Sayonara sojourns Pt 2. Takarazuka, Trains and transits

Well part two is now upon us. After Ikumi and my hospital appointment I set out on what would be my last major adventure around Japan, as such I wished to make it a biggie. In fact my idea was to go and see all my friends who were further afield so that I could say goodbye. That decision marked the start of a large amount of travelling.

First on my list however was a trip to Takarazuka (宝塚). I'm not entirely sure of the reason but I have totally fallen in love with this area and I just knew I'd regret it if I didn't manage to visit one more time. Now whilst it is a very fancy area, home to the famous Takarazuka revue, an all female theatre troupe, and many fancy buildings and restaurants, my main goal was to go back and visit Osamu Tezuka's museum.

My previous visit had been around two years earlier and I was quite taken by it then, regardless of how little I understood of the displays. I grew up watching a lot of his anime and to be honest he is not called the "Godfather of Manga" for any trivial reasons, his stuff is highly excellent. This time, armed with a much better ability to read and comprehend the Japanese language I was even more impressed with what I saw. Judging by the displays of his primary school work the man was a genius from the very beginning. 

In addition to being able to read more there were also a few extra films on in the small theatre including a very touching piece about a very friendly Ame-furi-kozou (a kind of rain demon that wears an umbrella and looks like a small child) who just wanted some rain boots. He befriends a local boy and helps him out with three requests in exchange for his rain boots. Sadly at the last minute the boy moves away and never returns the Ame-furi-kozou's help. Once he is a fully grown man (now a granddad in fact) he suddenly remembers his promise and goes through hell and high water to get back to his countryside home and present the demon with the rain boots. It had a nice simple line style and the Japanese wasn't too difficult which was great for me.

Afterwards I moved on to Osaka to get on board a night bus bound for Tokyo. I've lost count of how many times I've used that service now, though I am now a gold member so it must have been a lot. It's uncomfortable, it's tiring, but it's just so damned cheap that I can't help myself, I am my Nan's grandson it would seem.

This time, whilst my main purpose was to visit a friend, I was also very excited to be  heading into Tohoku, the northern region of Honshu, for the first time. Since I never like to do things the easiest way I got it into my head that it would be a fantastic idea to go by local train, a journey of a whopping 7 hours. Why would I do something so crazy you ask? Same reason I do everything the way I do. It was cheap. Also I thought the scenery might be nice.

The initial departure from Shinjuku went fine, if a little bleary eyed, and I arrived in Shinigawa in good time, enough time intact to actually buy breakfast. I boarded the first local train, bound for I-can't-remember-where, to begin about two hours of sitting still. I was hoping to read a bit and just spas out from tiredness but alas no such luck. A pair of Ojisans (old japanese men) sat next to me and started nattering away, so much for peace and quiet. It wasn't till I couldn't help but laugh at one of their jokes that they clicked that I understood Japanese. After a bit of a chat we realised we were off to the same place. Well that was that, I was stuck with them for the next four hours.

For the most part they were pretty interesting but once the Sake started flowing I knew I was in trouble as the conversation began to get steadily more and more unintelligible. I'd love to say that I did the right think and stuck it out but alas I am a bad man and ditched them on the third train transfer. I was tired, hungry and in no mood to try and decipher their slurs. I stepped out a little bit before Fukushima, grabbed a bento, played a bit of UFO catcher and just generally chilled for an hour or so before getting back on board for Sendai.

I think even if you know very little about Japan you have at least heard the name Sendai before as it is the capital of Miyagi prefecture, the area that was worst effected by the great Tohoku earthquake of 2011. I have to say I knew pretty soon when I had crossed the border into Tohoku as I was suddenly surrounded by vast seas of green, boundless nature. It is such a contrast to the urban sprawl that dominates central Honshu and I think had it not of been for a combination of the quake and a busy work schedule I think I would have made the journey sooner and more frequently. 

Right that is your lot for today. Next time I'll talk about what I actually got upto in Sendai.

Mata neee

Testing Testing 123

Once again I’ve been neglecting to write in this blog and I’ll be honest it is the same reason as always. I’m rapidly learning that a picture is worth a thousand words because the figures for my paper are taking for-ev-er to get right. Furthermore I was locked away in the bowels of hell (the Spring8 experimental hall I kid) for a good nine days doing crazy things with x-rays. As you can imagine not much time for anything else.

