Hello everyone, first of all, thank you very much for all your messages after the earthquake on 11 March. Angus and I are both absolutely fine and contrary to British news reports, Tokyo is mostly unaffected apart from low stocks of rice, bottled water, and electricity.
My advice would be to ignore the Western media's reports about Tokyo as they are mildly hysterical and smack of a need to fill 24 hours of rolling news, and not much more. The real news is 150 miles away in Sendai - it is terrible that whole communities have been washed away and are now in moderate danger of being irradiated.
Here are some things I have learned since March 11:
- aftershocks are really fairly major earthquakes in their own right - I thought an aftershock would be a tiny quiver but in fact each proper aftershock we have had has been bigger than any other earthquake I have experienced (save the March 11th whopper)
- the gas is not turned off in Tokyo for three days after an earthquake, it is switched back on pretty much immediately, but we have to switch it on manually in the cupboard outside our front door. This would enable us to shower and therefore become much cleaner than 3 days without hot water would allow. This of course is a theoretical problem.
- The Japan Meteorological Agency website is AMAZING, especially if you open it just after an earthquake - (click on ‘previous information’ to see the interesting stuff, for example this one last night which wasn’t so big but definitely woke me up and this one which nearly made me spill my cup of tea on Saturday morning)
- navigating home from Yokohama City on foot in the dark because a big earthquake has stopped all the trains is a peculiar experience. And I have also learned that I am somewhat disgruntled after a 25km walk in the dark - this is news to me although Angus didn’t seem so surprised.
So, an unusual start to my post - normal service to resume now.
Traditionally I start with an apology. Here we go: apologies for the shocking lapse in posting. I would like to claim that I have spent my time mastering the Japanese language, developing a brand new unrelated skill as well as developing some sort of craft society for expats.
However, you all know the truth; I have been sitting on the sofa in two jumpers (our flat has been made with paper walls and doesn't hold the heat terribly well) drinking tea and watching BBC costume dramas on DVD. Hurrah for winter! And triple hurrah for spring - I have now been able to discard one of the jumpers. I'm still racing through the costume dramas though.
So, I'll start at Christmas.
Christmas holiday
Angus and I had a really excellent holiday over Christmas. We started off in Hong Kong, and what a splendid place it is. We flew in to Shenzhen International Airport on 18 December. In my ignorance, I thought Hong Kong would be similar in character to Japan because of its proximity. After all, it’s only a four and a half hour flight away, like the London – Egypt route... oh.
So, we arrived in Hong Kong and I couldn’t work out why everyone was yelling instead of whispering politely (often behind a small towel). It took a little while to work out that we hadn’t arrived at a time of national crisis, but that people in Hong Kong just really, really like to shout.
On the first full day we were in Hong Kong, we took a ride in a tram up the Peak (the big mountain on Hong Kong Island) and were fortunate to have clear and sunny day (fortunate because HK is famous for having a climate that makes you feel like you’re breathing and looking through a hot flannel)
As you can see from subsequent photos, the clear sunshine didn’t last for long so it was good to take advantage of it.
Following the high prices of Tokyo, I did a little backflip of happiness when I discovered that the Star Ferry (which connects Hong Kong Island to the HK mainland) cost 3 HK Dollars one way – about 37 pence.
Apart from being a good value option, the Star Ferry is an excellent way to see HK, and to see the odd thing like this:
We stayed in an area called Causeway Bay which was suitably bananas and full of people howling at each other (if my Cantonese was better I’d probably have heard conversations along the lines of “3pm at our house? Oh yes lovely, I’ll bring round a sponge cake. Oh yes do, your sponge cake really is the best in China” rather than “I’m going to kill your entire extended family with my bare hands, and then I’m going to take all your money and abduct your hamster” which is what it sounded like).
Causeway Bay didn’t disappoint for many reasons, not least because the adverts were top class:
As well as roaming around, feasting and marvelling at the extraordinary architecture, we took the Rankin Heritage Tour and went to Stanley on the south side of the island, to the town where Angus spent his formative years learning to hunt bashed neeps and appreciate a single malt (he left Stanley when he was 11 years old).
Remarkably, we found someone in Stanley who remembers Angus – a chap called Fan Lam Kee. He greeted Angus with ‘ahhhhhhh – Roger’s son! [correct] James! [not quite, but close enough]’.
Here’s a picture of them both together – one hopes that the height differential has reversed itself since they last spent time together (1988).
