Photos

Please click on the links for photos. (these pages are still under construction)
New Kawasaki Daishi
New Yet more food
Updated More Oddities
New Odaiba
New Akihabra 
New Gyeon Park
New Ferris Wheel
More more food
Hakone and the open air museum
Tsukiji Honganji Temple
Fuji
Various sporting events
Oddities
Food from first three weeks or so
Insects
More food 
Bells, lanterns, drums, etc
Update Temples and Pagodas
Buddhas
Various street lights

Yokohama Stadium

About three months ago, I was sitting in my ex-flat in Cardiff, (it is still a flat, it’s just I am not there) watching New Zealand play Australia when the commentator told the world that the third game of the series was taking place in October in Yokohama. Well, golly-gee, I remember saying to myself. I am going to be in Yokohama in October too. I made it my mission to get a ticket.

But like most things in Japan nothing is initially as straight forward as it looks. So getting a ticket proved a bit of a quest. It’s not that they had sold out and I had to go on the black market, tt was  just that no one seemed to know who was selling them. Google failed me,  The All Blacks Web page had no idea, there was nothing on the Japan RFU site, I asked Jeeves and he just shrugged his shoulders. But eventually, I found a link that took me to a website that allowed me to buy a ticket and pick it up at a 7-11. Like most things in Japan, simple once you know how.  It was all systems go. I was very excited. 

When I got to Yokohama, the guidebook told me about the great baseball stadium in the Bay. You could see the floodlights as you walked through Yamashite Park. I guessed that was where the game would take place, which was just fine by me. Watch the game, have a look at some of the baseball memorabilia, go to Chiantown for some dumplings, then stroll along the waterfront before heading home. A perfect day. 

Except, Yokohama has two stadiums, the baseball stadium where they play baseball and the football stadium where they play football. The Nissan Stadium, the football stadium, is not in the Bay at all. It is 15 kilometres North, 40 minutes by public transport. How was I supposed to know that there were two bloody stadiums? Isn’t one stadium enough? 

Obviously the rugby was going to take place at the football stadium, the place that Brazil won the round ball World Cup in 2002. Anyway, surely no idiot, even one slightly bewildered in Japan, would go to the wrong stadium. Surely! 

That’s right. Luckily I saw the error of my ways two days before the big game so was able to go to the right stadium, at the right time and watch the wonderful All Blacks in action. 

Now you see it, now you don't

Every morning, on my way to work, I have to use a pedestrian bridge to cross over the railway tracks. The bridge is nothing special but the view to the left is. Once you look past the overhead wires, the Toyota signs and the greying buildings, you can see  mountains in the distance, a reminder that there is nature out there, that the concrete jungle of the Tokyo metropolitan area is surrounded by green. That glimpse of the mountains is a momentary escape to the country. I’ve got to know that view pretty well over the last few weeks. I make a point of glancing to my left as I cross the bridge every morning, to take in my metaphorical breath of fresh air. It’s also, I suppose, a little bit of hiraeth, for Cardiff is overlooked by mountains too. 

Anyway,  imagine my surprise on Wednesday morning when there was a new mountain nestled alongside the ones that I knew. Not just any old mountain either, but Mount Bloody Fuji. Majestic, mysterious, magical, marvellous Mount Fuji. How? Where had it come from? Why hadn’t it been there before? I stopped and stared, rubbed my eyes to make sure I was not imagining it, and then took a photo. I wasn’t 100% sure it was Fuji but it looked like it and later I had it confirmed. 

I had a spring in my step thinking for the rest of my time in Japan I would have Fuji looking over me when I walked to work, a spiritual guide. Except, on Thursday, it was gone. Disappeared,. Vanished. 

I’d experienced this before of course. When I went to Enoshima and up the Sea Needle I'd been promised a view of Fuji. The info panel showed me exactly where to look for the great mountain, but it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. No wonder the Japanese see it as Magical and otherworldly if it keeps disappearing all the time. 

