Hanami - Cherry blossom viewing

Our two petals with a late-blooming cherry blossom in K-chan's schoolyard.

Don't throw Easter eggs in grass houses (or something)

Hello folks. Happy Easter, I'm a bit busy (as always) but check out the pics here of yours truly and the "double kids" of Abiko doing an Easter egg hunt on the roof of the Abiko library (it's a grass roof - you gotta see it - right here).

My home is my castle

So, you don't post anything for a week and when you do, all I get is a picture of the side of a block of flats? Yes, rubbish eh? Well, I've been a bit busy what with teaching (got three new students signed up this month - don't they know there's a recession on?), doing unpaid work for Our Man in Abiko (go on, cut and paste that into google and see what you get) and now practising to play Hey Jude in front of hundreds of people (maybe). I got roped into playing in a family's community-centre variety show after my protestations that "I'm not very good" were taken as modesty, rather than the truth that they really were. The organiser, the father of one of my students, then told me I also have to play Sing by the Carpenters. In Japanese. The Beatles have a song for it: Help! Oh, and I ran a 10k race on Sunday - time was 52 minutes, since you ask.

Anyway, so what's with the side of a building? Well, I noticed it while dropping the youngest off at nursery the other day. Just thought the, how you say, utilitarian nature of the corrugated aluminium walls contrasted oddly with the flowery name. Allow me to crop a little closer...

Natural selection

Here's a picture I snapped at about 4.45 pm on the seaside at Kamakura on New Year's Day that I forgot to share with you all. It's a little taste of the forces of nature, which we gave thanks to at Kamakura's largest shinto shrine below, wishing for a lucky new year in health, business and miscellaneous life, with several thousand other folk. In order to do that, we were shunted around by loudspeaker, in a very unnatural way:

Far better was a little local shrine a stone's throw from where we were staying, where, apart from an impatient foreigner (me) we could get on with it at our own pace:

Compare with the shrine round the corner, back at the ranch, by clicking here.

What we did on our holidays

1. Followed a map. Abiko is the red station with the arrow. Kamakura, our destination, is the last but one station on the bottom left. The journey took two and a half hours. The big circle in the middle is the Yamanote Line which circles Tokyo and is a bugger to get off when you have had a few. 

2. To get to our friend's house, we crossed over a river, and look what we saw. Nice colourful koi (carp). Can you see his black brothers? Can you see the photographer's shadow?

3. Watched the surfers waiting for their wave to come in.

4. So, this is the sea. We've heard so much about you.

5. Can you make out Mount Fuji? (Hint: It's the snow-capped mountain in the distance to the left of my head, between the green cliffs).

Picture that, Mk iv

Picture 4: How old did you say you were?

Picture that, Mk iii

Picture 3: The only way is up

Picture that, Mk ii

Picture 2: Katherine all made up for her end-of-year ballet show

 

Happy New Year, all.

Picture that

The year is almost up, and we still haven't sent any Christmas cards or the New Year postcards you are supposed to send over here. So, apologies. Been a bit busy, but thanks to those who did send cards and e-mail. Instead, how about some photos I took that haven't made it to any blogs yet?

Photo 1: Emma finds a comfortable spot to cat-nap

Dusk on the water

As I've said before, there are advantages to teaching from home. The best is that I can nip on (Nippon!!! Nippon!!!) my bike between lessons and make it round the lake and back in under an hour. Well, the other day I happened to have my camera handy and snapped the last embers of sunlight (at about 4:45pm or so). By the way, I used no photoshop trickery on these shots. The orange glow really was, well, getting orangier.

 

The great trek

The girls and I set off on a journey of discovery (to find the fabled northern passage avoiding the traffic) to the far off Abiko McDonald's. We lived to tell the tale. Here's what we encountered:

 

Mush, mush, we've got to get there before Emma collapses from starvation...

 

We could pick up some veg on the way (you have to drop a donation in the tin), but no way to cook them...

Creep past the OK Corral...

 

Past the futons airing in the sun...

Through the ginkgo leaves and back in one piece.

