Tsunamis, Typhoons and Earthquakes

I remember one night in 2002, my mother knocked on my door and woke me up: “Did you feel that earthquake?” I rolled over and peered over to my door and groaned, “It was just a truck going by, go back to bed!” That was my first earthquake, a magnitude 4.8, and I dismissed it as a articulated lorry.

Since coming to Japan, my experience of the Earth’s fight against humanity has increased thousandfold. We feel at least one earthquake every three months, at least one typhoon in the summer, and, much more rarely, tsunamis. In summer last year, after a string of earthquakes, I became worried about the anticipated 20XX Tokai earthquake. Luckily, nothing has really come of it yet as I’ve still not stocked any survival gear, not even a torch. I should get my act together.

Yesterday morning I woke up to a Facebook message asking if we were okay. There had been a magnitude 6.9 quake in Okinawa, Japan’s southern island province. Keiko’s colleague is in Okinawa at the moment, so I rolled over and told her to check on him. It was the biggest quake in Okinawa since 1909, and only 2 people were injured. In the capital, Naha, it was only M4, which is enough to rattle the pans and cupboards, but being an earthquake-prone country, the houses and building throughout Japan can handle much worse.

Across the other side of the world, Chile was struck by a M8.8, a mindblowingly strong quake, the 5th strongest on record. Luckily, my friend in Chile is fine, but just watching the news, as I’m sure you all have seen by now, I was struck by the violent pattern of the shaking, as caught on the CCTV cameras across the capital. Commonly earthquakes shake from side to side, but the dangerous ones jolt vertically. Again, a severely earthquake prone country, Chile has the infrastructure and building codes to withstand the kind of forces that would level British homes.

As I write, tsunami warnings have been issued across the Pacific coast of Japan and people are being evacuated. Most areas are going to be fine, but trains are stopping along coastal routes. The hardest thing to believe is that this all comes from an earthquake in Chile – 17,200 km, or 10,700 miles away. I have been wrestling with in my mind since I watched CNN’s coverage of the Hawai’i evacuations last night. Nothing much came of them, but in 1960, a M9.5 in Chile killed 138 people in Japan. The governments of the Pacific Rim, the so-called Ring of Fire, are right to react as they have.

My heart goes out to the people of Chile. If you are worried about anyone you know, or want to help, please look at Google’s Support Disaster Relief in Chile page. If you are a British citizen living or travelling abroad, please register with LOCATE, as provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In the event of a natural disaster, it will help embassies with locating and contacting you and your relatives: LOCATE.

Socials, Snow and Sickness

It’s Monday, my day of rest. Much deserved too, I think.

On Friday, January 29th, I went to my first ever tweet-up. After finishing work, I rushed over to Yoyogi-Uehara to catch the tail-end of the party. There, the hardcore contingent of Japan twitterers were over-drinking and over-talking. It was nice to meet the avatars in the flesh, and they were all lovely people (and eminently more successful than me – but hey, they have age and time in their favour). I couldn’t stay out too late, what with an early start the next morning, but I was grateful for being able to attend: thanks to all the #youguys, but especially Fukumimi – for his good taste in organising the shindig – and Shinpuren – for inviting me.

The next day was my final Saturday in Kokubunji School. It was a bit tear-jerking for me. I loved that day, and some of my favourite students were there. I received loads of presents – thank you everyone! – including the wonderful inking of the church in Motomachi you can see on the right. My change of days was entirely internal. My branch of the company recently merged with the northern branch, and in the merger came a big reshuffle of our districts. Kokubunji has swapped districts and I can no longer work there (my Wednesday there will also change in the near future).

After work, I again rushed off for a nomikai. Okay, not so much rushed, but dawdled. I had 1 hour and 40 minutes to kill for a 50 minute train journey… too little time to go home and change, too much time to be comfortable. This particular get-together was with Musashi-Shinjo School students. Despite not actually working there, I did attend Shinjo’s Christmas Party as a teacher from Saginuma school. At that party, largely due to how close I live to their students, I was the last teacher standing and I made some good friendships as a result. Saturday was our shinnenkai and I was out until 3am with only two (awake) other people – three were sleeping. It was nice to get out again, to drink to excess and to chat about the most random things. The food was great too!

Unfortunately, Sunday was filled with queasy moments and a rotten hangover. Oh, and copious amounts of blood. Not mine, though. Ebichu was in dire need of a manicure. We’ve had him for over a year now and we’d never clipped his nails. Instead I attached small strips of sand paper to his wheel and ramps to grind it down a bit (with seemingly no effect on his tiny little feet). Still, they had grown long and unmanageable (possibly due to his lethargic response to winter) so we took him to our local vet for a trim. The nurse held him by the scruff of his neck and he struggled around. The doctor managed to cut a few ends off, but then Ebichan decided he wouldn’t have any more of it. As he wriggled around to escape, the nurse tried to secure him and must have hurt him in the process because he bit her – just once. There was quite a lot of blood but the doctor showed the nurse a better way to hold him and they got the job done with no further injuries – although Ebichu came out a lot redder than when he went in. Poor baby!