It reappeared today. Today, I went to the top of the Landmark Tower in Yokohama to watch the sunset. Again the info panel told me where to look for Fuji, but the clouds and haze hid it from view. Hidden until the sun had disappeared from the sky that is, and then a silhouette took shape. At first, I thought it was just a cloud. But what a coincidence for a cloud to be Fuji shaped. I’m not 100% sure. So, I’ll let you decide. 

Fuji from the Bridge

Same View a day later 

Same view a day later 

Apparently Fuji should be there somewhere. Sea Needle, Enoshima.

The Silhouette of Fuji from the Landmark Tower

Same view minutes before, not a sigh of the mountain. 

Birthday Presents.

For my 24^th birthday, my sister, who was living in Japan at the time, sent me a pad not unlike the one in the photo. I still have it, it’s currently in one of my boxes in my sister’s neighbour’s garage back in Wales. 

When it arrived in the postback in 1994, along with four lovely pencils, I thought it was the the most beautiful pad of paper I had ever seen. The cover was sort of textured and there was a quote that, although very much Japenglish, was somehow inspirational. It felt luxurious, and I imagined it must have cost a fortune. It became the most important pad in my life, because it made me want to write. I only used pencil to write in it; the paper seemed too fragile to ruin with pen. I wrote thoughts and ideas and poetry; bad poetry, really bad poetry, extremely bad poetry. No, I am not going to share any here, but trust me, it was exceptionally bad. But everyone has to start somewhere, and that pad of bad poetry started to define me. The poetry was dire, but the ideas were good. I enjoyed putting my thoughts on paper and creating something, I started to think of myself as a writer. 

Now we are just shy of my 48^thbirthday and I have today returned the final proofs of my novel to my publisher. Before I am 48 and a half I will be a published author.* The culmination of a journey that started 24 years ago with the arrival of that pad. And coincidentally, today I found the same pads for sale at the university book shop where I work. I bought one of course. I took it to the cash desk and took out a 1000 Yen note, (about 7 GBP), I had no idea how much the pad would cost but I was willing to spend any amount of money to have another pad like my old one. To be honest for a pad of such beauty, I was not expecting much change. The lady behind the counter smiled at me, and chatted away at me and then gave me my change - 850 Yen. The pad had cost me 150 Yen the equivalent of 1 British Pound, 1.16 Euro. 

So my whole writing career was launched on something you could buy in a pound shop. But I care not, that pad, was and still is one of my favourite and most life changing presents of all time. Thank you. 

*Humans, Being available in all good bookshops and some bad ones from April 19^thor order directly from Cinnamon Press. Or come along to the launch April 19^that Cardiff Library and buy one there, or buy one direct from me. Whatever you do, buy one. :-) 

Signs

Don’t you just hate lazy limes. The small minority of the green citrus fruit that think they can be full of flavour for 11 or 12 hours a day and then skive off, their feet up doing nothing while their fellow fruit are hard at work. No one wants a part-time lime, because no one knows when they’ll need a lime the most. It could be in the morning with your cornflakes, at lunchtime on your crab or a five to three when it’s time for the first Margarita of the afternoon. Luckily help is at hand, all across Japan there are signs for 24-hour limes. Full time limes that don’t shirk at the responsibility of being the most versatile fruit in the greengrocers. (Ok, so I know it says times but it took me a while to realise and let’s face it, 24-hour times doesn’t make much sense either.)

When I was a boy of about 8 or 9 I would, along with every other boy and girl of that age, start the adventure story that my teacher asked me to write with the famous line, the clock struck thirteen. I would then no doubt go on to describe, along with the rest of my peers, the town that only appeared at low tide on the 13^thday of the 13^thmonth of the year. Why this particular trope was so popular with 8 or 9 year old children I do not know but little did I know that nearly 40 years later, my story would come true. Except the clock in Japan doesn’t strike thirteen, it strikes 25. 

