what do you see?

I'm moving my blogs to my webspace, at phiine.com
Please update your bookmark for this blog to http://www.phiine.com/blogs/nihon

[There's a Hong Kong blog now! I'm about 2 weeks behind with it, but working hard to catch up
And don't forget the pictures on Flickr too.]

The 7 hours at the hotel passed quickly, as expected! But it was a comfortable night anyway, and we left the next morning in good spirits. The organisation at the hotel was really good, and we got bussed back to the airport efficiently. As we were pulling out of the hotel car park we ironically saw a famous symbol of Japan for the first time ever - the rising sun, exactly as you'd imagine it: an oversized glowing fiery red disc appearing in the hazy distance behind some small pines.
The flight got underway on time, and we were treated to some great views of Japan all the way from Tokyo down to Kyushu, before the clouds won out. This included the most spectacular view ever of another great Japanese symbol, Mount Fuji, standing magnificently alone on the vast Kanto plain, surrounded by wispy white clouds. We flew almost directly over it and could see it's brown bare flanks and the dreadful crater. Goodbye Japan; we will certainly never forget you!

When I said "Later" I didn't mean it to be quite so long - sorry! So, what did we do...I'll give you a brief summary in this post (which I've back dated just for tidiness). The first night in Tokyo we went down to Ginza and had a look around a bit for old times sake. We ended up eating and drinking at the Lion beer hall, which was somewhere we'd always wanted to go. Things are a bit overpriced there, but it's still worth it for the atmosphere and the decor.

The next day was quite warm and humid, a great day to hear the familiar shrill sound of the cicadas. There seemed to be hundreds of them in the trees of the shrine dedicated to Confucius, near Ochanomizu, where we went first.
For lunch we went to a very old soba shop, Yabu Soba in Kanda (virtually behind the Green Hotel of Colin-and-Phil-in-Tokyo fame!) which is apparently almost legendary. It's a beautiful place, still in the same family after 6 generations. The husband and wife behind the counter make a very interesting team, with their chaotic but very efficient system of keeping track of orders, which the wife literally sings out to the kitchen staff. The soba was excellent by the way!

After that we went down to Tokyo station and looked around the Marunouchi building, and then eventually made it across to Harajuku and Omotesando. We had a crepe and went in some shops, including ones in the newish Omotesando Hills shopping centre. It's actually quite cool I suppose, with the interior based around a gradually ascending spiral hill. But there didn't seem to be many very good shops, to just...buy stuff in. And I still prefer the old apartments that were rather callously pulled down. It's good to see they left one of them standing at least.
That night we went to one of the small yakitori shops almost under the railway tracks at Yurakucho - somewhere else we'd never got around to going back in 2002-3. That was a great experience, very atmospheric, with, of course,plenty of delicious food - a good memory of Japan to take away.

The next day didn't provide so many good memories. We took a taxi the couple of minutes to TCAT, and then a bus out to Narita (perhaps the most awkward to access major city airport in the world? Bar Gatwick maybe). So far so good. Check-in early, have a final set lunch, get to the gate with plenty of time to spare for boarding at 3:20pm...only to wait beyond the boarding time...and wait...and wait some more. Soon, the dreaded recursive announcements along the lines of "we'll make another announcement in 15 minutes" began, and so did the familiar sinking feeling. Eventually it was: "Flights to Hong Kong are all suspended at the moment due to bad weather [a typhoon] so your flight maybe cancelled; we're making arrangments for a hotel and transport if this should happen". It seemed we wouldn't escape Japan so easily!
The flight was confirmed cancelled just before 5, but it took until well after 9 to get to the hotel. That interlude contained a lot of very badly organised parts which I can't really go into too much here (but briefly, because I just can't resist it: sorting people out to go back through immigration by (after the Japanese customers had lined up separately, first, ahem, going one-by-one through a vast stack of exit-cards reading out names; assigning people to hotels without writing down names, and then much later on having a complete free-for-all and re-assigning people who could fight through the scrum with their boarding pass; announcements of departing shuttle buses made not using the PA system but by a diminuative ANA representative in a tiny voice to a hall full of hundreds of people...)

We were assigned to "the Hilton". However, the sinking feeling came back when our bus sailed past the Narita Airport Hilton and onto the expressway for Tokyo. Rumours flew around the bus - we were being taken to the Tokyo Hilton in Shinjuku, the opposite side of the sprawling metropolis; it would take another hour and a half to get there, and none of us had eaten, drank or even had a chance to use the toilet for hours. There was a glimmer of hope as someone managed to produce a bag of mixed nuts which were duly passed around. Time ticked by, and it really did look like Shinjuku for a while, but then the bus cut off at the Disneyland exit and we eventually arrived at the Tokyo Bay Hilton, where a huge (by any country's standards) room with a harbour view, tickets for a pretty decent dinner buffet and a free international call awaited us. Shame we could only enjoy the hotel for 7 hours, before our 5am bus back to the rescheduled flight departed...

And we are here in Hong Kong now, as of yesterday...I'll have to write a longer entry later to explain all that happened!

Hi - we're here in Tokyo - ah the big city! Got here no problem, and as a bonus we got to ride on one of the ANA Pikachu planes again, upstairs again (just like old times Colin, except the stewardesses weren't so crazy!). We managed to lug our lead cases to the Hotel Kitcho - I literally almost didn't make it up the many many flights of stairs at Ningyocho station. Out to find some food soon.
(PS - thanks for the well wishing emails everyone!)