In fact there has been one more thing that has been keeping me busy the past few months. A fair while ago I had decided that my Japanese language progression was getting a bit stale and so as an incentive to do better I enrolled myself into this July’s Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). There are several levels (1-5) of difficulty with N1 being the most difficult test and N5 being the easiest. I felt that the N3 would present enough challenge without being overwhelmingly difficult given my limited time resources.

This was way back in like April however and sadly I didn’t take the studying too seriously, due to other workloads, so by the time June came around I realized I’d done almost no studying. Panic! Well actually no. Stress is nothing new to me these days and in all honesty there was nothing really riding on this exam than my own pride. I guess I should look at things more seriously than that but if I failed I failed and I was the only one to answer to.

Either way I had spent 1 or 2 hours a day practicing kanji and switched any of my personal reading to Japanese. I felt that might give me a bit of a chance on the vocabulary and read sections at least. As for the listening section? Well Kansai-ben is way more incomprehensible than standard Japanese and I’m even getting the hang of old man Japanese these days so I was confident with my listening comprehension.

On July 7^th (yup a Sunday) the big day finally arrived and I made the arduous journey to Kwansei University, Nishinomia campus where I would be sitting the exam. This meant about 3 hours of travelling by train and bus with a large number of transfers. Still I guess all the hustle and bustle distracted me from any potential exam nerves, though I’ve always been a bit zen just before exams, since there is not much you can do on the day anyway.

The University itself is one of the oldest, and richest, private universities in the area and all that money really shows. The campus is really impressive with pristine, neatly mown lawns and well refurbished beige bricked buildings I almost felt like I’d wandered into an Ivy league university.

As I arrived I started to feel the buzz of nervous tension from the other examinees waiting to enter the halls. I was like being in the final year of university all over again. I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of examinees were from south east asia and many groups of friends were huddled together chattering in their own languages. It’s times like this that it really hit’s home just how small a minority native English speakers really are in Japan. The weirdest part for me was observing friends of different nationalities talking in together in Japanese. This is of course perfectly natural but it still took me by surprise. I guess this is what it is like for none native English speakers in most corners of the globe.

The test itself wasn’t all that long, though with all the formalities it seemed to take forever. I won’t bore you with a blow by blow but I do think it went ok and my results should come in soon. To wrap up here are some of the more interesting (to me) observations I made on the day;

1.     It seems like it is natural instinct for a lot of SE Asians to give and receive items with two hands, though this observation maybe biased as we were in Japan and that is customarily how things are done here.

2.     Seating order can be confusing. The seating order in the halls went from right to left and in columns with the lowest number at the top. Felt really weird to me but hey different strokes.

3.     Japanese inefficiency is everywhere. I seriously felt the urge to get up and show the instructors how to collect in all the papers in at least a third of the time. It was nonsensically slow. Maybe I’ve just been coding too long.

   4.     Natto spaghetti is not and never will be delicious and I refuse to believe and Italian would ever honestly enjoy it. Reading paper you are a pack of lies.

   5.     A sign with a little chibi man telling people to shush is about as effective a deterrent as a feather duster for warding away lions.

   6.     A short break should be longer than 10 seconds and not contain ridiculous music.

That’s it for now.

Mata neee.

Strolling in Spring-time Kyoto.

Experiment, data analysis, sleep, experiment, data analysis sleep. Yeah the long silence is definitely due to the lack of much other than work of late. Not that I’m not enjoying it but it doesn’t make for very interesting writing. Other than that I have mostly spent my weekends on snowboarding trips or just generally hanging, but that's not so interesting. However with our final experiments of the financial year are over and I have my weekends back. Nicely enough this coincides with Japan’s most hospitable time of year. Spring.

So with nice weather and a bit of free time on the side it can only mean one thing. It’s adventure time. Or at least get the hell off of the mountain time. Fortunately Spring is also the time of year when many students are graduating and the Japanese Rail company run a special discounted ticket known as the Seishun Ju-hachi kippu (青春十八切符). This baby costs 11500 yen and grants unlimited use of non-express JR trains for 1 day. The cost gives you tickets for 5 days, or 5 people depending on how you want to split it.

So how to use this wonderful magic ticket? Thankfully there was an interesting event to get to, albeit all the way out in Kyoto. Armed with my discount pass and a few friends we headed out to a light up event in the Higashiyama district called “Hanatorou” （花灯路) . Basically, as per the Kanji, the streets were lined with little paper lanterns. Being a light up event we would need to wait until nighttime but with the weather being so nice it would have been a waste to not make a full day of it.

