I Like Buildings.

It's Saturday! And the first day of Golden Week! (A week where a whole bunch of national holidays fall at the same time to give most of the week off.)

.... And I'm at work... We've got school on Saturday so that parents and the PTA can wander round and observe classes this afternoon. But lessons finished early at 2.30, so I'm just killing time.

If you are into Exciting Pictures of Great Buildings, like I am, check this website of cool buildings in Hyogo that I've just spent a good hour on, called 'Architecture and Street'. They've got sections for most areas in Japan, but info on Osaka and Tokyo is easy to find anywhere, so it's the detailed information on Hyogo that makes this special. I never realised Hyogo had so many wonderfully designed buildings! I know that Tadao Ando, one of Japan's most famous architects, is from Osaka, and so around Osaka, Kobe and the rest of Hyogo there are loads of his buildings. I definately want to check out a few of them before I leave. A friend of mine from round here who's got great taste - she introduced me to the books of Yoshimoto Banana (including an amazing special edition collabo with Yoshitomo Nara) and recommends me cool movies like かもめ食堂, loves Tadao Ando buildings, lent me a great magazine about design with a piece on design unit Graf's crazy little cylindrical room thing down in Okayama that I want to go to, so whever she tells me about something I'm all ears - was telling me about this place, the 'Wood Palace' up in Northern Hyogo, in Kami, a museum about wood in the middle of the forest, designed to look like a massive tree stump and sit well in the surroundings. That's the kind of place I should definately check, as coming to Japan as a tourist, you see Tokyo and Kyoto, Osaka and maybe Kobe, but who gets to check a Tadao Ando designed museum hours from a big city designed to blend in with the surrounding forest? (And within driving distance.) Sounds cool and definately going on my ever expanding of things to do in the ever decreasing time I have left.

Just rambling now to fill time. Only half an hour more til Golden Week begins for me... and I can get back to listening to this:

Notes from the inaka.

Three little things that are going on around school.

I hope my supervisor is okay.

I just marked the students' answer sheets for a test my supervisor set them. It was a simple 'fill in the word' type test with about 50 answers. It was a little dark. A selection of the correct answers are:

dead
turn off
sick
accident
empty
unknown
angry
said to myself
death
boring
injured
pain
judge
damage
less than
suffering
ill
weak
took away
voice
sickness
turned down
bombs
say hello to
least
failed

There you've got violence, sadness, death and a clear reference to Scarface. I hope he's okay.

Behind the scenes at a small school enkai

Last week we had the welcome/farewell enkai, which is to say hello and goodbye to the incoming and outgoing members of staff attend (every April, teacher's locations can change, it's like being in the army or something and being posted to different places.) They all make speeches, and it's quite emotional. My Japanese still isn't good enough to understand the speeches properly, but I have got that they always seem to pick some random theme and go on about it. They're pretty interesting this way. For example, the incoming maths teacher talked about bentos (Japanese packed lunch) for the entire speech, and whilst I'm sure he was making a clever metaphor for life as a teacher or something, it did really seem like he was just talking about how much he likes bentos.




Afterwards, cutely all the teachers sang the school song acapella (I play it on the piano at ceremonies so I had to sing the intro for them, as I was less drunk than most of them it was slightly embarrassing) with the departing teachers getting really into it.

I can't get over how cute and innocent my little school is. A few beers and various parts of chicken on a stick in a little yakitori place, and you're seeing sides of teachers that you never saw before. Then hanging around in the carpark with 3 of the other teachers waiting for Takahashi Sensei's mum to come and pick us up! Oh man. Work dos in the middle of nowhere in Japan are fun.



Hosomi Sensei did have a point about the bentos though.

Is there anything better to eat at lunchtime than Hello Bento? No. There is nothing better to eat at lunchtime than Hello Bento.



This is my life for a while whilst I try to stay in and study Japanese more. Small things.

春の旅 Part 2: Tokyo

We arrived in Shinjuku bit earlier than we had thought. Went for a quick drink in Dug (it's actually moved from last time, there used to be 2 of them but one closed) before on Shino's recommendation hitting a cool 70s-80s era izakaya. At first glance you might just think all the stuff in there is a bit old, but you slowly realise that the old chairs, anime on the screen (including the model of TV itself), posters, toys, uniforms, EVEYRTHING is carefully chosen to be from that era. Really cool place.

