The atmosphere in Tokyo is pretty hazy or murky much of the time. During the summer in particular, the haze sits over the city and restricts the visibility from our flat quite significantly. There is a marked change in the clarity of the air on the day after rain. So, having gone to Meiji-Jingu and seen that the the sun was out and the sky was very clear after a couple of days of rain, then it was time to go somewhere really high to take a look at the city.

In Roppongi Hills, there is an office tower with a gallery and exhibition space on the 52nd floor. They also grant access to the helipad on the roof, so it is one of the few places in the city where you can get outside at such a height.

	This is looking over towards where we live. The green glass block just to the left of centre is Steph's office. We live in the green block just to the right of centre of the picture. The shore in the distance at the back of the picture is well over 20km away.
	This is the view looking down on the Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba.
	The Tokyo Tower lit up by the evening sun. Bit of a shame that it has been totally dwarfed by the skyscrapers around it.
	This is a good picture to show how complex the transport system is: there are 2 freeways there, running one above the other. They are both above the local street that is carrying the local traffic. I also know that that is Azabu-Juban interchange, so there are also 2 subway lines running under that junction too. It is a very multi-dimensional city.
	This was supposed to be an arty shot of the steam ecaping being silhouetted against the pipework. Oh, well - better luck next time!
	The view over towards Shinjuku and one of the main commercial and governmental centres.
	Fuji-san lit up from the back. As usual, there was a right scrum to get a good view of the sunset!
	A less zoomed view that shows the city disappearing off in to the distance. An interesting statistic: if you draw a circle of radius 50km from the Imperial Palace, then there are 33 MILLION people living inside it - and a good bit of it is water too!
	Looking towards the runway at Haneda Airport - that is 16+Km away!
	Inside the exhibition space, there was this fantastic crystal chandalier. It was at least 3 stories tall, to give you an idea of scale.....

We also managed to go on a karting trip with the Axa Tech social club:

	Just to prove that I did manage to get her maj in a kart!
	Her in action! The course was actually quite tight and technical - which did not favour a fat git like me. A 15 lap race was extremely hard work - and I had a good few bruises from a couple of sideways trips in to the tyres. There was a good bit more contact allowed between karts, too.....!

Whilst our visitors were off visiting Kyoto and Hiroshima, there was a bank holiday to celebrate Emperor Meiji's birthday. Unsurprisingly, the Meiji-Jingu (large temple at Harajuku) was a good place to be on that day as they had quite a few events on. We were also very lucky as the weather was stunning, if a tad cold!

	First up was some ken-do. And these guys were going for it too. I have a sneaky suspicion that there had been some choreography before hand but the impacts were certainly real. I do love the cameras poking through the cloth screens at the back - so Japanese!
	This was the procession that preceded the horseback archery. The last time we had attempted to see this was at Kamikura - and it was rammed. I saw a few heads flying by and that was pretty much it. I had got a far better spot this time....
	And these were the archers on horseback.
	Fast food - Japanese stylee! A rice ball or triangle wrapped in seaweed (nori) with some form of filling that could be meat, fish or vegetable based. Another quality surprise waiting to happen!!
	The five toed socks are the source of much amusement for us over here. Here is some on a bloke....
	And some multicoloured ones on his wife!
	The archers regalia is fantastic.
	A very different type of stirrup, one that I can't help thinking is somewhat less secure than the western variety.
	Archer in full flight, just notching another arrow to go for the second target.
	I spent a good while trying to get a decent picture of an archer going at full pelt, that was correctly framed. These shots are the distillation of nearly 200 pictures....
	The second target that they were aiming at.
	Possibly the best shot of the day for me and certainly one of only 3 that I am very happy with. It was certainly very good practice for panning etc.
	we then moved back in to the sunshine (to warm up) in the courtyard in the middle of the temple. This was a toddler, dressed in traditional costume, with her mother also traditionally dressed who had a new born inside her kimono.
	Kawaiii! (cute!) - These outfits are monumentally expensive - the decorations for the hair alone are comfortably north of 100 quid each.
	A bride and her groom - in a rare moment of relaxation that allowed them to smile and interact.
	Another beautifully dressed wedding guest, and her father.
	The kimonos have some fantastic detailing on the bows.
	A wedding couple on their way to the ceremony - not many smiles there!
	They are led by the priest and a couple of acolytes.
	Another fantastically dressed family.
	The acolytes have some comedy head gear on.
	No smiles in the wedding pictures either....
	It may be an auspicious day to get married with many people in traditional dress, but that did not stop some wearing a fairly standard Tokyo uniform of tailored shorts, patterned tights or stockings and thigh high FMBs.
	The kids are so cute that random strangers want to have their photos taken with them...
	The weather was glorious and as you can see, the trees were just starting to turn.
	Hey, it's early November - so it must be time to starting pushing Christmas stuff? Oh, god - no.
	After the formal wedding at the temple, then it is time for the western syle meringue for a chapel ceremony and the party afterwards. We saw this example at the top of Omotosando and it is the best pink meringue I have seen for a long time!

Food for thought: Peter and I commented on the sad fact that if we went to an open day in the UK and took some pictures of some well dressed children, we would be either arrested or chased away by melodramatic parents....

We have had visitors for the last couple of weeks, so I am a little behind on the blog... This is the start of the catch up effort!

Earlier this month, Peter and I decided we were going to pay the Tokyo Motor show a visit. What we had not realised was that we had chosen a day when a typhoon would be passing close by the city and hence rain of biblical proportions would be being thrown out of the sky. Cheapy Chinese umbrellas don't stand a chance against the swirling winds round the skyscrapers and the volume of water.

We did have a bit of a win on arrival though: because neither of us read kanji, we had not bought advanced tickets via the ATMs in a convenience store. This was a very good thing because the queue to pick up tickets was huge - but the queue to pay cash for tickets was non-existant. Nice - no queuing in the rain for us!

