Xylophone

At the Children's castle they have a music room where you can just bash the hell out of various percussion instruments. They also have a band that plays kid's songs over and over. Alice clapped them politely at the end of each song.

Pets

Any one.

Marriage

Bek and I will be getting married at the Ward Office this Friday, for visa reasons.

Edit: It's been postponed until next Tuesday, October 2nd.

Human Strength Vehicle

Outside the Sensoji temple in Asakusa you can ride in a rickshaw. The word actually comes from the Japanese word 'jinrikisha', literally human strength vehicle. The men pulling these wear really tight pants that resemble lederhosen, and try to chat up women as well as convincing couples to part with some cash.

Unfortunately they don't try to solicit from people with babies so we'll have to try it another time.

Japanese characters

Some kanji are more graphically descriptive than others.

I want to ride my bicycle

I was thinking of getting a bike until I looked into the logistics of it. It's kind of illegal to park your bike on the footpath, although you wouldn't think that from simple observation. Some places go to extremes to prevent people from parking their bikes in front of their stores, like the above monstrosity found in front of Starbucks. It looks much worse than a couple of bikes ever would.

I saw a guy pull up in front of a security guard at Roppongi Hills once, and proceed to chain his bike to the roadside rail. The guard came over to tell him he couldn't park there and the guy just told him to sod off and walked inside.

Fastidious

I caught this rug shop owner ironing his rugs. Quite professional, I suppose.

Spotted by Bek

"Does a person have you gently?

That is thought the parson who can do it to be an actual good repson."

Click to enlarge.

Synergy

Japan is well known for its creative mixing of culture. However sometimes they don' t really pull it off.

Namjatown

For my birthday last weekend we decided to try to go out without Alice. We found a babysitter, and she came over a little early to see how Alice would handle her. We've never used a babysitter before apart from our mothers, but Alice didnt' mind at all.

We went to see the Harry Potter movie and afterwards continued on to a Nepalese restaurant that I'd noticed advertised. It was nice to have some alone time as I rarely get away from the baby these days.




The next day we went to Ikebukuro and the Sunshine 60 building. It's one of the tallest buildings in Asia and contains the amazing Namjatown. What's that you ask? Well we barely knew ourselves even after having been there. It could be best described as a food amusement park. It showcases various food stalls along with having pantomime shows and some games of skill. It's divided into various themed 'worlds', and I really wanted to go to the Ikenukuro Gyoza Stadium. Gyoza are Japanese dumplings, and this whole area in the park was based on a stylised Chinese back alley maze of diners. There were a variety of different styles of gyoza on offer but it's so hard to read Japanese characters that I just ended up asking for 'fish' dumplings, or 'vegetable' dumplings. We ate cheese dumplings also, which were a highlight and quite unusual. I tried to use my bad Japanese and asked for some interesting tasting dumplings at one stall, however they just seemed pretty normal when I ate them.





Above you can see one of the characters from Namjatown. The park is actually based on the brand characters from a company whose name escapes me at the moment. Alice seemed quite afraid of this giant cat and not at all happy to be around it. The park had other areas such as a jungle themed area where they had a lot of massage stalls running, with various exotic types of massage on offer like Thai and Hawaiian.

Ice Cream City had an ice cream museum of flavours, and served various styles like rubbery Turkish ice cream and gelato. We ate so much that day. It's really a weird but terrific place.

Post Office

Japan has two sides, the modern high tech side that I imagined before I got here, and the frustratingly primitive side that I discovered upon arrival.

Today I went to the post office to send a parcel. I bought a bag, stuffed the contents in and wrote the address. The lady weighed it and told me it would be 1900 yen. I opened my wallet to discover I only had about 1500 yen. I asked if I could pay with Visa or EFTPOS or whatever they have. Of course it was cash only.

Now when I say Japan is sometimes behind the times it's because I expect Japan to be at least as sophisticated as Australia, if not far ahead. And some things are; for example you can get a train ticket which works on credit and uses radio frequencies so you can just touch it to the ticket gate and it gets read. Now that's better than Australia's lowly but serviceable magnetic ticket system.

However to buy a regular ticket for a one off use you have to consult the map and find the price yourself, the ticket machine doesn't tell you how much it is. Also there are some private lines and to use two different lines in the same journey requires you to use a separate map to find the cost of the fare and then when you change from the public to private platforms you must get a new ticket at the fare adjusment machine even though you've paid the correct fare.

Anyway, I left the post office to get some money from the atm and returned to a different counter with a different lady serving. I showed her the package, she weighed it and asked me for the somewhat more affordable sum of 1300 yen. I had had enough for that on my first visit, however, as usual, the language barrier prevented me from understanding why/ how/ what, and I went home in continued ignorance.

Alice and I

It's been brought to my attention that there aren't many photos of me on this blog.

Change Room

A change room designed for Japanese women.

Dancing

What's for dinner on the 23rd of November?

We found these in Tokyu Hands, a department store with an interesting mix of products. They are housekeeping diaries, so all the Japanese house wives, such as myself, can note down the happy times spent mopping the floor. I thought I couldn't find a greater waste of time than housework but I guess recording completed housework would suffice.

Mirrors

There are mirrors everywhere in Japan, and people use them. The subway stations usually have standing mirrors like this, with a little bench to perch your bag on.

Suspense

Click to enlarge.

