Catching Up & Time at the Seaside! - Odaiba

Recently I had the opportunity to catch up with some old friends here, some of my former students.  We organised to meet at the nearest train station to where I work and went to a nearby Izakaya.  It was so good to see them again, as they all were such an important part of why I enjoyed my time here the first time, and that in itself was a motivating factor for me to come back again.  We shared some laughs, caught up with what has been happening over the last 8 and a half years, what is happening now, and shared a lot more laughs.  We enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided it would be a monthly happening now, the next one scheduled for the end of this month, a Hanami (cherry blossom) party!  Looking forward to that, but I managed to get one of the waitresses to take a photo of us:

Yesterday I also caught up with another couple of friends and former students.  One was so nervous about meeting me as she had stopped studying English and was worried that she wouldn't remember how to speak, but as I said to them, I am grateful that they speak anything to me in English as my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to have a conversation!  I told her not to worry as I could understand her perfectly.  She then noted that "My English is like a quiz!".  I don't know, but anyone who can say that has a pretty good grasp of English!!

Unfortunately we forgot to have a photo taken of us, but after catching up for lunch (which was just as much fun as the previous one!) we headed toward the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building as they have an observatory up pretty high.  We were a little unlucky with the view as the prevailing winds at the moment are blowing a heap of sand from the Chinese deserts and smog form their cities across the sea and over Japan.  It is a phenomenon that happens at this time each year, but I took some photos so you could get a bit of an idea of what downtown Tokyo looks like.

And in the middle of downtown Tokyo:

a massive park!

That interesting looking building in the left hand side background is the Tokyo School of Design which is why it looks a bit artistic I guess.

So today I had another day off and decided to head to a place in Tokyo called Odaiba.  Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay.  It was built in 1853 as one of six defensive posts to defend Tokyo (or Edo as it was called then) from attack by sea.  The biggest concern at the time was from an American called Admiral Matthew Perry who had landed at nearby Yokohama the same year demanded that Japan start trading with the US.  In 1990 the then Governor of Tokyo decided to develop the island into a showcase for futuristic living and they planned for the area to eventually house over 100,000 people.  Development kind of ground to a halt in about 1996 as the full affects of the Japanese economy bubble bursting took hold and a lot of the companies involved in the development went bankrupt.  In the late 1990's action re-commenced and it is now a bustling hive of offices, large shopping malls, apartment blocks and varied attractions that encourages a lot of Tokyo residents to cross the Bay on their days off and enjoy themselves.

One of the first places I went to was a man-made beach, complete with beautiful white sand,

and a windsurfer (if you can see him in the picture...

That bridge there is called the Rainbow Bridge and is what is used to get from the Tokyo across the bay to Odaiba.  There is an interesting story about that bridge that I will remember to tell you a bit later.

Anyway, it was a warm day, the sand felt great beneath my feet and I was just about to strip off and go for a swim when I see this:

Now just in case you want to ignore the warning about swimming, they have a warning about not having open flames anywhere near the water!!  If that isn't enough to stop anyone from swimming there, then they deserve whatever exotic rashes they get!

A little bit later on I see a sight that most people would think you would only see in New York:

Yes, Tokyo has it's own replica of the Statue of Liberty.  Just in case any of you thought that I was just making up all of this blog and hadn't really left Australia and I was finding these pictures on the net......

Yep, it is me!

There are a few uniquely designed building at Odaiba, none of which is more unique than this one:

This building is the head office of one of the TV stations here.  I don't know why the ball is there or what purpose it serves. I tried to find out, but even Wikipedia couldn't give me the answer.

I moved on from here and went to one of the many large shopping malls.  I was getting a bit hungry at this time so I hunted down a food court.

I went to the one right over in the back, with gold letters on black background.  The lady who served me was lovely and I uttered one word of Japanese to her and she immediately complimented me on my great Japanese and asked where I was from and what I was doing in Tokyo.  I was able to get out a few more words of Japanese (I don't know if my further attempts to speak in Japanese changed her mind at all) and then went and sat down with my steaming bowl of soup noodles and ate a thoroughly delicious meal!

