Blogstream of Consciousness

Have just checked into our Tokyo hotel and having having purchased a new Samsung netbook recently, logging on for quick updates should be easier this time around. So without much concern for profundity I'll be blogging a stream of random thoughts, photos and maybe a clip or two throughout this visit.

Hold on to you hat, it's gonna be a fun ride! :-)

So, without further ado, here's a photo of the helpful Tokyo subway map. ;-)

Sado Island, Mute Night in Shibuya, Instant Noodles and Kobe

OK, it's official - we're off to Japan for our next visit in a couple of weeks

This time around, the main reason for going at this particular time is to visit Sado Island before it gets too hot and humid in high June. Sado lies in the Sea of Japan, north of the main island Honshu. Our itinerary will have us arrive in Tokyo and spend a few days there, before flying over to Itami airport (outside Osaka) for our usual return home to nearby Kobe. Here we will stay with family and will act as our base for the rest of our trip.

A DJ friend is running a Mute Records club in Shibuya, Tokyo so we have booked a hotel nearby (with a great half-price deal via their Facebook page!) so we can squeeze that into our fairly tight schedule before we head over to Kobe.

In January, I visited the Disaster Reduction and Human Rennovation Institute in Kobe. It documents and commemorates the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 when more than 6,400 people were killed. I'd never been before and it was a sobering and yet fascinating way to spend a few hours (few can turn tragedy into an opportunity to learn like the Japanese). A visit there if you are ever in Kobe is thoroughly recommended. It was also in a part of Kobe I had never visited before, Nada, which I enjoyed wandering around. It got me thinking I should spend more time exploring the different districts of Kobe, rather than spending so much time thinking about consuming in Muji and Tokyu Hands! ;-) I haven't yet planned where I'll go this time. But I'm keen to revisit Ikuta Shrine - where my wife and I got married a decade ago - to check out the forest behind it.I might also go visit Kobe Fashion Museum on Rokko Island. I'm not into fashion and probably won't go inside. It's the arcitecture of the building I'm interested in. The Rough Guide to Japan describes it as looking like a docked Starship Enterprise (which from the photos I've seen it does). Getting there also means I get to ride on the Rokko line monorail - which still gives me a kind of retro-future, big kid thrill. ;-)

One thing we have planned (and booked in advance as it is necessary to get a specific day and time) is a visit to the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Noodle Museum in Osaka. I'm not joking! Lots of big name Japanese companies offer this kind of museum/factory tour, which usually end with you getting to sample some of the produce for free. (I first did it many years back with the Asahi Brewery - concluding with free beer tasting - which was rather nice.) Ando was the inventor of instant noodles. Here, you get to make your very own, unique Cup Noodle, complete right down to designing the packaging, which you get to take home with you. Cannot wait!

Das Fluff's 2012 Tour of Tokyo

I enjoyed watching this chronicle of Das Fluff's recent Tokyo tour. Hope you do too. A special soundtrack to a special place...

A friend's first visit to Japan

A friend, Dawn Lintern, who is the lead singer in a band called Das Fluff (dasfluff.com) is currently on tour in Tokyo and posted these wonderful first impressions of Japan on her Facebook page. I asked if I could share it here. If you've never been to Japan - this conjures up just the right image I think...

"Fish that's still jumping when it gets delivered to the restaurant, Geisha girls with slimy business men, cigarette smoke, cherry blossom, litter-free streets, teenage girls dressed like 5 year olds, courtesy, friendliness, modesty, non-agressive driving, orderly queues, Asahi, being treated like a pop goddess (for one night, at least), dogs in sunglasses, an insanely efficient transport service, soundchecks that run to schedule and the worst cover version of Karma Police ever. I don't want to go back to London."

I know how she feels! 

 

Wot!? No e-book readers!?

The Japanese are well-known for their insatiable appetite for reading; whether it be newspapers, manga (comic books), an infinate variety of specialist magazines or novels. Everywhere you go, morning, day, or night, you’ll see the Japanese reading in public. The Japanese are also well-known for their love of technology. So, you’d think a gadget that combines these two national passions, such as e-book readers, would be as popular as breathing. But, remarkably, you’d be wrong.