Those who know me well, who maybe have shared a house with me or even a bedroom, will know that sometimes I like to create my own micro-climate. This usually occurs noisily and violently and often after a load of beer or a particularly spicy dinner. But thankfully help is finally at hand. This massage place near my school specialises in all sorts of rubs for muscular pain but by the looks of things they’ve created a massage that’s a perfect cure for wind too. 

Have you ever bitten into a steak in a restaurant and your tooth has broken. Or realised as you scoop your ice-cream dessert into your mouth that your teeth are far too sensitive. or even lost a filling when you were nibbling your after-dinner mint. Fear not, help is at hand. The world’s first, dining and dentist experience. Leave the restaurant full and flossed, don’t allow a build-up of tartar after your steak tatare, go straight from filling your tum to filling your teeth. I should write their copy. 

I don’t know where to begin with the next one. So, I will just leave it here for you to create your own caption. 

Acts of Kindness

Someone said to me recently, that being in Japan is like being illiterate and it is a good point. I’ve already mentioned the three alphabets, and I’ve already mentioned that maybe I should have done more homework before I came. But basically, I can’t read or write in this country. It’s all Greek to me. As I mentioned in my last blog, my lack of language skills, combined with a little loneliness, is when my grumpy side rears its head. But it is more than just a language barrier, there’s something else. Things are different. This is best exemplified by toothpaste.  I think I have bought Colgate  in about 15 different countries so, when I ran out here, I was confident that I would find my toothpaste of choice in the appropriate aisle of the supermarket. But there was no Colgate, no Aquafresh, no Sensodyne, in fact nothing I recognised. So, I had to guess. I examined the options, and chose one at random. But was I buying children’s toothpaste, or something for dentures, or denture adhesive, would I stick my lips together the next time I cleaned my teeth?

So, these are the challenges, and my challenge of course is to stay positive when I am faced with them.

What’s this got to do with acts of kindness?  Be patient. I am getting there. 

As many of you will know, my ankle is um well the technical term for it is f***ed. I often need some Ibuprofen gel to ease the pain. The problem for me was that my tube of gel like the toothpaste had run out. So I needed to buy more. Armed only with Google Translate, body language and a warm smile, (grimace), I entered the drugstore. I showed them the word Ibuprofen on the phone and then proceeded to cross my arms and do the international sign language for oral and rubbing to show I wanted cream not tablets. Amazingly, I didn’t get arrested and managed to get my message across. This particular place didn’t have what I needed, but the young assistant who was helping me said in English, “I will guide you.” He then proceeded to lead the way to another drugstore. Now, this wasn’t next door, or even in the same shopping mall. We went over the railway line, up two floors and into another mall. There, he found the pharmacist and explained to her what I needed. I said 100 Agrigatos, but nothing could really express my gratitude. Mind you, a tiny tube of cream cost me about 8 pounds, so every silver lining has a cloud J. 

I wrote last time about my Shabu Shabu, a few people have asked me what that is; this dish is raw meat that you cook yourself in a boiling pot of stock. It means dangling meat in boiling water with chopsticks. I remember having Shabu Shabu with my sister way back in 1994.  I wasn’t that good with chopsticks then, and  her poor student who had taken us for the meal smiled politely throughout the feast while I splashed his smart suit and tie by dropping my meat into the pot. 

Anyway, I wanted to try it again but it is a something you need to understand, you need a guide to show you what to do. Thankfully, last night, I had a lovely waiter, who spoke just about enough English and had more than enough patience to help me. Again, I said 100 Agrigatos but nothing could really express my gratitude.

There’s a lesson in this for me. I mustn't let the language intimidate me. I mustn't give up, because there’s probably someone willing to help me and if not, well, what’s the worst that can happen? 