	We had gone to the show on Monday -supposedly less busy than at the weekend. Now, they had an area where you could book a test drive of various vehicles and luckily, we had gone to the show on the day when the GTR was available. Well, it may have been available but the queue to book a test drive of anything was mahoosive only 10 minutes after the show opened! Mind you, we should have guessed as it is a free activity and the Japanese like free!
	Electric bike, anyone? Electric power was occupying a huge amount of space on all of the stands this year.
	Hybrids were also very popular and some, like this Subaru, had very funky interiors. We will come back to the promo girls later....
	This is the new Lexus LFA. A third of a million quid's worth. It has been so long in gestation that various other car makers have moved the game on in the meantime. It was not that good looking either.
	Although the life sized model, complete with engine, gearbox, seats, dash etc, made out of clear perspex was stunning.
	This may be the next Toyota Celica when it hits the UK in a year or twos time. Note that there aren't that many people round it....
	... until you add a promo girl! Preferrably in high heels, micro shorts and with plenty of cleavage to keep the ninja photographers entertained. The dodgy bird playing the guitar is optional.
	This is a Merc that has been tarted up by Mani'doro. They should have been ashamed of themselves. Coming to your nearest premiership footballers drive sometime soon.
	SUVs aren't dead. This one from Nissan was quite funky...
	.... particularly on the inside.
	Looked interesting at the back too.
	This picture tells the story of Tokyo Motor Show 09: lots and lots of empty space. There were no European manufacturers there apart from Caterham, Alpina (modified BMWs) and Lotus, no Korean or American firms at all. The Sony Playstation stand was bigger than the Lotus and Caterham stands, combined. Having got there at 1015, Pete & I had seen the lot by 1pm.....
	Being Japan,there are always souvenir cookies available (individually wrapped, of course).
	What a great place for a school trip to gather together: out of the entirety of a huge concourse, would you really want them to huddle together outside the smoking room??!?
	Quality Japlish! I have no idea what "amenity car life" is either...

A good day out and we got drowned again getting home too. Just what the doctor ordered!

First up, an apology for not posting something last week: things have been a little busy! My mother-in-law and her sister (aunt-in-law?) have arrived with us for a couple of weeks so there has been a fair amount of activity getting ready for that, mostly around cleaning the flat and planning what to do around this great city. A word from someone who is a bit wiser about this now: if you are laying a laminate floor, don't make it a dark one as every single speck of dust shows up on it!

I spent a day over at the Tokyo Motor Show and have got a complete post about that to go up very soon, as well as one about horseback archery at Meiji Jingu.

Since their arrival, Steph and I have been doing the tourist guide bit around Tokyo until they got on the Shinkansen to go to Hiroshima and Kyoto for most of this week. I would like to give an honourable mention to the izakaya in Shibuya that we took them to on Saturday: we ordered "lightly roasted chicken salad" and when this thing turned up, it was most entertaining: the salad bit was very good with a nice dressing, but it was the chicken that caused the most consternation! It had been lightly seared for about 2mm round the edge and then sliced so it was very raw in the middle.... Very nice it was too! Salmonella hasn't killed me yet . Oh, silly me, according to the locals, there is no salmonella in local chicken!

I would like to say that things have been quieter since they left us but I would be lying! I have spent a good part of this week reading through the rules and regs surrounding food imports to Japan, which has been a particularly turgid experience, and we have both been out to a charity quiz in Ebisu.

And, how could I forget? I am looking forward to another momentous "Brits@lunch" today. Mind you, I can't go too wild as I am due to be in a lecture theatre at Temple University to start JMEC at 0830 tomorrow - yikes!

I thought I would finish up with a couple of oddities from the last few weeks:

	We spotted this poor pooch being preened within an inch of its life in a "salon" in Shin-Okubo....
	Which was the same place that we saw these guys in action. If you leave your bike in the wrong place, they can either give it a ticket, or take it away. This is the first time that I have seen them taking bikes off to the pound. Mind you, most people over here have have very thin, flimsy bike locks as crime is very low. They would have some right fun and games cutting through the monster lock that I have brought over from the UK!
	I really don't think this one needs any comment....!

First up, I have put some pictures in to the architectural museum post last week - we will certainly be going back there, as it was a great day out.

As Steph said in her last blog, she left me in bed last Saturday morning as I had had a very long day on the Friday – and it was not due to alcohol! I had been helping at a charity auction for Refugees International Japan, setting up and then running the silent auction which eventually raised about Y3.5M out of the Y22M or so that was raised on the night. However, by the time we had cleared up, done the sums etc then it meant that I didn't get home until after 2am, having arrived at the venue at 3pm. I was a very tired boy – and I only got one glass of champagne all evening!

After I had managed to drag my sorry backside out of bed on the Saturday – which was only an hour or so after Steph left – then I went down to Shinagawa station to get on a train to Yokohama. I have never been there before and was pleasantly surprised that I could get there in about 30 minutes by train. Japan's two biggest cities, right next to each other! It was very interesting down by the harbour, where they had an Indian festival going on. We had to press on past that as the objective of the trip was just beyond. We had gone down there for the Oktoberfest that they hold every year to celebrate all things German:

	So yes, that was a big hall filled with people, drinking from steins, with an oompah band at one end and drinking songs being sung.....
	.....as well as wursts, saurkraut and pretzels on offer.
	We were sat out here!

All very surreal! What was not surreal were the comedy prices that they were charging for a beer: Y2000 deposit for the glass (of 1L capacity) and then Y3000 to fill it! So the first proper beer was going to cost Y5000 in total: over 30 quid!!

We met some interesting people over the course of the afternoon:

	we spent a couple of hours teaching a group of people from Ricoh some great expressions and what various hand symbols mean. I do hope that they don't use any of them in the office!
	I think this bloke brought his own glass with him - and had taken out a mortgage out to get it filled up! I can only imagine the state he was in when he finished it!!
	We then met some American sailors – and, quite frankly, they were positively worrying in their outlook on life: the banjos were in full swing! By all accounts, she had quite a few more tattoos....

We left the beer festival at about 4 to see a queue over 100m long waiting to get in. Looking at the state of some of the locals there, I think a good few people will have followed us out of there! We then took a wander over to Chinatown, which is a famous tourist attraction.  and we then went for a wander round town.

	A couple of steamed dumplings to sort out the mildly tipsy appetite.....
	It was very interesting to see shops full of fortune tellers doing good trade with the locals.

We then got back on the train and met up with Steph and the remnants of the work BBQ at an Italian restaurant in Shinjuku, which was very chi-chi! We had a very entertaining end to the day though, ending up in a rockers bar in the basement of an apartment block, complete with skull ashtrays, black paint and a very metal orientated pile of CDs – only in Japan!

