The Edo-Tokyo Museum

Ohayou Gozaimasu (good morning) from the Traveling Bee, who has had a cold for more than two weeks now and as such has been an idle blogger. But I have much to write about, so much so that I can’t write it in chronological order because I’ve forgotten the names of the places we visited! I’ll have to wait for Sasha to come home and ask him the names of the places we went to. So for now, let me introduce to you the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

Located near the Ryogoku Subway station (lines JR Sobu and Toei Oedo) we went at the right time because the museum is about to close for several months. An adult ticket is 600 Yen (£3.30), not including the special exhibitions. On entry to the museum, you cross over a large bridge which divides the cavernous hall. Most of the artefacts and exhibits are from ancient Tokyo (or Edo, as it was known until 1868).

As I hoped, in the style of East Asian museums, there were many scale models throughout the museum that were strewn with little characters going about their daily lives. We also saw several ‘light shows’ as we had seen in China, where the model has a film projected onto it in such a way that it looks like real people are walking around the scene. The Japanese visitors to the museum crowded round these as the curtains drew back, with much ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the show commenced.

One of the first replicas I saw was of a kago – a sort of Japanese sedan chair. Though saying that, a true kago litter was much more primitive – more like a hammock on a movable tree than the regal sedan chairs of Henry VIII’s England. The one in the Edo-Tokyo museum was laid on the floor for people to try out, and had a door on a shutter which slid back and forth. It was mainly children in the queue to have a go, but as I walked past there was a Grandma inside who was very much enjoying the experience.

My favourite artefact was an old lacquer writing table and an ink stone in a decorated lacquer box. I’m not a fan of the Chinese red lacquer, with its garish colouring and harsh smell that seems so much more prominent in the crimson dyed paint. However, the Japanese lacquer work was hugely tasteful, with details in gold on black. The ink stone case was embellished with an impression of Mt. Yoshino, and the writing table depicted a wiry river winding its way through a landscape of gnarled branches. Other relics included intricately painted folding screens, pottery, statues and an array of numismatic items.

The museum ranks highly with me because there were a number of ‘hands on’ opportunities, like the kago litter. There was a section in the museum dedicated to the history of the Edo fire brigade. Japan's first fire service was founded in 1629 during the Edo era, and was called Hikeshi. There was a standard of the brigade, less of a flag and more of an octopus-on-a-stick. The long tassels, when swung around, make the totem look like a flailing sea creature or furious dragon. There was an example of the standard suspended from the ceiling which you could try and lift – it was too heavy for me; I can’t imagine carrying that around when there’s a fire afoot. Sasha had a go, and also tried lifting the ‘night soil’ buckets suspended on a carrying pole, laden with… something… to the weight of 25kg.

Other sections of the museum I enjoyed were the section on child rearing (in ancient times, it was popular to give birth while seated rather than lying down), and the section on printing and publishing. There were a series of sheets showing how a picture was printed by doing the colours and details one layer at a time. While woodblock printing had been around in China since the early date of 764, it was not widely adopted in Japan until the 1600’s.

Another favourite piece of mine in the museum was the ‘sea clogs’ – basically stilts that you strapped to your feet for when you were ‘working in the sea’. The smaller pair were under a meter in height, but the taller ones were almost as tall as me.

At the end of the ancient section of the museum, there was a part on modern Japan, with a special exhibition on its technology. By this point in our tour we were quite tired and zipped around the exhibition without much interest (for me at least, not being fascinated by technology.) There was also a bit about the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which I’m sure will be an exciting event. Actually, now is a great time to be an English teacher in Tokyo – the government is having a big drive to get people to learn English in time for the Olympics. Speaking of Olympics in Japan, do you know the origins of the male and female signs for public toilets? As part of the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Japan created over 40 different pictograms such as the internationally recognised pictograms for male and female toilets. They were not only used during the Olympics but became internationally adopted across the world. Fact of the day.

So that’s the Edo-Tokyo Museum. I’m glad we went before the museum closes for repair works, it would have been a shame to miss such an informative and fun outing. Other blogs to look forward to – our trip to the garden of the Imperial Palace, our sunny day trip to Edoshima island, the Kiku Festival, Japanese toilets and my working life. Yay!
Sayonara for now.

Oh, and to end it all off - a photo of an old telephone box from the museum, which shall henceforth be known as the Japanese Tardis.

Tama Zoo

Kon'nichiwa from me on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It’s been a busy week here in Tokyo so we’ve been taking it easy. Also trying to save money until payday so the enticing tourist attractions we have lined up will have to wait until then.

