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.