Saturday morning saw me leaving Glen in bed and out of the house before 8.30 to join the company family bar-b-que. Of course, there was a strict schedule of events so that we should have the organised and choreographed enjoyment that this country does so well!

So a bus ride took us to a large park on the west side of Tokyo, which has everything and more for a day out: a large lake with pedaloes, footsal pitches, cycles for hire, and a kids train. But we were here for the BBQ garden where, even at 11am, there must have been more than 1000 people in groups. It involved queuing at one place for tables, another for chairs, a 3rd for the BBQs, and somewhere else for the food, which despite being prepared and packed, was carefully washed. The ubiquitous loud speaker yelling out instructions was also in attendance.

People watching seemed to be the order of the day so I probably didn't join in enough of the preparations, but the food and drinks were great and then there was the equivalent of an egg and spoon relay race and 3 legged races. However, for other groups, it seemed to involve formal speeches, much bowing and synchronised clapping.

I think it reinforced the anarchist in me - I was never very good at doing what I was told!

Last weekend was a bank holiday weekend so we had 3 days to enjoy ourselves! It is year end and budget build for Steph at the moment which means that she is working hideous hours. So Saturday during the day was spent with her doing some work before meeting up with Pete and Charlotte for "a couple of quiet drinks". We had a couple of quiet ones and moved very swiftly in to some noisy ones before having a bit of a laugh at all the Jocks in skirts who were returning to Tokyo having seen their team be defeated by Japan.... Mind you, we left the bar before the embarrassment of Ukraine scoring against England.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny - but neither of us was in that frame of mind! Steph was off to a "Naked Lady" party, which is where a group get together to swap clothes, books etc and anything nobody wants gets donated to charity. I spent most of the day on the sofa, having been thoroughly broken by 2 nights out on the trot....

On the Monday, we went out to the architectural museum west of Tokyo, which was a good day out. It was interesting to see the evolution of Japanese houses over the last 150 years.

	This house was built in the austerity period during the war and it is made almost entirely out of wood.
	Some of the houses had some wildly inappropriate fittings - chandelier, anyone? It was way too big for the hall way. Nice ceiling though!
	Printed silk screens were beautiful.
	The transition from inside to outside was via paper screens. Through the ages, a Japanese interior will generally have a wood or tatami mat floor and paper screens round the outside of the house. It was only the outside of the house that varied: from the old and traditional below, via art-deco, to the wartime above.
	The gardens were also beautifully laid out.
	A nationally significant shrine has also been preserved here.
	There was also a street of preserved shops. Japan used a huge amount of copper to cover its buildings....
	A view towards the sunset as we approached the station. Cranes and overhead wires - the all pervasive aspect of Japanese scenery!

On Monday night, we met up with a few people for a couple of drinks and a trip to quite a good Chinese restaurant in Akasaka. The group left the ordering to me, which is a very dangerous move. So we ended up with a broad variety of dishes that avoided some of the more extreme things on the menu: garlic cloves fried in 5 spice (v good but stinky), sesame balls with sweet bean paste in the middle (tasty but wrong), fried bacon and wonton (v good).......

.....and a beef dish that had danger written all over it due to the solid layer of whole chillies on the top of it! And very good it was, too!

Life had been rumbling gently on over the past few weeks. We had had some bumf in to our mailbox about the block changing internet service provider. Now I am quite happy about our internet service as it gives us 24Mb both up and down, which is faster than most servers can send us data anyway. So I booked a time and a couple of blokes knocked on the door to insert the new cabling. It turns out that we now have an optical fibre connection in to the flat and our internet speed will increase to 100Mb up and down. Bearing in mind that I can currently make phone calls, listen to the radio, ahem, obtain BBC TV programs, surf the web and Steph can synchronise her work e-mail all at the same time, I have no idea what I am going to do with the extra capacity......

Last week, we had our first proper typhoon and a very entertaining experience it was. There was much studying of the Japan Met Service website to see where the eye was going to go. Our Japanese teacher asked us if we had cleared the balcony off to stop any objects making a bid for freedom! It turns out that that is a major cause of casualties - stray flying objects! The building swayed from the force of the wind, the ventilation system whistled at us all night and it threw it down with rain for 2 days. The third day dawned bright and sunny and quite a bit warmer too. As loads of people had been held up going to work, the city was very quiet too.

We joined the fun and games of getting Glasto tickets last weekend - and we are very happy that it is mission accomplished so we know we will be back in the UK at the end of June next year.

Finally, once a month there is a networking event called Brits@lunch. It is held on a Friday and is an opportunity to meet other expats over a glass of wine and lunch. This is the second one that I have been to, and quite frankly, the name "Brits@lunch" is completely misleading. Yes, lunch does feature, but I think calling it "Brits settling in for a mahoosive session" would be a far more apt name! It is a long time since I have been in a pub at 6 pm with one bloke already asleep on the table, amongst a discussion about what happy hour we were going to move on to next. Great afternoon out on Friday and working out who the various business cards apply to the following day is very entertaining. I retired hurt at about 10pm - which is a good way short of the record of 2 am, a fine performance from a midday start!

Our final day in Hokkaido dawned bright and clear. We were facing a 200 mile drive to get to the airport and therefore had to allow the thick end of 6 hours to do it. As the holiday weekend was certainly over by this stage, the volume of traffic had fallen markedly – although there were more lorries about. This is less of an issue than in the UK as they are keen to make progress wherever and whenever they can. It was not long before the cloud rolled in and the rain started. Oh, good. They are building a freeway across the island, so we thought we would give it a go as the scenery was a bit obscured by cloud.

So, picture this nice new freeway, smooth tarmac/concrete with some fantastic bridges and tunnels to make sure the passage of traffic is not disturbed by the natural topography of Hokkaido…. So why have they made it single carriageway??!?? The incremental cost of dualling it when it was being build would have been bugger all. No point using that, then – the roads over the mountains are far more fun.

We got back to the area of the airport a bit early so decided to find some lunch. I followed a random roadside advert and it led us to a farm shop, which sold Hokkaido dairy produce, spices and sweets. They were also doing a roaring trade in lunch – right tasty it was too! Steph had baked burgery thing with veg and a lovely gravy. Mine looked like a huge blob of meat but when I cut in to it, discovered that it was a very thin layer of meat surrounding a rice core. Interesting and not what I was expecting.

Once we had handed the hire car back, we then settled down in Asahikawa airport to watch the fun and games. It was very busy at that point with 4 flights to Tokyo in less than 2 hours – and then that was it!

