26 October 2010

Since I started work in the middle of September, you may have noticed a drop off in the frequency of posts. I am only permitted to work 28 hours a week according to the terms of my visa, but as I am technically a freelance, I prepare for my lessons in my own time and therefore seem to be working full time.

This is just fine as I'm having a hoot, but it does mean less time for blogging.

Here's a picture of where I'm teaching:

We are above a cinema, handy if you get bored of being droned at about Jersey and want to relax your brain


I teach adults one-to-one, in 40 minute lessons with a 5 minute break inbetween each one. The students range from near beginners to almost fluent, although nobody in Japan is a complete beginner - English is taught in school as a compulsory subject from 6-18.

By the end of 9 lessons each day, I have to plug my ears with corks to stop my brain oozing out, but it is a lot of fun and I have really interesting students - surgeons, housewives, artists, and more salarymen and salarywomen than I can count in Japanese. I have to wear a black suit and white blouse - I look quite peculiar, I think most of you wouldn't recognise me.

The school I'm teaching at is in an area called Ginza which is full of very fancy clothes shops, and many ladies and gentlemen who lunch (shopping and lunching is considered to be too much fun for just ladies here so men approach it with equal gusto).

There is also a man with a troop of cats wearing hair scrunchies round their necks. These lucky cats are thrown up onto road signs where they sit all day to be photographed. Hmm. Time to take the camera to work!


Temperature

Back to one of my favourite topics - the weather. In September the run of 70 days where the temperature did not fall below 35 degrees ended. Apparently this was the hottest summer since records began in 1898 (I just KNEW I wasn't making a fuss about nothing). Cue great relief and leaping about in a cardigan just because I could. However, the day the air conditioning was turned off in the subway, they turned the heating on. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!


Dog craziness

There has been further dog madness.

Plastic labradors modelling this season's latest fashions

I can also report that the other day I saw a dog wearing dog sunglasses that were a miniature model of those of its owner's. I am sorry to say that I missed the opportunity to take a picture. If only I took my camera out every day.

Arnie

Angus had a better than usual breakfast in September, crossiants and coffee in the company of the talking Chesterfield sofa, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently he was in Tokyo to promote southern California as a great place to do business.

By all accounts, nobody paid any attention to what he was saying as it was just too exciting being in the same room as the big man.

Camera shake caused by thrills at proximity to the Terminator


Highland Games

I knew that Scotland is popular in Japan. It is fairly easy to buy tins of shortbread here if you want, and I have seen large numbers of Japanese tourists on my visits to Scotland.

However, I didn't realise quite how popular Scotland is - this was driven home when we went to the Tokyo Highland games.

This event was held on 2nd October in Chiba, north of Tokyo, at the sports ground of Kanda University of International Studies. It was a lovely day and weirdly reminiscent of Britain in summer - warmish but cloudy with an occasional chilly breeze. My ears nearly fell off as there were 3 bagpipe bands practicing at once, plus a piper for the dance competitions.



The most impressive spectacle was not the caber tossing (it appears that for the purposes of heaving logs into the air, having a Japanese build isn't going to do you any favours) or the sword dancing, but the seriousness with which formal Scottish dress has been adopted by the Japanese. Here are some pictures of the magic.

We feasted upon fish and chips (strangely difficult with chopsticks) and watched a lot of dancing.

"Call that a portion?" or "why the Japanese tend towards slimness"

Mount Takao

Monday 11 October was yet another national holiday in Japan, this time 'National Sports Day'. Despite very strong urges to celebrate by sitting on the sofa in pyjamas, we took the subway to Meiji Memorial Forest Takao Quasi-National Park (the Japanese name for the place, not mine), to climb a hillock called Mount Takao.

Mount Takao is a sacred mountain, and also gives brilliant views over Tokyo.

It was a lovely day, just right for rambling up the hill. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones who thought of this and the mountain was threatening to collapse under the weight of approximately 3 million people who had the same idea as us.

In Tokyo, it is noteable how conservatively Japanese people dress. Clothes tend to be in muted colours, even at the weekend. Finding beige, grey, brown and cream coloured clothing is no problem in Tokyo. Cerise, turquoise, red, purple and green clothes are much rarer.

Something strange happens to the normally chic Japanese when faced with a mountain. Say hello to neon! Japanese hiking clothes are very jazzy - lots of primary colours and very bold patterns.