Grounded

Sometimes you need to replant your feet. To find your space and place. I’ve been a month in Japan already. It’s flown by; only 54 days left! I’ve done loads, seen temples and streets and views and parks, i’ve eaten ramen, gyoza, tongue, sushi, ramen, gyoza, grilled meat myself, shabu shabu-ed and had ramen and gyoza. Plus, I’ve had quite a few things where I wasn’t quite sure what they were. I’ve walked about 12000 steps a day, watched 4 rugby matches, one baseball game, and been in one typhoon. Whisper it quietly but I need a new notch for my belt, cos I’ve lost weight. On top of that, my teaching has gone pretty well. You could say it’s been successful so far.
But, oh there’s always a but, and people who know me well are probably wondering what I’ve done with the real Gareth. Don’t worry, the Grumpy one is still here and there have been grumpy days. But not today, today was a good day, today I did a different kind of sightseeing.
Apart from teaching, (just in case someone from my company is reading this,) one of the main reasons I came to Japan was food. There’s so much to try, so many delicacies, it’s bewildering. But food can be intimidating as well as delicious. Well, restaurants can be; especially when menus are in a language not even google translate can master and where there are different rules and regulation and customs with each different restaurant and dish. For example, in the sushi conveyor belt place I went to yesterday, you had to sign in on an iPad when you entered the restaurant, then wait for the digital display to tell you what seat to go to, then, although it was a conveyor belt place, you had to order the fish you wanted on an iPad and then wait for the iPad to sing. Yes, it sang; the song was the well- known classic wake up your sushi is on the way, it’s funny to hear such a famous song in Japanese. Once you’ve finished eating, you had to press another button on the iPad, then a real human came over and gave you the bill which you then took to the cash desk. I am so glad I was with someone because I’d never have worked it out on my own. And that’s what I mean by intimidating. For one reason or another, I am on my own quite often, and despite my best intentions to be brave and give things a go, sometimes it all gets a bit much and that’s when grumpy Gareth rears his ugly head.
So that brings me back to today’s sightseeing. Today I went restaurant hunting. I looked around stations on my commute home and explored other areas of Yokohama that I haven’t poked my nose into yet. I just looking, window-eating if you like. Looking for places that I want to try and that looked like they wanted me to try them; Gareth-friendly places. I found about 10 that look good, ranging from cheap and cheerful to cheap and grumpy. So now I am armed and ready, knowledge is power. To celebrate, I headed back to my local and ordered Shabu Shabu, another meal that has rules and regulations. I don’t know if I obeyed all the rules, but I feasted like a king. Today, was a good day.

First-World Problem

When I was growing up, we looked to Japan as being at the vanguard of technological advancement, these were the people who brought us the  digital watch,  the Walkman, the calculator and then the calculator watch and then of course the Game Boy. Every bit of stock footage of Japan on TV in the 70s showed flashing lights and a landscape out of the sci-fi movies. The Japan of the 21^stCentury is still in the technological driver’s seat. I’ve already mentioned toilets that can launch missiles, restaurants where you order via iPad, tills that count the money for the cashiers and deliver the change, and of course the bar where you are served by robot women, the list is endless. So, you would imagine that the Japan  of 2018 would have incredibly fast internet to power the race to the future. 

And at times it does. If you get online at 3 am the internet is so fast you can watch the second half of a rugby match before the first half has even ended. In fact, anywhere from early morning to about 4pm the internet is fast and efficient. But then comes the witching hour. 4pm, the schools have released their day prisoners and those kids have got home, taken off their blazers and straw boaters and are logging on to Grand Theft Auto, Fortnite or Call of Duty. There are 38 million people in the Tokyo and Yokohama region. I would imagine at least ten million of those are teens.  At 4pm when ten million teens start playing on their PS4s or Xbox1s of their Commodore 64s, the whole of the internet, grinds to a halt. It is no longer an information superhighway, it’s an information country lane where you are stuck behind a tractor which, in turn, is stuck behind a blind shepherd herding sheep. There’s no way round, there’s no way through, all you can do is sit and watch that little circle spin around and around and around and get occasional still pictures of rugby players in action. In the past, I’ve kept up with games on Teletext on old TVs, text commentary on the Internet and on Twitter on my phone,  but nothing is as depressing as trying to guess what is happening in a game by putting together the slender clues that painfully slow internet provides you with.  