As I mentioned earlier spring is the best time of year in Japan, shortly followed by Autumn. I’d advise any one wanting to visit to come around those times. In winter it’s pretty damn cold and in summer…well let’s not mention summer. So after a good 2 hours on trains and a quick look around a nearby electronics store we set off to go for lunch in an area of Kyoto I’ve never been before. I can’t remember exactly where it was, just that it was north of Gion.

At any rate it was a gorgeous place for stroll. The streets where lined with many little boutiques and cafes and all other kinds of delights. I wasn’t so interested in shops and in fact our target was lunch. The said restaurant apparently had ‘Vegetables outside’. That’s it. Wonderful directions ey. Somehow or other we found the place, or somewhere like the place, and in my friends defence it was delicious. A lovely set menu of traditional Kyoto foods with lovely fresh vegetables.

After a meal like that there is something that is vitally important. Cake. We headed over to supposedly very famous cake shop close to the river. Famous didn’t cover it. Whilst the shop front wasn’t particularly big it was most definitely rammed. The quoted wait time to eat inside was over 2 hours. Not going to happen. The cakes however looked incredible. Shelves were lined with amazing tarts of all shapes and descriptions with some incredible fillings, sadly of course none of which were edible by me, damned milk allergy. Instead I just amused myself with the wonderful inconsistency of the namings and translations of the names from Japanese (for some reason they were translated to French or English but not both, and there seemed to be no realisation that Tart and Tarte mean the same thing).

Cakes purchased we moved on to do one of my favourite things in Kyoto, lazing about by the river. Now I know Ratty said “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”, but I disagree. Simply spending time by the riverside is good enough for me. The river runs the length of Kyoto and slightly to the east and is very aptly named. 鴨川 means duck river and there are definitely a lot of those and all variety of water fowl. The weather was fine so I could just kick back and do a bit of bird-watching, spring time means there is plenty of courting behaviour on display and watching Japanese Kites swooping and twirling through the sky is really relaxing.

 

Gradually the sun began to set and we progressed over to Gion to the start point of the lantern road, Yasaka shrine. We progressed through the grounds after seeing a short display from some Maiko, Geisha’s in training, and on into Maruyama park just behind. Within the park were of course many small paper lanterns lining the streets but there were also many other light up displays besides. On of my favourites was an installation from students of the various Kyoto art Universities. The artworks were created with the theme of ‘traditional light’ and were very pretty.

The total light up course was about 5km so we spent a decent amount of time walking down from Maruyama park to the end point at Kiyomizudera. It was a very nice evening and something I doubt I’ll see again, maybe. Either way Kyoto is such a cool place to walk around that bathing in the light ambience of lantern light only enhanced the experience, the nice weather helped a lot also. We finished off with dinner at a restaurant serving traditional and contemporary tofu dishes including ‘yuba’ which is the skin that forms of the top of boiling soy milk. It was an experience to say the least though I’m sadly not so great at pulling Tofu.

Well that's it from me. With the rents up from now I’m sure I’ll get a bit of travelling done and have something more entertaining to write about.

Ja mata ne.

Hokkaido Yuki Matsuri

So after almost 2 years of hard work, stress, sleepless nights and god knows what else I’ve finally managed to get me some data I can work with. This of course means I’m now elbow deep in data analysis. A lot less stressful than experiments for sure but also a lot less fun. It’s repetitive, it’s boring and, thanks to the ambiguity of the technique I’m working with, seemingly never ending. But at least I have something I can work with.

Data analysis does however come with some benefits though. Almost all the analysis is computer based and as such can be done anywhere. This means I can do the unthinkable and…take a holiday mid-week. I know I know it’s very out of character and I’m pretty sure very un Japanese but hey, I’m not Japanese and neither is my boss so I managed to get away with.

So what prompted the desire to take a bit of a break, apart from being fully done in by several months of hard experiments? Well I’ll tell you. With my departure immanent, albeit not as soon as I was thinking it would be, I’ve been taking every opportunity to explore further afield whilst I’m in Japan. With that I decided to head out to the northern most reaches of Japan, Hokkaido.

The northern Island of Japan is famous for several things. Its natural beauty in any season is lorded by many of those on the mainland, its low population means that much of the natural landscape lays undisturbed. The same can also be said of its wildlife. Sadly this is best seen in the summer months and as we are in the middle of winter there wasn’t much chance of that. However winter also boasts some unnatural beauties of it’s own in the form of the Sapporo Yuki Matsuri (札幌雪祭り).

