Japanory

Kasai Rinkai Koen and Sealife Centre

September 2007

We take a day out to visit this enormous park outside Tokyo. It's easy to find as there is a huge Ferris wheel nearby which is called the "Diamonds and Flowers" wheel. This is because of the beautiful light show it displays at night. We always see it on our way back from the airport and it is stunning. Of course, I don't have a photo of it in all its glory, typical! Each rotation (apparently) takes 17 minutes to complete, which advertisers sell as permitting "maximum kissing time"!

The park is a nice reprieve from Tokyo with a lot of space for walking. It lies on the edge of Tokyo Bay so there's a fresh breeze coming in from the sea and plenty of people watching to indulge in as well as a sea bird centre which we didn't visit on this occasion.

The main reason for our trip is to visit the aquarium as Rhiannon is still hugely interested in sealife. Outside the aquarium was a huge wall of water which attracted children like bees to honey. She got soaked! But luckily it's still very hot in Japan at this time of year so she dried quickly.

The aquarium was rather spectacular with the largest fish tank I have ever seen. In it I was amazed to see Hammerhead sharks and many other huge fish, crabs and all sorts of creatures. There was also a vast hall with a tank all around the edge. This was the main tank and has a viewing area in the middle. You are surrounded by a wall of fish (tuna) going round and round.

Aquariums are something that Japan gets very right. They are way ahead of the rest of the world in managing to keep certain creatures in captivity where other set-ups fail. The tuna roundabout being one of them. They have also invented a special tank to display jellyfish which is absolutely fascinating. And I also saw a Nautilus in one of the aquariums here. Fabulous creatures!

While I enjoy visiting aquariums, all the lights and tanks do weird things to my eyes and give me a headache so I can't stay in there long. I made my way outside to wait for Tim and Rhiannon before I ended up with a migraine and lay on the grass outside with a tin of iced coffee from a vending machine. How very Japanese!

A lovely day out.

Another one of those quick round ups…

First three of weeks of September 2007.

After surviving the Typhoon, it was time to get on with the minutiae of everyday life.

I registered for some classes again at the TUCWS, managed to get Rhiannon to her gymnastics classes at stupid o'clock each Friday and had lovely coffee mornings on Tuesdays with my friends. Rhiannon's still really enjoying Aikido and has signed up for more extra classes on Saturday mornings. 

Tuesday has been marked as my "day off". My helper comes on Tuesdays and I find it hard to work while someone's around. It's also a day when one of my favourite shops is closed, so I won't be tempted to end our coffee morning with a shopping spree! This shop is full of stunning Japanese arts and crafts. Some are antiques which are way out my price range, but the modern articles are gorgeous. I've already bought a number of tea cups, sake sets and other bits and pieces and am eyeing up a real Japanese screen. One day…

Tim and I have an evening out - to a school-organised "meet the parents and teachers" do. It was memorable for the dreadful food and the fact that we swore never to attend another one.

Rhiannon's class are holding an assembly which we are expected to attend, and do so willingly, of course...!

Coming so soon after starting back at school, the children  must have worked very hard to learn their parts. Parents sit on miniature chairs at one end of the hall; the teachers sit around the sides and all the other classes troop in and sit on the floor. As you can see, Rhiannon was pretty nervous, although in my opinion she did extremely well. How scary is it to stand up in front of loads of people and say your piece? Many adults couldn't handle this, but Rhiannon's voice was clear, unwavering and easily heard.

A couple of playdates, a couple of birthday parties for Rhiannon to attend and that's about it for the day to day life in September.

Some more interesting things coming up in later posts though!

Typhoon!

6^th - 7^th September 2007

[From Wikipedia - A Pacific typhoon or tropical storm is a tropical cyclone that develops in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean between 180° and 100°E.]
In other places it's called a hurricane.

Basically it's Weather with a capital W.

Well, here's a new experience. It appears Tokyo is in the path of a rather nasty typhoon. Apparently it is due to hit between 6pm and midnight and is likely to be rather bad....
Meaning that school may well be cancelled tomorrow as well as all the other activities we have planned. All sorts of horror stories are being imparted to me about houses being blown over and so on.

At least with earthquakes you have no warning (I never thought I'd ever say that with relief!). Having this warning makes it more worrying as I have time to think about it! The current prediction is for approx 110 mph winds. Eek!

So, hopefully this has all been blown out of all proportion and I will be around as normal, or... goodbye and thanks for all the fish!

Later that day I sent a message - "It's very windy and pouring with rain, but nothing out of the ordinary yet."

