Back from the snow

I'm feeling pretty good right now. I'm finally back home after my time up in the snow. I've included a picture of the tiny train station near our research centre and factory to show you how snowy it was up in Iwate.

You can't even see the tracks and yet the little two-carriage train chugged its way in and out of each station on schedule - just like clockwork. Local governments of Ireland please take note!



By the way, I am pointing to the main road that had just disappeared under a fresh fall of snow. And yet there was a woman out jogging - they build them tough up here in the North of Japan.

This was the first training course that I organised alone with no real input from my colleagues. It was a lot of stress, especially because we have been so busy with other more serious matters in work. I hadn't been able to give it much attention in advance. Thankfully it all went really smoothly - without a hitch - and the feedback from the people that took the course was extremely positive.

It was blooming cold, though. Minus fifteen at one point. I tried to appreciate the beauty - the glitter of the freshly fallen powder, the crunch of the snow underfoot - but really I mostly wanted to be going to the factory dressed in this.



Kind of knocks the old American "slanket" (Tina Fey!) right out of the water, eh!

Japanese people can be so kind. I tend to forget this living in the big, anonymous city. But while up on the training course, the owners of the ski lodge where we always stay decided to hold a calligraphy lesson. No charge or anything; they just took a few hours out of their hectic high-season schedule to share a bit of culture. I decided to write 志 (kokorozashi). It's one of my favourite words in Japanese and it means something like aspiration, vision, or sense of purpose. That's what I'm all about these days.



I'll teach you another few words that have been coming up a lot with colleagues:

One is 甘塩っぱい (amajoppai) and it is really a fashionable word in Japan at the moment. It means sweet and salty and is used especially for the flood of new snack foods on the market - salty caramel, chocolate with sea salt and, of course, Royce's chocolate covered potato chips, which I have raved about at length before (http://digitalsocks.blogspot.com/2007/02/so-wrong-but-yet-so-right.html).

The other word is 親父ギャグ (oyajigyagu). I am the king of these. It means a rubbish joke that makes you groan. It's the kind a dad (oyaji) tells his children thinking it makes him cool. They go down like a lead balloon and are along the lines of the rotten puns and that that you find in a Christmas cracker. The other day I was having lunch with my colleague and she was struggling to decide what to order. She said how she liked tempura but how it can be really hard for the cook to get the batter right . This was the perfect set up for my mother of all oyajigyagus; "oh yes, you have to watch the batter, it can be very tempura mental!" Boom boom! and very much wakka wakka! as my heroes Basil Brush and Fozzie Bear would say.

I was speaking to my mother on the phone the other day and apparently my family (minus my Dad who was too truculent to get up off the couch) were moon-gazing - a favourite hobby of mine. A few hours earlier I had been doing the very same thing. I thought the moon was so beautiful last month that I braved the cold of my balcony to snap these pictures of it in its full, milky glory.






I still can't quite get my head around the fact that I was enjoying this view practically a whole day ahead of my family. The idea has that whole Fivel sings 'Somewhere out there' quality to it which kind of breaks my heart.

Oh, and I also wanted to keep you apace of progress with the new Tokyo Tower. As you can see, we're up to 281 metres and counting. I love the detailing on the structure - I think it's going to be mega.







And for the heck of it I'll throw in some more weird roadside plants. Can anyone tell me what it is?



And check out the pretty covers they wrap trees in to protect them from the snow.

Shitamachi scenes - a walk through Nezu and Hongo

Those of you who know me well know that I love Tokyo's modern heart - the skyscrapers, malls and galleries, all steel and glass brutalism. But sometimes it's fun to hang out in the older areas or shitamachi (下町 - downtown) to see a different side of the city.








We have the greyest population on the planet, and it's in dowtown districts like Nezu and Hongo that you really get a sense of that.


I love this photo. but it makes me want to cry a little when I look at it. The Japanese economic miracle and the rise of the corporate samurai in the seventies led to the disintegration of the traditional family unit. Time was, older generations here were cared for through the extended family and revered under Confucian principles. But now, old couples like these generally see their families only once in a while, if at all, and are mostly left to fend for themselves.

You can see how people REALLY live on top of each other here in downtown. I mean the population density is ridiculous in the centre of Tokyo too, but here you could reach out your bedroom window and click snooze on your neighbour's alarm clock.


And no matter where you go in Tokyo, you'll see that we're all being cooked by the cables and power lines swirling over out heads most of the time.


Living in this city you develop great blinkered vision: you have to focus on all the beauty peeking out from behind the ugly. That's probably why I’m forever taking photos of the plants and trees that I walk past. Like this roadside orange:


or these roadside berries:

I should make a coffee table book, "Surviving the roadside - a photographic guide to Tokyo's wild plants" or something. I could end up like J.R. Hartely, a defeated old man searching in vain for my work.

One huge advantage of downtown is the large number of cheap, traditional stores. I passed this sweet potato shop. Just look at all that yumminess. My favourites are the wee sweet potato pies, so guess what I had when I returned home.