I don't know if you can make out the writing on the sheet of seaweed at the back of the bowl, but it says "thank you" in about five or six different languages.

Nearby, Toyota has a showroom and I wandered in to take a look.  It was mostly just cars but they did have a couple of cool things.  The first one was a car simulator based on the Gran Turismo 5 game.  I burned my way around the track and was complimented on my driving abilities even though if it was a real car I had been driving, I would have been extricating myself from a smoking pile of scrap metal!  I moved on to the next interesting exhibit:

It was a driving simulator that utilises Toyota's new crash avoidance systems.  In a nutshell, it gives an audible warning when danger is approaching (ice on the road, a stationary vehicle or an oncoming vehicle if you happen to be driving on the wrong side of the road like I was.....  If there is no reaction from the driver, the brakes will start being applied automatically and the seat belt will tighten in anticipation of a collision, and to try and minimalise the damage to both car and driver.  At the end of my drive, the driver was relatively unscathed, but the same could not be said for my vehicle......  I walked away with more compliments about my great driving.

I made my way out of the Toyota showroom and into another shopping mall.  The interior of this one was very classic Italian in it's look.

Fascinating place this one, the architecture was great!  I left this place and went for a bit more of a walk and saw a large group of people milling around and headed over to find out what the attraction was.

At first I thought it was Optimus Prime, or another of the Transformers but it is actually from a Japanese animation series.  I didn't want to get too close, it looked serious!

I headed back over toward the beach area and got a better photo of the Rainbow Bridge.

So the story about the Rainbow Bridge.  A number of years ago, before I lived here previously, a man hijacked a Boeing 747 that had just taken off from nearby Haneda airport, swung the plane around and started lining it up for an attempt to fly under the bridge!!  Luckily for all concerned, as he was focused on his task, the flight crew were able to overpower him and regain control of the plane before any damage was done.  Now, a highly trained pilot could probably squeeze a Jumbo jet under the plane, but a random crazy man?  Definitely not!

It was getting close to 8pm by this time, so I went looking for a place to have dinner then walked outside to see the city of Tokyo lit up and did a quick swing around with the video camera so you could get an idea of what the city looks like at night.  Here is the link to the video on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KnrmfxK_W0&feature=youtu.be 

Thanks again for having a read.

See you next week with another update!  Bye.

Revisiting places - Asakusa

I had a day off today so decided to head to a part of Tokyo that has more of a traditional feel to it with a friend Daniel.  We went looking for an area called Ameyoko but I think we came out of the station at the wrong exit and couldn't see it but had a look around where we were anyway.  We were right next to one of Tokyo's most famous temples, Sensoji Temple.

When I was living here before, one of my students was a tv director and she asked me if I wanted to be in one of her tv shows.  The show was about what kind of Japanese souvenirs foreign tourists buy when they visit Japan.  Sensoji Temple has a pathway about 100m long leading up to the Temple and the path is lined on both sides with dozens and dozens of souvenir shops.  Basically they just wanted us to go from shop to shop and pick up anything interesting we saw and comment on it, why it was interesting, why we would or wouldn't buy it etc.  At the end of the program the tv crew gave me about $200 and told me to go back and buy anything that I wanted and then they would finish the filming with me explaining why I bought what I did.  I bought a mens yukata (kind of like a dressing gown) and a nice picture of Mt Fuji. So today I returned to the scene of my one and only tv appearance (and, no, I didn't get recognised.....) as Daniel had not been there before.  It is an incredible place, if you can block out all of the commercialism and just concentrate on the architecture, and what the place stands for.

Before we got to the temple we saw this guy.  It looks like he was trying to tell us not to do something, but I couldn't understand what, so I probably ended up doing it anyway!

