Kyoto Weekend

Well spent the weekend in Kyoto, which everyone told me was a must see. It is impressive, the city is built on a flat plain surrounded by hillsides covered in trees. Once again wherever it is flat the japanese have built but as soon as the ground starts to rise in anyway then the hillsides are covered in trees and shrubs. There was one scene where I was looking down a busy city street with high rise department stores, neon lights, cars, all teeming with people, a great neon tunnel, at the end of which was a tree covered hill. Difficult to explain how strange this looks, when you are just so used to countryside gradually creeping into a city scene.
I read the guidebook and there are pages and pages of must see temples and shrines so I spent breakfast on Saturday working out a route from thesilver pavilion temple, down the philosophers walk and onto another 5 or 6 temples. So jump into a taxi and ask to go to the temple in my best Japanese and off we go. 15 minutes later arrived at the golden pavilion temple sigh, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji are just a little bit too close, anyway not a total disaster as this was also one of the must see temples. Paid my money to get in and nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue, umm this temple visiting might not be my cup of tea. Back into a taxi and carefully pronounced GINkaku-ji and back onto my original plan.
Another nice garden, nice wooden building, nice statue, I think you are already beginning to see the pattern here I decided to carry on with the plan and walked the philosophers walk, well it does kind of suit my reflective nature...This walk was great, all along a blossom tree lined canal with cafes and houses flanking it. Part way along there was an artist sketching the path, mug that i am for this I ended up buying an original, not sure if my bargaining increased the price or not but it was fun trying out my numbers, numbers and counters in general are tough in Japanese cause there are so many ways to say the same thing and which one you use totally depends on context. Ended up at Eikan-Do, which is a another famous temple, nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue. Thought with this temple hunting was over for the day so took a taxi to downtown Kyoto, in particular to Nishiki Market.

Nishiki market is a long arcade, probably 0.5Km long, that is filled on both sides with food stalls. Tried octopus balls here, I am hoping thats only the shape not the content, also tried some other funny looking stuff that all I am sure about is that it wasnt meat, everything tasted great though so best not to think about it too much. Nishika is crossed several times by shopping arcades, each arcade is also about 0.5km long and there are shops for everything. I spent several hours going up and down mainly looking for Pokemon for Gian. Can you believe it the land of Pokemon and nothing. They have character shops teeming with toy figures from anime and cartoons but no pokemon, apparantly that ship has sailed. Going to have another go today at my business card department store, might even ask for directions to give one of them heart failure :-)

And so back to the hotel. The hotel itself is really impressive, the Granvia, built into the main train station building. The train station is probably the most impressive thing i have seen in Japan so far. It is 11 stories high, has 3 basement levels, it has a vast open centre and you can walk from level 1 up open steps to level 11. Its built like a segment of an ampitheatre and so the bottom of the steps is perfect for giving shows, on both days I was there there was a stage set up and various school bands came and played. Either side of this vast space are a massive department store and a huge shopping mall called the CUBE. Two floors of the CUBE are given over to restaurants, from fast food "Ramen" to high end sushi.

I decided to use one of the 9 restaurants attached directly to the hotel and so ended up at the japanese "soba" restaurant, soba is best described as pasta like. As I didnt have a reservation they were very apologetic and I had to sit at the chefs table and have the special menu. Oh woe is me, this was fantastic, 6 courses all served to my by the two chefs working 2 feet away from me, both very chatty and very very patient with my Japanese. I rolled out of here and went and had an after dinner coffee at the lobby cafe overlooking the central plaza area. If coffee here didnt cost 10USD per small cup I might have stayed longer...

Sunday was feeling lethargic, more accurately fat and bloated :-) so decided to just do the big temple near the train station, what was this like, oh you know, nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue. I then went off to spend an hour at the Manga museum, 5 hours later I left the place, it was fascinating. They were running workshops and constructing a new manga book, there were several artists around helping people draw, tons of kids were there making key rings and I had my portrait done, manga style, made me look about 10 so its obviously a perfect representation :-)

Decided after this to just chill out at the hotel, spent far too much money drinking coffee and eating cake at the hotel cafe and put Kyoto to bed.

