A lesson in Japanese

When you are learning a language there are awkward moments when you are not sure if someone is talking to you in Japanese or English.

We were learning about hobbies and our sensei split us up into groups to ask each other what films we like etc. One girl in my group asked our sensei

“Sensai wa shumi ga arimas ka”

Meaning: Teacher about hobby exist question mark

Our sensei says “Hai, shumi wa arimasu”

Yes hobby about exist = I do have hobbies

So the next question is

“Donna shumi ga arimas ka”

Meaning: What type hobby it exist question mark

Our sensei says: “Dog show”

We all look at each other, so she says it again. I say “dog show?” to her and she nods enthusiastically. I try to remember the word for dog in Japanese, “Inu?” I ask. “Huh?” she says, I say it again, “huh” she insists. It’s clear that whatever she said has nothing to do with dogs and I have got myself into an awkward situation and should have just kept quiet.

Our sensei goes to the board and writes out in Japanese this mysterious word that sounds exactly like dog show, it means reading. She comes back and taps me on the back laughing saying “funny.” I don’t know what to say.

Later on I try and explain what happened to some of the people I live with, I draw this picture to illustrate what a dog show is.

I know it is hard to believe but my drawing has actually improved a lot since I was 4, though not as much as my dog show.

To be honest

To be honest I’ve been feeling a bit low this week, and this has led me to do strange things like make spaghetti bolognaise using noodles instead of spaghetti, I figured they look the same and basically do the same job. I don’t think the people I live with will look at me the same way again after seeing me grating cheese over noodles.

The reason I have been down recently is because I have been spending a lot more time alone. I normally talk to Yan in the evenings but he is now going out a lot instead so is home less often. I last mentioned Yan when I went to the Ghibli Museum but I’ll take this moment to give you a proper profile of him. His real name is Woo Churl, he is from South Korea and moved here last November. He is staying in Japan for a year, working in a restaurant to practice his Japanese (which he is fluent in) and teaching himself English at home. He works from nine in the morning till six at night and we used to hang out in the late evening. This week though he has been out till 12 most nights and I find myself sitting around twiddling my thumbs. He has Thursdays off and on Wednesday night we agreed to meet up the next day. I was home from school at 2pm but Yan did not emerge from his room till 9pm because he had been asleep all day due to being ill.

It was on that day that I resolved to change my ways. I realised that I was too reliant on the people here, especially Yan, for company and that I should make more effort to entertain myself. In other words, “For Christ’s sake (sorry to use the lord’s name in vain but at least I capitalised it) you are in Tokyo, stop sitting alone in your room,” I told myself. I looked through my Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo and decided to go to Ropongi Hills the next day, and that’s what I did.

Ropongi Hills is a posh, impressive, modern, zanny new complex in Ropongi. That sentence was vague because the place itself is vague. It is a massive shopping area, a huge tower called The Mori Tower, a small but beautiful garden, hundreds of restaurants, apartments and finally what I came to see. Mamma:

Mamma is an enormous spider, and we are not talking about a Charlotte’s Web personification of a spider here, this is a realistic depiction of a spider because it is monstrous.

Now I hate spiders, which is why I wanted to come and see Mamma because it was clearly built by someone who feels the same way. Spiders build traps then lurk waiting, they tie up their prey to let them die slowly, the mothers eat the fathers, the young eat their mothers (well some types) they are plain evil and so is Mamma.

There is even an egg sack.

Mamma becomes less monstrous when you see how many people walk right passed without batting an eyelid. I guess you can get used to walking passed anything after a while.

So after school and after lunch I hoped on a train to go to Ropongi. I had my guidebook with me but I also had Ian because he lives in Ropongi. Just outside the appropriate station is the Mori tower which has an observation deck on floor 53 and we decided to pay the 1500 yen to go have a look. The view at the top is like this (but bigger and less square).

I have to say that the tower really does shake quite a lot in the wind, I felt a bit sick looking down at the ground far below. Apparently though, if a building shakes normally it’s a good sign
because it is more able to cope with earthquakes. For Ian the view was a, “I can see my house from here,” situation, made easier by his living in a top floor sprawling apartment complete with terrace (his parents own it).

The last time I was at the top of a skyscraper in Japan I was surprised to see shops selling Kermit the frog. This time there was a whole art gallery. The current exhibition at the top of the Mori Tower is on the subject of laughter and begins with two and three thousand year old clay statues of people and animals with smiles on their faces.

Is it just me or do you also find yourself thinking, “Would I buy that?” or “Would I put that in my house?” when you look around galleries. It probably says something awful about the commercialised world we live in these days but by god there was a statue of a smiling horse that I wanted. It was 3000 years old but I was looking for a price tag. I guess everyone feels like that otherwise there wouldn’t always be a shop right next to the exit; it’s like Ikea, you walk around on a set path looking at the showroom bit and then choose what you want to take home at the end.

The displays became more modern with some Japanese screens, one of which was of a smiling tiger gently lapping up water from a stream. The tiger had a cartoony expression on its face: big eyes looking cheekily at something far off to one side, which would have been on an adjoining screen now lost. I realised then that in most olden paintings no one ever smiles. Think about all the portraits of people hanging in stately homes, pictures of everyone from Henry the Eighth to Darwin, they all look miserable. This could well be reflective of what artists are like as opposed to photographers. The expression “cheese,” or “cheesu,” as the Japanese say, sums it up. You only need to raise a smile in someone for a split second for a photograph. Of course good photographers have a better repertoire of quick smile bringers than your standard “cheese” but they are not the kind of thing you will be smiling about for yeas after. There is probably a book of quick quips or something for photographers to learn the art.

Now compare that to artists, who can often be prudish miserable creatures which is fine, because if they were like photographers then they’d have to keep someone smiling for 10 hours or so by saying “come on, give us a smile, that’s it lovely.” And besides, not even an air hostess hostessing a plane of hostesses going on an air hostessing course could keep a smile up that long. There’s a tongue twister in that somewhere.

In summary, I think with the invention of the camera came also the smile to art. But it took a smiling tiger on a 300-year-old Japanese screen to make me realise that.

One of the best displays there was also the biggest, it was about 8 metres by 5 metres but completely flat as it was lying on the floor of a large room. Imagine a big map with green land and blue sea drawn on representing different fictional countries. Decorating the landscape were real objects like plastic trees, buildings and animals. The stars of the show though were about 100 GI Joe wind up toys crawling along randomly. In case you need reminding, GI Joes are classic American boy’s toys; plastic soldiers that crawl forwards by shuffling their legs awkwardly. These GI Joes were all in suits rather than dressed as soldiers and so looked very much like businessmen.

