February, in short, seems to me to be fit for only one purpose: hibernation.

However, I am a little chirpier than I would otherwise be, owing to a couple of days of convalescence last weekend. I had been dreading going to school on Friday, because at the school in question I get absolutely no help with planning, preparing or presenting lessons and am somehow expected to keep going for six periods rather than the usual four. Guess when I intend to use up my final day of paid vacation? At any rate, the ‘flu put paid to any notions of going along and doing the daily grind, and so I got to go and hang around the surgery instead and then had an excuse for doing nothing at home for a few days.

I tend to find, annoyingly, that when this happens I start feeling better before I really would like, and such was the case on Monday (perhaps partly owing to the miraculous Tamiflu, which is indeed strong stuff), so I was forced to abandon my doing of nothing in favour of real work once again. But, to look on the bright side, it probably won‘t be long before I fall ill once more. And that, after all, is about the most constructive thing one could hope to do in February.

uh-huh

2008-11-26T03:19:00.001-08:00

Spotted, in the window of a language school in the city centre. Always good, I suppose, to start with those all-important everyday English words. Interestingly, the lady in the video seems to be able to say it with her mouth closed.

Spotted.

2008-11-21T21:28:00.000-08:00

A question: does this remind you of anything?

For me, the pastel colours and Art Deco feel immediately recalled one particular, iconic, piece of design.

Yes, the architect must have been an alumnus of the Countdown School of Applied Arts.

On a different theme, I also spotted this:

I‘m not sure that I‘ve ever seen one of these before - it‘s a Chapel and Restaurant, as you may be able to pick out from the rather faint sign above the door. This is where Japanese couples who want a ‘European-style‘ wedding come to be hitched by a fake priest, with fake smiles all round and presumably some fake healthy food for lunch afterwards. I suppose it might be a nice enough day out, if you‘re into that sort of thing.

Japanese houses

2008-11-19T03:25:00.000-08:00

Houses in Japan are very different from their European counterparts. Most seem to be a variation, elaborate or otherwise, on the tin shack, which seems surprising in a developed country. On the other hand, a nice sturdy brick house would not be a lot of use once an earthquake comes along.

And not all tin shacks are created equal. Some are cooler than others:

Some of the older ones are made of wood, and roofed with tiles. Air conditioning comes as standard, though, as I couldn‘t help but notice in this instance:

And the advantage of this type of construction (just a frame with panels attached) is that once your house starts to rot or rust, or just feels a bit cold, it‘s entirely possible to remove part of a wall and replace it with a sturdier one. Or, as in the top picture, just cut up an old garage door and stick it on over the top.

Here‘s one that appears to be in the process of being refitted in this way. Unless, I suppose, the giant bedsheet actually is the new wall.

Some of the more modern houses offer a distinctive take on European or American styles. In this case, the plastic sheeting is supposed to resemble weatherboarding.

Towards the upper end of the property market are square houses with square garages and small square patches of garden, much as one would find on the outskirts of any UK town.

Sunset over Niigata.

2008-11-18T04:58:00.001-08:00

These were taken a couple of weeks ago, from my balcony, during Autumn‘s last gasp.

No doubt today‘s gruesome weather is more characteristic of the Niigata winter - horizontal rain of the feline and canine variety and gale-force winds blowing simultaneously from all four compass points.

Coastal defences - explained

2008-11-16T07:38:00.001-08:00

A bit of intelligent thinking on the part of the authorities here; this is a sign at the spot on the seafront overlooking the place where the concrete thingies are kept. I am sure it gives a very complete explanation of what they are and where they go. However, it is mostly in kanji, which for me is the written equivalent of watching someone talking very fast and waving their arms around frantically: I want to understand, I know it makes sense to the talker, but I am left entirely nonplussed. Kanji are pictorial symbols, intended to look like the thing they represent. To me, alas, most look merely like the sort of complicated inbuilt shelving units that graced fashionable living rooms in the 1980s.

Beside this sign is another, warning of the many dangers one faces on a walk to the beach. Now, it would never have crossed my mind that karate-chopping a bench would be a particularly safe or community-spirited thing to do. But some of the other pictures are less easy to reconcile with one‘s world-view. The prohibition on the over-the-shoulder manoeuvre when putting a can in the bin is a case in point. I do it all the time, as it makes life that bit more interesting and unpredictable. But I suppose I‘ll have to stop, now I know the authorities disapprove.

Then there is the ban on allowing one‘s rear end to be sniffed by dogs. I always do baulk at this practice, but canines, bless them, aren‘t always the quickest creatures to take a hint, and the owners generally seem to think of bottom-sniffing as a charming eccentricity on the part of their charges and rarely do anything to discourage the habit. I‘m going to be more forceful in future, however, knowing that I have the full force of the law on my side.

Coastal defences.

2008-11-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

Here they are, as they looked on Saturday. Some are dressed in metal things (presumably so they can be moved) and some aren‘t. The cranes weren‘t in operation on Saturday, though there were some others a little distance away making mud pies on one of the beaches.

‘Why not just leave the beach there, right where it is?‘, thought I. It‘s perfectly good, as beaches go. But then I suppose the people with the diggers are the ones with the power to decide what gets dug.

Meanwhile, I can‘t help wondering if anyone‘s ever thought of picking up one of those massive concrete blocks and moving it to an art gallery? Recipe for an instant fortune, I should think. Just stick a name like Brancusi or Magritte on it, say it‘s been discovered, and the connoisseurs of London and NY would lap it up. Plus, it‘d help to keep inflation down; laws of supply and demand, and all that.

Fridays, battleships, cranes and reading.

2008-11-14T04:49:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness for Fridays, eh?

I‘ve had only four days of work this week but feel as though I‘ve done about twenty, owing to the lingering remnants of three-week-old ‘flu and a couple of new lessons that I was worried mightn‘t go too well.

Today was one such, a variant of Battleships developed by one of the other teachers in the area. I needn‘t have worried, as once the kids got into it it went down a storm and even the awkward sixth-grade class (comprising one part lumpen adolescent boys, one part princessy girls and one part pale kids who won‘t say anything at all in class) got hooked by the end of the lesson.

Having got out of school unexpectedly early owing to a teacher-training course in another school, I took a brief walk out to the sea, passing a cemetery on the way where a priest or someone was chanting in a mellifluous voice by one of the graves, watched by a couple. Presumably it was some kind of a blessing or something.

When I got to my usual spot for quiet reading I found a gaggle of elderly people had gathered to watch as a pair of cranes manoeuvred coastal defences around one of the concrete platforms built into the Japan Sea for that purpose. It was mesmerising in its own way, seeing the two massive metal structures daintily duck around one another in the limited space available on the platform. In my tired state I started imagining it as a sort of courtly dance, and wished I had had a camera there to record it.

Later I popped out to Saizeriya (a pseudo-Italian fast-food chain) for a dried-out paella and a chance to sit on a comfy chair and read. I‘m slowly working my way through the impressively large English section of the local bookshop, and having finished ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight‘ am now in the middle of James Watson‘s highly entertaining account of the circumstances leading up to the discovery of DNA, ‘Double Helix‘.