As a frequent user of trains into London (and around it via the underground once inside), not a single day goes by without seeing someone using an e-reader. Indeed, randomly get on any tube train around rush hour and you’ll regularly see more e-books than traditional books being read. Not so in Japan. Not even in the capital Tokyo. During our last stay in Japan, which included time spent in Tokyo, Osaka and many, many train journeys (including on the shinkansen bullet trains), as well as internal flights, not once did I see someone using an e-reader. Not once! More than two weeks spent in the country globally recognised as one of the most technologically advanced, and not a single e-reader to be found.

Japanese electronics/technology giant Sony was one of the first to utilise ‘e-ink’ technology (the clever tech that means reading from an e-reader screen is as close to reading print on paper) and creator of one of the first readers to come to the global mass market with its Sony Librie way back in 2004. (Though, sales of Amazon’s Kindle e–reader have since eclipsed those of Sony – the Kindle accounting for 45%-50% of all e-reader sales in 2010 according to Gartner). So why didn’t I see a single e-reader in Japan?

For all their love of high-tech, the Japanese remain a traditional race at heart. They also manage to sustain social, cultural and economic trends at a national level that most other countries (certainly in the West) would never be able to pull off. So, if, because of some deeply-ingrained reason, they prefer Yahoo!’s services over Google’s, or clamshell mobiles over smartphones, or print over digital text, then they’ll see nothing unusual or surprising in that. They may, in their own time (and on their own terms) gradually decide, often over a period of many years, that they will switch from clamshells to smartphones (as is beginning to happen now). But it will be how and when they choose. Their equal love of print, in the forms listed above, seems as strong as ever it was. 

I’ll be keeping a keen eye open on our next visit to see if I can spot my first e-reader in Japan. When I do, I might just step over the usual Japanese social reserve and tell the owner that they are the very first native e-reader user I have ever seen! If, in the meantime, you have a theory as to why I didn't see a single e-reader then please do share your thoughts...

Hmm... sneaky early summer trip... maybe?

Yuko's parents (most particularly her father) have said they would like to visit Sado island around June time. Yuko recently had an unexpected short trip for business in Tokyo (just 2 weeks after we returned from our last stay at the end of January!) - which she extended to a week so she could spend time with family and friends in Kobe. I think Yuko's parent's, seeing that it is actually possible to do a short trip (in spite of the circa 6,000miles/10,000km between Japan and the UK!), began thinking that asking us to consider visiting them sooner than we had planned might actually be possible.

Fitting it in around the day job is likely to be the biggest challenge. Also, to save on using up too much holiday I immediately thought of planing the trip to coincide with the one-off two day public holiday in early June on account of the Queen's Golden Jubilee (God bless her!). Doing so would give us 4 days (including one weekend) without having to use up any holiday. Problem is work is busy in the run up to mid June, so unless we can squeeze 7-10 days in at the end of May (which would mean missing the Gary Numan gig on 1st June I've already got a ticket for!) I'm not sure we can pull it of then. Later in June would logistically be more straightforward work wise, but the temperature, and more particularly the humidity (which neither of us are fond of), rises rapidly as each week in June passes.

If we do manage to squeeze in a short break I'd love to go to Sado island as it is the home to the Kodo drummers - of whom I'm a big fan. Who knows? Maybe it won't be possible. But like a lot of things in life one would like to experience - the more you think about it, the more you manage to find ways to prioritise, change plans, etc to make the possibility of it happening more likely. Watch this space... 

Strolling around Nara

Wednesday 18^th – Nara

Guide books and Wikipedia will tell you that Nara used to be the capital of Japan a long time ago. Partly as a consequence of that, what distinguishes it today from all the other Japanese cities worth visiting is the park at the city’s heart. The fact that this extensive park is home to hundreds of roaming semi-wild deer is also pretty special.