So what happens when you have 100 GI Joes crawling about an enclosed area? Well mostly they end up forming big groups, rival factions that all struggle onwards together. Some had run out of juice and just lay limply, others were crawling against their dead comrades or going nowhere stuck behind buildings. There were different nationalities of GI Joes too; Asians, Americans, Africans etc. The piece was about the world of business, the way that armies of businessmen across the world spend every day competing against each other, forming factions and bravely soldiering on, even if they don’t actually achieve anything.

The lift from the bottom floor to the top of the Mori Tower has a large square panel on its ceiling which acts as a light. When you get into the lift at the bottom is looks like a standard bright white light. But, as the lift rises to the top of the tower the light changes colour very very subtly to go into a soft yellow light. At first you think you are just feeling sleepy and then that there could be something going wrong with your eyes. You look around at the other people in the lift who aren’t acting like anything is unusual. As you see their faces turning yellow you can only conclude that you must be dying and this is what the last moments always look like. Then the doors open and all the other colours enter the lift. “Bloody architects,” you think.

The return journey from the top to bottom is the opposite. The yellow hue burns into the bright white and you have the sad feeling of returning to reality. Then you see Mamma again and are reassured that no, reality is a long way from Tokyo.

Ian went off to Judo and I tried to explore. The place is utterly confusing. It seems to be a lot of disconnected underground tunnels that weave into offices and restaurants rather than shops. It took me quite a while to realise that it was all connected by the least exciting looking doors. The design is odd, here is a picture.

It is like walking down a Spanish back street, narrow with high walls on both sides. The walls in Ropongi Hills don't seem to be straight and they were all made of a light brown stone that was used throughout the whole complex. There were different floors going at strange angles, and lots of bridges across from one floor to the next. I expected each floor to have a walkway but they didn’t. You go up an escalator, over a bridge and find just one shop so have to go back down again. There are over 200 shops apparently, but it would take months to find them all.

Outside there is a neat little garden.

And an outside patio area.

I saw a stream of business people coming down the steps and they looked so much like a school party I had to take a picture. Soldiering on indeed.

I didn’t get home from Ropongi till 7PM and I felt very happy. I had finally explored some of Tokyo on my own and used my guidebook for what it was meant for, i.e. not a coaster.

Something I never expected to see in Japan

As I was walking through my local Seiyu department store, and was just getting over hearing them play I’m a Barbie Girl by Aqua, I saw these:

I couldn’t believe it. Moomin biscuits, in Japan, for only 100yen.

In case you don’t know The Moomins was a rather strange Finnish cartoon on television when I was young and impressionable. Here is a picture of the cast:

Let me introduce you.

On the far left is Snupkin, I may have the spelling entirely wrong but I could not find an official Moomin site for the UK, though you may be pleased to know that Japan and Korea both have them. Snupkin was my favourite character, he was a wandering lonely sort of guy who, as far as I can remember, fell out of his father’s flying ship when he was very young and that's how he ended up in Moomin Valley. He was always wise and calm and played the harmonica.

To his right is Sniff who was just a coward with little to say apart from “Ah,” and, “I’m scared Moomin,” whilst falling over.

On Sniff’s right is a glasses wearing Moomin that I have entirely forgotten.

Then it is Moomin Papa. As well as being the father of Moomin he is also the husband of Moomin Mamma. Throughout the show Moomin Papa could be seen doing fatherly things such as DIY, rowing and speculating.

On the extreme right is Professor Hemulin, a lonely and obsessed botanist. He would offer the others little bits of helpful information but generally stay out of everybodys way, much like a flower I suppose.

Next is Moomin Mama who, along with Moomin Papa, is one of those parents happy to be defined by her children. What was her name before Moomin was born? We never find out. She enjoys such pursuits as cooking, cleaning and telling everyone else to be careful.

Seated below his father and next to his mother is Moomin himself. A curious, intelligent, kind hearted and optimistic if rather egotistical young male. Looking back now it’s easy to see why Moomin became so egotistical, what with his parents being named after him, his hometown called Moomin Valley and even his species referred to as the Moomins.

Next to Moomin is the possibly worst named character of any cartoon, Snork Maiden. There was always speculation as to what was going on between Moomin and Snork Maiden but it was never revealed. Snork Maiden’s special skills were picking flowers, saying how beautiful things were and falling down holes hidden adjacent to foresaid beautiful things.

Second to last is Little My, a young brattish girl who lived with the Moomins and stood out from them hugely by being human. She was one of the most annoying characters ever created and the less said about her the…

Last of all some strange creatures that I remember from a few episodes, I think they are called Hattifatteners. They didn’t really do much but were scary because there were so many of them and they had glowing eyes.

This is a picture from the box, it’s Moomin and Snupkin enjoying a starlit night.

This is Moomin Mamma I presume offering sagely advice to Japanese housewives.

Here the characters turned into biscuits.

My box of biscuits ended up having far more Snork Maidens than anyone else so I took this to be a photo opportunity. This is a picture of an army of Snoork Maidens with Moomin Mamma and Pappa looking disapproving.

Guy Fawkes

After the sumo wrestling we went to find food and between the three of us (Ian, Henrik and I) we talked about films.

“I remember when I went to see V for Vendetta at the cinema in Sweden I was probably the only person who knew who Guy Fawkes actually was because I went to a British Embassy school when I lived in Greece.”

From what he then said it sounded like his school was very very traditional English; they had to wear ties, jackets and hats, sing the anthem etc. They studied British traditions like May Day and of course Guy Fawkes night.

“He was the man who blew up the parliament wasn’t he? Oh no he tried to blow them up but was foiled, ah yes.”

We nodded.

“And every November 5^th you make a little man, a “Guy” I think to burn in that slightly creepy kind of way.”

We nodded again.

“I remember in my school we would bring things in to make our Guy, like straw and wood. Then we would string him up a bit like Jesus on a crucifix and have to walk around the fire while it burned.”

We stopped nodding.

“And the headteacher would have to look very serious and stern while she watched it blazing.”

This was starting to sound more like The Wicker Man. We asked him whether it had been after school.

“Oh yes it was after school but we had to go, and wear special gowns.”

I looked at him. “We just made a little Guy out of straw, drew a smiley face on some paper for a head and burnt it in the garden.”

“Oh well I guess in the British School they were trying hard to keep the tradition alive.”

Great.

So if you ever meet a foreigner who thinks that all British people are ritualistic murderous pyromaniacs then chances are they attended the British Embassy school in Greece.

Sumo

On Thursday we had the very shouty teacher again. On that note it turns out we have three teachers a week, it goes like this:

Monday – a man who friendly, very animated, wears glasses and to me seems to be very stressed.