What is it? Do you know? Maybe I won't tell you.

Well, okay, it's a way to prevent deliveries such as fast food from being battered. Instead of giving the whole bike better suspension, they just build a frame around the package and hang it on a shock absorber. The added bonus is that as it can swing freely it will always stay level when the rider leans into a corner.

Rides

Here are some cool ride-on things found in a video game parlour/ gambling den. They're not bolted down, you actually ride them around the games machines.

And another big anime thing that Alice just wouldn't come out of. I think it's Doraemon.

Did you?

Find the humour.

Specialty

Japan has a lot of specialty shops.

Happy Birthday

The Sunday before last we went down to Odaiba, on Tokyo Bay, to see the big malls and funfairs. I was trying to show Rebekah some of the commercial side of Tokyo, because we did a lot of temple hopping on our last stay.

The large shopping centres in Roppongi unfortunately seem to be an exclusive enclave of high fashion designer womenswear stores. So, they are extremely boring for me to walk around in, but due to the rain Alice and I still have to run around in them quite often. The street side shops in Tokyo don't have an awning to cover the footpath, so you can't really just wander the streets when it's pouring, or indeed when inordinately sunny. I have a personal theory that this lack of cover is due to earthquake directed building regulations.

In Odaiba there is an amazing place called Venus Fort, and it unashamedly caters only to women. It's built inside a huge featureless concrete box, but when you get inside you discover the faux eighteenth century Italian promenades opening up to a painted-on placid blue sky. The whole interior is a series of these paved streets with two storeys of carved stone facades and softly lit ornate street lamps.

This is a huge fountain in the middle. Unfortunately the pictures don't do the place any justice as it's quite dim inside.

Even the security guards are dressed with Italian police uniforms, complete with berets.

Aqua City and Decks are the other two malls we looked around. Decks has an intriguing place called Muscle Park on the top floor, a kind of amusement park which tests physical skills. There are tandem elements where partners must help each other win, or cooperate somehow. There are commando courses which require extreme body strength to traverse as well as some coordination games with targets and things. The problem with telling you about all this is that we couldn't really participate in any of these pursuits as Alice was with us, so we'll have to go again another day to try them out.

We settled for the baby section of the park, which Alice and I had visited before.

Waiting in line is not as tough on Alice if there are other kids in the line too. Here we see her giving Bek's wallet to random children. The first time I'd taken her to this area the attendant asked me how old she was.

"Fourteen months," I said.

"Oh I'm sorry, she can only use this small, boring, empty part of the massive play area but she can fully view the three year old children having ten times the fun in the other parts," said the attendant in Japanese (maybe).

I tried to make my case, she can walk, I'll watch her, she is quite tall for her age, etc.

Sorry, small, boring section, don't move.

Well, this time we were prepared to get her into the 'dangerous' area. The one containing the ball pit. We decided to use our gaijin powers to intimidate the attendants and let her in. However, this time noone asked the age of any child and kids who could not even walk were allowed into all areas. I have no idea why, maybe lots of people complained, or maybe it was just so much more crowded and with a longer line.

Here's Alice falling in the two-ball-deep ball pit. It was her first time in one, I think. Be careful!

This past Saturday we tried to go swimming with Alice. We knew that lots of pools don't allow any kids to swim in them so we were recommended the Minato city recreation centre. We packed our bag, took the subway and rocked up to the centre's front desk.

"Sorry, the swimming pool is closed, noone can swim"

When will it open again, why is it closed, can Alice swim here?

"How old is she? I'm sorry, only three year olds can swim here."

But, but .... we rang ahead, a Japanese person inquired for us, we were told a sixteen month old could swim here. We bought a baby swim cap.

"Sorry, only three year olds may swim."

At the park, on the slides there is a notice, English and Japanese, only three year olds and above.

It seems three years old is when Japanese babies are allowed to do things, and before then they should just hang around their apartments and poo and cry and whatever else under three year olds do, we don't care, just keep them away from us, noooooooooo.

So, Happy 3rd Birthday Alice.

They grow up so fast, don't they?

Curry

On Saturday we went to Ito-san's house to play with Rio and have lunch. Rio dutifully showed me all her toys one by one and Alice played with Rio's best toy, the family's small Pomeranian. We also tried to get into the baby pool, but it was a little too cold for that. We had some nice curry for lunch and then went shopping for baby stuff. Bek was a little too excited about the shopping.

Most of the pics I took were of strange English on the baby clothes. These first few pictures make sense and sound quite poetic.

The next few are just strange.

Please note, my Japanese is much worse than this English.

We bought some toys too, a small car/ crane dealy, a high seat and some galoshes. Alice and Rio tried playing a duet on the toy piano, but there was a bit of a chair issue.

Harajuku Super Yosakoi

The Harajuku Super Yosakoi is a dance fesstival with around 2,500 dancers attending. They dance in formation up and down Omote-sando Dori, kind of like Asian line dancers. Except with props. There's no point describing it really, here.





Here are some really, really young children dancing poorly.

Sense

This sign makes more sense in Japan.

Some Japanese women would like to be as white as a geisha, and so use sun parasols. Strangely, these are often black. It would get quite hot underneath a black parasol, I think.

Five hundred yen is about five dollars, Australian.

R Burger

It's a little hard to see, but this is a fries bag from R Burger, a native fast food chain. Click on the picture to enlarge.