Soba and studies...

Tokyo is undoubtedly an expensive city, but when you know where to go, you can live quite cheaply. I feel sure it's less expensive than Dublin, at least.

This was my dinner after work this evening. So yummy and only 500 yen (about 4 euro). You can't go wrong - you have your buckwheat noodles, your soup, at least 6 different types of vegetable, and your tofu and egg for protein.

It's from my favourite little soba shop near Tokyo station; a very unassuming little place tucked away in the back streets. You'd easily walk by it and, even though I've been there tonnes of times myself, I always get a little bit lost trying to find it. The rewards? You always get a seat, soft lighting, and some laid-back jazz.

I can't remember if I told you or not, but my course started back up there in the middle of January. Ah, the joys of further education. I thought nothing would ever be as difficult as the interpreting module, but now we've moved on to sight translation. This is where they give you a document, but no pen, or paper, or dictionary and you have to tell them exactly what's written on the sheet. And I mean exactly - if you try to replace a hard word with a simpler one or to skip a seemingly superfluous bit, they'll make you go back and start again. The reasoning behind this is that in a contract negotiation, for example, every dot of an 'i' and cross of a 't' can be important.

To this end, I have a kanji test tomorrow. Now, I actually really like kanji (the Chinese characters used in the Japanese language) and quite enjoy studying them. But I've just not had a free minute this week. In the last module, I was pretty good about handing in all my assignments and keeping my notes in order, but this term is looking a lot more rough around the edges.

It's a new teacher, and she's a bit of a chatter, so I always try to get a bit of natter going at the start to minimize the amount of lesson time. But that won't fly tomorrow as it'll be straight down to the test. I guess I should go off and do a bit of work, eh?

For my mother:

Eh, Pob... Pob!Pob!Pob!Pob!Pob!Pob!



At the end of a meeting today with the president of one of our outsourcers - who must be about 65 - we got to talking about retirement and aging and how quickly the years go by. He basically warned me to make the most of every day as forty years seem to pass by in a split second.

So, I come home and ponder this and think about how, in many ways, it really does feel like just a short while ago - not 25 years - that I was sitting in the kitchen watching the above with my mother.

Of course, I don't know how deeply the kind gentleman's advice went in with me, considering that I spent (wasted?) my precious evening hours surfing the Internet, trawling through old clips of kids' tv shows.

And where would we be without the old www? How else would I be able to settle a long running argument that Pob's spit effect was in fact Mr Sheen polish, as I'd always claimed.

I am a bit functioned out in this job.

I will admit that it is terrible to be complaining about being treated to great meals in fancy locations, and about having the chance to talk directly to some pretty influential people. But these extra social events after working hours sure do eat into your free time.

I mean, take for example the thing with the president on Tuesday last week. The meeting part went really well, and I got some really positive feedback about my future plans with the company. But then the dinner and drinks went on till well after midnight - and this was on a school night! I'm usually in my jammies and tucked up by 11 or 11.30 of an evening. I'm not one for cigars and cocktails in the Shangri La hotel until the wee small hours of the morning. Though I would go back for the toilets alone - they were so much nicer than my apartment. I mean look at that little pyramid of hand towels. They were nearly too nice to touch.



However, I'm getting better at avoiding these social obligations. For example, I declined the kind invitation below.


I mean, me and the ambass have been besties ever since I walked at the front of the parade with him last year. Ah, how proud my poor mother was! But I just suffer from such crippling shyness at these things. I'm not great with new people as it is, never mind big parties of people where you have to make small talk and try and sound interesting for hours on end.

Give me a nice quiet night out with a small group of friends in a simple Japanese restaurant any day. And sure, the owners of these wee places tend to be the kindest people you'll ever meet over here. Just look at what the owner of one such place gave me the other day as we were leaving his restaurant.




They're little Hina Matsuri candy. I've blogged about this festival before - just follow the link. I love how much attention to detail is paid to a simple sweet that will just be handed out to customers as they pay their bill in a shop. It tells you something about Japanese customer service. More than that, it illustrates how important the idea of gift giving is in Japanese culture. If you come over here, even just as a visitor, you will get given presents left and right. And try as hard as you might, you will never win - a Japanese person will always end up repaying whatever small kindness you try to return to them, and then some.

It's in the area of ceremonial gift giving that some remnants of the bubble-economy days still remain. It's looking like we're going to be suffering through yet another period of deflation in the coming months and years. Despite this, look at the price of these oranges snapped at a small fruit shop just around the corner from me.


6,200 yen is about 50 euro for 8 pieces of fruit. I know it's not exactly the infamous 100 dollar melons of the 90s. But like I said, this is just from a wee store over the road from me. Admittedly, I do live in the financial district - a mere stone's throw away from the marbled halls of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Bank of Japan, and countless securities companies and hedge funds - so probably it'll be some of those billion-dollar bailouts funded by poor old tax-payers around the world that'll be bankrolling such extravagance. Oh, hark at me getting all political.