Tuesday – Koganazawa Sensei, I remember her name because it rhymes and she is the best of them. She is very comical with her play-acting, and seems to be obsessed with Angela’s Pokemon pencil case.

Wednesday – Koganazawa again.

Thursday – Shouty teacher.

Friday – stressed man.

On Thursday’s the shouty teacher drew a sumo wrestler on the board and then said “Ashita, Ju itchi Ji.” We worked out this could possibly mean tomorrow at 11’o’clock. I sad to Ian, as a joke, that we might be going on a school trip to see Sumo wrestlers tomorrow.

I was right.

Our class, led by our stressed teacher, left school at 11AM and walked up the road to this stunning park I had not seen before. It turns out that my school is not only near the Tokyo Dome and themepark, but also a beautiful park next to the station. When we were there the trees were selectively letting go of their petals into the wind, but the park had other beauty in the form of its buildings. There are some huge gates on one side of the park with gold letters, and many tradiational wooden buildings amongst strange stone statues. Unfortunately I did not have my camera. Other people did and that is why our class found itself split into two.

The first group included Ian and Henrik and our teacher; they were ahead. I was in the latter group of stragglers who had stopped to take pictures or be taken in pictures. We roughly knew where to go because there seemed to be a lot of people going in the same direction

I am always very cynical about school trips because I have been taken to Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station about five times with two different schools. I think they must have been on a drive to convince kids that nuclear power was safe and friendly. I remember asking the tour guide, at about the age of 13, what they did with the nuclear waste but I’ve forgottn what the response was. I also remember that they made us wear hard hats and told us the many dangerous reasons why, and yet the small blue uniformed women who took us on the tour apparently had indestructible skulls and so didn’t need to wear anything on their heads. Must have been the radiation.

So anyway, I was expecting the trip to result in us all cramming into a shed in the backyard of some fish shop while some ex-sumo wrestler sat on a stool in traditional dress and distractingly spread legs telling us about sumo in broken English.

I was wrong.

There were probably about a thousand people crammed into a big square space surrounding a tiny sumo ring. The ground had been tiered into large steps for seating. We had our bags checked before we were allowed in and as we entered the square in the slow procession of people we couldn’t see the rest of our class anywhere. Whilst losing hope a woman in a suit started shouting at us and we approached her. We found the rest of the class standing and looking bored. We tried to find somewhere to sit and I ended up squatting on the ground behind an Italian girl, another student of my school, and next to a Japanese guy. One of them had a plastic mat to sit on and they spread it out on the floor and let me sit on it too.

I didn’t know anything about sumo before so it was a real eye opener. First though, an ear opener when a guy got into the ring and started singing. I have heard traditional Japanese singing of stories in films before, this sounded similar because they both sound to me to be tremendously sad. I have no idea what he was singing, maybe that noodles would be available in the foyer and that, despite us being outside, it was no smoking. However, the tone of the song and his voice just made me feel depressed and I imagined he was singing about past gloried days, of traditions been and gone, of when honourable samurais walked the dusty roads and people worshipped the spirits of land and sea.

Then the fighting began. Two hefty men with tied up hair and not much on got into the ring. They faced us and lifted one foot high into the air. They brought it back down and did the same to the other. They approached the centre of the ring, bowed towards each other and then squatted in the middle. The referee, not really the right word, was in a kimono holding a wooden thing that he used to indicate when the match started.

Bang, the two men lunged at each other, not with any particularly specific part of their bodies, just to make contact. As large forces played out between them bodies they shuffled left and right. Then one force over tipped the other and one man was pushed out of the ring without question. No match lasted more than twenty seconds it was very very quick.

The loser walked away and the winner crouched on the floor for an extra moment while the singer, I presume, announced the score. As the next fighters could be seen approaching the ring the former winner and the singing man walked away and the next fight began.

Then the slapstick started. It was between a very large sumo wrestler and a taller thinner opponent. The fight seemed normal until they started doing girly slaps at each other and running about the ring shouting, “Honto honto honto.” After that they pulled each other’s hair, argued, threw sand at each other, hit each other with appropriate props and eventually bowed and left while we clapped. They probably performed for a whole five minutes; I don’t know whether it is normal for that to happen, maybe it gives the other wrestlers a break.

The Japanese guy sitting next to me started to make conversation. He knew the Italian girl somehow and via the use of two electronic dictionaries he was able to tell me that he liked trains, especially steam trains, which were invented in Britain. We talked about how expensive Tokyo is compared to Britain, about what I was doing in Japan, how he is looking for a job and that sadly there were not many steam trains left in the UK.

After the fights were over all the winners returned to the ring wearing large pieces of material on their fronts, kind of like beach towels hanging from their sumo belts. The singing man stood in the middle doing his job and the wrestlers clapped and chanted too, occasionally looking out into the audience and subtly waving at people with cameras. The singing man handed the microphone to one of the more multi-talented wrestlers who took his place and began to sing instead. This went on for a long long time. Most of my class was leaving and I was thinking about dong the same. Eventually all the wrestlers stomped off. But then they came back! This time there was a man in a white kimono leading them and holding some kind of important artefact. They all walked around the ring sombrely.

It was time to leave. I had the feeling that my conversation with the Japanese guy was going rather well and when I made the move to go he told me his name. I told him mine and then he asked me if I had a pen. I did but the Italian girl got their first. From his bag he pulled out a little square notebook and wrote his name and telephone number on a page. I wrote my name and email in his book and he said thanks and so did I.

Stepping into the future slightly, he emailed me the same night. He said this:

HI!!

I am ******** (I’m hiding his name, though imagine if it was this, it’d be so hard to pronounce)

thank you for your conversations in YASUKUNI temple with watching SUMO today.

Please you have mucg interestings( about Japanese traditional cultures ) ! I think so

I was happy today

See you next time !(σ・∀・)σ

∧＿∧
( ´・ω・)
( つ旦O
と＿)＿)

So there we go. What do you think? Pig or cat? Has the ears of a cat, the nose of a pig but the boxing gloves of neither. Hmmm.

Tokyo Dome Rollercoaster

The language school I am learning Japanese in is the first school I have been to that has a massive baseball arena (Tokyo Dome) complete with theme park next to it. When I say next to it I don’t mean literally that you can see one from the other, but they are just a 10-minute walk from each other.