The snow festival is one of Japan’s biggest events seeing more than 2 million people flock to Hokkaido annually to bare witness. It was started by a few High school students building Snow statues in the centrally located Oodori park in the 1950’s and has grown and grown ever since. One of my favourite facts is that the local defence force is required to participate as a training exercise.

The festival runs for one week and whilst you can visit the sculptures anytime I definitely recommend heading down after dark. Sure it’s freaking cold (about -10­⁰C)

And yes the streets are crowded but the lighting is absolutely fabulous and really accentuates just how amazing these things are. Pictures do not do these things justice. The scale is just something else with entire buildings being reconstructed purely out of snow. I was pretty much in awe of everything I walked past, some of these sculptures were easily over 10 metres.

A little bit down the way is Sapporo’s central entertainment district, Susukino, where the streets are lined with spectacular ice sculptures. Again these really need to be seen at night as the pure ice glistens with the surrounding lighting. Once more I really can’t do these justice with pictures but I gave it a go anyway. If you go for the start of the festival you can also be treated to watching some of the sculptors hard at work with their chainsaws putting together some of the statues.

Of course no festival in Japan would be complete without Yatai’s, small portable food stores, and these were a bit of a treat. The other thing Hokkaido is famous for, besides nature and being mega cold, is food. It is one of Japan’s central agricultural hubs, being home to about a quarter of Japan’s arable land. Add to this the cold northern seas and that gives you great fish and veggies to boot.

Being that it is very cold Hokkaido food tends to be on the heartier side but when you are out in sub-zero temperatures that is pretty welcome. The miso ramen was amazing, a really nice blend of aka and shiro miso, and the curry soup is possibly the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in Japan. Sadly as it was only a 2 day stay I missed out on all the good seafood but as it was crab season I think I would have missed out anyway.

Due to the short nature of the trip there really wasn’t much chance for side trips unfortunately but I did manage one. Just a short journey from the centre, maybe 30 minutes by train and bus, is a small peak called Moiwa san. It’s not particularly but it does offer some amazing views out over Sapporo, as well as having a rather unique cable car journey to the summit. Sapporo doesn’t have many tall buildings so you can really see pretty far out across the area.

To be honest that is pretty much it. I probably spent as much time travelling out there as I actually did in Hokkaido but I’m really glad I went. My favourite moment? Well that is a bit private but one thing I found highly amusing was Panasonics stage at the Snow festival. They had cornered off an area to advertise their new range of air-conditioners, complete with Hawaiian scenery and a fake beach. Was it successful? I’ll let the thermometer do the talking.

Mata ne.

僕の町で迷っている- Getting lost in my town.

Once again it’s been a long time between blog posts sorry. I think as I get more and more used to things here the trivial differences have become, well, just that. It also has a fair amount to do with me being knee deep in data analysis and after having your eyes glued to a computer screen all day the desire to write is somewhat diminished.

I had originally planned a post about Christmas in Japan, how and why it sucked, the soul sucking commercialism of the whole event and blah blah blah. Looking back it wasn’t so awful. I mean it was rubbish but the New Year made up for it. That sums it up better than any ranty tirade I can think of.

Instead I am going to take you on a journey. A journey through time and sp… sorry bit of a Boosh moment there. Anyway I regularly listen to1 a podcast called “The Forum” from the BBC world service. It has many interesting discussions, check it out, but one interesting segment is “60 second ideas to change the world.”. On one such show one of the panellist recommended spending a day getting lost in your local area. I hadn’t intended on it but that’s just what I did, and I came across quite a few cool things.

My goal for the day was to buy a new tin opener, my old one broke, and a new laptop cover, my old one broke. I think you can see a pattern here. I’m really bad at keeping things nice, always have been. With that in mind I left my mountain home and set out to my local City, Himeji (姫路) incidentally It means “Princess street”.

Now I don’t want to sell it short, historically Himeji is very interesting. It has the largest Castle complex that  maintains much of it’s original construction, it is the most visited castle in Japan. This would be wonderful but sadly it’s in a box at the moment. Nearby is Mt. Shosha and the Engyoji temple complex, a very ancient Buddhist site as well as the setting for some scenes in “The last Samurai”. It is the second largest city in Hyogo and I’m sure there are many other things it’s famous for.

