Nostalgiapalooza

I'm going away on business on Tuesday, and I must think the plane is going to go down or something because I was overtaken yesterday by a need to look back on my life and visit some old haunts. I went to see my former home in Zama, about an hour and a half by train from the centre of Tokyo. I lived here when I was studying Japanese and paying for my studies with English teaching. This feels like a world away from my life now. It certainly was a poorer time back then, but oh for the holidays. Being in Zama again brought back lots of happy memories.The town is a rural suburb, with lots of rice fields and small holdings, but it's still on the commuter belt for Tokyo, and it's also home to a major US air force base. All this combines to give it a pretty distinctive atmosphere. I mean, it must be a special place if you can find a Godzilla tombstone next to a vegetable patch as above!

I hadn't been back in over two years and nothing was any different. Well, apart from the fact that my beloved neighborhood karaoke-izakaya has changed hands. Peace out, warawara! The town centre is made up of a small train station and about 10 shops, and my video below captures most of them.



Anyone who visited me in Zama will recognize the sound in the background (though you might need to really turn up the volume, as it's just a crappy phone video). The bloody level crossing (fumikiri 踏切) was the soundtrack to my life as I lived right beside one. It got to the stage living there where I only noticed the sound when it was gone, like on the rare occasions the train service got stopped for a typhoon or something.

On the topic of noise, I got to take a walk in the nature reserve that is located just a few minutes from the station. I took this short video at the entrance to the park of the sound that will forever be Japanese summer to me: insects doing their nut.




This is a sound you just don't hear in Ireland's glacial summers. The park was such a great resource to have nearby. I used to walk here a few times a week and sucking up all those negative ions probably helped me be a happier person than I am now. That and the doing stuff for other people, I guess: back in the day, I used to volunteer at this old folk's home.



I certainly haven't been charitable like that for a long time. The journey down memory lane was a lot if fun, but it also helped me to take stock and figure out how I need to recalibrate my life.

Major tangent, but one final bonus of going back to Zama was being able to shop at my old supermarket and stock up on the world's best wet wipes!!!




I know it might not seem like a normal cause for excitement, but these wipes are individually wrapped, keep in a crazy amount of water and will get anything clean. Only a few people who know me extremely well can understand why this purchase made me so happy: these wipes have come to my rescue in some odd situations, most notably the time I was accosted by a deranged man far from any source of water and soap who was intent on shaking my hands with what could only be described as the filthiest hands I have ever had the misfortune to squeeze. You can't buy the wipes for love nor money in Tokyo, and I ended up clearing the supermarket of its stock minus one box, in order to be a little considerate of others. You see, I'm already recalibrating towards a sunnier more charitable disposition.

Art and nature in Tokyo

Wow, over a month since I last put something up here. That's pretty shoddy. In my defense, I caught this cold that just would not go away. It would look like it was clearing up and then suddenly get worse again. It's been over four weeks now and I'm still not one hundred percent. This all meant that apart from work and sleep, not much has been going on in these parts of late.

I did go hiking with my friend and his wife a couple of weeks ago, and that was a lot of fun.





I definitely won't be earning a tour guide badge any time soon. I thought I was suggesting a nice, flat hike, but it turned out I mistook the course for another one I'd done ages ago, and it ended up being quite the vertical climb in parts. It was good to get some fresh air and to see a bit of nature. The bamboo forest was especially nice.

Then, I had a museum day yesterday. I went to the Paul Klee exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art. I'm actually not a big fan of his work, but I just love the piece that was used to advertise the exhibit. It's called 'Bluhendes'. (I think that means blossoming.)


I love the way he plays with geometric shapes to make them feel really organic. There seems to be this energy or force just waiting to push through the canvas, which I guess is where the blossoming idea might come from.

There were about one or two other works that I liked. In particular, Dad, I thought you'd be interested in the next one, called 'Prelude to Golgotha'. The one after it is called 'trauerende' (sadness, I think).



But, to be honest, apart from these few exceptions, his stuff just reminds me of the Quentin Blake illustrations from Roald Dahl books. (Not that that's a bad thing, just not something I'd go out of my way to see.)

Keeping with the arty theme, I hung out in Roppongi Hills today.