So my school posse of me, Ian and Henrik decided to go on the rollercoaster at Tokyo Dome today. As is the healthy way to do it we made sure to have a big lunch first before setting off. As we neared Tokyo Dome the right hand side of the rollercoaster track came into view, bending its way through the air. As we walked around the restaurants and ticket offices the rest of the rollercoaster scrolled into view. With every step the steep ascent marking the start of the rollercoaster was being revealed to us and we saw the track going higher and higher into the air. We are talking about the Big One at Blackpool kind of height. Predictably, at the top it goes down again, very very steeply. But even when we could see the rollercoaster in all it’s glory I didn’t feel a single sense of worry.

However, when I was sitting down getting strapped into the ride itself, having bought the ticket, put my bag in a locker and convinced the people manning the rollercoaster that I didn’t have anything in my pockets, then I felt nervous (ie when it was too late). When the ride was just about to start all four of the staff around us did a little ritual dance. It was like a bow first of all, then they clapped and swung their arms in the direction of the metal hill of track before us. Not quite synchronised with their hand actions the ride started and as we passed their smiling faces they unnervingly waved us goodbye.

The ascent was the second worst part. But the view from the top was so awesome that it’s worth the £4 ticket alone. I was both gazing out into the distance of Tokyo as far as I could see but also staring at Ian who was sitting next to me. There is something stupendously weird about seeing someone sitting at a 70 degree angle, I mean I was sitting at the same angle too but to see someone else it s bizarre. At the top the cart stopped so we had a good opportunity to think about the awaiting abyss we had paid to be driven into.

I could not even see the track. The angle of descent was so steep that even when you are half way down it is getting steeper. It was unpleasant, let’s be honest about this. You get scared because you are essentially free falling from a big height and all your instincts are telling you that you are about to die. Don’t get me wrong, I love rollercoasters, but I am not going to lie about what parts of them feel like.

But after being sentenced to death you are saved at the last minute when the track levels off and rises again with enough momentum that you feel like you are flying. It plays with you rocking you left and right, the ground spins around you head and nothing makes sense except for forwards. A big wall approached, it got alarmingly nearer till I made out that the track had a large round hole to go through.

Again threatened with death but rescued from it. Up and around and then down and along and I could see the engineers in my head sitting around a desk designing the track by spinning eggs to decide which direction to go next.

The ground landed where it should be and the brakes hissed on. I didn’t know whether we would go round again and didn’t know if I wanted it to. Slowly we rode back into the little station where the staff stood clapping for us as if they had only started working there to build up the nerve to eventually go on the ride themselves.

I hope someday soon to go to Tokyo Disney Land, would be my first ever Disney Land. Finally I can meet Micky Mouse and ask him all those questions I have wanted to since I was a child. Like whether he has considered DNA testing to make sure Mini isn't really his sister as they do look suspiciously alike. And of course I can have a tantrum when they don't let me meet Bugs Bunny (he is Warner Brother's not Disney). If you have any other suggestions for things to do to annoy the staff at Disney Land then why not leave a comment.

Sushi and Nick

Some days after school I have lunch with two people from my class, namely Ian from Scotland and Henrik from Sweden. Each time it gets slightly more adventurous and yesterday we went out for sushi.

Henrik especially wanted to go to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, otherwise known as a Kaiten-Zushi and Ian happened to know one a few stations away. We found it alright but then had to stand outside for a while trying to remember how to say “three people.” Inside we delivered our instructions and they sat us in the waiting area with the other hungry customers who were all Westerners like us.

Now the only sushi I had ever eaten before was a £3 packet of vegetable sushi from Eat in Paddington station. That was a poor introduction to eating sushi and about 100 times less complicated. Sitting down in front of the little conveyor belt of food passing slowly in front of me I was first reminded of The Generation Game. When I saw the menu which tried its best to explain how much eat plate was, but ultimately failed in this endeavour, I was more reminded of a kind of backwards Argos.

Around the restaurant were all these people working out their next dish. Some looked deadly serious and you could see their hunter gatherer instincts coming into play. They were watching the food carefully, stalking the passing prey and looking into the horizon to see if there were any tastier morsals coming than what they could reach now. It looked like some people were estimating whether their plate would survive the journey, competition for food between predators is strong in a busy sushi place and someone could easily get their first.

As an ignorant ex-veggie I had no idea what to eat, or even how to eat it. My first plate I chose purely because it looked harmless, I could see some egg and what looked like rice wrapped in seaweed. As I took it off the conveyor belt Ian said “That’s a brave choice.” I told him my reasons for choosing it and he looked slightly worried.

First I tried to eat it in bits, but soon realised that isn’t the way of sushi, it’s all or nothing. Once the thing fell apart from my fumbling I was shown how to pick it up from the sides and then finally I managed to get into my mouth.

And it was horrible. When I eat eggs sometimes I feel like I am going to be sick, it’s something to with eggs and it might just be me. This feeling was at least tripled when the whole egg yolk exploded into my mouth combined with the fermented soy beans that it came with. Finally free they formed a sticky goo in my mouth which played hide and seek with my teeth as I tried to chew. I swallowed it, my first proper sushi and it was gone.

Ian was impressed and admitted that he had not wanted to tell me before that it is the favourite dish of only seasoned Japanese sushi eaters and that he himself finds it disgusting. Sigh.

Next I had some salmon because I was told that it was nice and at least, “slightly cooked.” Please remember that I am new to the world of eating fish, I had not eaten any for years before a few months ago and here I was eating it raw, if very slowly and with a lot of tea. I tried salmon, and something else and they were ok if a bit chewy. There was a nice looking bowl going around of vegetables and being a chocoholic rabbit at heart I happily took it. As I did so Henrik said to me, “So you like octopus?” I dug under the lettuce leaves and sure enough there were little bits of octopus complete with small suckers. Now to be honest I didn’t actually notice the suckers till I had eaten most of the octopus pieces. After seeing them though I couldn’t eat anymore, it was going too far. For instance, imagine an octopus, quite a small one with 8 white squishy waving legs and a big black eye staring at you. Now imagine going right up close to it, towards its tentacles, you can see the suckers. Now imagine opening your mouth and licking one of those suckers. See it’s just wrong.

In these sushi places, as you probably know, they devise your bill by counting the tower of empty plates you leave behind; it’s like they are only concerned with how much washing up you cause them. Ian had an impressive 16, Henrik 12 and me 5. I stopped early not because I was particularly full or feeling frugal but because I was worried my food might have a return ticket and that I would be seeing it again in a different form.

I am happy to say that I didn’t.

The Studio Ghibli Museum

It seems to me that if you have Asian parents, or have lived in Asia you will definitely know of Studio Ghibli and its many films. Their movies are an example of anime, Japanese animation, cartoons if you will. My rather convoluted route into anime went like this:

- I am 7 years old and go on a family holiday to France. On French TV I see one of the weirdest cartoons I have ever seen. Discovered later that it was called Dragonball Z.

