This evening its raining in Tokyo, not the summer rainy season, just the sorta end of winter shower and on a little trip to the supermarket I did something that I’ve got completely used to. I put my umbrella into is little plastic baggy at the door, aka the condom. I’ve not yet lived through the rainy season but in Japan it rains just like every where else, so what do you do with thousands of people with umbrella’s walking around your store.

Well here they have come up with an ingenious solution (Jury is still on on how eco friendly, more on that later). Actually you have two choices. At the small stores there is a rack outsite the store where you place your umbrella. (oh I think I may be ahead of myself slightly, everyone and I mean everyone owns at least 1 umbrella. I have 3 at last count, and I am sure there a few somewhere from London, the other city of rain).

The great thing about Japan is that if you put your umbrella into the rack, it will be there when you get back. Honesty is such a great part of living here. I suppose there could be mix ups, but I’ve never seen it happen. The other option at larger store is the Umbrella condom machine. This is a machine that sits outside the door, you walk upto it, put the tip of you collasped umbrella into it, put all the way down, the pull forward. Suddenly you wet dripping brolly is now encapsulated in a drip proof plastic baggy. No dripping in the store.

After your little shopping jolly all you do when you walk out of the store is take you little baggy off and put in into the bin provided! How cool!

Now for the eco side of things. Well, all the plastic is collected back into special bins so it can be easily re-cycled. If that happens and I really hope it does. Also what is the cost of all the dripping and cleaning and chemicals mopping it all up, again I don’t know. So end of day maybe an issue, but damn it is cool

I’m posting dating this entry as I did write much over the last week. But I there are so many thing s I want to say about having living here for a year. Basically I’m falling in love with the place.

Its taken quite some time to adapt to this point, and it really has been stages. I think that I adapted fairly quickly in the first two months to actually being here, but then each month after has been a growth from there as well.

I remember when I first go here I didn’t go out and see much as it was all quite overwhelming, then I waited until my friends came for Spring and I visited Kyoto with them. As you will know if you have read this blog I have fallen in love with Kyoto. Not because its the first place I really ‘saw’ but more as I really connected to the place.

During that trip I really had to step out of my little ‘world’ and it was difficult as then I was not comfortable with my language skills. I’m still not, but much better now.

After that it’s been an accelerated process of adapting, and it was not until I left this year for 10 days in Sydney that I really noticed how much I had adapted and grown fond of the Japan and Tokyo. I stil don’t know how a city this large with so many people can work as well as it does, but beleive me it really does work. Its clean, safe, the transport system works everyday and I’ve never had a power outage!!.

Yes, its crowded and that takes some getting used to, being crowded into a train, but its very different from London trains, here there is a ettiquite for boarding a crowded train that does not offend. Its totally silent, but learn that skill and its all easy!

I guess I’ll be writing more about it as I’ve decided to stay for another year, why not, so much more to see and learn!.

Was surfing last night and came across this image. It speaks so loudly itself that really what can you say. Writing a blog means proof reading is a common practice. I think this guy should maybe have done a little. Perhaps then his message may have had the impact he was after instead of the reverse.?

Received an email from my cousin in law which had the following

"Anyway, I was reading a book about raising boys and it said that men use a lot of non-verbal communication. I had never noticed this and thought it interesting. So I asked Gordon, “Do you think men use a lot of non-verbal communication?”

He shrugged. "

It reminded my of a trip to Paris with my cousin Mark.

When living in London Mark, Heather, Natasha, Bernadette and I decided to goto Paris for the weekend. Well Heather openly admits she is a talker, Natasha admitted that she could carry on three different converstations at the same time (and I beleive her) while Bernadette was also no slouch when it came to the talking olympics either.

This then left me and mark. As you may or maynot know Mark and I shared a house together in NZ just before I left and could happily spend the entire weekend together in the same house and maybe have three sentences of conversation. So here we are going away for a weekend with three women who could overtalk a hurricane. What chance did we have. Actually we were fine, the whole weekend the two of us maybe spoke three of four times, yet knew exactly what each other was doing or thinking.

On the train back the girls finally took a breath and observed that we did talk very much. We just looked at each other shrugged, and they continued on with the conversation about how uncommunicative men were. We could have taken a stand for the male team, but we passed something interesting outside the train and by the time we looked back the conversation was back on hand bags.
shrug.