Goodness knows what‘s coming up next; many of the books in there now are either by, or about, Barack Obama, and of the remainder a lot seem to fit into the genre of ‘highly disturbing, exhilarating‘ modern fiction.

And neither optimism about the US economy nor bloody dismemberments are what I‘m into right now.

I am on drugs.

2008-11-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

Having had a sore throat all week, without any other flu symptoms to mark it out as a common-or-garden cold, I thought I had better see a doctor in case I turned out to have got something more sinister.

I contacted my company, who immediately sent someone to take me to the surgery. It must be the shortest visit I‘ve ever had: a quick look into the gullet in question, then a prescription was duly despatched and after about two minutes we were nextdoor in the pharmacy picking up the medication.

I was horrified when the pharmacist handed over not one, not two but THREE packages, and tried in vain to reassure myself by remembering some previous occasion when I‘∂ taken three different kinds of pill. All I could recall was the last time I got sick, spent my month‘s salary on an NHS prescription and then left the medicine mouldering on the top of the ‘fridge.

But having paid about thirty quid this time, and not liking the feeling of swallowing broken glass, I resolved to swallow the lot as an experiment, and see what psychedelic effects would result. It‘s been a bit disappointing so far, though maybe I am a little more spaced out than usual. It‘s been nice to get rid of the pain, though, and did mean I was able to get through the week without the stress of having to justify taking the day off work...

Today I‘m on cold turkey; although the four-day course hasn‘t finished yet, I was curious to see whether I‘m still ill or not. I think, on the whole, not. Hooray for pill-popping, eh?

What I now look like...

2008-11-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of Yours Truly, posing together with a first grade pupil, penned during lunch by the pupil in question. I think it is quite a good likeness, don‘t you?

I wish I could do this...

2008-10-28T07:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OICSVujrtJU

sorry - t‘aint working as a link, but if my computer can do cut and paste then so can yours...

I can‘t upload any more pictures.

2008-10-26T00:45:00.001-07:00

I don‘t know why. The uploading facility hasn‘t worked for the last week. It could be my computer, or my broadband, or it could be a problem on this site. If it is the latter, which I doubt, I will transfer to a new blog some time soon.

just in case...

2008-10-18T07:08:00.000-07:00

....this blog is starting to get a bit too wordy, here is a picture of my bike.

Yes, it does look like a woman‘s bike, to Western eyes. But I can assure you that it is perfectly acceptable here for the most masculine man to ride a bike with one of those low crossbar thingies (presumably so it doesn‘t get in the way of his yukata). The basket, likewise, is unproblematic; no, in fact it is jolly useful, being exactly the right size for my stylish faux-leather manbag.

And it‘s the first time I‘ve had a bike with gears that work. My last bike had three gears - chain connected to back wheel, chain disconnected from back wheel, chain frozen. The second setting provided quite a thrill at times, whereas the third was useful only in the sorts of emergencies when one really needed a good excuse for not going somewhere.

‘yasumi‘ - recreation time

2008-10-18T02:09:00.000-07:00

I promised I would describe the typical after-lunch activities in my elementary schools. I like going walkabout once I‘ve sorted out my things for the afternoon classes, and went for a fairly average tour yesterday, so here is a run-down of what I saw.

First of all, I headed up onto the roof terrace. These are a feature of the older school buildings and consist of a bare expanse of flat roof enclosed by wire netting. For some reason, roof terraces always come equipped with unicycles. Yesterday a group of fourth-grade girls was up there, careering around on these contraptions playing a version of ‘tag‘.

Then I explored the top corridor, where the older grades have their classrooms. One of these was empty, whereas in the other some of the fifth-graders were playing harmonicas or sitting around drawing pictures. There was also a ‘Japanese room‘ up there, where a couple of kids sat on tatami matting playing cards. On the second-floor corridor a boy from the fourth grade was trying out a very impressive paper aeroplane. We‘d been making these in English class for one of the games and his hadn‘t worked awfully well, so I think he was anxious to prove to himself that his own design was better. He asked me to take it for a test run, then presented me with the finished product as a gift. It flies very well, too.

Down on the first floor, there was a group in the library, quietly reading, and another group helping the librarian make a poster for some unknown purpose. The third grade were all together, practising a dance for a special event. Outside the window, one of the trees was full of second-graders, hanging off the upper branches like some kind of strange, wriggly fruit. Another group was running around, presumably playing ‘tag‘, while the headmaster dug quietly in a flowerbed.

On the ground floor, the music room was the scene of a musical rehearsal organised by some others of the fifth grade pupils, while the older boys were roaming the corridor, followed by a gaggle of admiring first-grade kids. They started quizzing me about what sports I liked, so I assumed they were just back from playing football or baseball in the gym.

I finished my tour there, without venturing into the gym or going outside, but in all likelihood there would have been the same variety of activities going on in both locations. On the times when I have been taken outside to play football, tag, baseball or whatever I have always become totally confused, as the limited space means that sports tend to be played contrapuntally - by which I mean that a single set of goalposts can house anything up to five keepers, each playing in a different game, while three games of tag and two of baseball constantly crisscross the pitch. Generally, the same thing seems to happen in the gym, only more so as numerous balls ricochet off walls and first-graders get under everyone‘s feet while heading for the climbing frame.

Lunchtime

2008-10-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

The school day in Japan is very different from what I knew from childhood, and one of the major differences is the lunch break. This lasts for almost two hours (the exact timings vary between schools) and is divided into three parts.

1. Lunch. This is produced somewhere deep in the bowels of the school and then sent via a special lift to the upper floors, where the children appointed to serve lunch for the day collect it on a trolley and dole out the soup, rice and main dish on to individual trays. Generally by third grade the teacher does not supervise, except when something gets spilled or the process needs speeding up a little. Every class eats in its own classroom, together with the teacher. As a special treat, the kids once in a while get a visit from the English teacher, which is how I know what goes on at lunch. The food itself is designed to be a complete, healthy meal and is, I think, controlled by the government to some extent although the dietician and kitchen staff are overall responsible for deciding what the menu should be for each day. After the meal there is usually a game of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors‘ to decide who gets a second helping. Some classes eat in near-silence, whereas others will chat as they sit. In some cases the teachers let the kids visit other tables or even leave the classroom altogether. Often there is some kind of music playing in the background (over the school‘s PA system) or a radio programme produced and presented by the older children.

2. Recreation time. Once all plates are cleared, all teeth cleaned and most milk moustaches removed, the teachers begin to trickle towards the staffroom while the kids move out of their corridor and roam the rest of the school. Very few areas are out of bounds by comparison with a UK school, and there is much less overt supervision. If I‘ve nothing else to do I explore the building during this time to see what is going on and mingle with any kids who are friendly (and most are). I marvel at the number of activities, and the responsible way in which they are organised by even the younger kids, while the teachers mostly busy themselves with preparation in the classroom. I‘ll write about this in a separate post.