- I am 17 and we get satellite television. I watch a lot of the Sci-fi channel and about 1AM on a Friday morning I turn on to see anime. It is something called Neon Genesis Evangelion, I sit, watch it and get hooked. They show anime every week for about 2 hours, from midnight till 2am and I try my best to record it on the huge Ferguson video recorder my parents gave me when they replaced it with a younger model, the Ferguson one is actually older than I am. Occasionally the Sci-fi channel shows anime films and one of the first I saw was a very famous Studio Ghibli movie called My Neighbour Totoro.

- I am 19 years old and get to university. I join the anime society and struggle through being afraid of some of the people who made the same decision, then feeling lonely but eventually finding someone called Anthony who becomes a close friend (Hi Anthony). I also get to see 3 hours of strange but mostly good anime every week.

- I am 22 and in Japan, anime is everywhere. The book shops are stacked with manga (Japanese comics), there are arcades with anime characters all over the machines and above me are billboards advertising animes and related things.

Nowadays it is easier to get into anime because it's even on British TV. You remember Pokemon, that’s anime, not particularly good anime but still it is well known. In 2001 when Studio Ghibli released Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, it got released in Britain and America also (I think via Disney) under the name of Spirited Away.

So in summary anime is Japanese animated films and television series and Studio Ghibli is the most famous anime production company in the world. In Tokyo there is a Studio Ghibli museum, it’s very famous yet somewhat secretive as you have to book in advance and are not allowed to take any pictures inside. I went there with Yan and Miyagi on Sunday. When we were walking towards the museum I started humming the theme tune to My Neighbour Totoro, I don’t know the words but that didn’t matter. Both of my companions began to sing along. That is what Studio Ghibli is; its films are so good and so well known that they are both able to stay with you for a lifetime and appeal to all cultures.

Ok enough of an introduction, here are some pictures. This is on the walk to the museum, it was a slow walk as the tickets we had allowed us entry at 4pm and it was only 2pm. The road was lined with trees, some of which were still in blossom but there were a lot of blossom petals blowing in the air quite magically. I took it to be a photo opportunity.

This is a picture of me, looking like a smiling mannequin, and Yan.

This is me and Miyagi.

And predicatbly it's Miyagi and Yan.

Moving on.

Down this street were little signs pointing the way to the museum, for example.

To take up some time, and because it was a beautifully sunny day with so many petals blowing in the air that it was like the trees were getting married, we went to a park. This is a picture of a flower on the ground.

My companions found it strange that I took that picture since it is essentially a dying flower, but hey.

We found a small playground with two swings. One was occupied by a little girl and the other Yan commandeered for himself. This is a picture of him on the swing and don’t you think the girl is giving me the evil eye.

Miyagi went on next but she got scared after reaching an altitude of one metre and came off. When it was my go a strange thing happened. As I gained height I started losing weight. I first heard a clunk and saw my lipsill lying on the ground, Yan picked it up for me. Then there was a larger clunk as my wallet landed on the grass; the swing was robbing me blind. I got off.

Yan, who is Korean, was conscripted into the Korean military for 2 years. He wanted to find some monkey bars for old times sake. When we found some low ones Yan and Miyagi tried to do a roll on them, you know where you lift yourself up onto the bar and then revolve forward till you are back where you started…ok I give up trying to explain. It is something kids do in school. I had never tried before but had a go. The world went above me and then stayed there as I just got half way round and hung there like an idiot.

Ok so the museum. Here is me and Yan outside the gates and by god don’t worry, this is the last boring picture of me standing in front of something.

At the rear of the museum is a reception manned by Totoro himself. Here he is, and here is what he looks like in his film.

Whenever anyone goes to this museum they always take the same pictures. Firstly it is of Totoro and lastly the robot from the film Laputa, which is on the roof of the building. I can only describe what goes on inside the museum as no pictures were allowed, here though is a picture of the leaflet they give you.

Everything is Ghibli. Through a small passageway they check your tickets and you walk down some steps with white walls and stained glass windows where Totoro and other characters are watching you. The main area of the museum is like the bathhouse from Spirited Away. It is all wooden except for the narrow wrought iron lift. At the top is a small glass roof with a massive fan slowly rotating.

The first room you enter tells you about the beginnings of cinema. In sophisticated displays you see it going from the early zoetropes (see below) to more and more impressive technology as you near modern animation.

By far the most impressive and truly magical thing in the museum is in this room in a large cabinet. Inside are many models of Ghibli characters in slightly different poses. While you are appreciating the detail and recognition of these characters you realise they are all on a circular platform that starts to rotate, very fast. At the same time a strobe type light flicks on and off something like 18 times a second. The timing of the lights, the speed of the platform and differences in the models are all perfectly synchronised. What you see, ladies and gentlemen, is your favourite Ghibli characters jumping, skipping, running, flying, smiling for all the world as if they are real flesh and blood. It is an amazing combination of cinema and reality, the methods of cinema but brought into 3D. The little girl from Totoro jumps a skipping rope held by little Totoro helpers. Totoro himself stands near the back jumping up and down with a big smile on his face. Kiki rides her bike. Lots of Totoro helpers run around the outside while one continually breaks away, runs into the middle and then jumps into the large tree at the centre of the platform. A bat flies above them all its wing flapping and a manic smile on its face. And then, it all slows down, the lights stop flashing and again you see the characters still smiling but now burdened with the same curse as all other inanimate objects in the world. But then, it all starts again J

Upstairs are a series of rooms that sort of show you some of the inspiration for the films. Each room is absolutely full of things; literally hundreds of books, objects, paints, maps etc. I saw such books as “Wooden fighting vessels”, “The handy guide to garden rock pools”, “The Weekend Gardener.” There were loads of picture books in all sorts of languages, the kind of book you would wonder who on Earth would buy. I saw the bicycle from Kiki’s delivery service sitting there covered in dried flowers, I saw phones and hats I recognised from the films, or at least I thought I did. There are notices in Japanese telling you about the art process but the displays are detailed enough to give you the overall idea. And then, strangely, you meet Wallace and Grommit.

I think it is just a temporary installation at the Ghibli Museum but they do have quite a few rooms devoted to Aardmam animation. Big vesions of Wallace and Grommit are there, also Shaun the sheep and the evil penguin. There are pictures from every single Aardman production, even those adverts they did for British Gas etc. They have some of the sets from the Wererabbit film, like Grommit’s greenhouse. It was a strange sight of home for me. They also have an installation by a Russian called Alexander Petrov - a superbly talented painter who draws using his finger, and admittedly a brush for things like eyebrows. They had some of his pictures and clips from his animated films which look weirdly lifelike.