Abridged from a local news source on the day:

Japan issued warnings for high waves, strong winds and flooding, and more than 140 flights were cancelled as Typhoon Fitow approached Tokyo with gusts as high as 198 kilometers an hour (123 miles per hour).

The eye of Fitow was about 250 kilometers south of Tokyo at 8:50 p.m. Japan time today, according to the latest advisory on the Web site of the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The storm was moving north at 15 kilometers per hour. The eye of Fitow is forecast to make landfall on the Izu peninsula, southwest of Tokyo, at about 10 p.m. and pass over the western outskirts of the capital a few hours later.

The agency issued warnings for high waves, heavy rain and flooding for Tokyo and surrounding prefectures because of the typhoon, which is classified as 'strong'. The storm is expected to dump 50 centimeters (20 inches) of rain on Tokyo and adjacent areas.

Another message I sent: "It's now 1130pm and I'm still here! The name of the Typhoon - Fitow - means "beautiful fragrant flower", seriously! It's only got a name because it originated in Micronesia. The Japanese Met Office, being unsentimental souls have given it a number – 0709.

By the next morning it had all "blown over" with us waking intact in our own beds and not in the middle of the adjacent park as expected

The main problems appear to have been out of the centre of Tokyo.

Again, an update from a local news source: Heavy rain and strong winds lashed Tokyo on Friday as a typhoon neared the capital after killing one person, injuring at least 35 and cutting power to tens of thousands of homes. (a tree fell on the man, and other injuries were people being blown over or having car windscreens smashed) In Tokyo, train service was disrupted and pedestrians struggled to hold onto umbrellas. (sorry, but this made me laugh!)

Some kids didn't go to school but all the non-Japanese went in as normal. The British amongst us were puzzled as to why a little rain and wind would stop people doing normal things!

Back to School!

Tuesday 28^th August 2007

Oh yeah! At last, the long summer holidays are over and Rhiannon goes back to school. Now she's in Year 1 and is thrilled to have the fabulous Mr B as her teacher this year. This is the fun-loving guy mentioned in the post about Japanese Day who dressed up as a lady…

All the children adore him as well as all the parents, so we are very happy for Rhiannon. The only sad thing is that this school deliberately separates friends each new school year, so Rhiannon is upset that she won't be with her special friends. This "policy" thinks it's a good idea to split friends up regularly so the children get used to the peripatetic nature of expat life… That may be a good move, but it's painful to see your own child upset like this.

"The Girls" - my little group of special friends are still together though! We drop our children at school, have a quick nose around the class and swiftly make out way to Starbucks for a long gossip. We vow to make this a regular Tuesday meet. For me especially, this is much appreciated as a work-from-home-mum, I rarely get to talk to adults. Well, apart from Tim, that is!

Another fantastic option now that Rhiannon is in year 1 is something called "drop off". Rather than me having to find a parking place near the school and walk her to the school door or fetch her after school, I can drive by and drop her off in the morning. After school, I drive by again and collect her.

This isn't quite as straightforward as it sounds because there are hundreds of other cars doing the same thing in a narrow one-way system. Naturally, most of the expat cars are enormous people carriers driven by women with an overinflated sense of entitlement and an underwhelming knowledge of driving protocol. Meet one of them in the only two way road and there is no way they will reverse or move out the way. They probably can't reverse their monstrous cars; even with the built in reversing camera they all seem to come with. Some even feel it's their right to drive the wrong way down the one way street. Very annoying.

Later in the week we get a list of classes and clubs the kids can join. Rhiannon wants to sign up for Gymnastics and Rainbows, so that's OK: apart from the gymnastics starting at a ridiculous 7.30 am in the morning. There's also an out of school class where she can learn Japanese, so I sign her up for a trial run there. With all the work I'm doing now, I can use any extra hour in the day I can get.

She's also desperate to play the violin so we will reluctantly look into that. She's been talking about playing the violin for over a year now and even asked Santa for one for Christmas… He gave her a toy Hello Kitty one. She was disgusted. Oh dear!

I didn't have the chance to try all these things as a child, so if she wants to, I'm right behind her.

Travel Advice for Japan

Quite a few people email me asking for advice on travelling to Japan either on holiday or in one case, on relocating completely.

Mostly, I never heard from them again (did I frighten them off?) but one lovely couple kept in regular touch.

Michael & Glynis Thomson made a long dreamed of trip to this beautiful country and managed to fit a lot of sight-seeing into a relatively short time.

Once again, unfortunately, I've lost their original emails and my replies, but I kept this one as they enclosed a gorgeous photograph of them in front of Mount Fuji.