Last weekend we went to Tama Zoo. There are three zoos in Tokyo, as well as a sea life park (which, like in China, is hugely expensive compared with the zoo entrance fee). We decided on Tama zoo as it looked the most interesting from the Tokyo-zoo website, and it was the closest to us – even closer than we’d first thought, actually, as it only took about half an hour or so to get there. Entrance price to the zoo is 600¥ (about £3.50) but we got a combined ticket for the Tama Monorail which cost 1,000¥ and included the monorail part of our travel there and back. It was fantastic value, and I noticed on the brochure that they offer free entrance to kids under 12, students who live in Tokyo and disabled people.

Tama Zoo is split into different areas – African zone, Australian zone, Asian zone and the Insectarium. We started off at Insectopia – a giant greenhouse shaped like a butterfly that houses locusts and Lepidoptera in their masses. It was a stunning place to begin our outing – that day was a little chilly out and stepping into the warm, humid conservatory was lovely indeed. In the main domed area, there were hundreds of butterflies flying around and weaving in and out of the planted areas. The cavernous enclosure gave them so much space to move around that my photographs can’t do justice to how many butterflies there were in there. Some sat placidly on the flaky paintwork of wooden frames that held up the vines of flowers, while others darted around energetically, teasing the camera as they appeared to pause on a leaf, then soaring off again before I had time to frame the shot. It was truly breath-taking, and made all the more magical as we’d come on a weekend; the room was filled with the sound of children shrieking in delight as papery wings tickled their skin and dazzling colours flickered before their eyes.

We had lunch in the ‘Insect Picnic Area’, surrounded by Japanese families who were consuming onigiri in prodigious quantities. After that, a quick tour of the Insectarium Centre which boasted a glow-worm cave and a series of tunnels stuffed with leaf-cutter ants, busy at work. There was a table in the ‘hands on’ area where you could pick up the insects for a closer look. A rather rotund Japanese boy made firm friends with a giant stick insect – the area was not staffed, and for a moment I thought he would put the insect in his pocket to take home with him.

From our buggy-beginning we proceeded through to the African zone. The crowning feature was the Lion enclosure, where you could pay extra to ride on the ‘lion bus’ and get up close to the animals. We decided against it and enjoyed the view from above. In the middle of the enclosure was a building that was inexplicably decorated to look like the Taj Mahal. The tarmac road that ran around the arena for the lion bus also looked out of place. The lions had a fair amount of space, but they didn’t look particularly happy; perhaps they were just lethargic after their morning meal. Also in the African zone were zebras, giraffes, servals, flamingos, three African elephants, ostriches and a couple of moody cheetahs.

On the way up to the Australian zone, we passed through an area that was populated mainly by different types of birds. There was a deep pit filled with Oriental white storks, an aviary of eagles, and a whole cage of different sorts of owl. Best of all was the Tawny Frogmouth owl - speckled fluff-balls which looked suspicious, quizzical and surprised. I couldn’t get a good picture through the bars of the cage, but here’s one I found on Google.

Main attraction in the Australian zone was the koala house. The koalas were a gift from the Australian government many years ago, and after reading the plaque at the front door explaining the gift, I was expecting a grand enclosure. However, the two koala bears were perched on bare trees, which were the only decoration in an otherwise concrete home. They seemed popular with the Japanese visitors, but the koala house wasn’t one I rated highly. Other animals in the Australian zone: laughing kookaburra, womat, wallaby, wallaroo and kangaroo.

The largest area in the park, as you might imagine, was the Asian zone. There was such a wide variety of animals, and plenty of star acts. One of our favourite things we saw were the snow leopards. They are an endangered species, and it’s rare to see them in the wild. The David Attenborough series Planet Earth showed some of the first ever footage taken of snow leopards in the wild, and that wasn’t until 2006. The Tama Zoo has three snow leopards, two together in one enclosure and one in another. The two together were quite a spectacle. For a while they were just lazing around, eating and drinking from the stream, but every so often they leapt into action with one pouncing on the other in an elaborate play-fight, chasing each other up and down the rock face and tumbling in the grass. Each time they moved the entire crowd gasped and oohed and ahhed. Their tails were magnificently thick, and they had large paws – a trait which helps them to grip in their natural snowy environment.

We passed by the orang-utan enclosure, which includes an ‘Orang-utan Skywalk’ for the creatures to swing overhead between their usual playground and the Orang-utan forest, though I get the feeling that this is seldom used. Certainly no primates went flying through the treetops as we were walking underneath.