The other thing that is worth mention is the attitude to nature. In my experience, walking in the countryside in Britain is usually undertaken with a measure of reverence for peace and quiet, and all the natural goings on around the walker.

4 out of 10 of the Japanese walkers at Mount Takao had a portable radio strapped to their rucksacks, blaring Japanese radio, and in one case, a tape recording of French verbs. We also watched a family who had found a butterfly on a branch and were encouraging their little girl to grab its wings to 'encourage' it to sit on her finger so they could take pictures of her in a natural setting.

All quite different to what we're used to.

Here are some pictures of the temples and shrines that sit on the mountain

including what seemed to be a shrine to shoes

There was also a monkey enclosure full of Japanese macaques. They were fun to watch and my new mission is to see them in the wild, sitting in hot pools.

Kamagowe

To continue our explorations of Tokyo, on 17th October we went north to Kawagoe, in Saitama Prefecture, to see the matsuri (festival) there. This matsuri is famous for its dashi (floats - also the word for fish stock - see why I'm having trouble with Japanese?) - huge wooden vehicles with elaborate carvings and beautiful fabric drapery, and musicians and general hangers on, all pulled by groups of people with massive thick silk ropes.

The focus is on the masked people at the front of the floats, who I think are representing Shinto gods. And the music was performed on big drums with an accompaniment of wind instruments making thin high pitched notes. I'm reluctant to call that music 'haunting' as I'm not writing rubbish historical romantic dramas, but it's the best word I can come up with at the moment.

Everybody put your tassels in the air and shout "yeah"!

Also worth mentioning are the predominant snack at this matsuri:

Yes, they are bananas, covered in chocolate and hundreds and thousands, and mounted upon a stick. Ingenious!

We also passed an antique shop and were lured inside with the promise of interesting things. We found something excellent amongst all the old chipped china and torn kimono - a family photo album that definitely dates to before the unfortunate economic problems of the 1940s which are not mentioned EVER here, and possibly earlier.

I'm finding Japanese history very tricky to understand, and this little photo album is doing a great job in helping make sense of it all.

Can you see the plane in the background behind this chap? Any help dating the picture would be gratefully received.

Festival outside our back door

Two weeks ago, all over Tokyo, groups of people, well oiled with beer, picked up their shrines, and took them out for a walk. As usual, it was very hard to tell what the purpose was but everyone seemed to be having a nice time. Here they are outside our flat.

and from the balcony. The walking was accompanied by lots of grunting and singing. A jolly good Sunday out!

Sanma Festival

Meguro, the ward we live in, celebrates the abundance of mackerel (sanma) each year with a festival at which you is given a free mackerel and if you're lucky, a free yuzu (citrus) fruit too. Owing to the fact that we are terrible slugabeds, we didn't reach the festival in time for a free fish, or a free yuzu. However, we did see Sanma FM being broadcast

a man with a cat on his shoulders

and the remenants of an extremely long fish barbeque:

The next big thing

Order your copies of this CD at HMV now!

Language issues

My Japanese language skills are not developing, owing to a chronic lack of effort on my side, and the excellent English speaking abilities of Tokyoites. I tested some Japanese out on a taxi driver, and asked for 'Nakameguro-ebi, okudasai'. What I should have asked for was 'Nakameguro-eki okudasai'.

What I wanted was 'please take us to Nakameguro Station'. However, I asked 'please take us to Nakameguro Shrimp'.

Nature's revenge

Ah, the folly of expats. Having cocked a snook at nature with regard to my micro-garden, we received a little earthquake in the middle of the night, nothing major but enough to wake us up. HA! thinks I - one in the eye for Arrogant Dix. But you have not disturbed my garden!

Then, a week later, a cloud of butterflies descends upon my micro garden and proceeds to lay eggs. The resulting caterpillars then munched my whole microgarden to nothing in a day. RATTIKINS!

I considered eating the caterpillars as they'd be very delicately flavoured with a range of tender herbs, but I missed my chance and don't much fancy chrysalis pie, having seen on Planet Earth what's inside a chrysalis.


Inappropriate desserts

I give you the delicious, but unusually named, coq rouge.

Amazon parcel

Last week I made an order with amazon.co.uk (this sounds bananas but once you factor in the massive discounts on books, it is still far cheaper to buy books this way and pay the shipping than it is to buy books in Japan - English books are tooth-grindingly expensive). So far, so good.