Hi again...well we're sitting in a very minimal apartment at the moment, having got rid of virtually all our worldy possessions this morning. Our boxes went off OK on Saturday too - the postman brought portable scales, tape measure, price calculation booklets...why do they need an actual post office really?
So now we just wait for our net-ordered pizza to arrive and then we have the rest of the day to get the place clean and finish packing our suitcases. Only 4 more hours of internet access left today, so I think this will be my last ever post from Hokkaido. Goodbye to the Snow Country!

The 3rd and final fireworks tonight were again very impressive. The weather has been really nice for each one which is great. Some good final memories to take out of Japan.
I taught my last ever lesson this morning. Quite an auspicious occasion I suppose, although as is often the case I didn't really feel the reality of it at the time.
We also got rid of a few more items today (thanks Miwa!) so the place is thinning out.
We've literally just finished sealing up our boxes which will be sent off on a slow boat to China tomorrow afternoon. I called and found out that the post office will pick them up for us too, so I don't have to worry about lugging four 20 kilo boxes through the streets, or better still the look on the taxi driver's face as I throw them into his back seat...! I'm wondering what they'll do when they come - do they have a portable scales to weigh them and calculate the cost? Or can they do it by feel alone? Let's see..!

As you might know, we're saying goodbye to Japan very soon...in exactly a week in fact. So we've been very very busy doing all the pre-saying goodbye kind of things that one needs to do...cleaning up, throwing away, advertising and selling, going out for goodbye lunches and parties...as well as finishing off a little work and paying final bills...the list goes on so I won't bore you with too many details!
There'll be a blackout without internet access for about 24 hours from next Monday: I'm not quite sure how I'll cope! Then next Tuesday we're off to Tokyo for a couple of nights where I'll be able to check emails and post again.
Blogwise, I think I'll just keep this blog sitting here for a while as a reminder of how things were. I might back it up to a different URL too. And then, it's "what do you see (Hong Kong)?" (working title of course). Funnily enough Tokyo Girl is also making the great transition out of Japan at about the same time as us.

A post about other blogs today - I wanted to draw attention to a few of the sites in my right-column:
I've been reading the newish blog on the BBC, called The Editors recently - sounds a bit dull maybe, but it actually gives an interesting and surprisingly transparent insight into how the BBC runs, including a recent post titled Different Views about how BBC News 24 and BBC World take quite different angles on the same story.
Another post discussed how blogging influences other more traditional media these days and how the BBC "can now know what you [the audience] are talking about and interested in without you ever telling us..." (see Daniel Pearl's "We're watching you"). So I'm going to test it. This is basically a post about the BBC's post about reading other people's posts, so let's hope they find it...

Dave is going strong on his blog (recently retitled to "Crater-strewn Dirt Track to Damascus") and doing a great job of gathering together relevant articles about the whole Israel / Lebanon / Syria / Iran... situation in that part of the Middle East as well as providing an excellent picture of how it's affecting every day life (see his July 19th post for that).

And my oldest friend Charles has got a blog and a web-presence at last! He's working on a ferry between Hull and Zeebrugge for a few weeks and has some good stories over at Maritime Musician.

It all makes my stories of abandoned gorillas, weather and moving sales seem a bit bland. Oh well, I do the best I can.

This is a very sad post to write. It tells poignantly of the state of affairs in this modern world we live in; a world of disposability and instant gratification.
In the picture below, there's a small dark object, barely visible, dwarfed by the neighbouring "mansion" block and left out with the rubbish:


What could it be? The truth is somehow close to heartbreaking...


As I write this, it's starting to rain; huge ominous summer-storm drops inexorably darkening the pavements. The thought of that poor unwanted gorilla, turning soggy, left perhaps to moulder for days, is almost too much to bear.

Heat! Warmth! Yesterday the weather finally got its act together, and it reached 29C here in Sapporo (warmest so far this year). And it's surprisingly humid too, for Hokkaido. I'm not complaining (for once, I hear you all yelling)! Unfortunately the weather forecast is suggesting that from here on the weather will "collapse"...as long as it holds out for the first of the 3 big Sapporo Toyohira River fireworks displays, which happens tonight. It's almost 2 years since I last properly saw the displays. Last year I missed all but the last few minutes of all of them (work, pah).

Anyway, it's quite hard to write such mundane things when such un-mundane and ridiculous things are going on in the Middle East. Dave, I'm thinking of you over there.

FOR SALE!!
This probably won't be much use to most readers, but if anyone is in the Sapporo area (or knows someone who might be interested!), please check out what we have for sale at: http://www.phiine.com/forsale.
Thanks!!

Today, being 7th July, is one of the dates of tanabata - a Japanese star festival, derived from a Chinese one. There are many nice old traditions that are practiced all over the country, including decorating bamboo which is often then floated on a river or burned, dressing up in yukata, making paper cranes...
Here, and in some other cities such as Sendai, they celebrate it on August 8th (which is the 7th of the 7th month on the old lunar calendar). So today is nothing at all here actually. Just thought I'd tell you anyway!

So, quite disconcerting really. As I'm sure you all know, this morning a crazed leader launched a rocket.

And North Korea launched a few too!!! Harharhar! Boom boom! ! (that's "boom! boom!" as in Basil Brush's catchphrase)

Ahem. No seriously though, obviously the NK thing is a bit dodgy and hopefully will get sorted out soon, in a diplomatic way. Even at times such as this though the potential for a joke like that is just too great to resist. Too much time on my hands? I'm sure. Should take these things more seriously? Undoubtedly.

Sorry.