5...3...1...2... oh, forget it

I thought Japanese were good at maths. Years of being sent to abacus school as a child at the insistence of grandma, plus the high denominations of cash you need (can you believe around ¥270 for a can of Suntory Malts at our local 7-11) should have instilled a healthy command of the things. But I'm beginning to think folks here have a problem when the numbers are more, er, little. It's not rocket science counting backwards from 10, but the chap in charge of numbering the parking spaces near our 7-11 clearly shouldn't be given the job of counting down for blast off. Must have been at the Malts again. 

Life outside my front door

Thanks to the internet, I can live my life in Japan, but do a pretty good job of fooling myself that I am somewhere else. Want a taste of America? It's just a click away. Fancy visiting England? I can log on to the BBC website to catch the latest news or Facebook for more mundane fare from friends and former colleagues. But every now and then I escape the confines of my virtual world and professional little England life of Tower English to see the life outside my front door. And here's a slice of it from the other day, with Mizuki, a neighbour's seven-year-old, on her way back home from visiting a temple for her 7-5-3 blessing. Our kids took part in theirs the other week, but have reverted to even more traditional pursuits of children the world over: climbing on things they are not supposed to:  

After the harvest

I rather liked this sight of, I suppose you would call them haystacks, in rice paddies shortly after the harvest near Teganuma. And in a not entirely unrelated shot, here is my dad and little sister with their harvest. This picture was beamed via mobile phone all the way to Tower Tales from their allotment in Leicester on the same day I took my picture. Now there's a good use of technology.

You don't have any bananas do you?

Architectural feat

I've been told that the Japanese don't go in for DIY, that they prefer things made expertly by others and are prepared to pay top dollar (especially at the current exchange rate) for the finished article. So it was particularly refreshing for me to discover this homemade monstrosity 10 minute's bike ride away in the wilds of Shibasakidai.

Is this a warehouse, shed or sport utility vehicle? No matter, whoever made it was happy to use whatever was at hand, be it a couple of old doors, piece of corrugated iron or tarpaulin and the end result is, well, more borg collective than des res. I'm not that sure the neighbours, a swanky old folks' home, are too chuffed with the view though... 

For more fun with buildings, click here.

Photo finish?

Not only did my neighbours show up in force to cheer me on through the Teganuma Eco-Marathon yesterday, but one of them, Ishihara-san, captured a few key moments in the race: 

The "athletes" clear the 15km point, marked by the family restaurant Coco's and a whopping great bridge over the lake. 

One of the highly professional runners spots his family in the crowd...

... and proceeds to lose his place in the race posing for his wife, who somehow pressed the wrong button and videoed her thumb.

Shichi-go-san, part I

The girls got to live out their dream yesterday - not the one involving moving to Tokyo Disney Sea - but to be proper little princesses for the 7-5-3 festival. At least, that's what we told them to keep Emma happy (she had a temper tantrum in the morning at home, declaring she was not going to wear a kimono). I think you might agree from the pictures, we're glad we convinced her royal highness to do the business.

By the way, on Sunday, I'm running a half-marathon round the lake near my house. You can still sponsor me here. Why should you?

• Reason #7: What with the global financial meltdown, money's not worth anything anyway. 
  

Dutch courage

Ah, more of the joys of walking by Teganuma. Spend any time here at this beguiling spot of a playground with a fake windmill beside a tributary to the lake, and you could almost believe that you were in the Dutch countryside enjoying the taste of Edam and the smell of, er, clogs... almost but for one jarring detail... 

... the whopping great electricity pylon next door.

Something to get your teeth into

Katherine's been waiting for this moment for about a month. A third baby tooth is now history and her tooth fairy takings are up to ¥1,500. How better to celebrate than to pop down to Teganuma and visit my personal favourite piece of public art, a sort of upturned tooth. Much better than the water sprites at the lake or a lot of the public art in Tokyo.

Flower child

One of the nicest things about working from home is, every now and then, I get time off for good behaviour, and rather than spend time stuck on a commuter train or whiling away the odd hour in a McDonald's, can take a stroll along the path by the lake near my house. Here, I enjoyed the walk with my biker daughter Emma. Get on your trike and ride.