Next morning was all about Shibuya, (see The London Police from Amsterdam on the right) after a traditional Japanese breakfast at Yoshinoya. Ahem. Wandered round the shops for a while (sadly Jazzy Sport wasn't open, being so cool it only opens at 1pm.) In HMV tried to give j-pop another chance as they had M-flo's latest album on the stand, but it was woeful. Sad. Tried to wash it off with the Jazztronik listening post, but both his new album as Jazztronik and his solo one as Ryota Nozaki are miles off the standard of his previous work. On the next one along, Studio Apartment has a new 12" single out, a jazzy house version of 'Wonderful Tonight' which was similarly a let down. Sort it out Japan!

Anyway, Shino came to meet us in HMV and off we headed to look at the Obey Giant vs. WK Interact exhibition in Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya. Obey Giant will probably be familiar to most people, the sticker with the odd face and white on red logo is all over clothes, graffiti, skate shops, everywhere, but WK Interact was a new one for me, he's a French graffiti guy. The exhibition was really cool, but pretty small. Shino recommended the national art centre in Roppongi so off we went.



It's a really nice looking building and inside there was an exhibition on loan from the Louvre. A few minutes walk away is the new complex Tokyo Midtown, full of shops and restaurants which we had a look round. The design of the building is okay, nothing too special. It's a little bit soulless although to lump it in with shopping centres/malls would be a bit harsh. Out the back behind the garden is the 21_21 Design Sight, which is a very cool building designed by Tadao Ando, but the exhibition didn't look so interesting so just went for a coffee in the cafe. Went for Sushi after, which was great. Thankfully Shino was in charge of introducing this to Ray, otherwise I probably just would have picked up a pre made pack from the conbini or something and given it to him.



Went over to Roppongi Hills, up to the viewing deck at the top as the sun set and, wandered round. Miwa from Notts came too, and we found a little bar area, the 4 of us drinking sake and cocktails overlooking the metropolis of metropolii.



After going back to Shibuya, me and Ray went to The Room, tiny little club I've been wanting to go for since about maybe 3 or 4 years ago? People like Kyoto Jazz Massive, Hajime Yoshizawa (who even wrote a song about it), DJ Mitsu always name check it and it seemed like the holy grail. It was great, about the size of most people's living rooms. Was a hiphop night called Breakthrough, so it was the Jazzy Sport style deep rhodes drenched beats, before halway through the night a guest DJ jumped up and played all the classics from high school! Kweli's 'Manifesto' into Mos Def's 'Universal Magnetic' into The Roots into Bahamadia. Big fun.



Saturday lazed a bit. Went to Harajuku, looking for some clothes, but had baggy Carhartt jeans on so the stuff I wanted all looked a little odd with them. Explored cool shopping area for a while, then headed over to Shinjuku. Outside an opticians opposite Comme Ca, there was the guy below MCing to a little beatbox about the glasses inside! He was actually pretty good, dropping jewels on such topics as as the wide selection they have and the cheap cleaning service. I'm sure I read an article about him in the 'wacky' section of the news online, but I cant for the life of me find it. In his break from being Megane MC he went inside and just served customers as a normal assistant! What a dude. (EDIT: picture now with 100% more Run DMC) Had planned to go Odaiba but couldnt really be arsed, Ray's mate who we met later said it was a little bit tacky anyway so no loss it seems. Went for a bit of a sleep back in capsule as had had very little night before, before our get together meal.



Met up with Maho, Maya, Shino and Ray's travelling friend Laura and went up to a cool Izakaya. Wicked to catch up with everyone. The girls properly showed Ray about Japanese food (I think the week of conbini snacks and can coffee may have been giving him the wrong idea).



After a little Purikura (see Maya and Shino going at the decorating like professionals), me Shino and Ray did a little bit of Karaoke (more important Japanese culture for Ray), throwing up 'asian fingers' (as Fa and Ray call them) in a brief unguarded moment.



Sunday, walked round the triangle Shibuya-->Harajuku-->Aoyama then back to Shibuya (by which time the shops had opened). In Harajuku, saw a guy with this jacket, which I feel the programme should adopt as its motto and logo, be much better than the current one.



Dropped Ray on a train towards Yokohama, leaving him in the capable hands of Mahoko, before just having enough time to hang out with Shino in Yoyogi park for a bit (which looked more like Autumn than Spring) before getting on the Shinkansen back towards home.



(Nerdy point, the Shinkansen went through like a Shikansen 'car park' or 'siding' or something, with like 15 of them arranged in rows of 5 including loads of Nozomis. Looked amazing. I think I was densha-mania in a previous life.)