Then, as the clock ticks around to midnight, it miraculously starts working again. I guess, Japanese parents in houses and flats across Japan are sending their spotty teenagers to bed. Playstations, Xboxes and Sinclair Spectrums are shut down for the night and the bandwidth is free for me to watch the post-game interviews and the presenter telling me that I’d missed a cracker of a game before wishing us all a cheery goodbye. 

Sure as eggs is eggs

Today’s post has little to do with Japan but it is a public information warning for any of you who buy eggs on a regular basis. Anyone who knows me, will know that I am not the most tidy of people; when I was clearing my flat to move here, it was noted by my sisters that even my empty flat somehow looked messy. So, put me in an apartment which would have been described by Fry and Laurie as compact and bijou, and I am likely to struggle to keep it shipshape.

I only really have one room, and a bathroom. Okay, there is the space at the top of the ladder that a younger man than I might call his bedroom, but with my knees, back and ankle it is just a space out of reach. I don’t really have a kitchen either, just a hallway with a sink and two hobs, and then a fridge with a microwave on top of it which is next to the bathroom door. It’s okay, I don’t miss a kitchen at all. There are so many tempting delicacies in Japan, that cooking is reserved for the odd packet of ramen and noodles. But, I did buy eggs. Half a dozen, just in case I needed an emergency fried egg sandwich or a cheeky eggs benedict. Quite a bulky item is half a dozen eggs, so the question was where to keep them. The obvious place on was top of the microwave, which if you remember was perched on top of the fridge.

Now, it is all very well Japanese mobile phones screaming blue murder if there is a slight chance of an earthquake but why is there no warning for much more practical things like where one keeps ones eggs. 

And because Japanese mobile companies don’t provide that service, I will step in. 

WARNING: don’t keep your eggs on top of the fridge. 

WARNING: don’t keep your eggs on top of the fridge. 

It didn’t take an earthquake to teach me the error of my ways, just my overzealous hand when shutting the fridge door. The box rocked, it teetered, it seemed to correct itself, but then, as I thought all was safe, it fell. Not down the front of the fridge, but the down the back, not landing on the strong part of the eggs but on their most fragile, humpty dumptyesque part of the shell. I’m not yolking, the mess was eggstrordinary. (sorry, I shell never pun like that again. Sorry, last one I promise.) There was yolk everywhere, albumen oozed out from beneath the fridge, shell was shattered across the hallway floor. I was going to need all the king’s horses and all the kings men to help me clean up

Now, I didn’t know this, but the backs of fridges can get quite hot. Very hot in fact. In fact, hot enough to cook an egg. Despite the speed that the king’s men and their mounts arrived, my fridge was already cooking up an omelette which then stuck firm to the inner workings of the fridge. It was quite a clean-up operation, let me tell you. I did get it sorted eventually, but let me give you one last piece of advice, if you drop eggs on the floor, don’t ask the king’s horses to help you. Their hooves got egg all through the flat. It is no wonder they couldn’t put poor humpty together again. 

Back to the scene of the crime

There are a million memes on Facebook that will tell you that if you fail, you need to brish yourself off, dust yourself down and get back on the horse. Those who have never made a mistake have never made anything, etc, etc. So, armed with the good intentions of the meme makers. I set off for the scene of my greatest humiliation so far in Japan. Yes, you guessed it, the Japanese restaurant at the end of my street where I made so many faux pas on my first visit they have a new word in Japanese, doing a Gareth. Anyway, determined to right the wrongs of my first visit. I decided that I had to do everything the same, but this time correctly. So, despite the lack of rain, I took my brolly and headed to the eatery. Fair play, I got a few strange looks as I locked up my superfluous umbrella but at least this time I wasn’t mocked for not knowing how the contraption worked. I snapped it in no problem at all. Then, I confidently  slipped my shoes off and locked them up. I was two from two.  I was shown to the table and used the bell to summon the server. I ordered the autumn special again, this time confident that I knew exactly what to do when the stove with the bubbling cauldron arrived. I, like the flame beneath my food, was on fire. But meme makers also tell us that pride comes before a fall, that knowing what you need to do is not the same as knowing how to do it. As the broth bubbled away and the egg cooked, I was still faced with the problem of how to get the soup to the bowl without causing me and the nice family next to me third degree burns. I could do this, I told myself. I’ve been here three weeks, chopsticks are just like an extension of my fingers, second nature. This would be a cinch.
Anyway, I’d like to end this entry by wishing the family next to me a speedy recovery. I hear the Yokohama burns unit is very good, so with a bit of luck your skin grafts will be successful and you’ll be right as rain in no time. 