Looking at the map, I was baffled by the obscurely named ‘Pere David’s Deer’ and wondered who this Pere David was, given that the nearby picnic area was also named after him. Pere David was a French missionary who worked in China in the 1800’s. He sent examples of the animals to France where the French biologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards named them after Pere David. This species of deer is native to the subtropics of China, and while there are a number in captivity, they have a conservation status of EW (Extinct in the Wild). Efforts have been made to conserve the dwindling population so they can be reintroduced in the wild, but first they had to be reintroduced to China in a captive capacity.

In Neolithic times, the animals ranged all over China proper in large numbers. By the late 19th century, the only herd of Pere David’s Deer in the world belonged to the Emperor of the time, Tongzhi. In 1895, a wall of the Royal Hunting Garden was destroyed in a heavy flood, and most of the animals escaped and were killed by the starving peasants. Then in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the remaining deer were shot and eaten, leaving the Pere David Deer extinct in its native China. The species was saved by Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford. He acquired the few remaining animals from zoos across Europe and nurtured a herd at Woburn Abbey, from which the current world population now stems. As annual population of the captive deer continues to increase, it is hoped that one day the animals may be able to be reintroduced into the wild.

We saw a great number of other creatures in the Asian zone of Tama Zoo, such as the red panda, golden takin, chamois, wild horse, gray wolf, Japanese serow, mouflon, Himalayan tahr, greater one-horned rhinoceros, macaw, brown bear, Japanese giant flying squirrel and Japanese macaque. The macaques were funny creatures, with their bright red faces and bright red behinds they were comical from either end. They sat mostly in groups, grooming and playing together, with fights occasionally breaking out with piercing screams, the bearing of teeth and the defeated party scampering away with a wide-eyed look of fear.

That concludes our trip to the Tama Zoo in Tokyo. A grand day out indeed – I love zoos, and this one rates highly. Some of the enclosures lacked inspiration or didn’t seem very natural, but on the whole I felt that the Tama Zoo was animal-friendly, and the exhibits all seemed quite comfortable. It was a little busy when we visited but not heaving, and it was pleasant to see everyone having such a good time. The next big tourist spot on our list (hopefully) is the Imperial Palace…so until then, Sayonara.

P.S. A photo I took one our way to Japanese class last week – a praying mantis fighting with a worm.

Shinjuku

Kon'nichiwa from Tokyo where it is pouring down with rain, and has been all day long. Apparently we’re about to have a typhoon, but if it’s anything like the one I experienced in China, I’ve nothing to worry about. At least the rain is making it much cooler. Well, we shall see how it goes tomorrow – the typhoon will be coming into this area around midday, then after that it looks like we’re back to sunny, sunny October – I’m even getting a bit of a tan!

Thankfully we decided to have our outing yesterday – the weather would be too bad to go today. We hopped on the Odakyu line along to Shinjuku, about a 25 – 40 minute subway ride, depending which type of train you’re on. Shinjuku station is absolutely, completely mad. It’s in the Guinness book of World Records as the busiest train station in the world – easily achieved with over three million passengers going through it every day. The station has 36 platforms, and connects 12 different subway and railway lines. There are also, can you believe it, more than 200 exits from the building, so you can see how we got confused when trying to work out where we were. Not exactly the kind of place where I’d normally be found hanging out, but the Shinjuku area is a very typical example of Tokyo (tall buildings, flashing lights, etc) so I thought I should go and see it.

Once we scrambled out of the rabbit warren of Shinjuku station, we had a walk up the main street to the park, which was closed but we’ll go back sometime when it’s open. From there we circled around and headed towards a small temple, which looked like it had fallen out of the sky and landed smack-bang in the middle of all these monolithic sky-scrapers. It was peaceful there, even being in the middle of the city centre. We stood and watched people going to up pray – here, the procedure is something like ‘bow twice, clap twice, bow once’. I liked the little prayer tablets that looked like wooden postcards – people had written their messaged on them and they were bound together in a frame, clanking together in the wind like a Jacob’s Ladder toy.

After leaving the temple, we wandered down to the bar district, where rows of alleys are crammed with tiny bars – some with only enough seats to host a handful of patrons. Most of these places have a table charge, and others will charge exuberant prices to anyone apart from their regulars. But still there are some places where it’s safe for a foreigner to have a drink without getting ripped off, and the layout of the area means there are dozens to pick from within a stone’s throw from each other.