Amazon now has a splendid little widget that allows you to track your parcel as it speeds towards you. Here is the path that my parcel has taken:

Glasgow - Edinburgh - East Midlands - Cologne - Tokyo - Shenzen (China) - Tokyo - Shenzen (China) - Tokyo

It hasn't yet arrived. Perhaps it has ambitions to see more of the world before it ends up in my eager paws.

Romance

I came across a funny item in an English language magazine during my green tea break at work last week; top then things men do here to attract a lady.

1. Buy dinner

2. Offer to carry heavy bags

3. Make a "bold move" during a sports game

4. Buy dinner for a junior member of staff

5. Sing a ballad at karaoke

6. Pretend their mind is elsewhere

7. Stock up on and present trivial facts (I think they stole this one from me)

8. Open the top two buttons of their shirt

9. Keep bangs at a manga-esque angle

10. Act jaded while loosening their tie

Now, I don't wish to cast aspertions on these methods as I see plenty of happy families around - some of these methods must work.

However, the Japanese government is concerned about a falling birth rate. I invite them to address points 8, 9 and 10.

That's it for the time being, ja mata!

9 September 2010

Another long gap in posting - this time because the cascade of new things is slowing (although is by no means stopping).

My main exciting news it that I have a job with one of the big English teaching schools, which I am in the middle of training for. I shall be teaching poor beleagured Japanese souls to say things like 'what-ho, pop another log on the fire won't you' and 'that tastes very good but I preferred the one you made with beer in it'. I start on Tuesday 14th.

Visitors

In the past month we have had two sets of visitors. The first was Phil Cox - the only person I know who has ever been to New York, Argentina, Uruguay, Japan and Norway in one visit. He may well be the first person in the world to complete such a feat.

Phil's visit coincided with some of the hottest weather of the summer, but we were brave and soldiered out into the blistering sunshine to visit an art exhibition (where Angus became distracted by a room full of broken pottery), to the top of Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku,

Angus and I at top of the tall building

to the Imperial Palace (which we couldn't get very far into - living gods are very good at security!)

and very good at architecture

me trying to balance yet again, I'm not sure if I'm holding on tightly enough

and to Tokyo Sea Life Park

Angus and Phil looking very calm and collected outside the Sea Life Park given that it took an hour and half to get there, and we only bought tickets 2 minutes 30 seconds before it closed

to see the penguins and tuna.

Noteable achievements during Phil's visit included assisting him in his quest to eat as much ramen as possible, and learning the restaurant Japanese for 'three people please' (an improvement as we had only had to ask for a table for two previously). We also took him to Angus's friend Julian's house-warming party, which I'm reliably informed was very, very good.

the lady on the left on the subway is obviously immune to Angus and Phil's bountiful post-party charms

Hot on Phil's heels were Chris and Mila (Chris and I share an aunt but aren't cousins). Chris and Mila were in Tokyo on their way from Korea to Mexico. They had been teaching English in Seoul in order to save enough to travel in central America. They weren't in Tokyo for long but we had a fine old time with them, and managed to squeeze enough information out of them about Korea's idiosyncracies to last for a very long time indeed.

I had no idea that South Korea considers itself to be a global super-power, and neither did they when they arrived, prompting tears from some of their charges when Chris showed them how little Korea is on a world map.

It was great to meet Chris and Mila as this was the first time. Mila has a great blog if you want to read about their amazing adventures: http://idreamofdesign.wordpress.com/.

we couldn't find a bouquet for our honoured visitors to hold, so bananas it was

Baby Sea - installment 2

I saw our friendly Bretagne neighbour again last week. She had (quite rightly) forgotten my name - I confess I cannot remember hers either. Anyway, she was introducing me to her friendly French husband, and said 'cherie, this is Catherine' to which I said 'mais non, ma nomme est Elizabeth' to which she replied 'ah yes, I knew it began with an H'.

Mystere.


Heat

So, the heat has continued. Even the normally exquisite, non-ruffled Japanese people are beginning to look at bit sweaty and crumpled. But, today, it rained, and the temperature dropped to an all time low (for those of us who have only been here two months) of 24 degrees. Hurrah!