I am in a coffee shop and I have just stopped shaking...

It has been quite an unusual hour. So I was walking along the street
when I see an old man up ahead kind of teetering to the side. "Another
old guy drunk on the way home from an afternoon with his mates," I
thought. Seeing old guys falling down drunk on the streets of this
city is a commoner sight than you might imagine.

But just as I walk by, I hear a kind of a groan out of him. I hesitate
like a half a second, and in that time all that emergency response
training goes right out of my head. Nonetheless, I quickly turn back
and once I'd made that decision it's like it all kicked in: his lips
and hands were purple and he had beads of hison his top lip. Not good
signs. Admittedly, there's this whole spiel - about saying you're a
trained emergency responder and asking for permission to help in case
you get sued - that I totally forgot about.

But apart from that slip I knew enough to get him sitting down and
talking. I started asking him simple questions to see if he was
making sense. All the while I was monitoring his breathing and trying
to see his pulse. But i couldn't count right cause he was telling me
that he was 84 and that he had stomach cancer and that he had had most
of his stomach removed and that he lived nearby and that he didn't
want an ambulance and that he just wanted to go home. I don't know how
the tv doctors on er and the like do it.

At this stage I was still on my own on the street and thinking that I
should just call an ambulance whether he liked it or not. Then a few
metres away a lady comes into view and I call over to her and say,
"This man doesn't feel well and lives near here. Do you know him?"

Man, were the gods every smiling down on me. She comes over and says,
"No I don't know him, but I am a nurse!"

You wouldn't credit it - there I was on a quiet street feeling alone
and out of my depth when they very first person I see to ask for help
is a district nurse on her way back from a home visit.

She was fabulous; so calm and firm and efficient, yet completely
kind. She had everything - a blood pressure pump, a thermometer, a
pad a pen to take down his vitals - everything that is except a mobile
phone. And that's where I came in. At least that was one practical
piece of aid I could give to the poor man.

We got through to the man's wife in my phone and got her to come meet
us where we were before sending them both off to the hospital armed
with a written report from my angel nurse.

And just like that, the mini drama was over. I never even got the
nurse's name, nor she mine. But I am forever grateful to her for
walking by when she did. And 84 year old Mr Okamura with no stomach, I
really do hope and pray you are well.

It was funny, I felt grand for the twenty minutes or so that I was
with the old man. But as soon as I walked away I started to shake and
shake and shake. I guess it was an adrenaline come-down or some mild
shock, or something. It could also have been the realization that
throuhout this whole fairly serious event I was wearing the most
ridiculous wooly bobble hat and padded down jacket. I mean I looked
like I'd just hiked down a mountain in Peru - and it wasn't even that
cold today. The poor man probably now thinks he hallucinated me.

Everyone reading this, please go take a first aid course if you
haven't already. You never know when you might need it. If nothing
else, my little bit of emergency response training meant that I
didn't just walk on by and that I wasn't afraid to ask for help. I
mean, like I said, you never know - you might be a jammy dodger like
me and find that the first person you call to in your one and only
emergency is a trained medical professional!

iPhoneから送信

How did I make a post on architecture about poo and food poisoning?

I have been obsessed with the TV program Grand Designs of late. It is affecting the way I see everything. I now see parallels even between the buildings in the garden of the Imperial Palace and the Barcelona Pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. You see, I have learned from watching the show that this guy is famous for saying that God - and not the Devil - is in the details. His idea of modernism was that you pare everything down to quite simple, plain lines and structures, and then glory in the craft and quality of the detailing and finish. This is exactly what strikes me about the traditional architecture in the palace.

I mean, look at this simple wooden bridge.


And then see the beauty of the decorative metalwork.




And maybe it's because the buildings are deceptively plain, that the roof dragons dive down at you through the pines or that the chrysanthemums - the Imperial family's insignia - shine on the slate eaves.












While on the subject of architecture, I think I have found the inspiration for the golden poo that I blogged about a few weeks ago. I mean look at this - the architect in Asakusa must surely have been echoing this famous 60s landmark.




L'il bro, do you recognize the building? Hint - think of tiny wrestlers flying through the air. That's right, it's the Nippon Budokan (日本武道館) where we went to see the wrestling when you were over.

I like to think that modern architects do make reference to older buildings in the same city. Of course, Kevin McCloud would talk of this as a common language of construction. And when you compare the old parts of Tokyo with the new parts, like this view taken from Ebisu,


you can see how important these repeated references become to giving some feeling of coherence to the place. Tokyo certainly doesn't have any very striking identity like other big cities like New York, Paris or Sydney. So maybe these golden poos are the glue that keeps an idea of Tokyo-ness together. Not sure the tourist board will be adopting my argument as an advertising campaign any time soon, though.

