Archive for the ‘ Holidays ’ Category

Division of labour

By way of what the blogger formerly known as Iain Dale would call a ‘parish notice’, this is just a quick heads-up of some changes in my blogging habits. I’ve decided to outsource my political blogging onto a different site, which you can now find at Radical Discourse. This blog won’t exactly be retiring, but [ READ MORE ]

Day 60 (30.ix.10)

Well well, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?! Already I’m sitting in my hotel room in Narita, wearing an amusing branded dressing-gown-yukata-thing after a luxurious bath, preparing to enjoy one final night of trashy Japanese TV – and I barely booked the place half a month ago! OK when I say ‘booked’, I mean [ READ MORE ]

Day 59 (29.ix.10)

My trip to Yokohama today was something of a mixture of work and entertainment. As far as I can see, Yokohama is a city built mostly for the purpose of generating money from international trade – a lot of high-rise buildings, lots of swish hotels, and a very large number of mooring-stations, artificial harbours and [ READ MORE ]

Day 58 (28.ix.10)

Well, I had a day with a couple of real highlights – and since I have to go to bed fairly soon in order to get up early for a foray down the coast to Yokohama, I will keep today’s entry short and sweet. The first was that I managed to get from home to [ READ MORE ]

Day 57 (27.ix.10)

Since my time in Tokyo is drawing slowly but surely to a close, the moment of the final look-back and analysis of my stay is coming ever nearer. I will leave my overall impressions and vaguer musings for the very last entry, but I think that the unique nature of Tokyo as a city and [ READ MORE ]

Day 56 (26.ix.10)

Having another domestic day today – I’ve got a fairly hectic week ahead of me, so I think I’m going to take all the rest I can get. Plus there’s sumo, 相撲, すもう, on TV – and since I didn’t get a chance to go to the National Sumo Stadium in person, this will have [ READ MORE ]

Day 55 (25.ix.10)

Today was the final day of Alice’s visit – she has 5 lessons on Monday to prepare for, and going straight from night bus to the classroom wouldn’t exactly be the best idea, so she’s taking a late one tonight so she’s not pressed for time tomorrow. I had a lazy morning while she was [ READ MORE ]

Day 54 (24.ix.10)

Today was another working day – and like the 2nd-inversion dominant chord of build-up that prefaces the cadenza of inventiveness before the coda of completion, it was spent fine-tuning the last major project I am dealing with during my time here in Tokyo. It meant that I had to leave Alice to her own devices [ READ MORE ]

Day 53 (23.ix.10)

Well, today was the autumnal equinox, which occasioned another public holiday – certainly not going to complain. I got up at the usual time and generally faffed around in my room until a loud ping from Facebook informed me that a friend from Magdalen, Alice B, had arrived outside my apartment and was waiting to [ READ MORE ]

Day 52 (22.ix.10)

Another brief observation today – it’s to do with the trend in what I can only describe as utterly nonsensical expressions plastered all over the clothes of the (probably self-defined) ‘trendy’ Japanese people I’ve come across in the ‘cooler’ areas of Tokyo, most notably Ikebukuro and Shibuya. I’m not really referring to the weak innuendos [ READ MORE ]

Day 51 (21.ix.10)

Just gotten back to my room after a lovely meet-up with Eddy K, a fellow pupil and student, and since I spent most of today regretting not having slept more last night, I will make this another Key Kanji, and a hasty one at that. 銀行: ぎんこう, ginko, meaning “bank”. There are certainly more than [ READ MORE ]

Day 50 (20.ix.10)

The architecture tour today was briefer than I imagined, and focused mainly on Harajuku and Omote-sando. I met up with the others at 14:00 at Meiji-jingumae station – despite a brief communication breakdown at the beginning where I waited for them at the metro exit, while they had all congregated at the JR station exit [ READ MORE ]

Day 49 (19.ix.10)

Well, I’ve expended more effort and energy today than I have in several years – possibly since my heroic walks around Toronto two years ago… I had a very enjoyable but utterly exhausting day out in Hakone, part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, with some of the people I’ve met during my stay in Tokyo [ READ MORE ]

Day 48 (18.ix.10)

Next Monday is a public holiday of some description – which I will blog about when I’ve read a bit more about it – so since I will be spending both tomorrow and the day after in perpetual motion, I thought I’d be domestic again today. I finally caved in and decided to risk washing [ READ MORE ]

Day 47 (17.ix.10)

My brain feels like mush after an intense all-day event, so I’m going to keep this one short again. In the form of 5 More Things that are Different in Japan: Blowing one’s nose in public is considered the height of rudeness. Blowing one’s nose into a handkerchief and then studying the contents intently as [ READ MORE ]

Day 46 (16.ix.10)

Having now been in a fair number of situations where two groups of people were meeting each other for the first time – conference here, lunch there, you know the sort of thing – I think it might be worth my highlighting one of the remarkable idiosyncrasies of how Japanese people greet new acquaintances. With [ READ MORE ]

Day 45 (15.ix.10)

I spent a surprisingly long time today bouncing enthusiastically around my office and room in celebration of the fact that it is now officially cold outside – no-one else seems to be particularly pleased about this, but I’m hugely enjoying the prospect of not having to go to sleep with my air conditioning on full [ READ MORE ]

Day 44 (14.ix.10)

In light of the failed attempt today by “shadow shogun” Ichiro Ozawa to unseat Naoto Kan as Democratic Party of Japan leader and thus Prime Minister of Japan, I think it’s about time I gave the uninitiated a little glimpse into the politics of this constructed democracy. Japan is something of an island of liberal [ READ MORE ]

Day 43 (13.ix.10)

In light of the recent nine-year anniversary of 9/11, for which I can’t really think of any better lay analysis than this article by Robert Fisk, I thought I might devote today’s entry to a brief look at the nature and role of the Japanese military since the wholesale demilitarisation of Japan during the Allied [ READ MORE ]

Day 42 (12.ix.10)

Always a special day, the 42nd of any trip, I find – lot of symbolism and meaning, if only thanks to Douglas Adams. Also in my (growing) experience, since it marks the end of the sixth week of being wherever I am, I’m starting to find that it coincides fairly closely with the point of [ READ MORE ]

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.