On the top floor is a giant cat bus for children to play on. If that sentence made little sense then I am sorry, the best I can do is show you a picture of the real cat bus and you can go from there. Miyagi wanted to play on it, she wasn’t allowed, only for kids.

Afterwards the shop, where I bought these…

There was a 15 minute film to watch as well. We all crammed into this beautiful little cinema with painted walls of ivy. I did sort of expect the film to tell me something about Ghibli and I guess it did, but it was itself about a girl and her lost dog. Basically a young girl says goodbye to her cute little dog one morning as she goes to school. Her dog, though, manages to open the gate and run after her but loses her scent and becomes lost. On its journey it gets into all sorts of mishaps, meets some humans, some dogs and a cat with the deepest meow ever heard. At the end the predictable happens but this ok because you really want it to; even though I was actually wondering at the time how the audience would react if the cute little dog exploded for no reason at the end. I would have been scarred for life if it had.

Up to the roof and there is the robot from Laputa. Here is a picture of one of the robots in the film to compare, and ok and another picture of me standing in front of something.

So that was the Ghibli Museum, 1000 yen for a taste of childhood and magic and worth every penny (which is 427 in case you were wondering).

Helping Philip

There was a German guy called Philip who lived here, I met him on Tuesday. On Friday he told me that he was moving out the next day and I offered to help him. I don’t really know why I did this; we have little in common and don’t really get on amazingly well. He is very different to me, he dresses like an American, talks like a gangster but criticises people who do both of these things. He taught Yan-San the phrase “hot bitch” and when he talks he turns his head slightly away from you narrows one eye and raises the corresponding eyebrow. This gives him the expression of someone trying to look suave and cool, either that or he had a stroke and lost control of one side of his face.

It was 2 in the afternoon on Saturday when we left with his stuff. In return for helping him he gave me an umbrella, some washing powder, treated me to a mug of coffee and a really nice chocolate bar that I vow to have again before I pass on. Lumbered with his stuff we slowly inched our way to the subway station. On the train we got seats and he happily swore loudly in our conversation. “Last night,” he said, “I dreamt I had two dicks. It sounds good doesn’t it, but then I was trying to piss and it was coming out of both. I couldn’t control it, there was piss everywhere. I think be careful what you wish for.”

His new home is just a short walk from a subway station but the route contains a certain obstacle. “There is this old man always dressed in white with a white beard,” Philip warned me, “he stands around shouting, kicking things and starting fires in the station, we have to watch out for him.” Along a particularly narrow bit of road we heard a man shouting. It was an old man dressed in white staggering down the street drunkly, shouting and kicking things. The people walking and cycling by ignored him, swerved around him as best they could. I saw him pick up a can and throw it towards a man walking on the other side of the road. It didn’t get very far, maybe rolled up to the foot of its target, but the intention was there. We made our way passed him, not looking just walking straight forwards. “So that was the crazy man you mentioned,” I said to Philip when it was safe. He looked at me with his one eye and one eyebrow and said as if I was stupid, “No, he didn’t have a beard.”

I looked at the sky. You can make any expression you like to the sky, it does not mind and no one ever sees.

Thursday the 5th of April

At the start of our lesson today a woman entered the classroom and then stood in front of us ready to teach. I think we were all looking at her trying to work out if it was the same person who’d been teaching us for the past few days. She looked similar but somehow taller. Turned out that she was an Entirely different person, it helped that she wrote her name on the board.

This teacher is quite tall and very fond of shouting. She doesn’t shout at us, she shouts with us – as in when she draws a character on the board she shouts its name and we have to shout it back, it’s exhausting. Her voice is also quite shrill and sharp so its like being told off by something saying “KaKiKuKeKo.”

The Japanese have a word for 10,000 which is “man” and one of their words for seven is “nana.” Put them together and you get 70,000 or “Nanaman” which I have great trouble saying because it sounds so much like Bananaman. If you are not familiar with Bananaman then just know that he is a weedy boy called Eric who, when he eats a banana, turns into a camp blue and yellow banaskinned superhero whose strength and ability to fly help him save the world from numerous none-fruit related villains. Here's the man himself:





And when you get 40,000 it’s called “Yon Man.” When our teacher screams this it sounds just like “Your mum,” which is one of the laziest British insults around.

After the lesson me, Ian and Henrik went to find a restaurant for lunch. As we were queuing to get in we managed to figure out that you have to choose your meal, order and it and even pay for it before you actually get to sit down at a table. This efficient way of doing things is good if you know what you want, I didn’t. As you may know I don’t normally eat fish or meat, but since coming to Japan I have started eating fish because it makes life so much easier. I know this is a questionable reason for bending one’s morals but I like to think that with the amount of fish I have NOT EATEN in the past 16 years I have built up some kind of fish allowance which I am now spending.

I don’t actually know what I ordered, they use picture menus in Japan and I just chose the picture which most obviously depicted a fish on a plate. What arrived was some rice, grated horse radish, some mysterious stuff, some more mysterious stuff, a small bowl of miso soup and a large fish on a plate with no head or tail but an intact skeleton. I had to eat this fish with chop sticks and using these to pull out a piece of fish, de-bone it and then get it into my mouth was like something out of the Crystal Maze. It was nice though.

When I got home I met Yan-San and we went to a bookshop where I browsed the shelves not understanding anything. I did look through a dog magazine which was exactly like a fashion magazine for dogs; every page a picture of a dog wearing a coat or, some other unnecessary accessory, and staring aimlessly into the camera. There was no such magazine for cats sadly, people have probably lost their fingers trying to make one. Another magazine I picked up was The Disney Magazine which is the most sickening catalogue of people dressed up as Disney characters hugging kids and whatnot. You can actually see the Tokyo Disneyland from the train when it goes over a large bridge. There is a castle and space mountain. It’s so odd looking into the distance and seeing a fantasy land about 10 kilometres away. Here is a picture of it, you can see the castle on the left and the mountain on the right.


We ate dinner in a Tempura place. I didn’t use the word restaurant because to me a restaurant is a place with not only food you can order but also tables and chairs at which to eat it. This place was standing room only. You point to what you want, they give it to you in a bowl, you pay for it then stand by the counter eating with disposable chopsticks. People came in, ordered, ate and left all in the space of five minutes. Another example of efficient food in Tokyo. Tempura itself is just deep-fried battered fish or vegetables; you have it in a kind of thin liquidy soup with noodles etc. It’s highly nice.

Most of the evening I spent talking to the other people here. Yan-San gave me a list of body parts to learn. Turns out that the Japanese word for wrist is a combination of the word for hand and neck so it is like the neck of the hand, clever innit.