Something that I’ve noticed over the last couple of months is the different types of dogs within Tokyo. Now I come from a country were most dogs work for there living, and was brought up with working dogs as pets. We always had them, and still do. They live outside and are never allowed into the house. That being the cats territory. Actually there were rather defined boundaries that they were not really allowed in the front part of the property either as that was the barbecue and cats territory as well. As Dad has mellowed in his old age that rule seems to have been relaxed a little. Truth be told its more that the last couple of dogs have such a deep bond with dad that they know when he is by the barbecue and just turn up. They have also been some of the nicest we have ever had that no one really minds. Even the cat.

The UK is a country of large dogs, again from the farming heritage, so no real change there, except dogs seem to sleep by the fire at night. Tokyo is obviously not farming country (I am sure there a border collies somewhere in Japan). Also spaces does not really permit the luxury of keeping large does. On that I there is a beautiful golden retriever in the neighborhood. Most of the dogs appear to be toy dog. And when I mean toy, think the little puppet/electronic ones that you see and you are in the right ballpark. I was walking back from somewhere the other day and had to stop for a double take as this little ball of fluff appeared from behind this lady and I really could not tell if it was real or not. I was almost identical to one you buy in a toyshop. hmm, probably was purchased in the Toy Dog shop.

Down the bottom of the road is actually shop dedicated to toy dog accessories, so obviously its big business. As it is so cold here in winter and these little things are not exactly large they all need to have little jackets to keep them warm, hence the need for shops!

Anyway just an observation. I think I’ll stick to goldfish, if my apartment had room to fit them!

(Update: Apr 20 – Dinner guests for Lamb feast above noted high number of toy dogs in said hood – Positive will have someone knocking on my door soon advising that if I wish to continue living in this area I will need to purhase a dog.)

Well I’m back in Tokyo after a week of New Zealand. All went really well. Mum and Dad are both getting better. Things went a little down hill with Mum hitting her head and Dad getting an infection in his new knee. Birthday party bash went well with small exception that Dad could not really attend as the antibiotics were not settling very well. Sunday was the day they told me that I was getting black drivers cap and a name change to Parker. Dad had to have a checkup with his surgeon about his knee on Tuesday, and Mum a checkup in Waikato, and neither are allowed to drive.

Good news thing is that I love driving and the new car is great. Dads check up went well and the surgeon is keen to do the other knee asap so that he won’t have pain from it. Mums checkup ruled out all the dreaded lurgies that had been suggested of stroke or tumour. So a few hundred kilometre later family is all back in good health, or on the road to it

Well back at work today after a nasty bout of the flu. Not the chep chep variety (one hopes). Rather pleased with myself as I managed to balance my Yen bank account with MSN Money down to the last 1 yen that I earned in interest. Unbeleivable how low the interest rates here are for having money in the bank. I think close to 0% is probably correct. The main reason for keeping the large amount in the bank account is that they bank by standard will charge 210Yen per cash withdrawel, however if you hold a certain amount in your account they will credit this back to you. (thats about a pound per transaction).

As someone who is still not used to carrying huge amounts of cash around I do tend to make more withdrawels than most, probably weekly now! In this odd sense I earn reverse interest by keeping the amount I do there. Bloody odd. Its also nice to have the buffer.

The other success was putting the drawstring back into my Nike excercise pants. They broke a few weeks back, but without a bobby/safety pin could not do it. One turned up with my dry cleaning the other day, and using a skill my dear mother taught us years ago I put it back in, good as new. Thanks mum, skill i never knew I would one day require, and saved me.

a) having to buy a new pair of shorts 35 pounds
b) The embarrassment of them falling down my legs whilst at the gym. – priceless.

I have come to the rather unsettling conclusion that I must have developed some type of gravity well, or have had certain molecules replaced with dark matter.  Now I am a not a small sized person, however I don’t think I reached the size of a planetary body capable of generating gravity waves on an inter stellar scale either.  (quiet all you people with the cheap screens.).

How did I arrive at this point.  Well over the last month there has been trouble on the pavements.  The girl with mobile has been written about, as well as the old ladies, however its now just about everybody.  The pavements around were I live are for the most part exceedingly wide (which balances the bits which are exceedingly narrow).  Given how wide there are you would expect easy navigation and plenty of room to pass.  This however is not the case, what happens instead is that when approaching another pedestrian for passing I will pick a course that lets me pass with a meter clear on either the left or right.  With me so far?