We also got ourselves over to the mainland and had a good rummage around Nathan Road, having a look at the Yuen Po Street Bird Market:
And a shop selling orange coloured dried comestibles
In conclusion – Hong Kong = 10/10 (once you have got over what seems like continuous verbal warfare). From Hong Kong we flew to Sabah in Borneo, part of Malaysia, for the main part of our holiday. We started off in Kota Kinabalu, which feels like what I guess many newish tropical cities feel like – slightly impermanent and only just holding off the jungle which is waiting quietly to swallow the city up at the least provocation.
We took a trip to a stretch of National Park just outside a town called Beaufort (North Borneo was a British colony during the late 19th and early – mid 20th centuries - with great shame I admit that I didn't know this) to see the proboscis monkey colony, and were fortunate enough to start Primate Watch with some silver leaf monkeys:
However, silver leaf monkeys are all very well and good but WHERE ARE THE PROBOSCIS MONKEYS? 
Oh yes, here they are. Unfortunately they are a little wary of people (which explains why there are still some left; dodos would have done well to learn that lesson) so this is as good a picture as we have I’m afraid. In case you want to see a better picture and admire the nose of glory sported by the dominant male, you can do a lot worse than the Wikipedia proboscis monkey page.
During the next movement of “British Animal Spotters Get Thoroughly Overheated in Borneo” we left Kota Kinabalu to go to Lahad Datu on the north east coast of Borneo, from where we travelled along metalled roads for three hours to reach the Borneo Rainforest Lodge.
Although I fancy myself rather a tough exploring type (see phase III for proof of former life as Indiana Jones’s annoying little sister) I was absolutely delighted by the extreme luxury encountered at this hotel.
The rainforest lodge is right in the middle of the Danum Valley, which is situated in the enormous dipterocarp (like sycamore – no I didn’t know either) rainforest in the eastern part of Sabah.
For three days we walked through the forest with a guide with laser vision (‘oh look, if you look in that tree you can see a flying squirrel’ ‘which tree, that one in front of us?’ ‘no the one 15km away, can you see it?’ ‘...’) who kindly pointed out all sorts of animals and insects that we never would have seen ourselves.
We learned that new leaves on rainforest plants are often red but nobody really knows why
We (totally unsuccessfully) dodged the hoards of hungry leeches waiting for a fatty Western meal (although in my case I cannot accuse them of seeking fast food ha ha). If you give me a tenner I'll show you the scars.
We admired buttress roots
We looked at banana flowers
We marvelled at the beauty of the rainforest at dawn (once I had finished a spell of colourful swearing about being made to get up at 4.30am while on holiday)
We sweated and looked weird
We walked on a rope walk between trees and tried not to look scared in front of the incredibly cool guide
We went back up the rope walk the next day despite my previous hooting that I’d never go on it again
I bemoaned the lack of orang-utan sightings, although orang-utans are incredibly rare, solitary and roam fairly widely across the forest.
We then did a small dance of joy (much like a mambo but independent of a partner, on a path in the rainforest in squelching walking boots, and probably leaping on and killing an animal that will now never be known to science) when on Christmas morning this fine beast revealed herself to us. She was making a kissing noise which I assumed was an overture to Angus. I was gently corrected by the guide who said she probably had a baby somewhere and was warning us not to get any closer. Could have fooled me.
And when we were bathed and back in our pressed linens, with gin and tonic in our grasp, we ate like kings, and rather unusually, received Christmas presents from a man called Mohammed who was dressed as Father Christmas, while the whole staff followed him around singing a medley of popular Christmas tunes.
Ah, Borneo Rainforest Lodge, how I love thee.
Part 3 of the holiday involved yet more zooming around, this time to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, in order to slide around inside caves lined the poo of 3 million bats, in the company of a huge Italian family who demanded that we sit down to eat lunch despite being so covered in crap that we couldn’t identify each other but for height (another of Angus’s excellent attributes). Here’s the bat poo cave, and if you can stomach it, here’s a little video of David Attenborough talking about the dung heap to end all dung heaps
This is how we travelled around the National Park
And here is a dangly fruit that looked tasty but so far is untested by Team Nakameguro
This stalactite is called The Jellyfish
The final stage of our holiday was in a hotel near Kota Kinabalu. I won’t go into detail about how utterly lovely it was, I will just show you what we did most evenings before sipping a cocktail and listening to the waves washing the shore while we decided what delicacies to munch upon. Marvellous.
That’s it for the time being – I need to stop typing and make some risotto. Further updates to come later. In the meantime, have a ginger flower.
Semoga kau selamat!