3. Cleaning. A chime or some other signal begins the cleaning period, which lasts about twenty minutes. The children are divided into groups containing members of each grade, under the supervision of one of the teachers. Each group is responsible for a particular area of the school. Every student has a red and white reversible baseball cap, which is worn throughout this time. The group cleaning the staffroom often get distracted by the presence of teachers, and usually a few will gather round me and want to know what I am writing or drawing or how old I am or what my favourite colour is. If they stay too long they usually get sent back to work by the office lady, but things are never too regimented and I haven‘t heard anyone being told off for not working hard enough. Finally, the cleaning things are put away and another chime summons the kids back to class.

Hiyoriyama Observatory and Hats

2008-10-18T00:44:00.001-07:00

Both of the schools in which I work on Fridays are close to the Sea of Japan coast, so if the weather is good I like to go for celebratory walkies after the week‘s lessons are finished. This corkscrew-like tower is often my destination, as it marks the top of a ridge of hills next to the sea and affords a panoramic view inland towards the city and the mountains. It is also a good place to sit and read in the sun, whenever I can be bothered to take a book with me to school.

The pyramid-topped skyscraper is Next 21, a recent building containing trendy clothes shops and various other businesses. The building beside it is still in the process of being constructed, and I am not sure what it will be used for. Towards the left of the photograph is one of the schools where I teach.

Some elderly locals, wearing the customary sunhats. All age groups here are fond of hats of one sort or another, a fashion in which I sadly cannot participate owing to my prodigious noggin. The over-sixties tend to go for the mushroom hat, a little like the one my father used to don before mowing the lawn. Perhaps some time I will pluck up courage to take a picture of the wannabe hip-hoppers who hang around town in homburgs and check shirts, or their female contemporaries with their enormous range of furry or fuzzy or bobbly head-coverings.

Fifteens!

2008-10-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

I‘m generally kept busy enough in Japan that homesickness rarely strikes. However, some things I do miss, and this is one of them. Or, rather, this is my attempt at recreating one of them.

‘Fifteens‘ are slices of mushy delightfulness, made from Digestive Biscuits and condensed milk and permeated with glace cherries, marshmallows and chopped coconut. I‘ve never seen them in shops outside County Antrim, so they are about as localised as food gets. There are, however, several recipes for Fifteens online and so, for the first time, I made some yesterday. Unfortunately the proper Digestives (sans chocolate) are not available in this part of the world, so I used Rich Tea instead and had to be a bit liberal with the condensed milk to get the things to stick together. I may have overdosed a little, as the end result is slightly gloopier than I‘m used to, but I‘ve decided I like ‘em gloopy.

The picture shows them pre-slicing (and pre-eating) and doesn‘t look awfully appetising, but I can assure you they passed the taste test. I‘m considering making an industrial quantity to share around in school, but the price of cherries may turn out to be prohibitive. We shall see.

Just for comparison...

2008-10-12T03:49:00.000-07:00

This is ‘Canto d‘Amore‘, one of the best-known paintings by Italian metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico.

I‘m sure I‘ve seen an even better fit for the Irifune Port Tower somewhere (see previous post), but I can‘t seem to find it online. Pity the architect‘s budget didn‘t stretch to that big plastic glove, eh?

Irifune Port Tower

2008-10-11T06:03:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, during my day off, I took a cycle trip out towards the coast, intending to explore what lies west of the city-centre. Instead, I somehow found myself heading east, to the spit of land between the Shinano river and the Sea of Japan. This is old Niigata, and two of my schools are located in this area.

At the tip of the peninsula is this strange object, apparently somewhere between a building and a sculpture. This is the Irifune Port Tower, used for I have no idea what.

With its minimal shapes and numerous flights of stairs going up and down anywhich way, it looks almost like an attempt to translate a de Chirico painting into 3D.

And just like de Chirico‘s work, there is something spooky and not-quite-right about it, even in the late afternoon sunlight. I suspect it would be a particularly strange experience to come here at dusk. One of these days I‘ll make myself a flask of Horlicks and pop down in the evening.

From the top of the tower, looking west.

And the view to the north, out to sea. You‘ve probably noticed that most of the cars are white. That‘s not a fluke; cars here usually are white, for some reason.

I took this picture, of a tree-lined avenue near the tower, to show that it‘s not just in Ballymena that people like to do unkind things to trees. Just up the road as I snapped this one there were some workers sawing bits off trees like those on the left to make them look like the ones on the right. I have no idea why. I suppose it does save the bother of clearing up all the leaves when they fall off, but then all that chainsawing must have involved a lot of work too. But then I never understood why people back home seem to feel the same compulsive urge to tidy trees up until nothing but the trunk and two branches. If you ask me, the point of a tree is that it grows naturally and a bit unpredictably and has messy things like leaves. It‘s what makes it a tree, for goodness‘ sake! Leave the poor things alone, I say.

Civilised Japan (2) - Subway.

2008-10-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

This is the main subway under the High Street in Niigata.

At the far end is a museum display of things from Niigata‘s past. It has been there since at least last March, and perhaps a long time before. I don‘t know. And, amazingly, nobody has vandalised it yet. Awfully lazy, these young people here.

In fact, the only time the local youths hang around in the subway is when they want to break-dance, for which they dress up in beanie hats, check shirts and baggy trousers and bring a dainty little portable CD player. Evidently they have not discovered the endless creative possibilities of spray-paint.

All a bit unnatural. Makes me long to return to one‘s own vibrant and multicultural capital, where even the Olympic Committee likes to scrawl imaginatively over everything in bold, challenging, forward-looking fluorescent pink...

...actually, no. Think I‘ll stick with painted subways and polite break-dancing for now.

Civilised Japan (1) - Bus shelter.

2008-10-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

OK. A question. Do you notice anything strange about this bus shelter?

I do. It is something to do with the furniture inside. Now my memory is not all that good, but I do not seem to recall having seen a leather armchair inside a UK bus shelter. Nor, for that matter, any other shelter in Japan. Not that I have ever looked too closely (particularly not back home, where shelters are often occupied by exciting and dynamic young people with nine A* grades at ASBO level).

The particularly odd thing here is that the shelter is not in the city centre, nor anywhere near it, but in front of an old factory on a side road. My guess is that this was a particularly ingenious way someone found to dump some old furniture and look as though they were doing the public a service at the same time.

Another possibility, I suppose, particularly in the present economic climate, is that someone actually lives here. If so, they‘ve got rather comfier chairs than I have...

Teaching Second Grade

2008-10-08T05:57:00.001-07:00

I do really enjoy life in elementary school, but ever since I came here I‘ve liked the older classes the most. Some of the kids have lost interest in English by that stage, but I generally relish the challenge of trying to get them to relax and enjoy class. With the younger ones, there is rarely a problem with motivation - they tend to enjoy everything, even if it‘s just laughing at the cartoon animals, vehicles etc. on flashcards - but the classes are so much more unpredictable.

Today was a case in point. Four second-grade classes. 113 pupils. We did the same activities; the Hokey Kokey followed by learning fruits and playing fruit bingo to practise. The final activity was a game, popular in Japan, where the kids take turns to pick two flashcards (face down) off the board and score points every time they get a matching pair. All fairly simple stuff. And yet, the outcomes of the lessons can vary so much.