Here is the thing though Historical also means old. The price you pay for keeping such things well preserved is that you can’t do much renovation and renewal. There isn’t much of a night (or for that matter day) life in Himeji. For a city there isn’t a whole lot going on and with Osaka and Kobe so close I guess there is no real reason to bother.

Back to Sunday. Now I like most people am a creature of habit. My first thoughts for my shopping trip where to head to Miyukidori, the main high street of sorts. However for some reason when I left the station my body was telling me to go left not right. Sometimes it’s best not to argue so left I went.

Now one thing I really love about Japan is that it is really strong on boutique culture. The big name brands are of course about but they have no where near the presence you would see in high streets back home. For somewhere as homogeneous as Japan it is really amazing that so many niche and quirky stores can make a living. But they do just that. The fashion tribes rule the youth subcultures and it’s a consumer jungle out there so it lends itself well to these odd little stores.

First random encounter of the day was a café that specialised in all things soy. It was a tiny little thing with a Tudor style interior, very old school looking and quite incongruous in the surrounding concrete jungle. The place catered to all things bean, with fresh dried beans, home made soymilk, soy lattes on the menu ad even soy ice cream. I was more than a little happy. I bought some of said soymilk, made about 5 minutes from the till and I have to say it was worlds apart from the stuff you get at the supermarket, delish. The lovely old lady that owned the place assured me that their lunch menu was tasty also so I guess I’ll have to go back.

Returning to my pavement pounding with no real goal other than to find an electronics store I pressed further west. As I approached a bypass the roads started to widen and I was soon surrounded by nothing but car outlets and family restaurants.  It is of course at times like these that Japan likes to throw a quick spanner in the works.

As I crossed the next traffic signal I spotted a mini cooper. It took a second to sink in. A min cooper. In Japan! It’s been almost two years and I hadn’t seen a single one up until this point. Not only that but it was a classic none of this new fangled little big mini cooper nonsense. After the shock subsided I noticed another, and another, and in fact I was outside a mini cooper speciality garage. They even had a mini cooper pick up truck, not entirely sure when it would be useful but cool nonetheless.

 

After a few photos and nearly getting run over in the process I stumbled upon my next surprise. Out in what I can only really consider the middle (ish) of nowhere was an art museum.

Called the Enzan memorial museum of art it is a privately run establishment that specialises in showcasing traditional arts and crafts, including various methods for looming Obi (Japanese sashes) and bamboo weaving. The two curators looked a little nervous when I walked through the door but as soon as they realised I could speak a bit of Japanese they visibly relaxed and kindly demoed some of the techniques for me. It still amazes me a little just how timid Japanese people are about their English ability. 9 times out of 10 they know much more than they think they do and can communicate at least.

The second floor of the museum was a gallery with some wonderful displays of paper craft and intricate Noh masks. At times like this more than others I lament my inability to read Japanese. I really would have liked to know a little more about what was on display but alas I was lost in a sea of unknown symbols. This also meant my trip round the museum was considerably shorter since I wasn’t stopping to take notice of the signs. I did take a few moments to take in the wonderful garden at the entrance way though. The simple aesthetics of Japanese gardens are definitely a sight worth seeing.

And there ends my little detour. It was a nice reminder that life can still surprise even when partaking in the seemingly mundane. I encourage anyone feeling a bit humdrum to go and get lost in their local environs, just see what you can find. As for my shopping, well I at least found the tin opener. That's something.

Mata ne.

Denshima

So I’ve been asked about this several times by my friends back home. What is the Japanese electronic music scene like? Sadly I didn’t know until now. The scene is here; it’s not as big due to the dominance of awful, awful industrial pop, but there are some Japanese ravers out there.

Part of the reason I’ve been struggling with this (aside from the lack of free time) is due to the lack of a real club scene out here in Japan. Space is at a premium so getting large groups of people together to get down and skanking is a tough ask. I’m pretty sure this is the reason for the overrepresentation of small bars in the major cities.

The clubs that do exist are pretty expensive (though weirdly often they have ‘foreigner’ discounts, maybe they expect us to drink more?). Mostly they will put on weekly/monthly events rather than being consistently being open. I was a little shocked by this since like almost everything else is open 24hrs.

In fact clubs have been faced with some serious adversity of late in the major cities. The government have deemed it worth while to make it illegal for venues to permit dancing past 1am (I am not even joking it’s called the Entertainment Business Control Law and has theoretically been in effect since 1948). Due to this it’s just not worthwhile to run a club, the place can be open after 1am but you most definitely can’t dance.