By the next day I was as right as rain and so I pulled together my camera equipment and went out for a walk. Unfortunately, while it’s a nice bright sunny day today, last week was dark, dull and very grey. I knew it was going to rain and there was even talk of snow, so I packed an umbrella and headed out regardless. My destination was Todoroki Valley, a gorge running through through Tokyo just on the other side of the river from me. The actual location is very nice, but it was difficult to appreciate it on such a cold, dank day. I will definitely be heading back there at a later date. I finished my walk with a trek to the train station. It was spitting and getting cold, and I had a Japanese lesson to attend.

Following my lesson, I was back on the train, this time to Yokohama to meet Keiko and her colleagues for dinner. We had kushiage, fried skewered food. It was really nice, and the service was great too. For five people, we got a window-side booth and a free bottle of champagne. As we ate, the much-anticipated snow began to fall. At first it came down in tiny spots, barely distinguishable from the rain, but the snowflakes grew bigger and bigger leaving wet splodges wherever they landed. It was all very pretty, but walking home in it was hell. Keiko and I arrived back very cold and soaked to the bone. It wasn’t very surprising that I woke up with a sore throat.

As I worked, the sore throat developed into a full blown cold. I felt energetic the next morning, but again, by the afternoon I was close to death. I wisely took off the Thursday to recover, although that’s easier said than done when the temperature difference between the outside and inside of your home is as marginal as it is here. Still, by Friday I felt well enough to work, just in time for my new day in Machida on Saturdays.

Finally, yesterday, Keiko and I decided to celebrate Valentines early. We headed off to Nihonbashi for a kimono exhibition (I got free tickets from a student). It was interesting but, you know, it was embroidery, hardly the most engaging subject for a man. We followed this up with delicious gelato from the Valentines chocolate fair being held on the same floor of Takashimaya as the kimono exhibition.

I was eager to pick out my Valentines presents, so I dragged Keiko over to Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara. It’s the biggest Yodobashi Camera I’ve ever been to, and it was packed out. We mingled around the Wii section for a while as I debated what to buy – in the end I chose Smash Bros Brawl, Wii Sports Resort and an extra motion-plus accessory. I then took Keiko downstairs for some replacement headphones.

These were the appetisers to our main event: dinner in the Shin-Marunouchi Building. We booked a table at Deliziôso Firenze (5th floor) and sat down for a well-priced course – ¥5800. For the second time in as many months we were eating real truffles and foie gras (this time fried, and much nicer). The service was excellent and we had a great time: Keiko was already starting to plan our next visit as we headed over to the neighbouring Marunouchi Building for chasers (Breeze of Tokyo, 35F, ¥1050/head cover charge). I highly recommend both to anyone in the Tokyo area with a bit of cash and a desire for great service.

It’s a stressful time at the moment for Keiko, and I hope she had a chance to relax. The evening didn’t end on such a good note as Keiko found out her colleague has come down with swine flu… so while my tough week has just finished, Keiko’s has barely even begun. Hang in there, honey.

A Grand Day Out

Back in September, I missed out on my chance to go to Odaiba, riddled, as I was, with the man-flu. Odaiba had been top of my to-visit list since coming to Japan, having already seen most of Tokyo’s tourist attractions. Finally, with the approach of Golden Week, and some time off for Keiko, we headed over to Odaiba for the day.

It was glorious weather. The rain of the previous week has pretty much gone and we’re back on our inevitable climb towards summer. Odaiba had a Hawai’ian vibe as it was in the middle of rehearsals for its major Hawai’ian festival. The sun was warm, but the temperature was not too high: the perfect day for a outing.

Odaiba is an artificial island created to defend Tokyo from naval attacks. Much like the London Docklands, Odaiba was given an overhaul during the economic bubble, hoping to attract business and a nightlife, although inflated property prices and the complete inconvenience of living in Odaiba (where there is only one railway, one monorail, and a handful of bridges) doomed the project to cancellation.

The grandness of it all is what really struck me. Unlike traditional Tokyo haunts, it has wide open spaces, sea and greenery punctuated by magnificent buildings. We took the JR Saikyo/Rinkai line from Shinjuku, which Keiko informs me is much more direct and convenient for us than the meandering (but according to Andy, beautiful) Yurikamome Monorail.

We got off in Tokyo Teleport, the hub of the 1990s redevelopment efforts. Outside the station was the enormous Fuji Television building, with its signature orb. For ¥500 you can go inside the observation deck of that orb, but to be honest, it was a waste of money. Instead, take the Space Mountain-esque escalators to the 7th floor and wander around inside for free, you may even catch a show being filmed… However, to be honest, there is little to entertain anyone who is not a die-hard fan of a FTV show, so you could always just skip it all together.

We wandered over to the shore and were presented with a beautiful view of Tokyo Bay. The black water lapped at the shell-ridden shore, silverfish (alien-looking insects) scuttled away into the rocks. Anchors sat on the shore, covered with the grime of sea-life. The view was spectacular, even if the immediate surroundings had a strange out-of-place feeling about them. Behind us was a replica of the Statue of Liberty looking out over the nearby shopping malls… it was a sign.