Back in the homeland of Kansai, got on the very familiar lonely 10.54 Fukuchiyama line from Osaka (which is the last train! Ha!) and rode for far too long back to my stop. And so ended the spring holiday. Felt like going home to see people in HK and Tokyo, feel really refreshed. (I guess home is people, rather than places. I felt the same when I saw my family in India at Christmas.) I've used up all but 2 days of my annual leave so it's back to the old staffroom for me pretty much every day til August. I'm going to spend this weekend here doing nothing in Aogaki (which will be only the second one since I arrived.) Might do this more from now on, save some money (I've been spending more than I'm earning... oops) and study some Japanese, think about things like CVs and the Future. Hmm.

春の旅 Part 1: Pre-Tokyo

Ray came to visit, and using the Seishun Ju Hachi Kippu (a five day local train pass) we slowly wound our way East from Osaka to Tokyo. Our trip can pretty much be summed up with this one picture:

OSAKA
I had to work Tue so Ray wandered round Umeda during the day. I came and met him after school was over, and we took the underground to Shinsaibashi, where we wandered round Amemura, before heading down to Namba and Dotonbori area to explore the area and give him a taste of Okonomiyaki, Osaka's trademark dish. After a bit of trip planning over a beer, retired pretty early to our capsule to get an early start towards Kyoto next day. (Capsule had awesome baths, bathtime is the best thing about them. Fell asleep to Super Chample (see couple of posts back) in the capsule as well.)


KYOTO
Wednesday morning, went and had a look round the wonderful station, introduced Ray to another important aspect of Japanese culture, Mr Donuts (I wonder if I'm really the right person to introduce Japan...) before jumping on the train two stops to Inari to see Fushimi Inari, the famous shrine with the seemingly never ending red torii gates that create a pretty magical atmosphere. They have a whole fox theme going on, with statues of foxes tucked in every nook and cranny along the way. We went... quite a long way I guess, but there was more to do so we didn't get to the end. More to see! Headed back to the station for a brief walk round the area (see the McDonalds slightly brown sign? It's supposed to be less gaudy than normal, cos this is Kyoto, and they 'dont go in for that sort of thing' around here... supposedly.)





HIKONE
Made a quick stop here to walk around the castle area (didn't go inside as it looked like it would take the best part of a day to explore), saw the cherry blossoms, and introduced Ray to further important aspects of Japanese culture: see through umbrellas, chu hais, and takoyaki.


On to Nagoya! Some beatiful views along the way. The trains were really crowded in general, we rarely got to sit down (at least on this leg of the journey.) The special all-you-can-ride ticket can only be used during the spring holiday, so loads of people with kids or older people had the same idea as us. Makes me wonder how unbelievably crowded Golden Week will be though (when EVERYBODY in the country has most of the week off.)



NAGOYA
Nagoya has a really good feeling to it. Really good looking city and it's own identity away from the others. Ray and I both really liked it.



First we went to Sakae to the Robot museum where after riding around on Segways (fun but were the safety helmets really neccesary?) we watched museum staff wearing lab coats make three Sony Aibos in Kimonos (??) dance. This was a bit weird. (Can you imagine the meeting? "Yeah, so for our next serious robot demonstration, how about some robot dogs dancing together to hungarian folk music?" "Taro, I love it, but it's lacking something." "I know! Let's dress them in little robot dog kimonos!")



They had a really cool timeline of of bits and bobs from robots in popular culture, astro boy, kraftwerk, R2-D2, Dr Slump, Speak and Spell, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, various anime... was cool to see it all presented so seriously. Downstairs is a shop with cool robot-y products for your house (and robot shaped omiyage sweets.) There was a room where you could play with various robots, and the girl who worked with the Aibos had named them all, and they are pretty cool. Some even speak in Kansai-ben! You can tell them 'take a picture' in Japanese and then they look at you (there's a camera in their nose) and then you say 'Cheezu!' and it snaps and saves to its memory stick.




Ate some Misokatsu (pork cutlet in heavy miso sauce) and Tabasaki (spicy chicken wings), Nagoya famous foods (the restaurant was playing the new Musiq album) and went round Sakae. They have a Fortnum and Mason's there! Shock. Theres a large TV tower (which has a figure of spiderman climing it at the moment) and they were beaming a thin green light onto it from further down in the street in a sort of a calling batman style. Theres a really interesting place... you can't really call it a building, more of a construction, called Oasis 21. Underground are a number of shops and cafes, overground is an area with grass and cool walkways, and the thing itself is a large oval... platform i guess? But that doesn't do it justice. It's Great.