You can see then why it’s pretty difficult to be a DJ in Japan and why the development of an electronic scene has been somewhat stifled. And yet Japan is full of electronic noise, as a nation it seems to be crazy about it.

I digress. The festival itself took place at the same location as Summer Sonic though on nowhere near as grand a scale. I’d say there were maybe around 5000 to 10000 people though I honestly have no real Idea. Either way it was a bigger crowd than I was honestly expecting.

The start of the day was a bit surreal I must admit. I can honestly say it is the first time I have ever gotten up at 8am to go out raving. In fact the day ended a little while after the sun had set, rather than rising. It was novel I’ll give it that. Anyway I met up with some friends and we set off on a 3 hour journey by train and bus to Maishima sports Island, an artificial Island situated in Osaka bay with, wait for it, a lot of sports fields. The festival itself was situated in one such field overlooking the bay just to the north of where summer sonic had been held.

The first thing I noticed was the average age was much higher than I had seen at Summer sonic. I guess this goes with the scene really, That being said there were still some people wandering about with little kids in tow, and in some of these kids got stuck in when the music kicked off.

The festival ran for eight hours (12pm to 8pm) and had five stages covering some of the breadth of electronic music. Well I say that but the focus was heavily skewed towards Trance and Techno, not my music of choice I’ll admit but I’ve had a drought so I wasn’t going to be fussy. The five stages were Drum and Bass (which seemed to be going off but my friends showed no interest), Techno (which sometimes eemed to be playing trance), Trance, (which often seemed to be playing techno), Live house (I only stopped by a couple of times cos it was by the food tents but what I heard was cool)、chillout (there can’t have been more than five people there the whole event) and the main stage (more trance/psy-trance/techno).

that I looked like “I was in my element “. Hell’s yeah this is the scene I left behind in the UK and it was nice to make a return.

What also made the day for me was the wonderful opportunity for people watching. Niche cultures usually have there extremes it’s true but I don’t think anywhere in the world does extremes like Japan. It most likely stems from the oppressive level of enforced conformity that pervades every aspect of Japanese life. When people don’t conform they don’t conform hard.

 

Now normally if a trend takes off in Japan a good 90% of the population will follow it so it can be a bit like a scene from Scooby doo walking through the streets. There were of course the standard fake eylashed over makeupped Garuzu (Gals) in the crowd pouting away but also a lot more variation. In fact if I was really into fashion this event would have been a feast for the eyes. A particular highlight though was definitely the neon chun-li ladies or a girl with a (forgive me for the unintentional intertextual reference) massive Dragon tattoo.

In fact it was nice to see people just letting go, and letting go myself. The people were so into what they were doing that I definitely did not feel out of place skanking along besides them. Music is something that truly bridges boundaries. The primal instinct to move to a beat knows nothing of geographical separation and it’s fun to just be young and stupid from time to time.

The artists were no less wild, one of the Dj’s,Yoji, had some of the biggest fake eyebrows I’ve ever seen. In fact the biggest act where an Isralei duo called Skazi. They mainly focussed on Psy Trance with some metal licks thrown in. It’s not really my thing to be honest, I’m deffo a bass head, but they did drop some Skrillex so that made up for it a bit.

On an interesting note halfway through the day was something called クレインアプチム　(or clean up time). For fifteen minutes all the music stopped and we were told to pick up our rubbish. The cool thing is, everyone did. This is refreshing and I’m sure would be met with boos in the UK but as the DJ proclaimed “We love the environment so lets keep it clean”. It makes perfect sense, it saves the area and costs and it’d be cool to see it happen at more music events.

 

All in all it was a nice introduction to the Japanese electronic music scene. I’ll have to keep looking for some Japanese dubstep but I’ve not had any leads so far. The event runs twice a year, once in the spring and once in autumn. It was a shame I didn’t manage to make it to the show earlier in the year as it featured a really cool Japanese group called Hifana who meld traditional Okinawana music with breakbeats. Basically the event has let me know that I need to do a lot more digging.

では、またにぇえ

Fishing with birds.

Well as once again find myself in work at silly o’clock in the morning it is a definite realisation that summer is over. Actually I’d been meaning to write this entry for quite some time now but just hadn’t found the time. I visited an amazing conference on Mass spectrometry; the science and technology used to accurately measure the mass of atoms and molecules. It gave me lots of ideas and also inspired me that hope was not completely lost for Josie.