At the start, they have a big gate.  This place is always packed with people taking photos of the gate (yes, just like I did!):

Through the gate is where the souvenir shops start, way off in the distance you might just be able to make out the temple!  All of the shop staff are very friendly and always greet you with a smile.

I am sure you have all seen the little statues of cats with their hands raised in Asian shops and restaurants.  Sometimes you see them with their left paw raised (brings customers to a shop) or their right paw raised (brings the owner good luck).  I once heard a story about the origins of the good luck cat.  Way back in the old days of Japan a feudal lord was resting himself and his horse under a tree when he saw a temple nearby.  Outside the temple was a cat and it appeared to be beckoning him.  He got on his horse and rode over to the cat to get a better look.  Suddenly the tree under which he and his horse had been resting was struck by lightning and thus the cat had brought him good luck.  The feudal lord became close friends with the temple priest and the temple became very prosperous.  A nice story I think.  This next shop must be both really lucky and really rich!

I remember when we were filming the tv program, I spied a shop that grabbed my attention straight away!

That one right at the top, it's price is about AUD$2,900!

They even have Excalibur!!

Here are a few pictures of inside the grounds of the temple.  The detail in the architecture is incredible.  I could have wandered around admiring it for a long time!

In this next photo you can see a big metal cauldron with smoke coming out.  It is a kind of incense that is burning, and if you waft the smoke over yourself it is supposed to bring you good luck.  It is also said that if a man wafts the smoke over his head, he will not lose his hair.  I tried that once, and it clearly did not work....

While inside the inner grounds I took a short video.  I tried to upload it here, but kept getting an error so here is the link to it on Youtube: 

http://youtu.be/D2CyBT4is0M

It might give a better idea of what it is like in the grounds, and yes that was me saying that I didn't know how to use the camera just as it started recording!

Anyway, it was a good day, and I'll try and get to Ameyoko on one of my days of next week.

Unitl then, Bye.

A Week Into Work

Last Saturday the building I was working in was closed for the day for maintenance.  I was told it happens once a year.  Seeing as no-one had to work on the Saturday, some of the other teachers had organised to go out on the Friday night and enjoy themselves.  The frist place we went to was an izakaya, which is like a casual dining bar, or a Japanese style Tapas bar.  It was really good to get to know them, about half of the teachers were there and we had a few drinks and some food.

After we finished there, we went to a karaoke bar and the fun and games really began.  For those who haven't sampled Karaoke Japanese style, it is a lot more fun than some of the versions we may otherwise be used to.  There is no standing up in front of a crowd of people you don't know.  In Japan, your group gets it's own little karaoke room and the only people who are watching and listening are your friends, so it is always a lot of fun!  One of the songs that I sung was Smooth by Santana and Rob Thomas.  The karaoke machine ranked my effort the top ranked version of that song that had been sung there.  I put it down to the fact that it is not a well known song in Japan and no-one else had sung it!  But it was a lot of fun.

A friend back in Australia has asked me to talk a little about how English as a second language is taught to adults, especially beginners.  Here in Japan, school students have 6 years of English study through high school, but generally that education consists of reading, writing and grammar, no speaking. That is starting to change these days, however.So, when teaching to a beginner, they can usually recognise some of the written words they encounter in a text book.  In a beginner lesson, there are a lot of pictures and gestures used, an lot of repeating what the teacher says, and if they don't know how to respond to a question, writing the answer down and memorising it.  A lot of repeating, reading out loud and very short sentences.  Gradually two short sentences are put together to make a longer sentence.  Slowly you encourage your student to start asking questions rather than just responding to them.  At this stage, they are usually at an intermediate level and before too long, they are initiating conversations and using follow-up questions to keep a conversation going.  