If you’re visiting Nara for the first time all the guides will tell you to check out the ancient temples – and you should! They’re really cool. The Tōdai-ji building alone is worth the trip. Depending on where you want to accept your facts, it’s the biggest wooden building still standing in the world and the oldest man-made wooden building still standing. Though the latter claim should be taken with a pinch of salt since Japan is very adept (and well-known for) ‘restoring’ old buildings and managing to make then still look originally ancient! If planned well, and you’re being selective, you can do the major temple sites, the park and the Nara National Museum - housed in a series of individually distinctive buildings.

I’ve been to Nara a few times, most often as a day trip from Kobe. For me, this year’s trip was a last minute decision. Right up until the morning of the day I was going to spend the day strolling around Osaka, but when I got up and saw the classic, beautiful Japanese winter day that was outside (perfect blue sky, brilliant sunshine and crisp cold air), I knew I had to change plans and join Yuko and her friends Miho (with her two-year old daughter Erika) and Noriko in Nara.

Having done the major 'must-do's before, today was simply about relaxing, with no real plan; other than just to wander from the Kintetsu rail line station. JR also have a station in the city centre. As of last year private regional railway Hanshin began running a direct train from Kobe to Nara (terminating at the central Kintetsu-Nara station), meaning no change at Osaka as you would still need with either JR or Kintetsu.

A 15 minute stroll takes you quickly away from the familiar clamour, bustle and bright colours of the covered streets and arcades, into Nara-machi - a traditional part of the city, which provides plenty of well-preserved nostalgia. We stopped for lunch at a great little restaurant. Seating options for both Western-style (with table and chairs) or Japanese (kick off shoes, no chairs and on the floor) are offered, as was a tempting set menu of various curries. I opted for the chicken and spinach – which came up alarmingly totally deep green but tasted lovely - if you’re a spinach fan that is! Having filled ourselves sufficiently, the five of us continued on our way.

If you’ve even been fortunate enough to visit an old, traditional Japanese town, you’ll know just how easy it is to feel as though you’ve stepped back in time. The old wooden houses and stores in these places look virtually unchanged from when they would have first been built. Only the omnipresent, array of jumbled electricity cables (and occasional delivery moped zipping past) belying the fact that you are still in the present day. We headed for a traditional sweet shop where, apparently, an order had been placed in advance, so that when we arrived it was waiting for us. A classic mom & pop set-up of which there remain millions all over the country. A friendly elderly couple, who seemed delighted to see us (though we were undoubtedly just a few following many other knowledgeable native tourists who had also done their homework). They took a shine to cute little Erika and insisted on handing her a small presentation bag of sweets just for her. Although mum politely said it wasn’t necessary (or expected), they insisted. A genuinely nice touch.

We continued our stroll to the edge of the old-town district which is starkly brought back to the present by rising up a modest hill to a major ring road. A couple of doors down to the left though was a modest yet stylish café called Miriam - after its owner. It is run by an ex-pat Frenchwoman who freshly grinds the coffee beans (from a decent global selection including Brazilian, Cuban, Argentinian and Javanese) and hand makes the curry from scratch – as we could all smell with glee (in spite of having sampled our own little more than an hour before). Fortified further by a strong black coffee (I opted for the Brazilian which was deep and rich) and a gorgeous but too petite chocolate cake, we left the atmospheric cabin, turned back to the left and followed the ring road for a 100 metres to the edge of Nara Park. Where we soon caught our first glimpse of the native deer.

As the twilight gently descended and daylight was replaced by dusk we sauntered around the park and were rapidly joined by one especially bold (and hungry) female deer. Our attempts at trying to instil some sense of patience in the beast to hand feed it were met with ignorant impatience, with her forcing her nose into our bags and grabbing supper for herself!With the light fading and the desire to head back to Kobe before it got too late. We headed out of the park. Just as we did so a parade of deer, slowly walking one behind the other, casually walked towards us. Our paths literally crossed and they calmly passed us by like a group of schoolchildren heading home. I grabbed my camera just in time to capture them (still and moving) heading off into the distance, literally disappearing into the darkness.

A wonderfully memorable end to another pleasurable day in Japan.