Catch Up

Well its been a while, last week was mainly work work work but here are some of the highlights.

Went out with the Italian group on Thursday night, what a complete disaster, they turned up 2 hours late, fortunately I was with Ed so it was no problem. Once they turned up it took them an hour to decide to make a move to the restaurant and once at the restaurant they stood outside for 20 minutes, in the end i left them to it and went home, Ed stayed cause he fancied one of the girls but he followed me about 10 minutes later, apparently once in the restaurant they couldn't decide which table to sit at or even which set menu to follow. Italians or women.....

On Saturday finally visited the gardens in the centre of Kanazawa, for 3 days they were lit up at night, normally the park is closed at night, so I walked round the park and visited the tea ceremony building and watched a tea ceremony in progress, very interesting but a little slow, maybe you have to be taking part in it to understand it...

After this I walked around Katamachi, which is the Kanazawa entertainment district, had an unbelievably good sushi meal and then walked around a bit more and found a Jazz club with live music. Unfortunately I was the only person in the bar so the band played one song at 10 and then all got off stage to wait till more people came in. This bar was on the 4th floor of a building and most of the bars are on a floor in a multistory building. I still cant read Kanjii so its tough working out which bars would be any good just from looking at the signs.

Made major progress in speaking this week and able now to speak to the host family, its still all disjointed and I keep forgetting to say the verb, it always comes at the end in Japanese and after i have said noun, adverb, particles and adjectives I keep thinking i am done, its like saying "dinner really good" everyone understands but gives them a laugh...

Tonight I decided to go out and sample some more local food so I went out with a mixed group of students and Jets (some graduate program where english speakers come to japan to teach kids english) and we had a great indian. Followed this by going to a folk bar with Ed. This is kind of like Karaoke for talented people, yes thats right that was me out of the picture. Anyway the scenario is the bar has a stage area and any punter can go up, pick up one of the dozens of acoustic or electric guitars, or play the keyboards and give it some. Ed went up and dicked around on bass for 10 minutes or so, he was pretty good but he couldnt remember any complete songs. Once Ed finished a japanese guy went up there and picked up an acoustic guitar, took a scappy bit of paper from his back pocket and played a song about kanazawa that he had written. Brilliant doesnt do it justice, he then played a few more "standards" and went and sat down, wow!

Off to Kyoto tomorrow for a long weekend, its a holiday in Japan on Monday so no school. Probably have a 1000 pictures of temples and shrines for you to look at monday evening.

And suddenly the world caves in

Japanese counters...You know how most languages you learn how to count and then you can count, people, things, heavy things, vehicles, etc etc. Well not in Japanese! There are about 10 groups of things that have their own number counting system which is just close enough to the original numbers to catch you out and even within a groups counters there are exceptions! Grrrr this is just great, just when I was thinking I was on the home stretch to start learning Kanjii along comes this little monkey wrench.

Anyway went back to the department store today to "proof-read", yes thats the japanese word for it, my business cards. I dont know if my japanese is better or the memory of my last visit was still fresh in their minds but everything went swimmingly, go back on the 9th to pick them up. We didnt point to a calender this time so I think I go back on the 9th.

Was at the fish market again for lunch today, probably going to eat there nearly every day that I am at school, its fabulous. Up till now I have just been picking up snack stuff from stalls but I have notice that there are sushi restaurants in there as well, its not going to get much fresher than that so I think tomorrows lunch is sorted! Will take my camera with me tomorrow.

One final observation, you know in these kinds of markets the aisles are really narrow, it seems a worldwide trait that little old ladies congregate in narrow alley ways and casually move from side to side just arrhythmically enough that you can not get past without pushing them to the ground and shouting "walk in a straight line you silly old bat". Nearly made me late for my class.

A few more observations

Just a few different things about Japan.

You have to wear slippers around the house at all times EXCEPT when you enter a tatami room, tatami are woven mats that are laid on the floor, apparently in olden times rooms were measured by how many tatami it took to cover the floor. Wearing slippers is a problem for English people, at least for Ed it is, he forgets to put them on a lot and is often seen being followed around by one of the host family carrying his slippers to him...You can tell he is not swiss...