The first class enjoyed everything, even though I had my usual first-time-I‘ve-done-this-lesson-plan nerves and took a bit too long over the bingo game. They are a well-behaved lot, whereas the second class are much more lively and made a lot of noise the whole way through. The result of that was that although I took things at a faster pace the lesson ran over time, and it sounded as though some of the kids were protesting at the end because the memory game finished before they had their turn. They were doing so very loudly, to the extent that I did not feel at all guilty. Ha.

Class number three has a fairly ‘crabbit‘ teacher with a permanently surprised expression. There are some serious behavioural problems with several kids in that group, and the culprits kept up a constant stream of noisy invective while I did my utmost to make things fun for the remainder of the class. But none of the activities really worked well, and I had to leave out some of the vocabulary just to fit everything in on time.

The final lesson went perfectly, as have all my previous ones with that class. Not all of the children had a turn in the game, but they didn‘t mind at all, and everything was fun. I had lunch with them too, and was able to make plenty of conversation.

It was a pretty average day, on the whole. It‘s tiring dealing with that age group, and the Wednesday schedule keeps me late after school. On the other hand, four classes is a lot easier than five, and there was only one lesson plan to memorise.

And it was a relief to get through the day without any tears from a single one of the 113. When you are dealing with excitable (and often tired) eight-year-olds that is a tiramisu-worthy achievement in itself. Needless to say, I have rewarded myself appropriately.

Flashcards

2008-10-04T23:57:00.001-07:00

Teaching in so many schools means that I have to do a lot of preparation in my own time, as I can‘t, for example, sit in Monday‘s school after class preparing for Tuesday‘s lessons. Of course, the flip-side of this is that I do get to repeat a lot of lessons, so the workload is nowhere near as heavy now as it was in the first term. The frog here is for use in a particularly popular game called ‘Shinka‘, where the kids do dialogues, followed by ‘rock, paper, scissors‘ and win the right to become a larger and more complex species of creature. The frog is the middle rung between fish and monkey. A monkey who is successful at ‘rock, paper, scissors‘ has to perform the dialogue with me, so I can check that they are doing it properly.

Much of the time, they aren‘t. But it is a fairly efficient way to pass twenty minutes of lesson time, and those who do practise the vocabulary usually remember it well when we revise it in the next lesson.

Here is a spider, for use in ‘Fruit Basket‘ and other games where the kids get a card of their own. They enjoy his Victorian garb.

An illustration for ‘I‘m cold‘. Most classes roar with laughter at this one, for some reason.

‘I‘m Sick‘, from the same series. Not (yet) commercially available, though I have enough cards in my files that I could almost start a business hiring them out. More later, when I am sufficiently bored again.

Persimmons: the saga continues

2008-10-02T06:16:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, I tracked down a real persimmon. Or, at least, I think I did. And here it is. I have just eaten it. Unfortunately it was a messy job, so I don‘t have pictures of the insides to compare with those of the non-persimmon several weeks ago. But I can tell you that the insides were brown, mushy and very sweet. I am pretty confident it was ripe, which is a good thing as unripe persimmons apparently can give the unfortunate glutton in question a thing called a bezoar, which apparently is not a good thing to have. I got that from Wikipedia, but might as well assume it is true.

I was quite interested to discover that bezoars actually exist. My only acquaintance with the term in pre-persimmon days was from the sixth (I think) Harry Potter book, where I‘m pretty sure the line ‘Just shove a bezoar down its throat‘ appears somewhere. It‘s a nice word. I might try and drop it into my conversations more often from now on.

Two piano recitals.

2008-09-30T04:43:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday I had the day off, and popped along to the Daishi Hall (a concert venue situated, strangely enough, at the back of the Daishi Bank) to see a recital by Yoshimi Tamaki, a pianist of whom I had never heard, but who was playing some music I was keen to hear. The performer turned out to be a bespectacled, balding 59-year old with a deferential manner. He looked like something from middle management in a large financial corporation.

The concert started with Schumann‘s Kinderszenen. It was a reasonable and mild-mannered performance, such as suits this set of miniature pieces. I have always been a bit bored with the Kinderszenen, though, and was looking forward more to the other Schumann piece on the programme, the C major Fantasia, which I had heard before and found odd in a not particularly interesting way. I haven‘t revised my opinion in the light of what I heard, and in fact drifted off to the land of Nod for a while during the second movement, only to return to wakefulness during one of the more exciting bits. Even so, what I did hear sounded like a very good performance.

But the real fireworks came in between, in Beethoven‘s ‘Appassionata‘ Sonata. I was very slightly disappointed with the opening few moments, which appeared reasonable in the same manner as the Schumann, rather than having the muffled and sinister tone that the more ebullient of the European pianists like to impart at the beginning of the sonata. But in the more fantastical passages later in the first movement, the pianist was consequently able to bring out the contrast between the reasonable, Classical, ‘nice‘ Beethoven and the other, Romantically windswept, side of the composer‘s musical temperament. It‘s a dichotomy that I‘d never really noticed before, having heard so many uniformly turbulent accounts of this piece. It‘s almost as though many Western pianists are trying to turn it into the soundtrack to an imaginary horror movie. And yet I found Tamaki‘s performance more dramatic in its insistence on neatly separating the dual personalities suggested within the sonata.

__________________________________________

On Saturday I witnessed another performance in the Daishi hall, this time from a pianist whose name I don‘t know in the Roman alphabet. He is apparently the professor of piano at the university here in Niigata. He played mainly short pieces, and played them very well, but also attempted another of Beethoven‘s famous sonatas, the Pathetique. There were quite a lot of wrong notes. I can‘t really criticise, as I never managed to play this piece without about 20 percent of the notes being wrong, even after two years of learning it; however, I did find that the slip-ups rather dented my enjoyment of it.

Later in the concert there were some memory blanks during the Chopin F minor fantasia. I don‘t know this piece well, but there is a particularly nice tune that appears twice, and on both occasions the pianist fluffed it. He looked suitably sheepish when taking his bow, and I was left wondering how many in the audience actually noticed the mistakes. This being Japan, I don‘t suppose anyone would have commented if they had.

__________________________________________

One interesting thing on both occasions was the applause-to-encore ratio. I was waiting for whistles, stomping or even a standing ovation at the end of the first concert, but in fact what came out was a smattering of polite but reserved applause. This continued through the pianist‘s many reappearances on stage, during which he played no fewer than four encores. I thought at one point he would keep bring out new pieces until everyone stopped clapping, but after a brief speech to the audience he vanished for the final time and the lights came back on. Phew. A more-or-less identical thing happened during the second concert. Perhaps the pianist on this occasion felt he had to keep playing to try and recover his reputation among the musically literate of Niigata - though if I‘d been in that position, I think I would have slunk out via the green room window.

Bikkle - an ancient fable

2008-09-25T02:32:00.000-07:00

There was once a wise old monk who lived in a hut just outside a small village on the west coast of Japan. People used to travel from far and wide to speak with him and challenge him with tricky questions, and he could answer them all. The wise old monk had an assistant who was known to the villagers as Not-very-useful, because he was not very useful.