Rainy Day

It was pouring with rain when I got up this morning, it lasted well into the afternoon (the rain). On the walk to the station I felt like the only person in the country who didn’t have an umbrella, everyone has one. With only my coat for defence I have to duck and weave through other people’s umbrellas to avoid impalement.

The train this morning looked different - even from a distance. Its windows were misted up with condensation and it looked strangely black inside. When the train stopped and the doors opened it all became clear. Inside were more people than I have ever seen packed into such a small space, all in their dark suits clustered together.

You remember in March of The Penguins when the females leave the males to babysit the eggs, while they go back for food. The expectant fathers all huddle together in a massive circle. Well, being inside that train was a similar situation, but opposite. For the penguins being in the middle was the best place to be because it was warmest there. As a human on a train being in the middle is the worse place for the same reason, it is really hot, people are all around you and there’s barely room to breathe.

When the train stopped and more people got on I felt like I was a piece of rubbish in a kitchen bin with someone pushing down on top to fit more in. Humans are squashy, you can squeeze them together to fit more into a space. You feel the push of other people’s bodies against yours grow and you’re forced to shuffle your feet further towards the epicentre of the crowd where one poor soul must be utterly trapped.

When I got on I was pushed forward by the people behind me until I was standing right up against this man who was facing me. I was facing him through no mistake of my own, I tend to face forwards when getting on a train. His face was in mine and vice versa, not completely but near enough for me to hear and feel the sighs he kept letting off. They were deep and deliberate; he wanted them to mean something. Once I realised this I turned slightly so that my shoulder was in front of him more than my face. That seemed to do the trick.

Anyway, feeling slightly ill I got to my station with about 10 minutes before my lesson. However, before I could go to my lesson I had to find out where it was. The notice boards containing this vital information were outside the offices I had been the day before and I would either have lessons in that building or one just down the road. When I got to the right floor there were quite a few lost people like me trying to find themselves on the board. In a slight panic because it was nearly 9:10 and I might need to go to the other building I found my name and looked at the numbers next to it. They were 0402 and 0525. With these in mind I looked around for the classroom numbers, they ranged from 101 to 109. Deciding that my lessons must be in the other building I bolted down the stairs and started down the street. 0525 I thought, that number seems familiar, umm my birthday is may 25th and May is the fifth month. I stopped walking. 0402 then would be April the second which was yesterday, the day I first started going to GEOS School! I ran back into the building, up to the noticeboard and found the part I hadn’t noticed; the top of the page I was on said classroom 108 and in brackets "You are a fool."

I sat next to Ian again and our sensei entered the room. She is a Japanese day who seems fairly young, maybe late twenties, hard to tell. She took the register, which was quite a struggle because we couldn’t understand her pronounciation of our names. The first thing she taught us was how to ask each other’s name and reply, we went around the classroom doing this. Then we learnt how to ask and say where we are from and so went around asking each other for names and where we are from. Then she made us go around again asking each other our names, where we are from and our nationalities, so saying that you are French, or English etc. It went on and on like this and we now all know each other’s names, where we are from and also that bored look you get when you have done something 10 times before.

So, there is:

Steve from America
Henrik from Sweden
Sebastian from Switzerland
Mathild from Switzerland
Ian from America/Scotland
Lee from Korea
Oo from Taiwan
Pichta from Thailand
Stephanie from America
Angela from America
Sydney from UK/America
Deborah from France
Sandip from London

Our sensei does not know a whole lot of English but she is good. In fact, she is brilliant at exaggerated gestures and today when she was explaining the word for pain she acted out a fight and someone holding their face in agony, then someone skiing, falling over and walking with a limp. She put so much energy into her actions it was more like melodrama.

The lessons themselves are ok, we go at a steady pace and have been given grammar books to learn to write Japanese kana. One with a CD which is more exciting than it should be.

On the way home I decided to try some exploring so I walked to Gyotoku which is about 15 minutes walk from home. I'd heard that there were lots of shops there, and there are, but it seems quite a miserable place. I found a 100yen shop, which was something slightly different to the 99yen shops of Minami Gyotoku, and there was a big supermarket where I bought myself a frying pan, then a bread knife and ironcally some sliced bread.
When I was wlking around Gyotoku I felt like I was holding my breath. I feel like that when I am on my own and somewhere new in this city. If I was more relaxed about exploring by myself then there are loads of places I could visit, I have a whole guidebook to Tokyo, but I am just too nervous about it at the moment, hopefully this will change. Anna, a Canadian who moved in this week has already been to see the statue of Godzilla, though aparently it is only about a metre high. Got to see that though.

My First Day at School

I like to think that if I had met either of my grandfathers they would have been the kind of people to give me sagely advice and tell me how the world used to be in such a way that I could see it properly for what it is now, and how it may look tomorrow. This all stems from my getting up this morning with a quasi queasy stomach. I had the impression in my mind that some wise person had once said to me, “There are 3 worries in life, matters of the heart, matters of the head and matters of the stomach.” I had decided that this was definitely a matter of the stomach, rather than nerves about my going to start learning Japanese properly today.

Anyway. I had to be at the GEOS building, not far from here, by 9:30AM. I left at 8:30 and I admit that I meant to leave earlier, but matters of the stomach prevailed. This was the first time I had caught a subway train that early in the day and it was the most crowded I have yet seen in Japan. Those expecting me to say that it was utterly crowded and had people pushing extra passengers on to the train will be disappointed. It was busy, I had to stand with compressed aura for a time but I have been in worse on the Tube. However, I did start feeling a bit sick and even a little faint.

Absolutely everyone else on the train was in a suit, some of them wearing those masks people wore when SARS was around, but they are wearing them now because of pollution. I looked up and down the train and realised that I was doing the wrong thing. I was standing by a window but I had my back to it. Everyone else standing was facing their nearest window completely perpendicular as if standing to attention. I quickly followed suit. I found escape in closing my eyes, which is what many of the Japanese people were also doing. I opened my eyes when we were flying over the river, I saw a man fishing and people walking or cycling along the banks and I felt envy. I think this is how you are supposed to feel.

The train kept stopping, not just at each station but between them as well and it was very frustrating as the day was growing later and so was I. But at 9:28, or so, I arrived at Kudanshita station and got off the train, struggled to find Exit 5, did, ran up the steps, surfaced, took out my map and was immediately lost.

For the second time here I was a confused foreigner and for the umpteenth time a friendly native came to help me. He was a Japanese businessman, he looked at my map puzzled but recognised the name of the building and indicated for me to follow him. He walked aggravatingly slowly. I tried to converse by telling him that I only understood a little Japanese and he made a noise as if to say “Oh, I know.”