This is especially good news as my computer is feeling the heat - the little application on my desktop to tell me the temperature threw its teddies out of the pram the other day and proudly declared that it was 96 degrees celcius earlier this week. I was frightened to go outside, I tell you.

Culinary Institute of Nakameguro

Many exciting culinary developments have occurred in Nakkers. Angus made delicious curries (with guidance from Mr R. Stein), and we faced the strangeness of shrimp paste and galangal together for the first time. The end result was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS, and worth going to a market selling dead turtles as snack food for. We didn't buy any turtles.

Score! I give you aubergine curry with chilli, tomato and kaffir lime leaves, and prawn jungle curry. Actually, I can't give it to you as we ate it all up.

I have also decided to mount a challenge to nature, and have planted a lot of seeds (thyme, mint, coriander, nasturtiums, parsley, sage, lemon basil, normal basil and Thai basil, chives and geraniums, for if you can't eat it, what is the point of growing it) just as autumn approaches.

Here they are on 24 August on our trusty balcony when I planted them.

And here they are on 29 August. TAKE THAT NATURE! (postscript - please don't send a big earthquake to teach me the consequences of arrogance)



Wildlife

As I'm sure you know, I take pride in being very nature-friendly. I was delighted to find a stag beetle nest in Carrie's garden. I have been watching the cicadas with great interest (especially since Phil told us that they lay eggs that hatch a prime number of years later, and that they only ever eat sap which sounds desolate even for an insect).

However, I have found the limit to my love of the natural world. I saw a 2 metre long, bright green snake swimming through the river by our flat and almost levitated - running home in record time squeaking with fear like a twit. All I could think about were the deadly green mambas which Roald Dahl described in his autobiography. EEEEK!


That's it for the time being as I am in the middle of English-teacher training and need to go to sleep.

Ja mata!

10 August 2010

Since I have been here, lots of small, but peculiar, things have happened. So, instead of an eye straining 6000 word essay today, here are a couple of things that made me laugh recently.


The Baby Sea?

I met our downstairs neighbour earlier this week. She is from Brittany, works nearby in Nakameguro, and has a nice six month old baby called something elegant and French like Clothilde.

She asked me if I worked, to which I replied 'not yet but looking'. When she heard that I worked at the BBC until recently, beamed a huge smile at me and said 'ha, you'll have no problem finding work here, it's so hard to find English speaking childminders, I have a load of friends with similar age babies to *name of elegant French baby* - let me put you in touch with them'. I was rushing off to the tube (probably on another feasting mission - I can't remember now) so I didn't question her odd logic.

I realised later that when I said BBC, she must have heard Baby Sea, hence the childminding advice.

I must learn not to mumble.

Noodles and trip to Kappabashidori

It was going to happen sooner rather than later, and I'm delighted it did - I have found a kitchenware partner in crime, Marta, and have therefore been able to go back to Kappabashi-dori (the kitchenware district, also known as the Road to Shangri-La for Elizabeth).

Marta and I went along for some noodles, and then to mooch around kitchenware shops, looking for all the world like 5 year olds on their first trip to Hamleys. I am now wondering which pieces of furniture I can hock to fuel my crockery habit. I don't think Angus would miss the dining room table...

Be still my beating heart - the source of the problem at Kappabasha-dori

Tea ceremony pt. 2

Here is a picture of me (centre) and the top of Marta's head (right) at the tea ceremony, having a fine old time.

The tea is powdered and must be whisked in a certain pattern with a bamboo whisk. Mmm, there is more kitchenware potential in this past-time, I must look into it further.

Applying for services

Applying for vital services (for example, phone lines) is made very easy in Tokyo as there is usually a kind soul making lots of nice cash by providing the interface between complicated service provider instructions and stupid foreigners such as myself. I was particularly taken with the following line during one application procedure:

If the way you normally write your name makes the total longer than 15 letters, then putting a shorter nickname in place of your given name, or replacing it
with just a first initial, is OK. For example, if your name were Alexander
Fritzpatrick Bogumasus, you could enter it as Family name: Bogumasus; Given
name: Alex which comes to 14 characters, including one space.

What I want to know is, who the hell is Alexander Fritzpatrick Bogumasus? Surely someone with such a luxuriant name wouldn't dirty their hands by arranging access to utilities? And why on earth, if your name is Alexander Fritzpatrick Bogumasus, would you shorten it to Alex, and not Fritzbogey?

