15 June 2011

January - February

What time did you go to the Japanese dentist?

I would like to write about the wonder that is Kitamura-san. In January I noticed that all was not well with my teeth, so booked an appointment to see Ryu Kitamura, an English speaking dentist in Ebisu. What a lovely experience!

Never before have I been to such a stylish medical facility. Kitamura-san greeted me at the door, wearing a purple rollneck, and white corduroy slacks, beaming a PERFECT Hollywood smile at me. All the dental nurses wear white roll necks and purple corduroy slacks.

After a check up with the dentist, whose English was excellent, I was introduced to the dental hygienist who cleaned my teeth like so gently and thoroughly she could have been restoring an Old Master with a cotton bud (please let it be known I have no pretensions about my teeth, they're OK but certainly not worthy of this attention). To add to her charm, her only English consisted of 'open wide' and 'and now relax'. This is the first time I have nearly fallen asleep in a room full of jaw clamps and high pressure water jets (I think).

And if all this wasn't pleasant enough, when I was all clean and tidy and fixed, instead of paying the bill and wandering out into the sunshine, I was asked to sit in an easy chair with a blanket on my knees while I sipped camomile tea and recovered from my ordeal. Hurrah! I am thinking of importing Kitamura-san to south London to teach the hygienist 'Doreen the Ripper' how much fun her job could really be - imagine the transformation her life would undergo if she sent people off humming and grinning instead of bleeding and weeping.

Kamakura

Shortly after we returned to Tokyo in January, we took a day trip to Kamakura to ride around on the wooden tram and see the giant Buddha.

Kamakura was capital of Japan between 1185 and 1333, but is now mainly famous for being a nice escape from Tokyo. It's an hour away by no fewer than three types of transport - tram, monorail and train. There are lots of lovely temples complete with armies of tiny statues, fresh sea air, a giant Buddha built in 1252, and some strange crackers that taste like marmite and come with a delicious edible seaweed holder.

If you close your eyes when you're eating this, it is like crunching a giant, marine, marmite crisp.

Guernsey's attempted invasion of the Jersey embassy
I am sorry to report that on 29 January, my northern brethren sent a secret emissary to try and unbalance the harmony found in Jersey HQ (Nakameguro Branch). Amy (also known as Guernseyperson) visited from New York (a heroic 14 hours flight away). Hurrah! Not that we made it easy for her (I really was worried about some sort of inter-islands conflict); we immediately took her to the Australia Day Ball in an attempt to show her how hip and happening we are. The costume dramas, preserving of vegetables and pursuit of Japanese fabric crafts were put on ice.

This was a great success, not least because Angus was able to greet Sir Murray McLean, the Australian Ambassador to Japan, with great gusto.








Despite severe jet-lag, Amy took Japan by storm, like a cheerful whirlwind and visited many good things. Together we went to another great cat cafe:

and she managed a visit to Kyoto and Nara, to see the temples and to be nibbled on the bum by a deer.

We went to see bunraku (Japanese traditional puppet drama) which I slept through as I have no poetry in my soul.

We ate raw fish and unidentifiable jellies.

We visited temples and Amy tried one of the questionable banana on a stick snacks.

'is this really a Japanese snack?' 'yes yes, samurai ate them for breakfast'

We visited a floating tea house for matcha (foamy green tea) and rice sweets. And Amy demonstrated that she is very good at kneeling.

And (my finest moment) we visited Kappabashi (also known as The Street Where All My Dreams Come True) and went through the ceramics shops like a dose of the salts. Hurrah! Amy - I thought you didn't like shopping. I now see I was wrong.

Nakameguro
I realise that I'm posting merrily away and have included very little detail of Nakameguro, save for pictures of the river.

Now that we have been here for a whole year, I can show you the river in all it's seasonal glory

summer: this picture doesn't really convey how blisteringly hot the weather was

autumn

winter: this picture doesn't really convey how blisteringly cold the weather was

spring: pretty! more about the cherry blossom in a post yet to be written

So, we live in Nakameguro. Here is the station and the pedestrian crossing much beloved of Phil Cox for its seasonal crossing music (currently silent - the music coincides with the intense summer heat).

A little further up the road is Nakameguro 'town centre' - with a couple of supermarkets, the best vegetable shop in Japan (in my opinion - I'm happy to have a 'who can eat the most chicken sashimi without being sick' contest with anyone who wants to argue):

I can identify peas, broadbeans, two kinds of turnips, some soya beans still in their shells, and the rest is a culinary opportunity - the owners usually stop me if I'm going to buy something they think I can't handle

loads more restaurants and lots of little shops. Here's the main street:

As we walk home from the station, there are several points of interest.

The big shop pictured below is called Bals and has an excellent wine and cheese supplier, and a dog beautician. I don't even notice it now, I have become immune to most of the everyday weirdness.

Three cheers to whoever decided to call this shop Bals, it's actually quite good

The next thing to see is the splendid hoarding that lines the building sites. I think the pictures the line the hoarding are the result of a competition - how small can a dog be before it stops being a dog and is considered to be a rodent or even insect?

aggression/confusion

The enormous cranes in the background of the picture below are operated 24 hours a day, because they are excavating a hole under the ring road, 71 metres deep. It has been decided that installing an underground ringroad, in one of the most seismically active cities in the world, is a wise idea.

The building site is run very much like all Japanese building sites I have seen - it is immaculately kept and has staff whose only job is to say 'welcome' and bow as you walk past.

although it's a titchy photo, you can see how deep the hole is by comparing it to the depth of the river on the right hand side of the diagram

We then come to Nakameguro River Park. Here it is. Grass is so very over-rated.

Pigeons staging a sit in, in protest at the lack of vegetation. Either that or the hot surface has melted their legs.

When I arrived in Japan, I was puzzled that amateur photographers never take pictures of views, but spend a lot of time composing extremely close up pictures of flowers and leaves. It took me ages to realise that this may be a response to Tokyo's (ahem) lack of aesthetic qualities. So, I tried it, and it works! Here are some pictures of the flowers in the park.

My favourite thing on the walk home concerns gluttony (surprise!) - a really excellent pizza restaurant called Il Lupone. Despite being in the base of a 10 storey building, it has a wood fired pizza oven, tended to by pizza magicians.

they put the shutters on the door down when Angus or I walk past, just in case

And we're nearly home!

House Nakameguro is in a block of flats that only has six stories (it's no uncommon to live on the 30th floor of a building here). On one side is the river, and the other a non-descript road which is only remarkable for the number of empty cabs which hurtle down it - usually a hazard to be noted and occasionally a great bonus when late for an appointment or when my shoes are too precipitous to be safely walked on.

Of course, there are also plenty of vending machines that handily service any late night cravings for warm, tinned, sweetened coffee (bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! not my favourite).

Here's our building.

Next to the front door, there's a fine (if tiny) Japanese garden with a small elevated pond to rinse your hands and mouth in, and a chain that allows water to run off the eaves without making an annoying splashy sound that might interfere with the tea ceremony or flower arranging.

Finally, once you have gone through the front door, you can see through to the river side of the flats, and the beautiful glowing green light caused by the vegetation. Here I must tip my bonnet to the maintenance man who spends a great deal of time and energy eliminating our grubby footprints, and achieving that high shine on the floor.

I must zoom off to work now so I will sign off, and leave you with a picture I took on the balcony. Ja mata!