En route to the main attraction of the day, we walked past Omoide Yokocho. It means “Memory Lane,” but the place is more commonly known as “Piss Alley” – in days gone by, patrons of the little bars and restaurants didn’t have public facilities nearby, and would relieve themselves in the street. Thankfully this practice has gone out of fashion, but now instead the street is overflowing with smoke from the yakitori – a type of BBQ that is popular in Japan. It usually refers to skewered chicken, but also to skewered meats of all types. The billowing smoke chokes the whole alleyway, with the low ceilings making it difficult for the air to clear.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is a great place for tourists to go to, not least because of the Tourist Information Centre on the ground floor. We picked up dozens of leaflets (in English) to cool places around here, such as the Tama zoo (one of like three zoos in Tokyo) which I am very much looking forward to visiting. The government building itself is amazing – with twin sky-scrapers each standing at 245 meters tall, it’s a colossal building. Both of the towers have observation decks on the 45th floor, which are free to the public and open late, which is handy because the best time of day for a great view is after sunset. The view was immense – on a clear day you can see all the way to Mt. Fuji and other mountain ranges in the area, and of course, all the thousands and thousands of buildings in between. It wasn’t too busy on the observation deck, and I was surprised that such an interesting tourist attraction was free.

Going to a busy tourist spot on the weekend isn’t usually my idea of fun, but sometimes you’ve got to bite the bullet in order to see something that really sums up a city. Tokyo is the most populous metropolitan area in the world – the total population of the prefecture exceeds 13 million. The area of Tokyo that we live in isn’t at all like the bustling Shinjuku area (thank goodness) and it was nice to return to the quiet, bland suburb after our day out.

To end this post – another luncheon update. Today we went to the local Coop this morning to do our weekly shop and bought ready meal lunches. I had a box set with rice, pickles, sweet egg, salted salmon, deep fried white fish and fried squid. 380 Yen, so about £2.20. Not bad! Sayonara for now.

A Fan of Japanese Lunch Options

Kon'nichiwa again from me in Japan, where the weather is much cooler today because it’s been raining on and off today. It’s really pleasant, actually, what with our little room getting so hot and stuffy; the rain is keeping the temperature down. I was wondering how far the ash would travel from Mount Ontake, which erupted without warning a few days ago, but we’re about 125 miles away so I doubt we’ll see any ash here.

I’ve been in Japan for one week, and this week have had two interviews for teaching positions. I applied to about a dozen jobs last week, mostly on http://gaijinpot.com/ which is a great website to find employment, housing, etc. Lots of Tokyo opportunities. A few other jobs have replied to me but I’m saving those as back-up choices (particularly the one-off Halloween Party event where, rather than the ‘teaching event’ that was listed, what I have been contacted about is coming in for an interview so I can ‘learn the dance moves’ for the performance… uhh, no thanks!) The first job interview was with a Kindergarten that teaches in the Montessori style. I really liked the environment and the job is for the age group I most like to teach, but the pay isn’t so great and it’ll be over two hours of commuting each day. On the subway. Which I hate. So, pros and cons. The second job is with a very professional company that pays quite well, but the age group (12-15 years) is older than what I prefer to teach. Depending on what I’m offered, I could be at a school just a few metro stops away, or I could be more of a substitute teacher, going to a different school every day with no regularity. So, both jobs have ups and downs. At the moment I’m just waiting to hear back from them with firm offers and the like to make my decision.

I’ve really been enjoying the shopping experience in Japan, where customer service is excellent and the items seem good value. For the first few days we were going to the supermarket pretty much every day, making the most of the late-night discounts. We got overexcited the first time we saw this, then we realised that they have this deal every day. Japan has high food safety standards and as such they never sell food that is out of date, particularly fish. When at the supermarket, we make a beeline for the fish sections to see what’s on offer. The first reductions happen at about 6:30, where sushi, sashimi and fresh fish is marked with 10% off. About half an hour after that, they go around again and mark it down to 20% off. Finally, if there is stuff that really needs to go that day, you sometimes see fish with a 30% off sticker on it. You’d think the best way would be to go to the shops late to get the best deals, but of course if you leave it too late, the best offers have gone already, so about 6:30 – 7:00 is a good time; the fine science of when to buy your sushi.

In the Aeon supermarket, they have duplicate sections for popular items. For example, there are two fruit and vegetable sections in the store – they are completely separate, selling fruit and veg from different suppliers and at different prices. It seems a bit mad to me, but I guess it’s a way to offer customers lots of choice. The main point is that, in this one shop, there are three separate sections that sell fish. That means three lots of sushi, three lots of sashimi, three lots of fresh fish… it’s great. We’ve pinpointed which section has the best deals and head to that one first, of course.