All toilets are high tech or low tech. If they are low tech you have to squat, this is mainly for public places but most modern building have high tech western toilets. How can a toilet be high tech I hear you ask, well for a start all seats are heated, even in public buildings, I personally find this a little disconcerting because i would prefer my toilet seat to be cold if you know what I mean. A lot of the toilets also have a control pad next to them where you can initiate all kinds of bottom cleaning and flushing. The first time you encounter one of these its good to know that the top button generally does the flush you are looking for. On no account press buttons at random when the seat cover is up, problems will ensue. A small thing that is actually very sensible is that the toilet tank fills up from a tap which pours into the cistern. What this means is that you can wash your hands with the water that will be used for the next flush, very eco friendly.

As I mentioned slippers are worn everywhere, including the toilet BUT not your normal house slippers, these you leave at the door to the toilet and put on the toilet slippers.

Finally putting a kimono on is not a trivial task, Stefania tried for over an hour on Monday night, you can see the pictures here

First week impressions

1 week gone by already so I thought I would write about general first impressions.

Somethings are really wierd, japan is just generally a bit grotty with some stunning pieces of architecture or gardens surrounded by factories or run down areas and buildings. Nothing really gets built up too high because of the threat of earthquakes and their are very lax zoning planning laws. The house I am staying in is beautiful and you would say this was a residential district yet next door is a garage and next to that is some kind of small scale wire wool factory..

If you sit down on a bus and there is a space next to you, no matter how full the bus gets no one will sit next to you, apparently there is a small stigma about gai-jin (foreigners), but the main reason they will leave the seat free is that they would be terrified you would talk to them and they would then have to say that they cant speak english. I was told that the gai-jin stigma thing was the reason that one of the other students despite being here 3 months already hasn't had a date yet so I am not 100% sure about the truth of this one...

Although the air seems clean enough its not uncommon to see people walking around with face masks on. Most of the bus drivers wear face masks and they all wear thin white gloves as do all the taxi drivers. Although japan is a rich country, Kanazawa is not where the money is, I havent seen one nice car since I have been here they must export all the good ones, maybe Tokyo and Osaka would be different so I guess I will have to wait till the next trip to find that out.

Fresh fish is everywhere, yesterday I ate smoked fish at the fish market absolutely no idea what kind of fish it was but I asked the guy if I could eat it straight away and when he said yes picked a couple up and started munching delicious. The fish market itself reminds me of the one in leeds but a lot lot bigger, probably how it was years and years ago.

In the centre of Kanazawa is its main tourist attraction, the kenkouku gardens, reputed to be one of the top 3 gardens in Japan, I have cycled round it and will visit it next week, its massive. Next to this is the museum of modern art which is interactive and has a great cafe, where I had tea (imagine a tea-latte) with new york cheesecake this afternoon. Also nearby is the Noh museum, this celebrates the traditional japanese stage play form "Noh". I intend to go into this when I can read some of the kanjii.

Just around the corner from the gardens and at the end of the main high street is Katamachi the entertainment district, basically this is where the karaoke bars and other bars are. Its all bright lights but very very small.

I know I said that Kanazawa wasnt where the money was but on the high street there is Gucci, Armani, Burburry, a couple of huge department stores, 9 floors each and a Louis Vuitton store is opening up in October, so I guess there is some money around just not to be spent on cars.

I am getting around on a bike I hired from the school, before I could take it I was treated to a stern lecture telling me to be extremely careful and to only ride on paths and to go slow. This is another feature there are signs for danger everywhere almost on every street corner, often I have no idea what they are warning you about, maybe that there is a road next to you so be careful. There are also descriptions on how to use everything. I bought a bottle of water from one of the ubiquitous vending machines and noticed there were instructions on the bottle telling me which way to turn the top. A lot of the vending machines can serve you hot tea and coffee in a can, or the same drink ice cold also in a can. I have discovered a new rule when I went to the lion costume museum on Tuesday. Vending machines are on every street corner, unless you have climbed up a hill 500 metres in which case there isnt another one for miles.