I had a student last week who was at a low intermediate level and he had a company meeting and party afterwards the next day.  There were going to be some English speaking people there from overseas and he wanted me to give him some pointers on how to initiate a conversation.  He was quite good at asking further questions, just found the initiating bit hard so I taught him 3 questions: "Where are you from?", "Is this your first visit to Japan?" and for someone he had met previously: "Long time no see.  What have you been up to?".  We practiced these quite a bit with me taking on the character of the overseas colleague, changing the country that I was from each time to elicit different follow-up questions from him, and he was great!  I haven't  seen him since to find out how he went, but I think he would have been fine.

When a student then gets to a more advanced level, the lessons then take on more of a discussion style, still with a target language to the lesson, but the main aim at this stage is to introduce more natural language, idioms and higher level vocabulary.  At a really high level, when they are almost like a native speaker, the only real difference at that stage is the number of idioms and slang that is used.  Primarily students at this level are there to take lessons simply to maintain their high ability.  These can actually be some of the more difficult lessons to teach, because at this stage, the student probably knows some vocabulary that the teacher doesn't especially if the vocab is very specific to the industry the student works in.  The good thing is that they usually realise this and are not too concerned if you have a blank look on your face when they use one of those words!!

I hope that helps understand a little of what happens in our classroms.  Of course, if anyone has any more questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section, or email me.

On Monday at about 5pm, I was at work and it was a little quiet, only one of the teachers had a lesson.  Suddenly the building's PA/intercom blared to life with a loud, high pitched whistle and a recorded voice announced something in Japanese, then in English, I heard: "Please brace yourself.  A big earthquake will arrive in 5 seconds"!!  At this point, the only student who was in the school went to dive under the desk!  The voice then announced something else in Japanese followed by the translation in English: "Please brace yourself.  An earthquake is arriving now", and exactly as she said the word now, I felt the floor starting to shake.  Now, we are in the second basement of our building so it didn't feel too bad, but it was a 6.2 magnitude earthquake based about 120 km north of Japan.  One of my students later that night whose office is higher in our building said the building was swaying noticeably.  But then, they are designed to do that to limit any damage.  So after the shock of hearing the warning it turned out to be not too bad, and last I heard, there had been no damage or injuries closer to the area it originated, which is good.

Today I had a day off and thought I would go exploring.  I headed off in the opposite direction to my train station as I had heard that there was a bicycle recycling place nearby.  A big problem in Japan is from people who leave bicycles at train stations.  After a while, the local government will put a sticker on the bike telling the owner that if they don't retrieve their bike, it will be removed.  If it is still there after a set period of time, they are removed and taken away to be crushed.  This place that I had heard about has a deal with some of the local governments whereby they will take some of the bikes that are in better condition, fix them up and sell them to the public at pretty cheap prices.  So I went off in search of the "Suginami Bike Recycling Centre".  I found it and a lovely man explained to me that they are only open for sales a few days a month and those days had already passed for February but told me when they were open for March.  He also explained that there are no mountain bikes or sports bikes, just standard shopping bikes, so I will keep looking as I am more interested in a mountain bike I think, to get around on.  Nearby there was a small elementary/primary school.  There was a very interesting statue in front of the school:

It looks like a statue of a child hiding under something with it's eye poked out!  You can see the blood running down the side of it's face.  I'm sure there is a perfectly logical reason for this.

I kept on walking though and soon came to a large highway and started walking along it as one of my housemates had told me that there was a 24 hour supermarket somewhere in the area.  Pretty soon I saw this bank of vending machines.  There's no such thing as too many choices.  Yes, Japan really is the King of vending machines:  

A popular way to deliver food in Japan is by little 3 wheeler motorbikes like this:

You might just be able to see under the bike, there is a kind of pivot, so as the bike is turning a corner, the whole bike except for the rear wheels lean into the corner.  The container that the food is in, usually swings independently from the bike so that the food doesn't go flying every time a corner is taken!  These particular deliver bikes were for a sushi restaurant.

A little further on I came across a Mcdonald's  restaurant and saw that their current special burger was this:

You might just be able to make out at the top, the name of the burger, the Idaho Burger, so thinking of my good friend from Boise Idaho, land of the blue football field, I went inside and got one.