Once we were in departures, we managed to find a TV showing the sumo so we were the last to board the aircraft. On our arrival at Haneda, we handed our receipt in and got a large brown envelope in return – with a gas cylinder in it!

We spent the day driving around the Shiretoko peninsula. We started off by going up the pass that crosses the spine separating the east and west coasts. There was a car park at the top with some good views. Because it had good views, it was also rammed with cars and coaches!

	This is me stood in front of Rausu-Dake, which is 1661m tall. And, yes, it is an active volcano - just not been that active too recently!
	This is Steph doing her best to frighten the locals. Japanese tourists really don't like hoodies!
	All the coaches had a uniformed guide with them. That is a job that I really would not want to do...
	Some quality fashions up here too!
	The dark line of hills on the horizon is Russia! The road in the foreground looks good but was disappointing - no decent hair pins and....
	... the whole thing was covered in this grooved, high grip tarmac, which was very very noisy.
	If you look carefully, you will see some naked men in the middle of this picture using an outdoor onsen, next to the river.

The east coast of Shiretoko (and a lot of the more remote coasts of Japan) is a ribbon settlement – 1 house and 1 road wide between the sea and the hills. There has been an incredible amount of money spent on stabilising hillsides, to prevent rock falls, and tunnels for roads – this work was ongoing too. This is another manifestation of the Japanese will to control their environment and maximise safety, at pretty much any cost. On our way up the coast, we spotted people drying the kelp they had collected and also this:

A motorised washing-line for drying fish! Just after this pic was taken, the owner came out and wondered what the hell a couple of gaijin were doing with a camera pointing at her fish from a car....

When we got to the end of the road – it stopped at a bit of a car park! – we saw a few people looking in to the rivers and streams that were running off the hills and in to the sea. When we went to see what was going on, we discovered that the salmon were running up the rivers to spawn. It was very interesting to watch and the rivers were full of fish!

	Those dark shapes in the water are the salmon getting the energy together to go for another jump up....
	The water was not that deep.
	So much so that in some cases there was a good bit of the fish poking out!

We set off down the peninsular again to find some lunch. In all the villages, there were signs for tsunami safety zones as this is still very much on the “Ring of Fire”. Mind you, you wouldn’t half have to be going some to travel the 800-900 metres that some the refuges were inland before the wave arrived! Signs of population decrease were everywhere with some villages being nearly complete ghost towns. This meant that finding somewhere for lunch became entertaining (again) with a distinct lack of choice! We ended up pulling in to this huge, barn-like restaurant that was used to catering for coach parties. We only just made it before closing too. I had some tempura but Steph ordered a grilled fish. It was huge and we both had a good fill of it – most interesting with chopsticks! Fantastic meal!

We crossed back over the peninsular to get back to Utoro, where there was another interesting thing to be seen: We had not realised just how important sunset is to the Japanese. One of the reasons is that most of the population live on the east side of the country, so rarely see it, and a good sunset is supposed to be a good omen for the future.

	This is the crowd that appeared in the campsite to watch sunset. They brought cameras, tripods and lots of other crap to record the event.
	The local hotels are even constructed to maximise the number of rooms that are west facing so you can get a good view of the event!

As the campsite did not have any showers, we ended up taking a walk to the onsen just up from the camp-site. This one seemed to use heated tap water as there was no sulphur smell. Mind you, it was nice to sit in a bath outside and look at the stars overhead.

Ramen for dinner - we are starting to look like bowls of noodles.....

When we got back to the campsite, there was a bloke using the dish-washing facilities to salt some fish. We then retreated back to the shed overnight.

God –we hurt! I bet the car has never heard language like it as we fell out at every stop… I know that we are not the fittest of people, but even so!

Most of the day was spent travelling up to Utoro, a small town in the north east of Hokkaido, close to the Shiretoko National Park. On the way, we went to Abashiri, which is on the north coast of the island, and home to one of the most famous prisons in Japan. It is a fishing town that freezes up completely in the winter so people come here to look at the pack ice. There was very little to recommend Abashiri to anyone, really. We stopped to look at the camp site, but it was in a very exposed position and its highlight seemed to be the doggy adventure playground….

As we were searching for sites in mid/late September, then quite a few were already shut up for the winter. There was one in a natural amphitheatre in a wood that would have been ideal – apart from the locked gates!

We carried on up the peninsular, stopping to look at the things that either the map or the satnav pointed out as being camp sites – we even recognise the katakana so can read some of the signs as we go along. A good few did not exist at all, some were bits of the beach used by fishermen and some were so exposed that I was concerned that we would be on a no-expense, one-way trip to Russia before the night was out.

Eventually, we got to the Tourist Information office in Utoro and they said that there were a couple of sites open in the town and gave us directions to one of them. When we got there, we discovered that they not only rented space for a tent, but you could also rent a log cabin too, for the princely sum of 22 quid/night. That’ll be us, then – at least it should not be so bloody cold!

	Our garden shed...
	Steph laying out our futon matresses for the night - luxury!
	They also did cabins with more beds - we reckon that you can get at least 6 Japanese in there...
	Utoro harbour as the sun started to set.

Utoro is a small, over-developed fishing town that also does a roaring trade in tourism – boat trips up the peninsular, onsens and trips in to the National Park with a suitable number of huge hotels supporting this trade. You would not believe the amount of money that is being spent to improve the road up to this far flung corner of Japan. The other local speciality is seafood: flogging crabs and salmon roe to all who want to buy it.

As it was now early evening, we decided to go on a bit of drive up to the 5 lakes, as they are supposed to be very picturesque. On the way up there we came across this:

Very docile and completely unconcerned by cars. Fine set of antlers – and there was a shop selling those in the centre of town, which had lots and lots of stock….

When we arrived at the 5 lakes, there was a huge queue at the car park, which was a bit of a shock. We eventually got parked and walked out over the wooden walkway to the view point.

	The autumn colours were just starting to appear, and they looked fantastic in the evening light.
	Some top quality fashions on offer up here too. Loved the stripey shoes!
	The walkway was protected by electric fencing to keep our cuddly teddy friends at bay.... Didn't see one though.

On the way back, we did a bit of a detour in the car to a famous onsen, which was shut for renovation, but we did see more of these:

When we got back in to town, we then started the fun and games of finding somewhere to eat. What we needed was somewhere with one of the following: models, pictures or katakana and that did not cost the earth. We eventually ended up in a locals izakaya, eating huge bowls of ramen…..