What will happen is that said pedestrian will then start to vear gently into this path on a collision course.  Logically a change in direction is required to pass on the opposite side and its clear that the person is front has found a new tragectory.  However the course correction then seems to result in the forward pedestrian gently veering from pervios heading to new heading and again imminent collision.

Okay the easist thing would be to just walk patiently behind, except I have long western legs, and a London pace.  Adapting to the dawdle is like stepping through mollasses.  On one occasion I had to perform 3 adjustments before I could overtake, which was getting hard as I was laughing so much.  Since the people in front have no idea that I am actually goto pass some unseen force must be in action.  Therefore I have to work on the gravity well/dark matter hypothosis.

I new my brain was a black hole, I just didn’t realise it was exhibiting all the features of one!

Those of you who know me will know that I hardly ever ever ever wear a watch.  Its odd because I own a number of watches, (well 2 sport and 2 dress, and a third really dressy, just cannot remember where that one is suspect New Zealand).  Why I don’t wear them is sometimes a mystery, and when I do wear one, it comes off the wrist very quickly, like right now its sitting on the desk.

I suspect a couple of reasons are that the get in the way when working on computers, (feeble excuse), but I do seem to be very hard on watches when I do wear them.  I can scratch one in hours, hence why I never invested in Tag Haur, it would just make you cry to wear a $2000 watch and scratch it the first day.  Scratch resistant you say,  would you lend me yours to prove it?  My latest Kahuna literally went to pieces in Santorini and is now back together thanks to super glue.  I rather like it as its very light.  That could be the second reason is that the weight of a watch is annoying and with the arthritic problems I had in the last few years this has not helped either (hence the non heavy watch).

But I strong suspect its because after years of being in the UK I found I just didn’t need one.  My mobile phone provided a fine fill in for the odd occasion that time keeping was required.  Why check you watch to see if the bus is running on time, because you know it never will be.  The watch is only going to tell you that you have been waiting for 40minutes in the freezing rain.  Without a watch this 40minutes becomes a indeterminate amount of time somewhere in the region of late to mildly annoying, whereas if I had been checking every five minutes I would be accurately aware of just how late I was and how high my blood pressure was getting.

Same thing with the tubes/underground.  When you arrive at the station you are politely advised by the overhead signs that the next train will be in 3 minutes, following by another 5 minutes after that.  No amount of watch wearing is going to make it arrive any faster.  Boring meetings, do you really want to know just how bored you are?  Airport Queues, chill out and just move along with the crowd, remember once they have your luggauge they really do prefer to get you on the plane.

As you may see, not having a personal time keeping device constantly telling you just how late/boring/behind/inefficient etc etc things are you can actually cruise through London with a smile on your face that is guaranteed to annoy any die hard dour Londoner, (how dare someone be happy in the middle of a grey winter day).  I am not saying that its a cure, but its a very good survival trick.  How to avoid missing planes/inter city trains.  Well I have missed a flight to Ireland, but thats because the tube was delayed for an hour,  (no watch, so who cared, even when watching you plane take off from the outside).  The trick is to work out roughly how long it will take you to get from A to B, and in the normal screw up factor, work backwards from departure time and your on the ball.  Trust me it does work.

Adapting to Tokyo this little survival tactic is not proving as quite as effective, not that it failing, just that its not really necessary.  For example I have discovered that if I catch the 8:18am train from Shirokanedai (my station) it will take me all the way to work without having to change trains.  If the catch the next one at 8:22 I have to get off at Shirokane-Takanawa, then wait 2 minutes for the next train to take me to work.  Ironically this would have been the 8:24 at my home station, so I could have just waited on the platform.  The fact that these trains leave at exactly the time specified, and I mean right on the dot, no mucking around leave on time I am slowly finding that I really do need to be a bit more accurate with my time keeping. While I am very good at guessing within 10-15 minute periods I get a little hazy at the 2min mark.  As everything is so incredibily efficient, on time and reliable in this city you really do need to be on the ball.

Odd that country which revolutionised the digital watch is actually tempting me back to wearing one.  Who knows what next, I’ll be carrying my mobile phone around with me all the time.  oh, maybet I could use that as a watch?