One day a splendid samurai arrived, and the villagers cowered in fear as they looked at his huge sword, elaborately brocaded armour and irascibly curled moustache. He headed straight for the old monk‘s hut and walked straight in.

‘If you give me some Bikkle I will give you a quarter of all my gold. If you do not give me some Bikkle I will cut off your head‘ announced the stranger. The wise old monk thought for a moment, then returned to his meditations.

‘You have ten seconds to respond‘, said the samurai. ‘Or I shall cut off your head‘.

Just at this point, Not-very-useful walked in from the back room, where he had been listening and doing nothing useful. Wordlessly, he motioned to the visitor and showed him outside to a white rectangular object which stood just beside the door of the hut. Gingerly, after a few moments‘ meditation, he took three small metal discs from the folds of his yukata, and fed them into the rectangular object. A quick prod at the rectangle, and a freshly cooled glass of Bikkle emerged from a rectangular slot near the bottom of the object.

‘You will receive the gold tomorrow‘ said the stranger and strode off, stowing the Bikkle firmly into the in-built cup-holder in his armoured suit.

.........................................

The next day, the gold arrived, and Not-very-useful was happy now as his treasure gave him the opportunity to travel to strange lands and live the heroic life he had always wanted.

The samurai was happy, as he had received the wisest of answers to his challenge, and now had a flask of cold Bikkle to accompany him on his journey.

Meanwhile, the wise old monk was happy, as he had been able to dismiss the stranger without having to open up his own secret store of Bikkle, which he kept in the refrigerator in the back room of his hut. Following his wise actions, his fame spread all over Japan, and many more samurai, shoguns and geishas beat a path to his door. But never again did anyone demand to be given Bikkle.

Osaka pictures - part 5.

2008-09-25T02:12:00.001-07:00

I‘m including these lovely holiday snaps more for the sake of completeness than anything else, as I had run out of things to do during my last afternoon in Osaka.

A street in Tennoji.

Some buildings, one of which includes a plastic replica of Osaka Castle on the roof.

Tsutenkaku, the centrepiece of Tennoji, is an aging tower, built in the heyday of Sixties modernism and still featured on the tourist trail. I went there for the sole reason that I had bought a two-day tourist pass and could get in for free. Somehow the woman at the front desk managed to take my coupon without giving me a ticket, so I had to abandon my trip without getting to the top. I suppose that is what some people refer to as ‘karma‘.

Still, it‘s amazing how infuriating it is to be deprived of something, even when it is a trip up a rusting old relic like this. I left in a bad mood and proceeded to get hopelessly lost in a featureless cityscape of offices and hotel delivery entrances on my way back to the station.

My last picture of Osaka features a wooden dummy perched on a bike. Whether it was a sculpture, an advertisement or something the bike‘s owner purchased on a whim we shall probably never discover.

The persimmons that weren‘t.

2008-09-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

I am referring to those persimmons pictured three posts below this one, which are in fact figs. I found that out today, in a conversation with the receptionist at school. I always thought figs were brown and mouldy looking, but that, I now realise, would be after they are dried. Duty demands now that I track down a real persimmon and get some up-to-date pictures of the genuine article.

Apologies for any in convince (as the director‘s PA at my former workplace used to write).

Favourite food joints.

2008-09-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

As my kitchen is virtually non-existent and restaurant food here is cheap, I have been eating out every night since the summer, in preference to supermarket food which costs almost as much and varies widely in taste. Let me give you a run-down on the best places for some cheap grub in Niigata.

1. Sukiya. This is a fast-food chain, apparently famous for gyudon, and I suspect I have dined on gyudon a good few times despite a little uncertainty as to exactly what it is. Sukiya (pronounced like skier) is open 24 hours per day, and seems to have a late-night atmosphere no matter what time of day it is, with its fluorescent lighting and groggily solicitous staff. The clientele is mostly male, either groups of students or lone middle-aged late-shift workers. It makes me feel as though I am taking a starring role in some wacky art-house road movie. The curry, moreover, is noteworthy in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense.

2. Mos Burger. The name might suggest a vegan restaurant of the most radical sort, but in fact the fare here is pretty standard, if a little more distinctive and upmarket than the Macdonalds equivalent. I particularly remember my first experience of a burger made from rice. Not the most structurally sound food, you might expect, and you would be correct; every time I took a bite from one side a correspondingly-sized portion would drop off the other side and disintegrate over my fries. Still, this place is more spacious than Sukiya and the large sash windows, low tables and slightly faded minimalist decor give one the impression of being trapped in one of Edward Hopper‘s nocturnal scenes. The nighthawks of Mos are mostly office ladies of the 20-40 age range, either single or in pairs, a demographic that one might have expected to draw off a large proportion of the Sukiya crowd. That this hasn‘t happened is perhaps due in part to the existence of....

3. Saizeriya. A cheap and cheerful place which specialises in sublimated Italian cuisine, Saizeriya is always packed with groups of young women and schoolkids, talking very fast and showing off their accessorised mobile phones. One of the most intriguing aspects of the place is the ready availability of melon soda, a transcendentally bright green liquid. I am unsure about its effect on health; it may lower the lifespan of on who overindulges as I have (purely experimentally, I should add), but I suspect my half-life has been increased by a corresponding amount.

4. Macdonalds. Oh yes, the ubiquitous Maccy Dees has an outlet here too. My default setting is to ask for a ‘daburu chizubaagaa setto‘, as I know from experience that my sensitive and finely-discriminating tastebuds will just about cope with this least offensive Maccy Dees delicacy. The main attraction for me is that it is the only place where it‘s possible to sit outside, thus giving it more of a bohemian, Continental air than any of the other eateries in town. As usual, the crowd here is mainly young teenagers and primary school kids with their grannies. It‘s the place where I most often bump into one of the 2000-odd children who know me as their English teacher, so I‘ve been avoiding it recently.

Listing the four main cheap places, it seems that there‘s a definite progression based on age. For all I know, Macdonalds might issue its regular customers with a graduation certificate by the time they hit fourteen ; OK, so that may be an exaggeration, but we are in Japan, after all, where they like ceremonies, and it is certainly the case that people play by the rules, whether they are written down as such or not. I‘m probably violating some local laws of etiquette by straying out of Sukiya. But then, as a foreigner, I‘m allowed some leeway. And the people-watching opportunities are simply unmissable.

...and I‘d feel silly going to the same place every night - they might think I was just being lazy and couldn‘t be bothered to cook...

Osaka pictures - part 4.

2008-09-20T21:58:00.001-07:00

As a special treat on my last day in Osaka I went for a cruise around the harbour on this ship.

There wasn‘t anything particularly picturesque to look at, but this set of flyovers is mildly interesting, I think. It reminded me of the Cumberland Basin in Bristol, which I used to request as a special addendum to day trips from Granny‘s house when I was young.

Another reminder of Bristol, in fact; a suspension bridge.

