what do you see?

The flight into Boston was interesting, as there was thick fog over the airport but it was completely clear everywhere else. Still feeling the effects of jet-lag quite a bit.

Well we're safely in the states now after a LONG day of travel yesterday...12 hour flight to Detroit, 2 hour wait and then another couple of hours to Boston...it's now 1pm on Tuesday, although that's 3am on Wednesday morning Japan-time...

More later!

Again only one day off this week, spent it mostly shopping for souvenirs...we're off to America on Monday for 3 weeks. Busy at work, at least the weather's turned really nice here recently...one of the students claimed to have seen St. Basils Cathedral when she was young.....in Koiwa (where Christine works)! Hmmm.

See pics site for new album of the Edo museum I mentioned 2 days ago. Also, I've renamed one of the albums to Japanese Gardens and added pics of the one we went to recently.

Today was our only day off (yesterday we worked a shift swap for one of our days off when we're visting the USA at the end of the month). We went into another new part of Tokyo, just down the line from where we live to visit Fukagawa Edo Museum. Of course before we could go there, we had to do the usual 30-40 minutes of wandering around randonly trying to actually find it...but this is always interesting in Tokyo, as you come across stuff you'd ever have visited otherwise. Today we found an interesting temple/shrine complex and wandered around it a bit. This was an interesting one with a more modern building you could go inside. It had lots of small, tatami side "chapels", one of which was occupied with chanting monks. We have a sound recording if anyone's interested. Another area held a unique display...pictures of gods/buddha painted in fluorescent colours, which glowed brightly in the darkened but ultraviolet lit room (complete with 80s Jackson Pollock-esque decor!)



After that we we finally found the museum - a large building housing part of a reconstructed Edo-era (old Tokyo from about 150 years ago) town, complete with fake sky, canal, trees and wooden buildings (one with a automaton cat on the roof which moved and meowed periodiucally). You could take your shoes off and go inside the buildings, which were recreated to an incredible level of detail. If you opened cupboards or drawers you could find kimonos, teacups etc.

Next we went to another traditional garden, which was nearby, for about an hour. This one's main feature was the use of lots of stepping stones around the central pond, and interesting rocks from different parts of Japan (no really, it was interesting!).



So, work again tomorrow - another 6 day week for the same reason as the last one!

We went to another shrine in Tokyo today, where there's a lot of plum blossom at the moment. Very nice, although completely freezing and windy. We also saw a man and a performing monkey (see Pics site, we also have some video clips if you're interested...) and then went to an old-fashioned coffee shop to get warm. The owner and customers seemed worried about us understanding the bill when we finished and had a discussion about how to say it in English (although we'd already read the Japanese menu!).

Up early this morning...it's hard to sleep when the house is literally shaking in the wind...

(New pictures of Hakone are now on-line)

Just briefly, Hakone is a large area about 60 miles west of Tokyo. It's situated around the crater of a volcano which erupted 400,000 years ago, and there's still volcanic activity going on there. Being Japan, this means that lots of hotels and resorts have sprung up aorund the area, all with their own natural hot springs. We stayed at the Fujiya Hotel, the first hotel to be built for foreigners in Japan, 120 years ago. It's a really atmospheric place - old fashioned Western and Japanese styles mixed together, just a little faded round the edges. A lot of famous people have stayed there over the years including Helen Keller, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lennon, Margaret Thatcher and Twiggy. All the rooms are supplied with natural hot spring water, and they even use it for the central heating!



We bought a special free-pass from Tokyo which meant that once we were in the area we could use all the public transport - this included a very steep, old fashioned train, a funicular, ecablecars, a tacky reproduction galleon and buses. On Monday we went to the Open Air art gallery where you can see many sculptures by famous artists outside (it was very cold and snowing that day) and travelled around a bit before going to the hotel. The next day was sunny but still a little cold, and we started the day by walking around the hotel gardens (they have greenhouses heated by hot spring water) and then going up to Owakudani - a mountainside where sulphurous steam spouts from the ground (it smells very bad and there are warning signs about not staying in one place for too long!) and you can buy eggs boiled in hot sulphurous pools. After that we travelled on, riding on the tacky boat and then walking to some beautiful gardens overlooking the lake. Then we found some remnants of the old Tokaido way (which went between Tokyo and Osaka a few hundred years ago) which is lined with huge cedar trees, and visited Hakone shrine, which has a very large, red, torii gateway standing in the lake waters nearby.