On to other business.

Let's have a blossom watch update. You can see that the plum blossoms are picking up the pace. This makes my heart sing as I am well ready to be done with winter.








As I've said many times before, following the progress of the flowering trees is serious business over here. I am certainly not the only one to be arranging my weekends around a trip to a park, a riverside or a mountain. However - while people taking photos of the blooms are a common sight, it's not that often that you see someone out sketching. I love how the woman's body has become one with the trunk of the tree. You'd almost miss her.


And the final item on the agenda this week - work! So for those of you keeping a tally of my ratio of tough weeks to easy ones, this was another toughie, I'm afraid.

In addition to it being busy, I managed to go and get myself food poisoned. This was definitely divine retribution. Only on Tuesday I was on the phone to my sister saying how I thought most cases of food poisoning are in peoples' minds and that our stomachs are much stronger than we think. And then THE VERY NEXT DAY, I ate a pasta salad for dinner and thought, 'hum, this mayonnaise tastes a bit cheesy - I wonder what they've put in here.' It didn't taste bad, but nor did it taste normal, and I shouldn't have persevered. Cut to a sleepless night of knives in the gut and wondering if I'd make it into work the next morning.

Now I take turning up for work very seriously. I haven't taken a sick day from work since 1999, and even at that I have only ever had one sick day in my entire career. I think this ethic probably arises from the guilt I feel at all the sickies I pulled in my academic life. In school, the slightest sniffle and I'd be at home under the covers. Moreover, I guess I have been influenced by the attitude in my adopted country to not shirking one's work responsibilities. For your reference, this classic Simpsons scene:

Homer has just ordered a 'Juice Loosener' and we see the machine getting packed in the factory in Osaka.


Worker A says, Please don't tell the supervisor I have the flu.'
Worker B answers laughing, 'I've been working with a shattered pelvis now for three weeks.'

And the thing to remember is that the joke is not a million miles from the truth. Remember I've chosen to make my career in a land that actually has a word for death from overwork （過労死 karoushi). I mean, you'd hope the notion wouldn't be so prevalent that it would need its own word. But there you go. I survived, I got my work done, and I was back in fighting form 24 hours later (vowing never to touch pasta salad again).

A short animation

Mam, watch this short animation when you get a chance. It's by a Danish animator, Tobias Gundorff Boesen and is called 'Out of a Forest'. It's only a few minutes long. It reminded me of the Japanese music video I showed you years ago (http://digitalsocks.blogspot.com/2007/05/multimedia-madness.html) - super cute with a dark twist. Enjoy! And persevere; it ends well...

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen on Vimeo.

Stress and the City

It was another stressful week at work: my boss dropped a bombshell on me on Friday at 7pm - on the 23rd of this month, I have to present my strategic vision for the group for the next five years to the company president.

I have two problems with this:

One, I think it is really unfair to throw something like that out there just before the weekend. How do you put it out of your mind and relax and enjoy two days off work?

And two, I don't really have any more vision left in me. Two fairly major ideas of mine got implemented over the last year and I don't really have any more ideas to bring to the table. Plus more ideas just mean more work and I'm flat out at the minute.

Anyway, I'm not complaining - I know I'm lucky to be working, and, in any event, these things usually go fine in the end whether you worry a lot about them or not.

I think we might be going to a very swanky location at the top of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. The last time I was there was for a Chamber of Commerce event. The food was nothing spectacular, and the decor is a bit cheesy.






But everyone goes there for the view. It looks like something out of Blade Runner.



And you feel right on top of Tokyo Tower.



I have two main ways of dealing with stress. One is to pound the pavement. I walked out of the office on Friday and just started walking. I covered some ground, probably not a great idea in work shoes, to which my poor mangled feet can attest. The ginza nightime neon always lifts my mood. These pics were taken with the camera on my phone. To be quite honest, I don't really rate the camera, despite my great love for my phone overall. However, the light distortion comes out really well here.





And you might need to click on this one to get more of the detail, but you can see the Imperial Palace is an ancient island of dark in a sea of neon.






So, the other way I have of dealing with stress is to stuff my face. It is genetic - I come from a family of comfort-eaters. As my brother says, my parents are classic feeders. Japanese restaurants do desserts really well. Admittedly, the portions might be a bit small, but they are never too sickly sweet and they get the presentation just right every time.





I know fellow diners get a bit irked by me whippin' out the camera over meals, but how else can I do show-and-tell and check if my sister remembers the restaurant? Big sis, I'll give you a hint - it's in Marunouchi.

I got some comments about the whole moon / Fievel thing I was talking about last time. Don't any of you (except my siblings, of course) remember 'An American Tail' from when you were young? That ' Somewhere Out There' song was huge as I remember it.



Anyway, here are more of the moon pics.