P.S. On a related note, I have been asking my students what their aim for the next few weeks is. I too have a new aim for this trip to Japan, and that is to bring home at least one shirt without Ramen stains on it.

Misplaced Confidence

As my head hit the pillows, my eyes closed and I already felt myself drifting away. The combination of tiredness, (I am not used to working regular 9 hour days and walking over 12000 steps a day,) and Japanese hops were working wonders on my insomnia. I would soon be safely rocking rolling riding, towards the land of nod.
JISHIN
JISHIN
JISHIN
JISHIN
The woman’s voice was sharp and harsh, the alarm that accompanied her was piercing, lights flashing all around my room. It was coming from three different angles.

JISHIN
JISHIN
JISHIN
JISHIN

I sat bolt upright, my heart beating, my eyes searching the darkness for the source of the cacophony. I grabbed at my phone, the screen flashing in time with the beat of the siren.
JISHIN
JISHIN
JISHIN
JISHIN
The woman continued to scream from all corners of my room. my Screen displayed the ominous words emergency alert, in English but exactly what the emergency was was shrouded in the mystery of one of the Japanese alphabets. I managed to shut my phone up but the voice still screamed and the alarm wailed. Why do I have three phones.
Then, silence, a silence pregnant with expectation. An emergency alert is followed by an emergency as sure as night follows day. What should I do? Assume the foetal position and climb under the desk, waiting for the shaking to start? Run into the street in my boxer shorts looking for salvation? Prey to a god I’ve rarely believed in begging for forgiveness? Or just put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea and keep a stiff, British upper lip? In the end, I did nothing. I just lay in bed and let my heartbeat return to normal while my brain ran wild with doomsday scenarios. When was the quake coming? Would it be soon? Would it be fierce? How earthquake friendly was this building? How far inland to tsunamis roar?

Apparently, the earthquake usually follows the alert within 3 or 4 seconds, so if there were any tremors, I was far too busy thinking what the fuck? to notice them. Maybe this is the whole point of the emergency alert, it takes one’s mind off the actual emergency.

P.S. I discovered today that Japanese word for earthquake is Jishin, interestingly ,it also means, confidence. 

Worship

This little fella is standing in a pond in the Hasedera Temple Complex in Kamakura.  I don’t know how long he’s been there himself but the complex dates back to the 8^thCentury. There were plenty of other Buddha’s there, round ones, angry ones, happy ones and serene ones, all of them had bald heads and round bellies. But this one caught my eye because as I walked past it, two rather attractive young women were taking their time using the ladle thing you can see in the photo to wash the buddha, rubbing its head and its belly with a tenderness I have only ever seen before from mothers with their first born (sorry second and third borns but we all know after the first born wonder and tenderness is replaced by the need for speed.) Once the cleansing was done, I took this photo and then another woman arrived and started to cleanse the statue from scratch. It’s just been cleaned, I said but it didn’t stop her from showing the same tender loving care to the statue as the previous ladies had done. It was then that the idea struck me. The bald head, the rounded tummy, the bad choice of clothing, there was something about that buddha that reminded me of me. I had a plan, I found myself a spot, placed a ladle at my feet, put the palms of my hands together and waited. Surely, it was only a matter of time before the ladies mistook me for a buddha and started to bathe me. I stood and stood, just a matter of time, I told myself, just a matter of time. Eight hours I stood there, eight hours, not one belly rub, not one shine of my head. Nothing. I don’t understand it. 

Here are some more of the Buddhas from Hasedera.