On the way back to our capsule, in the freeeeezing cold dead of night air, a group of young guys were playing jazz in the pedestrian area in the central intersection of Sakae. They were reeeallly good! Played Straight No Chaser, Feel Like Making Love, Chameleon, September, Pick Up the Pieces and St Thomas - before I got so cold I had to call it a night as a listener, I have no idea how they managed to play in the biting night air. Unfortunately their only supporters seemed to be one of their friends, one of their girlfriends, a guy who stopped on his bike, and me and Ray and a bunch of people who seemed to be enjoyed it as they passed, but the freezing temperature moved them on. Shame. Talked to them briefly between tunes, they were Uni students in Nagoya studying on the Jazz course having a little midnight jam session. So cool! Little things like that add so much.



The capsule here was a good one, in the bathing area had like a fake waterfall over a large rock wall with little hollowed out bits in caves with jet streams and stuff. Watching TV in a capsule is loads more fun than it should be, don't know why. I guess because you turn up at a time when strange things are on. There was an interview with Fidel Castro (who was pretty animated), an old 70s anime and of course Super Chample! Excellent. Next morning, the capsule hotel was playing a lounge version of Killing Me Softly as we left - bonus.

Next morning, went up Oasis 21 (we had been too late to actually go up it the previous night). It's got a shallow pool of water in the middle that really adds to it looks, especially from underneath. Popped into a couple of shops downstairs (all the Ghibli and Jump Comics goods you could need - important Japanese culture to show Ray? Maybe getting there.) Rode the subway back to the main JR station (see the massive towers) then on to Hamamatsu.



HAMAMATSU
Still trying to introduce Japanese culture, I took Ray to Freshness Burger...
Hamamatsu has a nice feel to it... can't put my finger on it, but it's something to do with the fact that it's not huuuge and a lot of the buildings seem to be a little bit older than say Nagoya... Like a fun city, almost stuck in a little timewarp from the 80s or something? To be fair, wasn't there anything near like the amount of time you need to get an accurate impression, but that was my quick first impression of the place. It's called 'the city of music' as lots of music companies are based here, and 100% of Japanese pianos are made here. Some of the stations signs are in Portugese as well, owing to the high Brazilian population.




They have a wonderful museum here - Museum of Musical Instruments! I could spend all day here. Grouped by continent, they have fantastic examples of instruments from all over the world - you can't play most of them, but not a single one is inside a cabinet, so you can see them all up close. In front of each one is a set of headphones playing the music of the instrument, so you can hear everything. I fell in love with the sound of the Shakuhachi (bamboo flute), which I recognised the name of from the default 127 GM sounds of most keyboards, but the real thing is beautiful. The instruments that I knew, the examples there were all such great quality (see the range they have just for maracas in the pic below) that you could trust the ones you didnt were also great. Of course they had steel pans!! And there was a trying stuff out room (which became the playing-the-godfather-theme-on-as-many-instruments-as-you-can room) which had cute mini little pans. A room full of classic early pianos and stuff... wow. I LOVED this place.


Headed up ACT tower (the second pic in the Hamamtasu section) which is supposed to look like a mouth organ, again, with the city of music theme. The views were amaaazing. Slightly different from those of Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo which was to come in that they were of a smaller city and so you felt the view was more revealing than the others. I found it absolutely amazing, like a city made from the musical narrative of Naoya Matsuoka's Pacific Jam album or something. Still, no time to ponder on this trip, we headed off to Shizuoka.


SHIZUOKA
We had kind of been neglecting cool shopping districts, but Shizuoka sorted that. Tiny little backstreets with UNDFTD, Neighbourhood and Bape right across from each other and small independent places tucked along the roads.


We saw a massive torii gate and went to investigate. Turned out to be a seemingly endless road leading down to a shrine, and they had had a festival that day that was almost completely wound up apart from the street sellers along the way. I counted over 50 (!) of them, selling tacoyaki (octopus balls), okonomiyaki, chocobanana, karaage (fried chicken), yakitori (grilled meat on skewers), toffee strawberries (think toffee apples), and character shaped dorayaki. That was dinner sorted then, and we wandered round the shrine grounds in the fading light. We decided to go to Tokyo a little earlier than we'd originally planned and headed off.



To Tokyo --> Part 2 Soon Come