Today was a day of firsts.

The first of those firsts was that we climbed an active volcano. Me-aken-dake, 1000m up from the car park, round the rim and then back down. With a stroll round the lake to finish off. Or so the guide book said: 4-5 hours, 8km, easy to moderate. Easy to moderate my arse!

	It was easy to spot other walkers on the hike as their bear bells gave them away! We looked at buying one but I think the constant tinkling would have driven me bananas.... In addition, this was a sign we had seen earlier in the trip, recommending the carrying of bear spray.... Autumn is the most active time in the year for bears as they forage for food for the winter and late afternoon is the most active time of day. When were we doing this walk again??!?And we didn't have any spray with us....
	This is the view from the road up. As you can see, the autumn colours are just starting - and that tell tale wisp of steam IS coming out of the mountain....
	The first 90 minutes or so were spend climbing up a steep slope over the top of pine roots. We also saw a good few wires and monitoring stations on the way up. The guidance said that if there was an earthquake or you heard the sirens go off, then you were to get off the moutain in as quick and safe way as possible. Yeah, riiight! This was the view behind us as we left the pine tree section and moved in to the brush pines instead.
	This is the view up the mountain through the brush pines. Yup, that wisp of steam is still coming out of the mountain....
	The lake is our eventual destination. And is is well over a kilometer long, to give a sense of scale.
	The dark blob at the bottom of this picture is Steph to give you a sense of scale!
	The lunar landscape on the left is a mix of sulphur covered rocks and obsidan. Steph can still be seen in the lower right of the picture....
	My first view over the rim and as you can see, there is quite a lot of steam coming out of one bit of the crater. We never did see the hole that was producing it....
	This is looking over the edge in to the crater and you can see the steam coming out of holes in the plug in the bottom of the crater.
	That is another steam vent and is looking towards Lake Aken. The town/spa is just visible on the near shore of the lake. Lots of smell of sulphur here and the rocks towards the lake and past that other crater were covered with it. The whole area looked like the surface of the moon.
	The path round the rim with some obsidan in the background. As you can see, the rope is the only safety guide and the edge is all a bit crumbly.
	Steph at the 10th station - the current summit. I didn't take a picture of the 2 older Japanese couples that were up here with their stoves, having a noodle lunch and making coffee. Gits. They did offer us coffee but we had to decline as we were a little concerned about how much time had passed getting up here....
	The sister peak that consists of cinders and is considered to be a "Fuji-alike". You can just see a path that zig-zags its way up the side of it.

Coming down was equally entertaining – the first hour or so was on sandy scree so was very slippery, then rocks and more boulders in the brush pine before another hour going down over the pine roots again. By this stage we were running out of daylight so getting back to the road was getting quite critical. Although I had a torch, I really really did not want to be coming down over those roots in the dark!

We set out on the final 40 or so minute section at a brisk pace as we knew the car was waiting for us at the onsen and we were thoroughly worn out and a bit jaded with the whole experience! About 2/3 the way round the lake a car coming the other way stopped next to us and it turned out to be one of the couples that we had met at the top. They insisted on giving us a lift back to the onsen – which was absolutely fantastic! I know they will never read this but I thank them here anyway - they were lifesavers!

Once we had signed ourselves out of the walk, it was time for our second first! We haven’t braved an onsen yet – really because there are only a couple within easy striking distance of the flat in Tokyo and they have separate bathing areas for men and women as the whole thing is done naked. We had smelt the sulphurous fumes when we had started the walk so it was time to go and immerse ourselves in the hot waters.

The first stage is that you scrub yourself clean all over – if in doubt, clean it again! The Japanese take a good 10-15 minutes over this, and don’t forget to rinse off your little stool afterwards! There were some outdoor baths but I was drawn to the big pool inside – which also turned out to be the hottest! Things were going OK until one of the older bathers asked if we had done the walk and how long it had taken. My busted Japanese got the numbers wrong so I said 4 hours instead of the 5½ that it had actually taken. That was met with gales of laughter as this coffin-dodger had done it in 3…. Suffice to say, I was the butt of the jokes for the rest of my time in there!

Back out in the car park, we saw this:

The Japanese like doing things for free, and this is a great way to camp in any carpark! It is a roof tent that goes on a set of roof bars on any standard saloon. I think you would need to get a reinforced set to take the weight of a couple of westerners... He had a little aluminium ladder to get up in to the tent itself!

We then returned to Teshikaga to find some food – only to discover that all the restaurants around where we had eaten last night were closing up early. So a quick jaunt around town to find a “local restaurant for local people”. During this jaunting round town we found all the car parks rammed with people sleeping in campervans or the back of estate cars/minivans to avoid paying for a site..... When we had found what looked like a suitable venue, it was time for our third first: going in to a local izakaya and being presented with a katakana menu. No pictures, no models! Right – time to get reading then. Things were good and the waitress was plainly very pleased that we could read a bit and say a bit! The look on her face when we walked in was a picture to behold! Food was OK too: tonkatsu, mixed pizza and some potato furai later and we were sorted!

Then it was back to the campsite to get dressed up like Michelin men again to go to bed!

We had quite a long day in the car. Just how long does it take to get anywhere here? Blanket 50km/h limit and 40 km/h in towns. Yes you did read that right: 50 km/h. Speeding is endemic with most people cruising at 80 km/h (50 mph), slowing to 70 or so in towns. Very active overtaking culture – anyone doing 70 klicks or less gets overtaken fairly quickly. Interesting contrast between some who are very tentative and others who are the double centre line, blind bend specialists – yikes!! People are very disciplined about their overtaking too: accelerate to 100 klicks or so and then slow down to 80 or so straight afterwards.To be fair, you cannot travel any faster on single carraigeway roads in the UK as artics are limited to 40 mph - out here the artics travel as fast or faster as the rest of the traffic and seeing one pull out to overtake is always entertaining!

Hokkaido is a good example of what happens when speed limits are set too low – they just get ignored. The police and cameras were out and about too but that didn't stop people going for it. I am waiting to see if I am going to get a pressy in the post as I didn't spot a camera as I was going for an overtake....

We stopped at a family restaurant in Ribetsu for lunch, which turned in to a bit of a pot luck selection: hamburger doria, spaghetti and tuna salad.