Curl Up Cafe
Angus and I took a walk deeper into the ward we live in on Saturday, and had a cup of coffee at an establishment called Curl Up Cafe. WITH CATS! 15 or so fine kitties were available for our ministrations while we were being refreshed. What a strange experience. The other people at Curl Up Cafe were all local (i.e. not originally from The Realm Of Boris Johnson or nearby) and had a fine old time tormenting the cats to various degrees. What a strange institution cat cafes are.

Some Japanese people hanging out with cats.




A very patient, long suffering cat (although it looks like it might be a stray ring-tailed lemur who only came in for a cup of coffee and was forced to wear a silly hat)

If you aren't sure about the provenance of the cats on offer, it's OK, you can read their CVs!

Dance festival

When wandering around on the hunt for some groceries on Sunday night, Angus and I found a huge dance festival in one of the streets off the main drag (Yamate-dori) behind our flat.

Dance troupes were taking it in turns to perform traditional Japanese dances, to some surprisingly rocking music. The costumes were beautiful - sashes with painted waves and dragons, lots of coloured silk, soft soled ninja boots with a separate big toe that look very good for creeping across ceilings in.

The most interesting thing was that the age range within each dance troop ran from about 4 years old (or, just about old enough to wear a little version of the costume, and follow what everyone else was doing) to somewhere in the region of 90. One of the dance troops bunched all the older ladies together in the middle of their formation, and they used their walking sticks as props in the dance.

Sadly we didn't have a camera with us as the dancing was very impressive and an unexpected treat.

The other thing which I loved about the dancing was one of flags (What? You thought I liked it just for its merits?).

One of the dance troupes had two men at the rear, waving enormous, light flags, with beautiful Japanese characters on and delicate silk paintings of stylised animals. And one of the flags had, underneath all the beautiful artwork, in massive Roman characters, the message "PASTA MANIA". This makes me very happy.


Now down to the important stuff

This blog post has been crashed by an interloper if there isn't a detailed run down of the gourmet delights that Angus and I have been enjoying lately.

Without wishing to toot my horn too much, one of the fatty treats to have come our way recently was home-made - ramen noodles in miso soup. Here it is:

Very tasty, very easy, very cheap, very filling.

And here's the strange wonder we had for dessert after the ramen. The black cubes are flavourless jelly (with gold leaf on - as all dessert should have), the green ones are green tea flavoured, and the white balls are made of rice starch. There's also a layer of sweet bean paste underneath, and a couple of black beans at 10 o'clock.

It's amazing how quickly our tastes have changed, this now seems like a perfectly acceptable dessert, despite its savoury and bitter qualities.

I shall be campaigning hard for sandwich shops in London to stock this pudding.

And here's a picture of my number 1 favourite snack - jelly within jelly (how post-modern). It's cubes of hard set vegetable jelly, inside a soft set vegetable jelly. I'm wondering how I can import this to Britain in decent quantities - I think it would be very popular.

Savoury jelly - what's not to love?

And finally, the real revelation of Japanese food so far (apart from jelly within jelly which took a bit of thinking about) is the salad dressings. I didn't even think that salad dressing would be any different in Japan.

Here is my new favourite recipe for a delicious and mightily addictive salad dressing that has briefly existed in our kitchen recently.


Ginger Salad Dressing

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
About an inch of fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into a couple of lumps
2 teaspoons lime juice
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon pepper

I put it all in the blender, guzzed it, added a little bit more ginger and some sesame oil and then whizzed it round it a bit more to make sure it was all blended nicely and has no lumps in.

That's all for the time being. Hope you're all having good summers.

Ja mata!

PS.

If anyone can help me translate my note to the local mosquitos into Japanese, that would be very helpful. It goes:

Honourable Mosquitos of the Kanto plain,

I understand that, in our ignorance, we have moved to a former swamp.

I understand that, being larger than your average Japanese body, and so pale I'm luminous, I'm a more attractive prospect than a Japanese person, when you have your eye on an easy feast.

And I understand that you have young to feed, and a knawing hunger of your own that you must fulfill.

But I would be eternally grateful if, when choosing a piece of me to bite, you avoided your current preferences of biting me right on the bony bits like my elbows, ankles and knees. There are much more satisfying (and less irritating) parts of me that you can access, with the added bonus that you won't have to watch me dancing like Bez while I am trying to kill you.

Thank you!