A ship on the Chinjif line. The name perhaps lacks some of the mystique of Cunard or Pandora. It is in fact Chinese, as the first four letters suggest.

Persimmons

2008-09-20T05:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I recorded two personal firsts. I both bought and ate a persimmon for the first time. The experience was such that I have bought some more today. These are apparently popular fruits in Japan. And this is what a persimmon looks like.

For some reason I thought it would be arty and postmodern to combine a persimmon with the Niigata cityscape, and that‘s what this picture is an attempt to do.

Next up is a similar view, sans persimmon. The garden next door looks impressively green.

And just for completeness, here is the insides of a persimmon, during demolition. The taste is like no other fruit I have ever tried. It‘s perhaps closest to a slightly unripe apricot in flavour and texture. But persimmons are onion-shaped and commonly a mixture of purple and yellow, with a load of little seeds like in a fig, so don‘t really seem to relate to anything we would ever eat in Europe. They‘re nice and sweet, though, which is all that matters right now.

Osaka pictures - part 3.

2008-09-20T04:11:00.000-07:00

Art deco style concrete on a department store in Tennoji. This area was mentioned in the guidebook as a now run-down seventies experiment in city planning. I went there for lunch because I thought it would be cheap. It was, and perfectly edible.

Osaka Castle. The defences are designed like a Russian doll, or perhaps one of those annoying games where you have to manoeuvre a few ball bearings around a load of little square partitions and into a hole in the middle, but every time you breathe or someone speaks they all pop out again. There are several moats and gates to negotiate before reaching the central square. The castle itself looks a little like a wedding cake. Inside it are lots of plasticky exhibits and audio-visual interactive thingies. I didn‘t stay long, but got out again and explored the park, which was pleasantly green.

For some reason there was an elderly chap cycling around the park with a canary sitting on the visor of his baseball cap when I arrived. Later I saw him, devoid of bicycle and bird, taking his pet iguana for a walk.

Osaka, like Tokyo, is home to a small but diehard band of rockabillies, cavorting in inimitable style to the sound of a portable CD player.

Osaka pictures - part 2

2008-09-20T03:38:00.001-07:00

The next morning I headed out to the bay area for my first ever trip on one of the giant ferris wheels that seem to be catching on like the measles in cities everywhere. This is Tempozan Giant Ferris Wheel, and the promotional literature claims it is the largest of such wheels in the world, though a quick check on Wikipedia suggests that title is at least open to dispute. However, it is considerably cheaper than the London Eye (or the fairgroundy thing that was put up in Belfast for a couple of months) so it seemed like a good opportunity to become an initiate into the thrills of sitting in a contraption that goes round in a circle.

This picture was taken from a point fairly close to where I joined the circle, so things aren‘t looking too exciting as yet.

But during the ascent I spotted many strange buildings in the port area. This one had a sort of gold minaret attached to it. My guess was that it was an amusement park or casino.

A more cityish view.

Osaka pictures - part 1

2008-09-20T03:23:00.001-07:00

I took the cheapest inter-city train between Kyoto and Osaka, as it cost about £2.50 and happened to leave from the station nearest to my hotel. It turned out to be a fairly plush train anyway, so I am wondering what the more pricey options look like. My hotel was right in the social hub of the city, on a pedestrianised street known as Dotonbori. The building is something of a landmark in its own right, as this picture demonstrates.

Another local landmark is the giant crab on the front of one of the seafood restaurants. Somewhat disconcertingly, the thing is in fact motorised and the legs and eyes can move.

Some well-stocked windows in a department store.

Evidently an Osaka entrepreneur felt that this often-disrespected English word needed rehabilitating, and found an ingenious new use for it as a name for a CD shop.

Kyoto pictures - part 6

2008-09-20T03:14:00.001-07:00

I can‘t explain this either.

An Eastern take on Gothick at Kyoto City Hall.

The entrance to the Botanical Gardens, where I went to relax and get away from the heat.

The gardens were designed in a European style and are therefore not part of the usual tourist trail. As an expat, though, I enjoyed this departure from the local norms.

Kyoto Pictures - part 5.

2008-09-15T01:17:00.000-07:00

On my second and final day in Kyoto I went to the eastern extremity of the city, to the temple of Nanzen-ji. As this picture shows, the temple is quite high up on the hill, though this was taken from the top of the main gate (known, at least to my guide book, as San-mon)

San-mon. The entire structure is made of wood, and has that woody smell that I will always associate with the Folk Museum in Cultra.

An aqueduct runs through the temple site. I walked through the arches and up into the hills, hoping to catch a panoramic view over the city, but saw only lush forests all the way. It was incredibly warm under the trees so I succumbed to gravity and returned to the temple sooner than I had planned.

On the way down I passed this graveyard. I cannot explain the giant lollipop sticks, but they seem to be a feature of all cemeteries here. Must remember to ask someone what they are.

Another picture of the elusive, ‘real‘ Japan.

1st day of term

2008-08-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my first day back at school after the summer vacation. I was at one of the Friday schools; probably my least favoured of all the schools, in fact. I always get the feeling that some of the staff would rather I didn‘t come at all, and it might be easier for everyone if they just said so.

So it was that over my ‘Topvalu‘ cornflakes and morning ablutions I began to contemplate running away to the other side of the world, and finding work as, oh I don‘t know, a software developer or something like that.

In the end I didn‘t run, and the lessons went well enough. The lower grades were learning the days of the week (which, impressively, they already knew) and the older kids were practising months. The month names are extremely tough for Japanese speakers to pronounce, and hence very difficult to memorise, so the top priority was to get through the lesson without boring everyone too much. I like to think I managed to do that, though it depended on one particular game where everybody says one, two or three month names in order, but anyone who says ‘December‘ is eliminated from the game.

For some reason the kids always seem to enjoy this game, and will conspire with the others around them to force a particular individual into saying the word that gets them eliminated. The fifth grade developed it into a battle of the sexes, with a big cheer going up as the last of the girls was put out. It took the sixth grade a bit longer to get into it, but even the shy kids were keen to try for the three-word option and by the end I no longer had to prompt them even through the difficult autumnal months.

Kyoto Pictures - part 4.

2008-08-21T06:09:00.001-07:00

One final picture at Nijo-jo, of the castle and the mountains behind.

Then I moved on to Shimogamo-jinja, a shrine in a wood somewhere north of the city centre. According to the guidebook, it is supposedly impossible to conceal an untruth while in the wood, so people come here when they want to have an argument.

A very intricate building, though somehow lacking the quiet sophistication of a temple. I‘m beginning to see how this Shinto architecture differs from the Buddhist style, though the one clearly influenced the other. There are very few buildings in Japan that pre-date the introduction of Buddhism and other aspects of Chinese culture.

Not needing to settle any arguments with myself, I eschewed the woodland path in favour of this second-hand book marked. There were some interesting-looking books there, but most were of course in Japanese. In a fit of nostalgia I bought a volume of pictures of England and Scotland for £1. I thought it was quite interesting to see what things fascinated the Japanese photographer when he visited. The book has all the usual stuff - the Houses of Parliament, Brighton beach, Edinburgh, Christ Church College Oxford, etc., but also some other things UK people take for granted - like semi-detached houses in a suburb of Brighton, for example, and some normal-looking people sitting on a bench somewhere in Scotland.