We made our way up to the shadow of Me-aken-dake, to Lake Onneto, to find a campsite we had spotted on Google earth. It was in the middle of nowhere. The banjos were in full swing as there was no village, no restaurant, no nothing! It was also v v cold (7°C at 7pm) and most people were looking far more professionally kitted out than we were! We were a bit concerned that we would end up pitching the tent, eating the high quality pot noodles that we had bought earlier in the day (also known as a pot sh*t) and then going to bed to keep warm….

We set off again and passed another site at Akan Kohan that looked very busy but was also full of children that were making an incredible amount of noise. I was also not impressed with a wooden corale that seemed to have a sound system and stage lights set up for an “Ainu cultural performance”. The Ainu are the local indigenous people that have been practically obliterated by the ethnic Japanese.

Off to candidate number 3. This did us as it was quiet and we managed to get a pitch that was well sheltered from the incoming wind and rain that battered us all night…. It was the first time that we have used all the guy ropes on that tent since a particularly stormy night in an exposed site in Wales! The only thing that the site was missing was showers. And that is because you are supposed to go and use your friendly local onsen….

The evening meal that night at Teshikaga was also a bit of a voyage of discovery as I had fish tempura, which is fairly obvious but Steph ended up with kaki furai – fried oysters and they were great!

Suffice to say that we went to bed wearing pretty much all the clothing we had with us – including fleece hats!

We spent the day around Sounkyo having been very cold overnight. We have only brought our summer weight sleeping bags to Japan and they are great for festivals in the UK but not so good for autumn in Hokkaido! Things were not helped by not having any hot coffee in the morning due to lack of gas! We even checked the vending machine at the camp-site to see if it served hot tinned coffee. You have no idea just how nasty that stuff is so this was a real act of desperation.

We drove up the gorge and then decided to go up the rope way at Sounkyo. We had a real result when I spotted gas cylinders for sale at the trinket shop at the bottom station. Y630 later and we have coffee sorted for the rest of the holiday!

 

We went up the rope-way with a view of going for a walk and possibly taking the chairlift up to the very top of the mountain. There was a ramen restaurant at the top station, so we decided to get some lunch. Good thing that we did as the cloud and rain arrived after about 20 minutes. That was us going back down the rope-way after lunch then....

 

We drove around edge of park enjoying the scenery and countryside as the weather was not suitable for going up high, which was a bit of a shame.

 

We returned to Asahikawa for dinner, the thrutching metropolis that it is, and ended up with yakiniku at a Korean bar-be-q restaurant.

 

We had a bit of a sweepstake on how many tents will have joined us at the campsite. I won as 5 had arrived!

First up, an apology to my regular readers because I did not get a post up last Friday. Things were a bit busy this end as we were in the final fun and games of getting ready to go to Hokkaido.

Japan have just introduced (yet) another bank holiday in September, fairly close to an existing one that always falls on the 3rd Monday of the month. The interesting bit about this is that if a bank holiday falls during the week and 2 days away from another bank holiday (eg a Monday and a Wednesday), then the day in between is given as a bank holiday too! Nice. This mean that this year there was a thing called Silver Week where Monday and Wednesday were official bank holidays, so Tuesday was given as a freebie and that meant that the Japanese could take 5 days off work without using any holiday allowance. 

What that really means is that everyone buggers off out of the city and all the hotels in the country are booked up for months in advance! We had wanted to go and see some countryside for a while and as Hokkaido has something like 25% of the land area of Japan but only 5% of the population, it seemed like a good place to go! Silver week being what it is, the flights on Saturday (out) and Wednesday (return) were already full 3 months ago so we added a couple of days of Steph's holiday allowance and went up on Friday and came back on Thursday, hiring a car for the entire duration.

I wanted an MX5 (since we were going to the mountains.....) but 2 successive apologetic e-mails from europcar later, the first saying that a manual MX5 was not available and the second saying that the MX5 itself was a figment of their imagination, suggested that for the same super-inflated price as a sports car, I could have a luxo-barge monstrosity. Perhaps not, so we cancelled and re-booked something the size of a Ford Focus.

Knowing that the hotels/ryokan were going to be a) full, and b) chuffing expensive even if they did have space, then we decided to brave the autumn up north and take a tent.... This obviously presented a bit of an issue about how to find where the campsites were. The Japan Tourist Board website was quite helpful and listed a few but not many - and a good few of them would be shut by early September. That filled me with confidence!! So I spent a happy day or so using Google maps at a high magnification driving myself round Hokkaido to find any tent symbols that might be there, and then adding a suitable black dot on the road atlas! Later experience suggests that some of those tents were just a little bit spurious!

Friday dawns bright and warm, Steph gets home from work at lunchtime and I have packed all the camping kit and clothing we needed, and off we go. Train to Haneda - great service and only takes 20 minutes.

Haneda is bedlam! Ah, Silver Week. The majority of Tokyo looks to be trying to go somewhere else. Check in and all the baggage has to go through an x-ray machine before being consigned to the hold. Hmmm - the security staff are not happy. Bag goes back and forth a few times before they invite us to open the bags up. Cobblers - I had forgotten that you are not allowed camping gas cylinders in your checked luggage! They also wanted to look in to the tent bag etc and then the bag went back through the machine again to check there were no more offending items in there. This being Japan though, they don't just confiscate any forbidden items. Oh, no - they put them in an envelope and give you a receipt so you can claim them back when you return to Tokyo! How very civilised! Good job we have learned a bit of Japanese too - it would have been a disaster if we had not spoken any of the language! There was quite a queue by the time we had finished that little lot.

Flight was good and we arrived and picked up our hire car. 10 minutes fiddling with the satnav and we had worked out how to input phone numbers of destinations and get it working. Off to find the first campsite. And a shop that sold gas as otherwise there would be no hot coffee in the morning...

They weren't lying when they said that the population density of Hokkaido is far lower than the rest of Japan. It is very rural and shops and facilities are few and far between. We arrived at the campsite (and gave the owner a bit of a shock - he was not expecting white monkeys to get out of the car....) to discover that we were the only guests. The banjos started playing in my head at this point! This was a site with capacity for about 30 RVs in tarmaced bays and camping for 100+ tents, and we were  the only people staying. And he had hot showers - we'll come back to that point later.