I love that complex. It's a great place for people watching, and it has some really interesting corporate art. Here is the Roppongi Hills Spider.



I hated it at first, but I've grown to like it over the years. I still refuse to stand under it, though, for fear that she's gonna drop those nasty eggs on me.


And here are some horsemen of the Apocalypse, or something.

In the background, you can see the sprinkler system giving people a cool place to sit. And believe me, we're in need of such places at the minute. It's hot! We seem to be hitting mid-thirties most days. Luckily though, the energy saving measures at work have worked really well, so we're able to have some air con on. The biggest reduction was when we disabled a bunch of lights in the building, so it is a bit darker than I'd like, especially where I sit. Still once you step outside, it's like opening an oven. I was in my hot yoga studio last night, and I got to tell ya, there didn't seem to be too much difference between the sauna-conditions in the main room and the feeling out and about in town. I must try and get a quick photo of the view from the studio one of these days. It'll not an easy thing to do, as they'll probably think I'm trying to grab some pervy shots of the other yoginis. But the night time view from the 11th floor in Ginza where the studio is located is pretty class.

This baking weather is particularly bad news for the plants.


As you can see, the sun even managed to bleach and dry me poor old hydrangea. Basically, we got no rain this rainy season in Tokyo. There are still some living flowers to be found in shaded nooks and crannies.



I know I go on a bit about flowers and greenery, but I guess something a bit natural becomes even more important to you when you are living smack in the middle of a mega metropolis. I think the Tokyo government does a pretty good job of providing parks and more natural spaces. I remember trying to convince an Irish friend who'd lived a few years in Tokyo that it was a pretty green city, but he just wasn't having it. (He has since changed his mind.) I mean, here is the snap I took sitting under a tree in Sangubashi.




It's not so bad, right? And this is just one of two major parks smack in the middle of downtown Shinjuku. It is a concrete jungle, but when you know where to look, there's always some little oasis nearby.

Chateaux en Irlande

I went home for Golden Week (the week-long string of Japanese public holidays in April/May), and it ended up being just the tonic. I completely relaxed, despite a hectic social schedule, and came back to Japan refreshed and over the anxiety that the quake and constant aftershocks had created in me. We've had about 10 significant aftershocks since GW and none of them has ruffled my feathers, not even the one where the early-warning alarm went off in the middle of the night: I didn't open my eyes!

I had so much fun back in Ireland. The weather was amazing and the long days made me feel energized and eager to fit as much in to my flying visit as possible. In the end, the holiday took on an unintentional castle /stately home theme; certainly something you don't get much of over here in Tokyo.

We celebrated my Mam's 70th birthday at Clontarf Castle. It was a great meal with even better company. It was one of the best family events in recent memory for me and just thinking back to it now brings a smile to my face.










I also walked down memory lane with my friend and took of a tour of Dublin Castle in the city centre, a place where we had both been tour guide many moons before. It was weird going back and the old place looked a little rough around the edges, but it holds many precious memories.







On one of the really fine late-spring days I took a spin into Wicklow with my sister to visit Avondale House and take a seemingly never ending trek - it got a little Blair Witch Project at one point - around the forest and river running through the grounds.











It's a cliche, but I do forget how unbelievably green the little island is.





Ireland had it's Sunday best on that day, so we even managed a late-afternoon stroll along Brittas Bay. It was great to see the sea, and our beaches really aren't all that bad on the days when you're not being attacked by driving wind and horizontal sheets of grey rain.





One final little fun photo from my trip: so we have this infamous childhood photo of me and my two siblings dressed in matching onesies from some time in the mid-80s.


We had great notions of recreating the photo in the present day, but it all went a bit pear-shaped because we never got round to buying the adult-sized onesies and had to unceremoniously snap a shot on my last night in the country. We got the positioning all arseways on the first attempt, and I was so tired from all the parties and travelling and whatnot that I could barely keep my head up. But the spirit is there, even if I am doing a convincing impression of the brown Jamie Lee Curtis.




Like I said, fun, fun times.

Moreover, in other catalog- shopping related news...

You know that when these guys were starting out modeling, they thought they would be on the catwalks of Milan or Paris... Not waist deep in some mosquito infested swamp with a Marks and Spencer shopping bag on their head. The fate of the catalog model is truly a cruel one.