The entrance to GEOS is next to a coffee shop and after showing me the way my Japanese guide asked me if I wanted some coffee with him. I pointed at my watch and tried to say that I didn’t have time but thanked him profusely. It was very friendly of him. I know what you are thinking, that there could have been a suspicious nature to the invitation but I am choosing not to believe that, though I am of course aware of the interpretation.

I ran inside the building, looked at the wall chart saw I was meant to be on the 3^rd floor. A janitor looked at me and held up 3 fingers (not an insult) and I said yes and thank you, he smiled, I smiled. Up the stairs I found the office, it was very small. The first thing I saw was a sign saying that only Japanese was allowed to be spoken, not a good sign. Next a Japanese woman who I am sure speaks perfect English indicated a room for me to go in to take the test. The room I approached was the wrong room and she quickly corrected me. I opened the door and entered a room full of white people, I sat down in a free seat and was handed a test to write my name on the front of. It had not started yet so everything was fine.

Getting tested on the first day seems rather cruel but their idea is to use it to decide which class to put you in. I had applied for the Japanese conversation class but I assume there are different levels you can begin at. The procedure was test, interview and finally an orientation talk. The test began, the sensei said “The first 6 questions are dictation, please write the word I am saying in hiragana.” Now I don’t know about you but I have almost no knowledge of hiragana or katakana, I keep trying to learn it and maybe know five characters but that is all. After the six dictation questions we were free to finish the test. It was all in kana. I could not even read the question number let alone answer the question. The sensei said we had till 11 o clock, I was done already.

Fortunately I was not alone; the sensei saw lots of blank faces above blank pages. If we were done we could leave, lots of us left. Next it was the interview, and I think I have never failed an interview so quickly before. The woman sitting at the desk was friendly, that much I could tell. She asked me my name and I tried to reply. I think she asked me for my nationality and I again tried to reply. Then I think she asked me my age and I think I tried to reply. That was it.

I and five others had now found ourselves in a huddle of evictees. We were rejects falling into the lowest category, “Japanese zero” as they later called us when asking us back into the classroom. But it was only 9:45 and we had till 11 to entertain ourselves. I wore my Warwick hoody today and this was a talking point for a British girl called Sydney who was one of the group, “Did you go to Warwick?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, and that was that, conversation started. The others in the group were a dual nationality British/American guy called Ian, a Swiss (I think) guy called Sebastian, a girl called Matild and finally another girl called Rachel. We left the GEOS building and went to a coffee shop, incidentally not the same as my rejected businessman, but one across the street. And that ladies and gentlemen was the first time I ordered anything in Japanese. I ordered a coffee, the lady serving me said something, I said “yes” and then before I knew it I was 150yen down and one mug of coffee up. Success.

Gender segregation happens all the time, look out for it next time you go to the toilet. Our group magically split itself between males and females but we all talked to each other a bit. On returning to GEOS people sat where they had before and I realised I had previously been sitting next to Ian. But now on my other side was a girl who introduced herself as being from Iran, her follow up to that was “As in atomic bomb” with a big smile. That made my day J

So I start properly tomorrow, school runs from 9:10 in the morning to 12:40 in the afternoon, that’s 1:10AM till 4:40AM English time. I will be in the conversation class where we are only allowed to speak in Japanese. I have been given a little pack with information about living in Japan and some “Useful Japanese phrases” such as: “Call an ambulance!”, “Fire!”, “I see smoke”, “My neighbour’s house is on fire” and “_ is in pain!” Pessimism at its best.

There is also pictorial advice on how to excrete in Japan. See below.

The Cherry Blossoms

Tokyo is happy.

Happy because its trees are pregnant with cherry blossoms. Scattered around the neighbourhoods are one or two blossoming trees but then suddenly you find long rows of them flanking rivers or huddles of them in parks. The Japanese have a tradition of going to see the cherry blossoms, sitting under them relaxing and drinking, and that is what I did today.

It was like a school trip, Masako the manager of the Gaijin (foreigner) House where I am staying organised it. She wrote on the whiteboard next to the TV to bring trainers, money and a packed lunch, can’t really get more like a school trip can it?

At 11:35, see…

I was sitting in Kasai park (I think) on a green plastic sheet eating a cheese and tomato sandwich that I had hastily made that morning but which was receiving great praise from my companions. I was there with Masako, her American possibly boyfriend Andy, and two of the Japanese girls living here also. We were later joined by a Russian guy called Alex and his Japanese girlfriend, who also lives here and has a name like Heroi.

Instead of 3000 words here are three pictures

It was like a hundred picnics in one park, each with its own plastic sheet and a host of nice food, happy children and parents with cameras. Some brought little tents, barbecues, badminton rackets.

Others opted to ride on large swan boats; looks like they have them everywhere, though I think the Japanese ones have better eyelashes.

Here is the first picture I am posting which features myself.

So going from left to right we have the Japanese girl who I met on my first day here, the one who lived in America for 12 years and speaks brilliant English. Then it’s me, American Andy, Masako the manager and finally Masako’s sunglasses.

I think though, that we were only having half the fun. The biggest smiles were on the faces of parents who probably spend Monday to Friday tired from work; outside the house twice as much as within. Some Japanese people even have to attend work functions on Saturdays, sociable in nature but essential to keep face among their colleagues (or so my book about Japanese culture tells me.) Sunday can be the only free day in the week and this Sunday hundreds of families were out in the sunshine enjoying each other’s company, underneath the blossoms that had beckoned them outside.

To sum up, just look at this picture.

Another family near us had younger children, somewhere between babies and toddlers. The father was holding up his son just below a cherry tree branch while his wife crouched down to take a picture of their child’s cute chubby face of staring confusion against the blossom. Then it was their daughter’s turn. I just know that when those pictures find their way into solidity they will stay on walls for years to come as sweet reminders of a forgotten day out amongst the blossoms.

But we are harder to please, give a child a sunny day and he will spend hours with grass and sunbeams. Us? We wanted this.

It was my first ferris wheel; I am not including the London Eye for romantic purposes. I went on with these two.

On the right is Miyagi, I remember her name easily because she gave me her business card, which I held with both hands and studied thoroughly as is Japanese business card etiquette. The view from the ferris wheel was beautiful, you might wonder what is beautiful about skyscrapers and smoggy sky but for me it was beautiful because it was what I had come to see. Here was Tokyo laid out huge, a privileged glimpse without worries of transport, crowds, money and language.

Here is Tokyo from the ferris wheel in Kasai Coen (park. Well I think that is where I was).

And this is my picture of my long to be remembered day out with the cherry blossoms. But more importantly and just like the families, my day out in the warm company of others.