Harajuku

This week has been very busy, everyone is really tired at school and we have a lot of weeks to get through yet. Two kids actually fell asleep in one of the physics lessons this week. James, the teacher, tried to get the class to leave without waking them so they would be all confused, but they woke up. Monday was mini-day, when the parents come in for an afternoon and have a mini lesson with each of their kids teachers. Very scary. We also had something called Spirit Day on friday, which is a bit of an American thing. Different year groups have a different theme and the kids all dress up in the theme (we had Disney characters, past fashion, future careers, jungle fever etc) and then at the end of the day everyone goes to the gym and all the sports teams do little performances and there's lots of cheering and shouting and they get people to do silly things. Apparently they do it a lot in the US and call it a pep rally. It's supposed to raise school spirit, and the kids did seem to enjoy it, especially the bit where the PE teacher had red full body paint and a feather boa to strut about as tickle-me-elmo. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of that.

Last weekend I went for sushi for the first time here (it smelled too fishy for Will - he had a subway). I really enjoyed it, and it was cheap too. I did keep getting wasabi though by accident, which is really foul stuff. I must be more careful in future.

The food here is really good and if you know where to go you can eat reasonably cheaply. The supermarkets are expensive anyway so it's sometimes cheaper to eat out than stay in, especially Japanese food. Today we had ramen for the first time, which is basically noodles with different meat and veg in a sort of broth. Very tasty, I shall be having it again.

On sundays just outside the main Meiji Shrine in an area called Harajuku there are lots of girls (and the occasional boy) who dress up in various silly outfits which they seem to think are cool, and hang around on a bridge. It is a truly bizarre sight. Apparently a few years ago they loved to have photos taken and would pose for tourists, but now they only want to see the professional photographers (of which we saw none) and turn away from everyone else. It sort of makes you wonder why they even turn up, but I suppose its a culture thing. Anyway, they are entertaining to see. Just around the corner from the Harajuku girls there is a group called the Rockabillies. These are mostly middle aged to old men who wear leather and have huge black quiffs and dance around in the street to (as far as we could tell) bad covers of the Supremes and grease songs. Very odd, but again very cool to see. This was the 2 youngest ones with our friends Wendy and Diny.

When we thought we had gawped at strange things enough, we went and gawped at the Shrine. The building itself is very plain but interesting, and set in a huge green area which was a lovely break from the noise of the city. There were traditional Japanese weddings going on, which were quite prestigious, as the Meiji shrine is the biggest in Tokyo, so it's sort of like getting married at Westminster Abbey. We felt a bit bad taking photos of these people we didn't know, but apparently people get married there to be seen, and they didn't seem to mind. The kimonos and bridal outfits were so detailed, they must have taken hours to put on. We were kept amused by the make-up artists running around the groom before the main photo - he didn't look very happy with all the powder.

After the wedding we went shopping. We wandered around the Shibuya district, a huge, extremely busy shopping area, and stumbled on a street festival. These little festivals are everywhere here, there are a fwe dotted around most weekends, but even then we were surprised to find one smack in the middle of the city.

Today we went to Ikea and spent a fortune. I won't post photos, it is just as painful as Ikea anywhere else. I won't be going back for a good long while. In the meantime, we will soon have a new bed and sofa (yay) so I am happy.

Hi again, I have now managed to get some photos of the apartment on, so you can see where we are living. It is still a bit bare at the moment but it is fine for us and I'm sure it will be covered in all our rubbish soon enough so I shouldn't moan.

This is the lounge. (Will is wearing shorts although it might not look like it.) We have added a TV to the picture since this was taken which is good.

The door he is facing is our bedroom, and there is another one next to him to the other bedroom. These are the bedrooms:



Well, one is more a photo of the wardrobe but it was difficult to take a shot in there!















Anyway, the other doors you can see are the
bathroom on the right, again it is hard to take a photo of the room, but really it is a sink in a little room, then a shower room with a very small bath straight on (the whole room is the cubicle) and a toilet off to the right.

The other door on the left of the lounge is to the porch or genkan, a little foyer at the front of every house with shoe storage because everyone must take off their shoes. In some restaurants with tatami mats you still have to do that here, but I haven't seen it happen yet. We have a huge closet in there where we hang the washing to dry.

On the right of where I was standing is the kitchen. There is zero preparation space in there. Actually no surfaces to do anything on. It is very odd. We have got a tiny chopping board which we wedge onto the draining board and any plates we dish up just have to be balanced wherever we can find. The washing machine in the corner can be useful for this but it has a sloping lid. At least one plate has landed in the clothes so far. Otherwise the kitchen is great although I do miss having an oven.

So that is where we live! I will just slot in one more picture which is the lounge from the other direction, with the table and chairs.


See, at least one little bit of anywhere I live is homelike (ie messy) in no time!

Still Here!

Hi everyone, we are still surviving and mostly enjoying ourselves. Our main annoyance now is bugs. Urgh they are horrible. We have had cockroaches and mosquitoes mainly but the spiders here jump a lot and run fast which can give you quite a shock. Not as much as a cockroach over an inch long appearing behind your head when you are in bed though. I can cope fine with spiders etc but the cockroaches really do make my skin crawl. This photo shows our little boxes on top of the bedroom aircon. One catches the bugs and the other keeps them away, so hopefully we won't have to deal with dead ones. Fingers crossed.