Anyway that's not really that interesting, though in one of the talks it was revealed that a lab group had modified their million pound piece of equipment with lego. Instead I wanted to write about something I’d been meaning to do for ages.

The conference was in Kyoto you see and during the summer the quieter, more tranquil area to the north, called Arashiyama, becomes a hive of activity. Well after the sun goes down at any rate. A less well known and definitely quirky tradition called Ukai (鵜飼), or cormorant fishing attracts many away from Kyoto’s more popular central districts. The cormorant being Liverpool’s official bird I kind of had to go really.

The tradition itself traces it’s roots back over 1000 years and was most likely brought over from china. Quite a few rivers play host to it in Japan over the summer, the most famous being the Nagara River in Gifu. The Oi river of Kyoto is much nearer to me though and since I was in the area it was worth a visit.

Before I get into what actually happened I have to sidetrack a bit to tell you about the journey there. Now the easiest way to get to Arashiyama from central Kyoto is by the main train line. I however had a free pass for the underground from the conference so I chose to exploit it as much as I could.

Sadly I couldn’t make the entire journey that way but it lead me to riding the rather charming Keifuku electric railroad. This is a one-car tram that winds through the streets of northern Kyoto and gave me more than a hint of nostalgia for some of my European adventures. It’s dead old, it began operation in 1910, but it made the journey that bit more special.

After arriving it was only a short walk to the Togetsukyo Bridge which was lined with boats, their little lanterns beckoning me on. Since the cormorants aren’t so big, and as it is dark, the only real way to view Ukai is up close in a little roofed boat. I got my ticket from the boat stand and, since I couldn’t really understand any of the kanji instructions, followed a pair of Japanese Girls to a nearby platform.

In the end they were as clueless as me and we were ushered back to the ticket office by one of the Ukai boatsman. It did however prove as a starting point for a conversation, a bit of language goes a long way and it was nice to have a bit of company, sometimes experiences are best shared.

The girls it turned out were old friends from Uni in Tokyo, though one hailed from Kyoto. Her friend was visiting and as neither of them had seen Ukai before they decided to make the trip out to Arashiyama, firsts all round then. In fact I'd say it's quite common for natives of a country to have not participated in many of their cultures older tradition. I mean I've never morris danced for a start.

We boarded our boat along with about 20 others and were guided out to the middle of the river. To my surprise once we were anchored in place along side many other eager viewers some small motor boats pulled up alongside us. Each had a few tepans (Japanese hot plates) and hotpots selling grilled squid, oden (a kind of stew) and mitarashi dango (rice dumplings grilled in a sweet sauce). The girls bought a couple of dango and gave one to me, never refuse free food from a lady. Golden rule.

After a bit of snacking the boats moved away and it was time for the main event. The cormorants have small bands around their necks, not enough to be uncomfortable but enough to stop them swallowing any fish they catch. They also have a long rope fixed to the band and are held in groups of about 4 or 5 by the fisherman on the boat. It kind of looks like he’s taking them for a walk I must admit.

At the back of the boat a large bale of dry grass is set alight so the birds can see better and then the event kicks off. It was quite distressing at first for me. The cormorants dip under the water to snag a fish and then are hauled onto the boat to relinquish their prize. It seemed a tad cruel but the birds didn’t seem to mind to much and they are rewarded with a sliver of fish for their efforts, just enough to keep their appetite going.

The leisurely cruise around the river took about an hour all told with the cormorants being paraded in front of us periodically. I guess it’s mostly for show these days really but it is something I may not have a chance to see again, I try my best not to let opportunities like this pass me by.

All in all it was a very relaxing way to wind down after a hard day of science. The river is serene at night and Arashiyama just has such a chilled atmosphere. The boats themselves rock pleasantly and you sit maybe a few centimetres above the water. If I get the chance I think I’d like to go again with some friends. Apparently you can also go to a restaurant afterwards where they prepare sashimi from the evenings catch. It’s a tad expensive however so I gave it a miss.

On the way back however I had a wonderful moment of serendipity. I managed to get off the train a stop too late, I was daydreaming a bit as always. My stomach was grumbling at this point and I came across a burger place with a skateboard for a sign. I was sold before I even crossed the door. It was awesome, best burger I’ve had in Japan and genuinely spicy. A top end to a boss night.

Ja sore de ijou desu,

Mata nee.