Blossom watch continues apace. This was my first official cherry blossom: a hardy mountain cherry - not the later-blooming someiyoshino (ソメイヨシノ) - but a sakura nonetheless.



And then this was a very sweet smelling plum varitety.


I overheard two old dears calling it a robai (蝋梅), which the dictionary translates as Calycanthaceae, if you want to research that, Mam.

And finally a Fraggle-esque shout out to my mother, the Great Trash Heap: look, real-live Doozers!



Oh yeah, and especially for my sister, here is the mild-mannered guard dog at one of Nezu's many temples.

A life in pictures

I have nothing much to say at the moment, so let me catch you up on
how I've been since I've been back through the medium of coloured
pixels.

This photo dates back to the first day of the New Year; back when the snow
in Ireland was still a pretty distraction instead of a national
emergency. I bet the birdies have never been so glad of those feeders hanging in the tree in the background.

Also please note how the prior typhoon-like winds have knocked my Dad's beloved garden lamp all wonky and sideways.

The flight back was one of the best I ever had - I even managed to sleep most of the way for the first time ever.

By the way, this is a view of clouds from the plane and not an aerial view of the Sally gap (though I understand it looked quite similar at about this time).

The first five days back in Japan I suffered from rotten jet lag. As a
result, the first weekend passed in a haze and I have no recollection
of what I did. I know that I went back into work and found two weeks'
worth of problems waiting for me on my desk. Oh well, it wasn't that
bad getting back into things and I have my little kingdom running
pretty smoothly again now.

The second weekend back I visited Hie Shrine to pray for a good year
in 2010. There are all these cool shrine gates leading up to the main
site. They are called torii 鳥居 (the Chinese characters can be read to mean 'where you find birds' or 'where birds are').





Everything looks more beautiful in the clear winter sunlight. It
heartens me that such plants and trees as these survive at the side of
the road, even in such a big city.

The sun was splitting the trees in Tokyo when I woke up this morning
so I decided to head out to the sea. I get great thinking done by the
ocean - even if it's not that beautiful - I think a big part of it is
the sound of the waves. I needed to decompress and think: we're currently recruiting three senior executives and consequently we had some heavy interviews during the week. One guy had been made redundant from his job in the summer and, as he is a middle aged family man, is finding it hard to get new work. It's the first time I've felt a huge responsibilty (though I am way too far down the totem pole to have any real say) about whether to recommend someone for a job or not.

So I made my way to Zushi, about an hour
from Tokyo, and by the time I got there the clouds had rolled in. I
was raging. Still I tried to make the best of it, and I have to say
that the change in conditions made for some pretty dramatic skies,
which I love.






This strip between Zushi and Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture brings a
little bit of the tropics to the commuter belt.


I was particular taken with the berries / seeds / fruit on this palm
tree. I've never seen the like before.


It's a popular spot with surfers, but it's certainly no Manly.

I don't know how they got in the water at all. I was on dry land and
would have been completely frozen but for the presence of Fluffy the
Wonder Hat (the second).

I had done a lot of walking by now and decided to stop for a veggie burger that I think anyone could do business with. However, this photo is included particularly for the benefit of my li'l bro - first on the menu if you make it back over here?

I walked into Kamakura town and revisited Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine
where I'd attended a Shinto wedding many years ago. The Tsuru in the
name means crane (of the bird variety) and I was lucky enough to
come along just as one of these guys was lounging about on the top of
the main gate (torii). The observant among you will now of course call to mind the reading of the Chinese characters in the Japanese word torii that I explained above...spooky!


I think the close up is hilarious - he looks fed the f@£k up!


As quite the tourist trap, Kamakura is full of all sorts of little
souvenir shops and arts and antique stores selling trinkets of every
kind. Not much grabbed me, but I did like this window of shoes for
people of restricted growth.


My trip to Kamakura also marked the official start of Blossom Watch
Twenty Ten! I couldn't get a great picture of these first plum
blossoms that I spotted as they were on private property and I didn't
want to get nicked.

Tokyo is soon - well in 2012 - going to be graced with a new landmark. In the following artist's impression you can see that it's going to be located in the Asakusa district of Tokyo - the artist has cunningly indicated this by showing it beside Asakusa's current No. 1 landmark - the golden poo!


Anyway, here is the state of play of the new tower as seen from the bridge at the
end of my road.


I am ashamed to admit that I must have been affected by some of the
remaining property-bubbleitis spores still floating around the city of
Dublin when I was back there on holidays - all I could think of when I saw the start of the tower was that I wished I owned some property nearby as values will go through the
roof once construction is completed. Views are very rare in Tokyo real
estate and command a major premium. Not to worry - I went home and
took the recommended dose of reality check, had a nice lie down, and
woke feeling all better.

Wow, I guess I had more to say than I thought I did. Thanks for sticking with me. Peace out!