Hi Carole,

I felt that a quick email to you in Tokyo would be in order. Why? Well having read, with great delight your many excellent articles on Japan in our local "Freebie Booklet", I then am happy to say spent an excellent fortnight in the country in question!

Everything you said was a great help to us, on this trip of a lifetime. My wife and I are both ex-art teachers, so you can understand that Japan had to be paid a visit (This is a forty year old dream) to see for ourselves the "real" stuff!

Well the dream came true and we had a really wonderful time all round.

Our trip took us from Tokyo to Nikko, Bandai National Park (Snow still up in the mountains ) Fukushima, on to Toyama-Shirakawa and the GasshoZukuri thatched houses, to Nagoya-Toba and then on to Osaka.

Next came a trip to Matsue, Hiroshima followed by an excellent link in a "700" Shinkansen train to Kyoto. Spent a great time in this city, to continue to Hakone National Park and a cruise on Lake Ashi.

Japan is a strange country but I could cheerfully live there!

I have many interests in Japanese things, one being a collector of Japanese toys- the best being "Pla-rail" which this year celebrates 50 years of age! (See my trains on YouTube under the name of:-plarailmike)

However, enough about me, all I can say to you is, please keep on writing your super articles on Japan for my wife and I to read!!

Best regards,

Michael J. Thompson.

HELLO TO MICHAEL & GLYNIS!! Thank you for following my very slow blog and please feel free to fill in my many blanks about our email conversations! I'm so happy I could help you a little bit with your dream trip.

Email Me!

This blogging platform isn't the easiest for finding where to comment on posts, so I quite often get emails instead. Which is fabulous! Thank you!!

I've now sorted out my Japanory email system so I will be informed straight away of any new emails and won't keep you waiting for months for a reply (I'm really sorry about that)

If you want to contact me the email address is [email protected]

As I mentioned previously, when I recently changed web-host I lost all the emails received apart from a couple I saved in a page on this blog which I've now removed to make it look a little tidier.

 

Just a note to say I love reading your blog, it's really fascinating.

My husband recently visited Japan and we both read your site with interest before he left, it certainly opened his eyes to how very different the culture is to here in the UK.

I think you really capture the mood of what it is like to be a stranger in a country and how life's simple pleasures - buses! - can make such a difference!

Keep up the great blog - love reading it. R

 

Just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed reading your blog. I read most of it some time ago and have just been back to read your latest pieces. Your descriptions of your life in Japan are so vivid that I've been madly googling the places you talk about so that I have more pictures to go with the images your writing has created in my mind. I hope you'll be writing more (and more often!) so that I can keep up with your life.

Thank you for letting me share your experiences with you. H

 

Enjoying the site very much.

If ever you get to Kyoto please send lots of photos - it's a dream destination, but not in this lifetime! Enjoy your experience. D

 

Thank you for a most interesting website. I shall certainly bookmark it as well as pass it on to all my friends. Keep up the good work. R

“Fan Mail”

Sorry - bit of a delay updating this due to a major computer problem over the weekend.

Note to self - if my husband offers to rebuild my computer for better performance... REFUSE! It's taken two extremely late nights and much anxiety on my part for it to come back to life. I only wanted a new graphics card!

However, it reminded us of a time many years ago when we worked together on a job in Lyons, France. We had to rebuild a network 11 times before the new software finally worked. We finished at 4am then. Two days later, the server caught fire...

It's good to remember those days!

Anyway, back to the slightly closer past!

 

Perhaps even more than the thanks from the publishers, it was the emails from their readers that really impressed me. Especially when the owner of the publishing company where I sold my articles decided she no longer wished to run them.

This one in particular made me extremely proud and sad at the same time.

Proud that a Japanese woman enjoyed my view of this fabulous country, and sad, of course, because nobody would get to read any more articles. Unless they read Japanory, of course!

Hello Carole,

As a Japanese woman who is living in Edinburgh for 20 years, I want to say your Tokyo Tales are amazing. There are many Japanese fans for your articles and we are all disappointed that we can no longer read your articles any longer.

Your unbiased vision of life in Japan is refreshing not only for Japanese but also for those who have little real knowledge of Japan.

Your articles have made me happy and many thanks to you.

Y

A Disappointed Publisher

Following on from the cancellation of my "Tokyo Tales" articles, I received this sweet email from one of the publishers. I had many others too, but haven't kept them due to a long overdue and over-enthusiastic clearout of my private email. Bad me!

Hi Carole,

Just wanted to say that through T**** I have used all your Tokyo Tales articles in my magazine and am really sorry to see them go. They were the best article on there and really popular with my readers who will be as disappointed as I am.

Thank you, they gave a fascinating insight into life in Japan.