Brian my friend, this one's for you!  I sat down at my table with a view, had my burger and watched the world go by.

I started making my way back home and as I was about to turn away from the highway and back to my place I saw something interesting across the highway so I made my way to the other side and found myself in another one of those "contrast" moments I talked about a couple of posts ago.  Leading away from the highway, the busy, modern highway was an old school Japanese shopping street.

So I went for a wander.  So many little small interesting shops with the owners constantly trying to encourage shoppers to enter their shops by describing  their shops, and their goods for sale in them.  I could have wandered around for hours and not gotten bored.  Eventually though, I turned around and made my way back home.  I decided to go along the river side instead of the road and as I looked over the walkway into the waters of the river below, saw this:

Yes, those are fish, huge fish!  The white things are ducks, that is how big these fish were!  Don't know that I would want to cook them up for dinner though, the water was a bit green.

Thanks again for reading.  I hope you are enjoying my stories.  Speak to you again soon.

Settling In

So the last few days have involved settling in to my new surroundings.  I went to the local government office to register my address with them and in the process, it became even more obvious how much Japanese I have lost since I last lived here.  I felt sorry for the poor lady who had to deal with me as I couldn't understand very much at all of what she was saying!  She ended up calling a co-worker who translated to me what the other lady was wanting to know from me.  As a result, the whole process took twice as long as what it would normally have, but we got there in the end!

The following day I went to the bank to open an account with them.  All of the staff there were really friendly, helpful and spoke great English.  This process was finished very quickly.  I had chosen this bank as all of their services are in both Japanese and English, including their online banking site!  Very convenient.

People often ask me what do i like about Japan.  One of my common answers is that Japan is a country of contrasts.  The example I often give is that you can be in the middle of Tokyo, one of the busiest and most populous cities in the world, then jump on a train, travel for an hour and be in a remote village where some people may not have seen, let alone met a foreigner.  I stumbled across another incredible example today of these contrasts that I love.  I did a trial run to get to my company's offices today as I have to be there to sign my contract tomorrow and I wanted to know how long it would take to get there and where exactly to go.  I found the place fine, and was just about to head back to the train station when I spotted an innocent looking group of trees that required a little more investigation.  Bearing in mind, the area that I was in looked like this:

Typical of downtown Tokyo.  I walked across the road to where the trees were and saw this:

It appeared to be the gateway to a temple!  In my previous post, I showed some photos of a temple near my house that was "guarded" by a couple of statues of dogs.  Well, this one was guarded by cats, both living and not!

I walked in and was amazed at the beauty of the place, and the peaceful, serene atmosphere of a temple, surrounded by greenery.

Absolutely incredible!  I was walking around stunned.  To find a place like this in the middle of Tokyo is just amazing, and really sums up the contrasts that I talk about.

However, I then stumbled upon something that reminded me of where I really was.....

Oh well, I guess the temple needs an income stream too right?  So I sat down with a bottle of coke zero, and just soaked up the atmosphere and became one with my surroundings.

Off to the office tomorrow, and then training starts and will continue for 3 days after which, work starts!

Speak to you soon.

Sad farewells and new beginnings

Work at the Port Lincoln Hospital finished last Friday by which stage I had pretty much packed everything and was ready to leave to drive to Adelaide the next day.  It was sad to be leaving the hospital as I had really enjoyed working there.  A great group of people to be working with, especially Jenny, Danielle and Cheryl (I'll always be a laundry lady at heart!)

Last Wednesday signaled my last night in Australia and so had some farewell drinks with friends at the Coopers Alehouse in Adelaide. The Alehouse has always been my favourite pub in Adelaide so it was appropriate that it was the location for drinks.  I have to say thanks to everyone who turned up, it was really humbling to see so many people come to say goodbye.