All in all a good week, learnt how to conjugate the verbs for the future, past and present tenses, how to negate them, how to use the possessive, tell the time, count and ask for directions, though if you have read my post on the business cards this doesn't mean the japanese necessarily understand everything i am asking for yet, but its been a good week. Roll on week 2.

Karaoke Night

Well Thursday night I went out to Karaoke!! It was a lot different to what I expected.

Firstly you dont go into a bar and then get up and sing in front of the rest of the pub, my dad probably knows this kind of sing-a-long very well...What you do is rent a small room for a few hours; the room contains a tv and karaoke machine that you control with a complicated remote control that can dial up 1000's of songs. In case you are wondering the remote is in japanese so dont try this at home or you wont be singing for a good few hours till you manage to get a song selected.

The rooms for rent are in internet clubs, or at least the one I went to was, and each person who is in the party pays, for some reason girls pay less than men no idea why. The group i was with said we would go for the 3 hour special, I went along with it thinking I would be out of there within an hour but strangely I wasnt, even though I was the worst singer in the group it just simply didnt matter. Included in the rent of the room was free tea, coffee and soft drinks. The rest of the group bought beer at the "familymart" round the corner.

So once we were in there we were a group of 8 people sat in a small room with a tv set, a karaoke machine, some drinks and a dodgy tambourine. 3 hours later after having an absolute blast it was time to go home. If we tried this in Europe you would be laughed out of town but it was honestly a great night out.

Buying business cards

Spent a few minutes practicing how to find the business card counter, "meishi uriba wa doko desu ka?" and tootled off to the local department store to get some business cards printed, western on one side and Nihongo on the other.

Straight upto the information desk and proudly ask my question...then ask it again slightly differently...and then again..and again..and finally "Ah-soo Meishi uriba!" floor 5. So slightly deflated at my obviously extremely poor pronunciation of Japanese of I go to the fifth floor. There I find that I have been directed to the business card holder collection so yet again I have to inflict my Japanese on some poor unsuspecting soul. Whats interesting is the way they all look so scared when the Gaijin approaches then look so happy when I start to speak Japanese and then start looking confused as they realise they have no idea what I am trying to say. Anyway this guy takes me to the stationary department on floor seven and now the fun begins.

I explain I want them to make me some cards with Romanji on one side and Katakana on the other and i show them the text that I want. The katakana causes no problem but the western letters do cause a major issue. Apparently they only ever see Romanji in text books and so never actually see handwriting, what this means is that my very neat and tidy notes takes three of them to convert into exactly the same letters but in japanese writing style so that they can understand it. All the time the senior lady is bowing to me and speaking the shop talk that show proper deference. Then another girl arrives to explain to me that I should return on the 1st of October (we went to another part of the shop to get a calender) for the final proofs and that when everything is ok the cards will be ready on the 6th. Phew everything done and then I just have to go through the bowing, the senior lady has her head on the desk as I leave so hopefully she didnt notice me knocking over loads of stuff off the shelves....

Well lets see what turns up on the 1st of October...

Lessons start in earnest

Well now have everything sorted at the school, I picked up a japanese mobile phone and I have a bike to get around kanazawa.
Also after discussing with the school cancelled my course and am moving to all private lessons, so this is 5 hours a day every day plus homework, its going to be tough but I am looking forward to it. Yesterday morning in the library and then the lessons in the afternoon and the day just flew by. In the evening as usual was treated to a feast of food, some vegetables (unknown), rice, cabbage, fish (unknown) and then went to the local shopping center on my bike to have a look around.

This morning breakfast was vegetable omelette, salad, potato soup, rice and crab sticks. Interesting breakfast but really tasty and sets me up for the day.

In the language I can now read and write the Hiragana, going to sort out the katakana this week, and then hopefully i will start to be able to read the books easier which makes the learning go a little quicker, I hope to start learning some kanjii as well in a couple of weeks. Done lots of basic stuff, and beginning to recognise some words that are spoken to me, not a lot though so its still a struggle talking to the homestay family, but they are really nice so we generally get stuff sorted out.

After the lessons today I am going to try and get some business cards printed up, should be interesting.