Something else I love about the Aeon supermarket is that the checkout is super-efficient. As you approach the desk, there are channels marked on the floor, like the start line at a race-course, so that you don’t block the way of people trying to cross the aisle. As you put your basket on the counter, the checkout girl will place another basket on the other side and put your items into the new basket once they’ve been scanned. This is pretty much the most organised thing you’ve ever seen. The way they pack the basket for you is far beyond the ‘heavy at the bottom, eggs on top’ mantra. Basically, it’s like a game of edible Tetris, and they win every time. There isn’t an inch of space in the basket that is wasted. Then, to make things even more orderly - rather than packing your shopping into bags at the end of the counter (while getting in the way of the person behind you) what you do is take your intricately-packed basket to a separate packing counter and pack your bag there. It’s amazing. Perhaps I’m getting carried away with my shopping experience, but I love how methodical it all is.

Back home, ‘ready meal’ is a bit of a dirty word. It conjures up images of nasty, microwavable packages filled with indiscernible gloop. The kind of cheap, unhealthy muck that burns on the outside while it’s still frozen on the inside. You know what I mean. But the ready meals in Japan are awesome. I think it’s got something to do with the working hours of your typical ‘salary man’ who works long hours and needs to grab something quick on the way home for dinner. These ready meals are great for lunch too, and I’ve been enjoying trying out different ‘Bento Box’ style lunches. Today I bought a boxed lunch from a convenience store that was epic. It contained three onigiri rice rolls, ginger, a sweet meatball, a few strings of spaghetti, sweet fried egg, deep-fried vegetables in an onion bhaji style, katsu-style fried fish, mushroom and carrot. Delicious, and it only set me back 298 ¥ (about £1.70). Also, it’s all pretty healthy. The Japanese love deep fried things, but they tend to be quite a small part of the meal with the majority just being plain rice. Good for me, good for my wallet.

I went to the 100 Yen store again today – we discovered a smaller one that’s near our house and I popped in the get a few things. It’s such good value! Better than Pound World, that’s for sure. I bought a small umbrella, a mini clothes drying rack (octopus type), tuppawear… all for only 108 Yen per item (the 8 Yen is tax added to the price of 100 Yen). Not bad at all. As for the rest of the day I’m going to do some more writing, and make a start on learning some Japanese. Sayōnara!

The Travelling Bee Arrives in Japan

Kon'nichiwa (hello) from Japan – the Travelling Bee is off once more on another great adventure. It feels like this has been a long time coming – when I first qualified as a TEFL teacher, this was where I wanted to go. Japanese teenagers were my first language students – they’d come over to the UK and I was their part-time teacher, an experience which got me into TEFL teaching and inspired me to move abroad. I applied for the JET program (Japanese-English Teaching) and was fairly sure I’d be offered a position, but because of a lack of employment opportunities in the UK that year, three times as many people as usual applied for the JET program and so I didn’t get in. Which is why I wound up in China. So basically, I’ve eventually got to where I wanted to be - I just took the scenic route.

One thing I was sure of before I started looking into this trip – getting a job in Japan would certainly be harder than getting one in China. In China, they are desperate for English teachers. It’s still a new market – language learning is a contemporary thing in China, and right now it’s booming. But in Japan, there has been a Western influence for decades, particularly since its occupation by the American’s in World War 2. People here have been learning English for a long time, and as such their need for English teachers is less frantic than in China. Browsing online jobsites for teaching opportunities in Japan, many schools won’t offer an interview to anyone who doesn’t currently reside in Japan – and that seems to be fairly standard. So here we are, in Japan, and I don’t yet have a job.

Sasha’s job is through a well-known company that hires teachers for Japanese Universities, and he’s been placed in Tokyo. I wasn’t too keen on living in Tokyo as I’m not much of a big city person, but you need to go where the jobs are. Actually, the area we’ve ended up in is nothing like the ‘big city’ I imagined. We’re in Tokyo, but we’re not really in Tokyo – we’re in a city called Kawasaki, which in itself is also pretty huge. Our area is Asao-ku – one of the seven wards of the prefecture.