I had a nice moment at the airport with my brother Matthew.  20 years ago on my 21st birthday, my father gave me the "keys to the house", which means that you are welcome to return anytime.  In Port Lincoln I had been living with Matthew and so I had a set of house keys.  I went to return them to him at the airport and he simply told me to keep them for anytime that I returned.  That moment of handing over the keys came full circle!  At the airport I had my 2 closest friends (Warren and Daz) and my brother there to say goodbye and I must admit that I did shed a quiet tear as I walked away and left them.  I am absolutely blessed to have such a great group of friends and family all of who are very special to me, and to be saying goodbye is such a difficult thing to do.  In the year 2000 when I first moved to Japan, I was only intending to stay for 1 year, so that farewell was not too bad.  This time, I am looking at this as a long term move so it is so much harder to say goodbye.  My family and friends do realise that moving back to Japan is something that was probably inevitable, so everyone has been supportive of this decision.

So my flight went through Kuala Lumpur where I had about 5 hours wait for my connecting flight. The connecting flight was delayed by an hour which caused some problems when I landed in Tokyo.  I had organised to meet my landlord at 11am to move into my new house, but because of the delay I was late arriving and missed him.  A few phone calls later and I met up with him and was taken to my new home.  My bedroom has a couple of big windows that let a lot of light in, which is great.  One of the windows opens out onto a small bamboo "forest" which is fantastic!  My very own little patch of nature in the middle of Tokyo!

A couple of things happened to me on this first day in Tokyo that so truly represent what I love about Japanese people.  When I arrived at the airport (which consists of 2 terminals), I had to make my way by shuttle bus to the other terminal to pick up a Japanese sim card for my phone that I had ordered.  So there I was with my 2 suitcases, laptop and carry-on bag waiting for the bus.  When it arrives a Japanese guy comes up to me and asks if I am catching this bus.  When I said "yes", he took hold of one of the suitcases and the laptop and tells me that he will help.  He then gets on the bus with me and when the bus gets to the other terminal, helps me off the bus with my bags, gets a luggage trolley for me and helps me load them on.  Now, I don't even know if this guy was even intending to go to this terminal, but it just wasn't any trouble at all for him to help me out!  Later that day before I had met with the landlord, I was walking around the streets of Tokyo (Shibuya) looking for their office and an old man came up to me and asked if I needed any help.  I explained that I was looking for the real estate company's offices.  He didn't know where they were, but stopped and had a chat with me anyway.  He asked where I come from and I told him Australia.  He then said "Oh, Australia is very hot now, summer.  Lots of fires and storms and water and....and....Tasmanian Devils!!  Very dangerous place!"  He then asked me how old I was.  I told him 41 and he laughed and said "I am 81, twice your age!!" He pointed me back to the train station where he told me I would find an information counter and sent me on my way!  A couple of very nice experiences already!

So after settling in to my new home I decided to go for a walk to have a look around my new neighbourhood.  Not far from my house I discovered a little Shinto Shrine.

In that picture, just before that gates, at the top of the steps you can see a couple of small statues:

I'm not sure what they are representing, maybe guarding the temple, but I look forward to finding out about them.

A little further on, I came across this.  it looks like a Shinto shrine, although I could be wrong, I'm not really an expert!

Then I stumbled across my most important find so far!  I discovered, right outside my train station, a liquor store that sells my favourite beer that is made in Adelaide!

So, of course I had to get a couple!  It just feels like I was supposed to be living in this part of Tokyo!!

I have met a few of my housemates who all seem very friendly.  The house has a mix of Japanese and Korean people with me thrown in as well.  The ones I have spoken to speak pretty good English, now I have to improve my Japanese (and learn some Korean too!).

Tomorrow is a public holiday so I might catch a train out of Tokyo and see if I can find some snow somewhere!  Then on Tuesday I have to go to the local government office to register my address with them and open a bank account.  After that I will be ready to go to my work, sign my contract and start training.

I'm looking forward to all of that happening and will give another update soon!

Bye.