A Beautification Enforcement Area.

Kyoto Pictures - part 3.

2008-08-21T06:02:00.001-07:00

The gardens at Nijo-jo. Very peaceful, until 3.30pm when a message began to be beamed around every five minutes warning tourists to push off as the place closes at 4. Still, the pictures make it look quite restful.

This heron looks as though it doesn‘t much enjoy being photographed.

Kyoto Pictures - part 2.

2008-08-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

A doorway, Ryoan-ji. This is what Japan is supposed to look like, but very rarely does.

Ditto.

The Japanese like to be told how to do things, and assume tourists will too.

Outside Nijo-jo, a castle to the west of the city centre. I took this picture to show how Kyoto is surrounded by mountains, and many of the wide streets provide views of the surrounding scenery. The city feels much greener and less artificial than Tokyo, and I liked it a lot.

Nijo-jo. This is a castle which was owned by a local Samurai. It was surrounded by some fairly hefty fortifications, in a system of moats and twenty-foot walls. The floor inside the building is what is known as a ‘nightingale floor‘, ingeniously designed to squeak constantly as anyone moves around on it, so that any intruders would immediately be noticed.

One has to assume that it was built before the Japanese had noted the destructive properties of fire, however.

The building is pleasantly retro inside, with pictures of trees and birds painted on the walls and some funky psychedelic patterns on the ceiling.

Kyoto Pictures - part 1.

2008-08-21T05:23:00.001-07:00

Kyoto Station. No Victorian red brick here. This view is of the main atrium, taken from the roof terrace on the 11th floor, if I remember correctly. The atrium was packed and I found it very difficult to find where I should go. I headed first for the tourist information office, but found there were two and I was in the wrong one, intended only for Japanese tourists. Getting to the correct place involved going into a department store in the station and taking the lift to the 9th floor, which however is not linked to the roof terrace, which has to be accessed by means of a series of 10 escalators. All very space age, but I was quite glad to get out of there and get lost in proper streets instead while trying to find the hotel. All of which is another story...

Having got there in the end and got an extremely comfortable night‘s sleep (on a bed rather than a futon) I got the bus out to the first of Kyoto‘s delights on my ‘to do‘ list. This was Ryoan-ji, a temple with a very famous rock garden. There are apparently 15 rocks in all, but it is never possible to see them all at the same time.

Nobody knows for sure who put the garden there, or why. It seemed to me like a somewhat obscure practical joke, and I tried to imagine the enigmatic smile of the designer as he thought about the millennium‘s worth of eager sightseers who would come to gawp at his whimsical little creation.

Inside the entrance to the garden there was a replica in miniature, for some reason, and as other people were taking pictures of it I thought I would too.

This sinister figure is attacking some moss with a brush made of bamboo. I don‘t know why.

More views of Niigata

2008-08-21T05:07:00.000-07:00

The industrial building in the middle here is a paper-mill. When I am downwind of it I certainly notice. One of my schools is right beside it, and used to be known locally as ‘Black Crow School‘ until it was rebuilt; now it is called ‘White Crow School‘.

My area from above. The apartment block is almost exactly in the centre here, surrounded by much bigger blocks. The raised track in the background is used by the Shin-kan-sen or bullet train. These elevated tracks run all the way across Japan and must have been extremely expensive to build, but of course ensure that the superfast trains can move unhindered by local trains chugging underneath.

Sunset over the Sea of Japan.

Toki Messe, from the top of which these pictures were taken.

Niigata - a virtual tour 5.

2008-08-21T04:53:00.001-07:00

Another route from my flat into town is the street opposite in this picture. It runs along the back end of my neighbourhood and is populated mainly by the 120-150 age range.

There are many electrical and telegraph wires along this street; I read somewhere that in Japan these are hardly ever buried underground as in some countries.

An old shop which has been displaying the same wicker handbag in the window for at least six months. It is quite a tasteful bag but is getting to look rather old.

A cactus-filled roof garden.

Typical Japanese houses, which are made of wood, metal or plastic of some sort and built out of prefabricated panels. They must be very cold in winter, and probably rather warm in summer. Brick buildings, though, would be useless against earthquakes. And as the walls are so thin the residents have got used to being quiet when at home and ‘noisy neighbour‘ syndrome is uncommon here.

Niigata - a virtual tour 4.

2008-08-18T00:31:00.001-07:00

On a clear day some craggy mountains appear on the horizon, but I haven‘t seen them for months. As far as I know they mightn‘t be there at all any more. Back in March there were also mountains visible from the front of my flat. If they return I will post a picture.

The riverfront. Several of the buildings here are top-end hotels.

The triangular-pointed building in the centre here is Next 21, a glass-and-steel skyscraper that can be seen from right outside the city. Because of the glass spire it has a nasty habit of reflecting sunlight straight into the eyes of anyone who looks directly at it.

Next 21 is not the tallest building in Niigata, however. That honour is taken by Toki Messe, seen here on the right, an extremely smart conference centre with an enormously long verandah at the front. It‘s a very pleasant, restful place as skyscrapers go, and if it were easier to get to I‘d probably spend a lot of time there.

Looking towards the south side of the river. This is one of the main shopping districts. I live about twenty minutes‘ walk from here, a little further south.

Niigata - a virtual tour 3.

2008-08-10T05:12:00.001-07:00

LoveLa, a department store where I go for groceries.

A side street. Macdonalds is further up, and there are some posh clothes shops populated by young fashion victims of either gender.

The river, known as the Shinano-gawa and said by some to be the longest in Japan. People here are very proud of the bridge in the picture - the Bandai-bashi - as it is eighty years old and withstood several very severe earthquakes.

Looking inland. Occasionally the silhouettes of some mountains appear in the distance, but they‘ve been hidden for months now. The bridge here, or more precisely the path under it, was the setting for a damp and draughty barbecue last April.

Cruise ships go up and down the river during the summer. It‘s something I‘ve been meaning to do and must get around to soon.

Niigata - a virtual tour 2.

2008-08-10T04:54:00.001-07:00

In case of thirst, there are plenty of drinks machines out on the streets. Capitalism requires that they often come in twos, threes or in one instance a group of seven. There is a bewildering array of different drinks available - water, juice, iced tea, iced coffee and some less self-explanatory ones such as Calpis, Bikkle and the iconic Pocari Sweat. Presumably in winter they are all replaced by machines doing coffee and hot chocolate. Or perhaps hot Bikkle. We shall see.

Looking from Drinks Machine Street towards the station. This area is full of little restaurants called ‘izakaya‘, where middle-aged men congregate at night and pollute their lungs and livers.

Looking towards the main station square. The station building is on the right.

Here is where the buses leave from. The bus drivers have to reverse into very narrow spaces the other side of the shelter; watching the buses come in can actually be quite interesting, though I should point out that I have never gone to the station specifically to do so.