Up goes the tent in the chilly evening air and off in to the local town to get some dinner, and some gas. Well we would have done if anywhere had been open. Everything was shut by 7pm - and I do mean everything, apart from one seafood restaurant! That will be us driving the 30km to Asahikawa, then.

Half a dozen shops later, and that will be no gas cylinder. Not happy with the prospect of cold coffee tomorrow! Still, we ended up in a Victoria Steak House and the beef was very very good. Then it was back to the campsite and put our thermals on for our first night under canvas for a while.

Baseball (or rounders as our UK readers will know it) is really big business in Japan. Being on the baseball team is the pinnacle of school sport and, out and about, you see more baseball diamonds and practice grounds than facilities for any other sport.

So baseball was on the "bucket list" of things to do. I have now been twice, with a group of Yakult Swallows supporters, and it has been what has been going on around the pitch (and after) that has provided the entertainment rather than the stuff going on on the pitch.

	This was the first game that I went to, held at the Tokyo dome. It was a 45,000 ticket sell out and the noise in there was incredible. The Japanese have copied the French rugby supporters trick of bringing a band with them who play tunelessly all the way through the match. This was the Swallows playing away vs Tokyo Giants on a Friday night.
	This is a Tokyo Swallows home game on a Thursday vs Hiroshima Carp. Lots of empty seats, but not in the away supporters area.They were certainly making some noise!
	Being Japan, there is a desire to make things as authentic as possible. So you get a 5 minute performance from the cheerleaders half way through, along with some comedy mascots.
	The score board is one huge display that shows highlights through the game and, most usefully, warnings about balls arriving in the audience. They usually put that one up about 10 seconds after one has been twatted in to the crowd.
	These are the most important people at a baseball game! Tokyo dome earned big black marks because their beer girls disappeared after the 6th inning. At least the Swallows keep theirs out until the bitter end!
	As you can see, the old ones are still the best! Look at the stack of cups Pete is holding, he was deep in to his 5th or 6th beer by this stage. The comedy miniature umbrellas are put up and danced with when the Swallows score a home run. I have't seen them used that often....
	We had a Hiroshima supporter sat in the row in front of us. And this was the moment that the Swallows snatched defeat from right down the throat of victory in the 8th inning. He is going to have some really interesting bruises today!
	Once I been for a few more (lots) beers in town, I wandered my way home. Now, I know the Japanese are renowned for being able to sleep anywhere, any time. But on the bottom of a flight of stairs, on the platform at a subway station?? I didn't have the heart to wake him up and tell him that the last train had just left....

A highly entertaining evening out which I think I am going to be paying for for the rest of today....!

I have done some strange things in my time but this weekend was one of the more incongruous. Steph's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and we never really got a cake to celebrate it. Japanese cakes look lovely but aren't really anything to write home about. If you are looking for a properly powerful, sweet taste then you have to go western.

So I went for a bit of a raid up the back of the cupboard and dug out the Christmas pud that my parents had bought over for us in April. Only 4 months beyond its “best by” date, we were sure that it would be OK! So, sat in a flat in Tokyo on a rainy Sunday night, we have been watching the broadcast coverage of “V” Festival and eating chrissy pud.

Speaking of “V”, there were some absolutely belting performances from Elbow, Keane, Lily Allen, Calvin Harris and Lady Gaga. I also thought Snow Patrol did a fantastic job of filling in as headliners for the now defunct Oasis. Bit of a shame that the clowns at 4Music have not learned from the BBC about how to cover festivals. The Glasto coverage was streets ahead.... Still, it was nice to see some good live music!

We have had a fairly quiet week apart from an upmarket wine-tasting that I went to on Thursday night. It was a very couth affair at the Mandarin hotel but that did not prevent a couple of Japanese blokes getting squiffy monumentally quickly! I have also seen flocks of vultures before, but nothing beats supposedly prim and proper Japanese ladies when they are fighting their way through the crowd to get to a tray of canapés! Get those elbows busy!!

I have also been working closely with another ex-pat out here looking at whether or not we can get a cheese import business up and running. The view is that the numbers work but, by 'eck, there is some paperwork to go through! We have also heard some interesting stories about stuff being held up in Customs for ever after they have been “encouraged” to hold on to it by competitors, which are concerning us a bit.....

I have been spending some time with Pete and a friend of his who is over from Mumbai for a weeks holiday. Obviously there has been some trawling round the fleshpots of Tokyo (which is as dead as a dodo in the early part of the week) but the highlight was a trip to a Korean restaurant for lunch. All the food was served pretty raw but in a baking hot stone bowl – stir it to cook it and then get eating!

Finally the election over here is over. I was getting heartily sick to death of getting yelled at in my own apartment! The most overt signs of campaigning are the election posters outside the railway station (all neatly arranged in numbered spots on a large board) and teams of vans with massive loud hailers driving round town making a huge racket. It was a nightmare all the way up in the sky so it must have been bedlam on the ground.

Everyone has been saying about what a momentous event the election result is. I am less sure. There are still too many vested interests involved in governing this country for change to happen quickly. The new government is going to have to be bold to drive change quickly and I am not sure that that is in the Japanese character. The power of the bureaucrats here is all encompassing and it is going to take a while to prise their sticky mitts off the levers of power. Also there is the question of how all this is going to be paid for. Although the Japanese population have got hundreds of trillions of Yen in the banks, the government is pretty broke – and tax revenues have collapsed due the reduction in global trade with Japan. Not a great state to be in. Mind you, the world markets seem to think so as the Yen seems to be appreciating quite nicely at the moment.... as the pound goes down the toilet, again!

Whilst we were back in the UK, Steph got me a great present: a new camera. The thing that I have been looking for is improved performance in very low light as I like taking pictures of cityscapes and the neon lights. This is a really good thing as Tokyo is a pretty ugly city during the day but it provides some great cityscapes at night. Suffice to say that my new toy is rather better at taking pictures than I am composing them....