So far, our local area seems lovely. It’s green and fairly quiet, even with a main road only 100m from our window. It’s not too built up in this area – there are some apartment blocks like the bit we live in, but for the most part it’s just individual houses of two floors, which look all the more smaller for their cute, compact design. Today I went exploring and found two tiny parks that are near our house. They’re little more than children’s play areas with some trees and patches of grass, and both of them were overgrown, but in a charming sort of way. Like how British parks have currently been featuring these ‘wild’ patches to encourage insects and animals to live there, except I don’t think the overgrown patches in these parks are planned.

We’re a 15-minute walk from the Shin-Yurigaoka subway station, which is surrounded by shops, restaurants and the like. Our local supermarket is only five minutes away and also there is a big one at the station, which is called Aeon. ‘Topvalu’ is like their own-brand and a good choice while we’re still working out how much things cost. It’s much harder to calculate than in China. In China you just divided by 10 for a rough idea of how much things cost (100 Yuan = about £10), but with Japanese Yen you’d need a calculator - £1 is about 175 Yen, so a bit tricky for me to work out in my head. I guess I’ll get used to it in time – once I’ve bought a few things and compared prices in different shops it’s easier to remember what’s good value and what’s not.

Thursday was our main admin day, and amazingly we managed to get lots done even though jet-lag completely messed up our sleep and we didn’t get up until after 2 pm. We had to go and register and show our residency cards, which we were given to us at immigrations at the airport, and also sign up for the National Health Insurance. The NHI in Japan is amazing – with the insurance you only need to pay up to 30% of medical costs, though fingers crossed I won’t need to use it at all.

The place where we’re living is block of little flats that are private or dormitory room style. Needless to say that we have a private room! We have a bedroom, small caravan-style bathroom and a corridor with washing machine and fridge/freezer. On each floor there is a tiny communal kitchen, and a large kitchen/dinning/living room on the ground floor. It’s not ideal, but as Sasha’s work is a short contract we’ll likely only be here for 3 months. Housing is expensive in Japan, and until I find a job we need to try and save money. It’s small, but it’s cute and functional. Easier to clean too as there is so little that needs cleaning!

So far, I love Japan. The main thing is the food, which is just amazing. Japanese food has always been one of my favourite cuisines, with the added bonus that it’s good for you! In China, I struggled with the food as the diet there contains lots of wheat (noodles, dumplings, bǎo zì, pancake) and everything is fried in so much oil all the time – I like Chinese food, but it didn’t make me feel very well. But Japanese food is so simple and clean, and at the same time – delicious! Just plain sticky rice and clean, healthy fish… yum. Obviously we won’t be eating sushi and sashimi platters all the time – it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than in the UK but it’s still not the cheapest thing, so while I could happily chomp my way through a plate of sashimi every day, we’ll be keeping it to special occasions.

As well as sushi, there is an abundance of fish in general at the supermarket. We’re cooking at home a lot to save money, but it’s easy to make tasty meals when you can get fresh pieces of fish for cheap. Our trick is to go to Aeon at the end of the day – at about 6:30 they reduce the prices of fresh things and the reductions are considerable. Last night we got a packet of delicious chunks of fish for about 150 Yen, which is less than a pound.

Something I had been told by friends who lived here is how much the Japanese love pastry. In general I try not to eat too much cake and bread because of the wheat, but I make an exception when it comes to things like donuts, which I love. So as you can imagine, we’ve only been here for 4 days, and we’ve already been to the ‘Mr Donut’ shop where you can get a basic donut of 100 yen (about 60p). Sasha had a ‘curry donut’ – someone he knows bought one of these by accident and got a nasty surprise when he bit into it, but Sasha likes savoury things and chose the curry option in full knowledge, enjoying it thoroughly. I had a sweet donut with yellow sugar crystals – I can see myself working my way through their menu over the next few months!

Yesterday we went to the harajuku shopping area, mainly to go to the ‘100 Yen Store’. As we’re not sure exactly how long we’ll be here, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on appliances and furnishings, so this store was perfect to pick up those few things we needed for the flat – cushions, mugs, soap etc. We didn’t realise it before going there, but the Takeshita-dori shopping street seemed to be some sort of popular tourist destination, as it was fairly busy with Japanese and Westerners alike. There were loads of little cafes, bars and restaurants, as well as street-food vendors selling, of all things, crepes. We didn’t have much of a look around the area but it’s one we’ll be going back to.

So today Sasha went for his induction at work, and I’ve been madly applying for jobs and just getting things done here really. That’s it for now, but I’m looking forward to the next adventure and being able to share it here on my blog. So it’s Sayōnara for now. (So tempted to put ‘zàijiàn’ at the end there but I need to get used to my new sign off!)