The main street, Higashi-odori, looking from the station towards the coast. ‘Dori‘ means street, and ‘Higashi‘ correlates to the ‘High‘ of High Street. The ‘o-‘ is there just to make it sound more important. (edit: This is in fact bunk, as any Japanese speaker would know. Higashi means east. What significant thing this street is east of I am not sure. It is absolutely in the centre of the city, and any buildings of importance are on this one street.)

Niigata - a virtual tour 1.

2008-08-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

My apartment is close to the centre of town, so it is possible to take in many of the main sights during a fairly brief Sunday afternoon stroll. So, let‘s join on a virtual stroll and experience the delights of Niigata...

My apartment block. I am third from right on the top floor, so my balcony looks out on roofs but is away from any traffic noise.

Not that there‘s much traffic on my street anyway.

Akashi-dori, the main road connecting the neighbourhood with the centre of town. All the main streets in Niigata are tree-lined, which makes the place look pleasant enough from street level.

The little poem here is a real tear-jerker, hmm?

This Japanese green man is more classy than his UK counterparts. For a start, he‘s wearing shoes. He also has a bowler hat, and is that a glove on his hand? I bet he isn‘t going to blow smoke into anyone‘s face and not apologise.

Tokyo Photos - Day 5, episode 3.

2008-08-07T06:23:00.001-07:00

A concrete torii, Shinjuku. This tells us there‘s a shrine in amongst the undergrowth somewhere. Often in Niigata shrines contain the only trees in the whole neighbourhood, whereas Tokyo seems to have plenty of parks.

An impressive array of air-conditioners, Shinjuku.

Punk band at Shinjuku station, and a chap who didn‘t seem to realise he was dancing in a very public spot. The figures at top left perhaps merit a closer look.

An unexpected cultural transplant, Takadanobaba.

Building covered in chains, Takadanobaba. This was an interestingly bohemian area, and I was sorry not to have had more time to explore it. But I was determined, for my last evening, to return to Shibuya and watch the swarming crowds out of the window of Starbucks. No photos of Shibuya, unfortunately, but the people-watching there turned out to be quite mesmerising.

Tokyo Photos - Day 5, episode 2.

2008-08-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

Asakusa. I liked this area, which seemed more friendly and down-to-earth than much of the city; it‘s also built on a much more human scale than some of the more central districts.

The main attraction in Asakusa is this temple, the Senso-ji.

This was clearly a crowd-puller, but the area somehow managed to avoid becoming too kitschy, and I wandered for a while.

Finally, back to Shinjuku, where this menu did its best to tempt.

Tokyo Photos - Day 5, episode 1.

2008-08-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

A friendly truck, Tsukiji.

Skyscrapers reflected in a pond, Hama-Rikyu-Teien park, Tsukiji.

This was the site of an imperial palace which was destroyed in World War II.

Cruising up the Sumida-gawa (River Sumida) from Hama-rikyu to Asakusa in the north of the city. There are some interesting futuristic buildings across the bay. Plus a gigantic ferris wheel... I wonder where that idea originated?

Tokyo Photos - Day 4, episode 2.

2008-08-07T05:43:00.001-07:00

Maid outfits on sale... the legendary Akihabara. Notable for having a lot of shops full of things that beep, ding and tinkle, this place does a sideline in manga and anime, the cartoon books and films that are wildly popular here with people of all ages.

It is a fairly down-at-heel place, and not the most subtle in style.

I had lunch in a cafe staffed by people in outfits like those above - an Akihabara fad which apparently is beginning to catch on elsewhere, when for a quick look around and ended up staying for tea, by dint of getting caught out in a thunderstorm and being virtually imprisoned at the entrance to a supermarket in one of the side streets.

Still, the opportunities for people-watching made this quite an enjoyable experience, as thunderstorms go.

Tokyo Photos - Day 4, episode 1.

2008-08-07T05:12:00.001-07:00

A temple in Tsukiji. It isn‘t listed on the tourist trail, and probably isn‘t particularly old, but is quite an impressive building both inside and out. Japan has two religions, Buddhism and Shintoism, and this belongs to the Buddhist tradition.

A row of old buildings, Tsukiji.

Tsukiji Fish Market. For some reason this has entered the tourist trail and both Japanese and foreign tourists flock here to take pictures of people haggling over dead fish. The real market, where the fishermen flaunt their wares to merchants during the early hours of the morning, has been closed to the public since tourists were getting in the way during auctions.

The stallholders here didn‘t seem to mind having the extra custom, but I still didn‘t stay long as I had no intention of buying any sushi at this time of day.

There are many ways to transport refrigerated fish. Bike, motorbike, trolley, van or these rather cool motorised crates. I could do with one of these; it‘d speed up the daily supermarket trip. And if it‘s OK in stylish, self-conscious Tokyo, it‘s bound to catch on anywhere, hmm?

Tokyo Photos - Day 3, episode 2.

2008-08-07T02:13:00.000-07:00

Some posters outside a restaurant in Ueno, advertising the delights available within. 500 Yen is approximately £2.50, and even in Tokyo buys a filling portion of noodles with meat or eggs thrown in.

The Ueno Shouchiku Department Store, as the notice proudly states. Not all of Tokyo has been plastered with Prada and Lacoste.

Having gone to the art museum in Ueno and found it closed, I travelled on in a state of considerable dudgeon to Ikebukuro, to check out an escalator which merits a cryptic note in the Lonely Planet guide, only to find that this dubious attraction, too, was closed, for ‘inspection‘. Later I discovered why: apparently the previous day a four-storey escalator elsewhere in Tokyo had started travelling backwards while full of passengers. Anyway, I dined in Ikebukuro (pictured here) and went walkabout briefly, before returning to Shinjuku to follow the Lonely Planet‘s walking tour and get hopelessly lost.

This fellow is suspended from a wall in Shinjuku, presumably because an advertiser somehow thought he would encourage people to buy a new watch. I wasn‘t won over by this logic, but anyhow...

More of Shinjuku, which was beginning to get boring by this point so I stopped taking photographs and headed back to the station.

Tokyo Photos - Day 3, episode 1.

2008-08-07T02:03:00.001-07:00

Ameyoko Arcade in Ueno. It was early morning, and many of the shops and stalls hadn‘t yet opened, but this picture gives a flavour of the shambolic feel of the place.

I always thought ‘Foot Locker‘ was a strange name, but this goes one better, particularly with the cute graphic.

Ueno seems to be a bit of a hub for those infuriating vending machines that have a grab thingy that goes back and forth randomly as you press the controls and ends up swallowing your money and time with no result.

Did I try it? Not this time, no, as I have no present use for a grinning green Martian.

Tokyo Photos - Day 2, episode 5.

2008-08-07T01:46:00.001-07:00

By this point it was getting toward late afternoon, and I sadly didn‘t have time to investigate the Carrot Tower any further.

Harajuku again, where I got off the train. The hairstyles here reminded me more of Marge Simpson than of Elvis, but the dancers seemed to be having fun.

Walking south toward my intended dinner stop at Shibuya, I came upon a more serious crowd, protesting against the Beijing Olympics.

Graffiti in Shibuya.