I have taken a few pictures in Shibuya before but I thought I would give it another go to show you some of the oddities that are there, now that I can get a far better quality result:

	I had only been in Shibuya for a couple of minutes before I spotted this lot walking along. There were 2 "trains" of blokes all dressed in black walking around. They were advertising a local video arcade that had just opened its doors.
	Condomania is always good for a bit of entertainment and strangeness....
	... and it did not let me down this time, either!!
	Male S+M kit?
	Baby doll is a pet shop that sells suitable cute dogs and cats that have all been trimmed and pampered within an inch of their lives.
	Here is the interior of the shop. Very clean and no smell whatsoever.
	They had a sale on. the cage on the left has got Y50,000 (300 quid....!) off - which is a good thing considering the starting price for that young moggie is Y358,000. Yes, I will repeat that: three hundred and fifty eight THOUSAND Yen. Or in real money, north of £2300. For a cat.
	This poor pooch was feeling really unloved - to go from Y218k to Y150k is a bit of a kick in the teeth.
	Internet cafes are some of the cheapest places to stay in the centre of Tokyo if you miss the last train home. 60 minutes is Y1000 or all night is Y3000, or about 20 quid. They offer showers, DVDs, videos etc as well as nibbles and drinks, and generally cater for a purely male clientele.
	Here is the outside of one of the infamous "hostess" bars, where men go (although they are common for women too) for some compensated dating. The prices are suitably steep at each Y1000 being nearly £7 at the moment. I am very proud of the fact that both Steph and I can now tell you that the katakana across the centre of that sign reads "strawberry jam"!
	Amusement arcades are a very popular "dating" activity and offer all kinds of machines. Including Japanese drumming ones, obviously.
	Remember me telling you that this was a very 3D city? And that the bar you are looking for might be below your feet? or way above your head? Here is a good example of that on one of the buildings.
	Remember those blokes dressed in black at the top of this post? Well, this is the other, more traditional way of encouraging people to come in to your arcade!
	Plastic food outside restaurants is often the only clue you have about what they serve if you can't read.
	I have NO idea what "moon style dining" actually is!
	The neon is very bright in Shibuya and Shinjuku, and quite overwhelming. Whether it is bright enough for the shades that the bloke in the middle of the picture is wearing is a very different question!

What else have we been up to?

Summer in Japan is fireworks season and I have to be honest and say that they do fireworks very very well. We went over to Sakura City to see Gail and go to a local display. It was very very impressive and it was nice to see the field empty about 20 mins after the display finished and no litter!
 

	One of my few successes when taking pictures of fireworks!
	Megumi, Gail and Neo. Neo had bought Gail the kimono earlier that day. One size fits all, according to the packet. Yeah, riiiight! Once size might fit all Japanese! Sure don't fit Gaijin! I gather Gail needed scissors to get out of it where they had sewn some of the straps together.....

Steph has been threatening to throw a party for her colleagues for a while so we decided to have a triple celebration: Steph's birthday, our first anniversary in Japan and Hanabi. We chose the night of the Tokyo Bay fireworks, hoping to get a good view from our flat. Did we get a view? Oh, yes – and some of these fireworks were monsters that rattled the windows from over a mile away. Very impressive!

What else has been going on? Well, we have booked some flights to go to Hokkaido at the end of September to go camping. I have sorted a hire car – even though they couldn't do an MX5.... - which may be a good thing as I don't know how cold it is going to be. The city that we are flying to has the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in Japan: -40°C. Yikes! We will be taking some wooly hats with us and sleeping in them, if necessary. We also understand that bears can be a bit of an issue up there, so it looks like there might be much to keep us amused!!

As it gets quite warm in our apartment, we have been running the aircon quite a bit. Well, we have been until we got the latest electricity bill..... Y23,000 for one month. That is over 150 quid on electricity alone... Looks as though bloke will be opening the windows in the afternoon, then!

Finally we have been spending some time networking in the Brit community over here. It has proved to be good fun although a couple of the hangovers have been brutal!

Things have been a good bit calmer today: the lashing rain has gone and also the building is not moving around quite as much!

I also thought I would post the final day's pics from the trip to Beijing:

	This was the view out of our hotel room window - over towards the Forbidden City.
After 30 mins in the coach, we arrived:
	This was the back entrance, which had thousands of people round it. Mostly Chinese tourists.
	The main part of the palace is made up of walled courtyards with these long corridors between them. Each member of the royal family or harem had their own bit. Interestingly, even the emperor's complex was very small and claustrophobic.
	The roofs were spectacular in terms of colour and detail.
	This how all the drinking water is delivered to the various stalls around the palace (and having seen quite a few of these out and about) the rest of Beijing too.
	This was the private throne room where most of the business of state was done. The last emperor was manipulated by his mother, who stayed out of sight but in hearing range so she could control the decisions made.
	This is the main throne hall for ceremonial events.
	And this is the scrum to try and get a picture of it! I managed to get to the front of this (size has its advantages) but could not get a decent picture :O(
We walked out of the palace towards	Tiannamen Square:
	This portrait of Mao looks down the Square (which is huge) towards his own mausoleum.
	The Great Hall of the People, where some decisions are rubber-stamped.
	Mao's mausoleum.
	Complete with stirring workers statues outside. Very communist. Interestingly, our guide said on the coach that it was most likely that we knew more about events in the square of 20 years ago than she did. News in China was and still is tightly controlled.
Then it was off to an ancient observatory:
	Considering the simplicity of the instruments, the level of observation and the conclusions they drew from these observations even from about 1200 AD onwards was breath-taking.
	On the way back to the bus, we found the local party headquarters. Being a member of the Party is still the best way to success.
That night we went out for our final meal in Beijing:
	This looked fairly innocuous - but was a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing! Those green things are whole peppercorns and the sauce was suitably hot. The prawns in there were great, though. At the top left is some pumpkin chips which were fantastic!
	Steph is eating crayfish in the background. The real reason this photo was taken is that big red dish in the middle, which was the cause of a massive c*ck-up that had some very entertaining consequences.
	This is fried pork Szechuan style - and it looks a good bit different to what you would get in the UK.The red stuff is a mix of chopped red chillies and pepper corns. The idea is that you sift through that pile and then recover the bits of pork to eat them. What you don't do is take a really big spoonful of the dish and then pop it straight in to your mouth.... The voice of experience (when I was able to speak again...) says that that was a really bad idea. That one plate rendered 4 of us utterly incapable of speech or pretty much any coherent thought. Steph was the clever bird who worked out how we should have done it! The following day really was not pretty for a number of us!

So that was China - finally!

You will be pleased to know that I have some Japanese stuff to talk about in the next couple of posts.

Or not as the case may be. Stupid o'clock this morning and this happens.

How not to wake up.... Having your cart move around randomly below you is not a pleasant experience :O(