Right off into school now, another day another 4 sheets of homework to finish before the lessons start

the first couple of days

Well I am still feeling tired but this is now because I have already done so much.
I walked around Kanazawa a little bit on Monday morning, completely missing all the shops and the huge park in the centre so I now have a map in English from the tourist information. I followed this up with 5 hours japanese in the afternoon, its soooo hard, i am finding it difficult even to learn simple phrases, I just done have anything to hang the words onto. Speaking to other students this is a common occurence so its something I simply have to get through hopefully in a week or so it will get better.

During dinner on Monday evening I mentioned that one of the things that I wanted to do was to visit a japanese bath house, a big discussion followed (none of which I understood) and suddenly we were in the car and going to a local one. It was a great experience, the baths themselves were very similar to spa's in Switzerland but the water was much much hotter and there was also 20 minutes of cleaning and scrubbing before you got into the water. Arrived home after this and went pretty much straight to bed, shattered.

Tuesday morning came and I went to visit Shishiku heights, which is a nature park/temple about 40 minutes away from Kanazawa by train. The temple was really impressive and the view from the top of the cable car was pretty good as well, I just cant get over how tree-lined all the hillsides are, I guess the reason they dont build on hills must have something to do with earthquakes.

Now I am about to spend a couple of hours doing my homework for tomorrow.

Arrived in Japan/Kanazawa

So first impressions of Japan, pretty much lives up to all its stereotypes.
The train was incredibly well organised, when you buy a ticket you have the choice of reserved seat or not, I took the reserved seat option which meant that when I had a change to make then my seats were organised so that I could simply step out of one train and into another (had to wait till another train had gone through though) Fortunately even if the signs weren't in English the trains run to the second so you can use the time of the train as a pretty good indicator that you are on the right one.

Just had my first real japanese conversation with the trolley lady on the train to Kanazawa, managed to get a black coffee by asking for it, she had to hold up fingers to get the right money off me but its a start!

Around Kansai airport into Osaka it was all pretty shabby housing and run down areas but as we left Osaka towards Kyoto everything became cleaner and more with traditional housing interspersed with high rise offices and flats. All the housing and streets are really narrow.

The train is running a lot along the coast line and here its incredible. The land is flat to the coast and then suddenly rises in mist covered mounds. As soon as the land starts to rise it is immediately covered with unbroken shrubs and trees.

Arrived at my host family house in Kanazawa now and "oh my Gosh!". They dont speak ANY English, which is great and also a little bit of a nightmare. As far as i can make out there are going to be 3 students staying in the house (but I could be completely wrong). They made me a meal as soon as I arrived and initially I thought she kept saying with meat but she didnt. For some reason I am not able to put my stuff in a bedroom yet, no idea something to do with another student who may or may not be stopping here but the lady told me to get a little kip on a tatami mat on a hard wooden floor. Yeah right I thought, so 3 hours of deep slumber later I have just woken up and found out they have broadband in the house :-). Her husband was in watching a GO game on tv but he took off soon after I arrived, possibly to do with how I smell, I need a shower after a hard days travelling but how to sort this out.

Going to go back downstairs now.

Singapore Air lets me down

Day 1 and it started so well with a great meal at an italian restaurant in Zurich Airport. Zero stress as I was there in plenty of time and was able to investigate that the best lounge for Lindsey and the kids would be the Bellevue Lounge near the gate, though they should arrive there early to ensure they get a seat because it gets really busy. 

Started to board and was called back and asked to go to the singapore air desk where they downgraded me. Grrr there went my flat bed and plans for 8 hours solid sleep and I was back with a cramped seat, stiff neck and they didnt even have my preferred meal, why do they bother allowing people to specify meals on their site if they dont bother to load it. What I did get was an offer for 75% reduction on my ticket (not enough) and an on-board 100$ voucher, which cost me another 100$ because the special golf sunglasses were 200$. At least the service and food in economy was superb, really looking forward to finding out how good business is. Hopefully when SingaporeAir contact Lindsey to discuss the compensation she manages to get the money and some upgrades...

Just going through an 8 hour stop over in Changi-Terminal-3, its really superb here, great food in the lounge, excellent shopping in the terminal. Had my hair-cut and a long shower and shave and feeling human and ready for the next 6 hour flight to Osaka.