We managed to get a TV finally this weekend. It isn't bilingual but we have connected a DVD player so we can watch films and we have loads of comedy series. The teachers all swap too so there is plenty to watch. If we can get cable then we should be able to get news and a few other bits in english.

I am trying to take it easy with the rice based alcohol. The Chu-hai in particular tastes like pop and goes straight to my head. When we are out with a big group drinks just keep appearing in front of me which is very bad. I am determined to make an effort to pay attention in future. Westerners in general seem to be in agreement that Ume-chu hangovers are just awful.

We had our first earthquake this week too. I was in the bar of a hotel at the time, on the 22nd floor, and the whole place just shook and all the glasses were sliding around the tables. We had been taken there by one of the older teachers to show us the view, but it was quite a cool place to be for the first one. It measured 4.9 on the richter scale. Will was in our apartment at the time and thought he had ripped the door off the inges until he looked outside and saw all the telegraph wires swinging around. It sounded like a big rumbling bang, if that makes sense. It was definitely interesting.

This weekend we went to Shibuya. That is the place with all the lit up billboards and the huge crossing that is always used in films about Japan. There are so many people it is amazing. The station in particular is incredible. 1.6 million people go through there every day. I couldn't really imagine that until I saw it. We pushed and shoved our way around to a (very slightly) quieter street and found a brazilian carvery which was fantastic, then we staggered our way back to the station because we were so full. We went on to the hotel where I felt the earthquake, called the Westin in Ebisu, which is 22 storeys high. The bar is on the very top floor and a little on the expensive side, but the view was amazing, all the lights over the city, so we had cocktails and sat there digesting. We didn't leave until 1am, and had no idea that it was so late. The trains had stopped so we had to get a taxi back, but they are not as expensive as you would think if you are not going too far. The next day we went back to Shibuya for shopping. Busy is all I can say. It is a place that has to be seen to be believed.


So people will have to come out and see it for themselves!

Jennyx

Azabu-Juban Festival

Life in Tokyo
A Week in Tokyo
Hi Everyone,A week in Tokyo is a very expensive and exhasting thing.We have been to the Azabu-Juban festival and had a pretty cool time. The streets of a normal central Tokyo suburb were packed with people and stalls at the side of the roads selling all sorts of food drink (mainly alcoholic) and junk, some kinds of normal market stands selling farm produce like corn on the cob and eggs kind of thing.

Loads of people were dressed in traditional Japanese dress and looked really impressive. Even one of the teachers from school dressed up, although he is married to a japanese woman. I looked like a tourist but I couldn't help staring, it was great.The food and drink were great there was everything from Yakitori (mmmm), there were fish cooked on wood fires and the most disgusting thing I could ever think of salted cucumber. I had some dough balls with octopus in (I can't remember the name) with "Bulldog" sauce they were ok but I couldn't eat it all, I felt a bit queasy at the tentacles. The octopus is mainly red here so it is that bit more obvious what you are eating.

It was amazing that everyone was drinking and pretty much getting drunk heavy chu-hai (rice wine with flavours in lemon/apple/grapefruit) drinking going on but there was no fighting or disturbance of any kind. Everyone crams into the small streets and barges past each other but there is no hassle its impressive. It does take forever to get anywhere though.


Plus the litter situation was crazy they had no litter on the floor and there were probably about 10,000 people in these streets people handing out flyers (mainly in the shape of plastic fans so people were grateful) and if they dropped one flyer they then made a special effort to pick it up. then there were of course many many extra people (council employees) doing extra litter collections and policing. It was all really clean. A good example was when a I went to throw a plastic container in the bag next to the bin, it was full so a lady sat next to the bin came half way to take this plastic off me to put in the bag hidden behind the bin. Everyone seemed to care and was really friendly.

There was also traditional dancing to a Japanese taiko drum and music. The drummer was cool. It's a big drum around a couple of foot wide which they hit with a big kind of stick, but it was the hitting on the side of the drum and throwing inbetween the drum beats that was impressive. There was a hard core 20 or so older ladies dressed in full traditional dress that danced around in a circle doing the traditional dancing. I call these dancers a hard core becuase they must have danced for around 4 hours just while we were there making all the actions and then taking a couple of steps forward as part of the dance and making their way round the black sanded courtyard area which is a childrens playground most of the rest of the year. The best thing about this dancing was that anyone could join in, the ladies would show you what to do as you mimic them as closely as you could. I had a go and it was tricky because so many people were doing it and I kept losing sight of the little old lady, but still good fun. There were about 100-150 people dancing all at once and made a sight. (dark picture above I know but the man in the black t-shirt is mark, an australian teacher).

There was a place for modern Japanese culture in another nearby square but to be honest this was nothing on the real thing a couple of sisters in impossibly short shorts and tight white T shirts singing and dancing around to J pop tunes, they were called Toutou and one of our number managed to get a CD of theirs, they were followed by a kind of Nsync/Black eyed peas boy band with a girl thrown in all in white who we were transfixed and then embarressed to watch so we went to mingle in with the crowds.

I haven't been able to put more photos on yet so I will leave it at the festival for now. I will try to get some of the apartment/sports night/izakaya soon because they are cool too.

Bye for now,
Jenny x