Unable to resist, we dipped into Aqua City, one such mall, for some refreshment, and mostly to get out of the heat. We ate at a Wild West-themed Tex/Mex restaurant, rather expensive of course (you should expect it if you visit), before heading over towards the sandy beach in the distance.

On the beach, the festival was getting underway. Market stalls were selling Hawai’ian wares, hula dancers practiced (a mass of waggling arses) and an acoustic guitar-playing duo began to sing. On the beach, children played in the wash of the filthy sea, mindful of the no swimming signs. Fish leaped out of the sea causing flashes of brilliant silver as the sun caught their scales. Every man and his Chihuahua/Dachshund (it is usually a case of one or the other in Japan) was out, catching some rays with the comforting views of Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower close to hand. Not wanting skin cancer, and not having prepared for a day of sunbathing, we moved on, heading towards our final destination for the day: Palette Town.

The walk to Palette Town was green and peaceful. Couples were sucking faces, kids were picking flowers and dogs were riding in their pushchairs (yes, you can fit 3 dogs to a pram here). The big wheel, once the biggest in the world (1999-2001), rose over the walkways. It was as scenic and as peaceful as we could ever have wished for a day off together.

Part of the Palette Town complex is a huge indoor recreation of an Italian al fresco shopping arcade, complete with fake sky. The shops were unmistakeably expensive, but we stumbled upon a Mother Garden, home to Keiko’s favourite character, Shiro-tan (a white seal). Keiko has had a Shiro-tan in her bed for as long as I’ve known her, and she’d always said she wanted a bigger one. This shop had a metre long one for a bargain price, so of course I treated her to it. Luckily they vacuum-packed them so that they were only the size of a flat, large pizza.

Next door to Venus Town is MegaWeb, an permanent exhibition run by Toyota. We had a wander around through the automobile history museum part of Megaweb before crossing through the larger showroom side (where you can drive electric cars on an elevated track, or even actual cars! It was very impressive and expensive, but it was simply scenery as we reached the ferris wheel.

It was twilight and the perfect time to hop on. It costs ¥1800 for a gondola, so ¥900 per couple, and a special entirely transparent gondola is available, although the line is much longer. We were lucky, perhaps, in that we didn’t wait for a gondola at all. The experience came with a tacky over-priced photo (¥1000) which we wisely skipped. The whole ride was 16 minutes long but afforded impressive views of Tokyo Bay. The movement of the gondola, however, made it difficult to take many great photos, but as you’ll see in the gallery below, I managed to take a few beauties. I highly recommend it. It might be the only great reason to visit Odaiba… but take a date.

Gallery (below the cut)

‘Tis the Season

Spring is known for many things. As you began to think of lambs, taxes and the last gasps of winter, I was searching for a spring-clean of an altogether different kind. Sunday saw us househunting in Musashi-Shinjo (at long last). It’s an expensive business and it is highly unlikely we’ll find a place cheaper than what we’re in now without a downsizing. Still, with more storage options, that is not necessarily a bad thing. There was one place that appealed to our wallets, a 2DK (i.e. two rooms plus a dining room-cum-kitchen) some 6 minutes from the station, so we asked for the details.

The estate agent took us for a look around, and this being Japan, and with it being so close to the station, we all walked down together. We weren’t planning to put money down on anything, and we stuck to that, but it really tugged at our heart-strings. It had some shortcomings: it was on the ground floor, it had less floor space than our current place, and a ‘mansion’ block was slated to go up outside the balcony. That said, the wooden flooring, oodles of windows, three air conditioners, built-in cupboards, and washlet (electric lid with bidet) toilet were very convincing. It was actually the first time that particular agent had gone there and he said he was surprised with how nice it all was.

Moneywise, it made a lot of sense: ¥87,000 plus ¥1500-odd insurance monthly. Most importantly, it needed only a month’s rent for key money (non-refundable and to be paid again if you renew the two-year contract) and another month’s rent for the deposit (technically refundable but rarely yielding significant amounts). Compare this to the 2:1 or 2:2 ratio that was standard for the area, and the country. It was a possible goer, but the landlord wanted a tenant for April and we’re looking for August. Still, the factfinding mission was a success and we’ll be back in May and June for the real thing.

Another facet of spring is the start of new life, which for Keiko and I manifested with a particularly social week including a nomikai in Shibuya with some friends of hers from Statford House College, followed on Thursday by a full-blown hanami. ‘Hanami’ literally means flower-watching, but it is really a picnic in celebration of cherry blossom (sakura). It’s early in the blossoming season, so there was little in the way of blossom snow, and we went to Ueno Park which had prepared bright blue plastic tarpaulins and rubbish bins along the sides of a path lines by blossom trees. It was pretty when you looked up, but any but when you looked groundwards, parked as we were next to the bins.

For a Thursday afternoon, the park was particularly crowded. People constantly streamed by and made me a very well-photographed man by the end of the afternoon. On the other side of the bins, a woman instructed some students in a traditional tea ceremony, although I couldn’t see it for all the bins and parked bikes. For all the pleasantness, however, there was a few less delightful events. First, as I went to the toilet, someone was throwing up in the stalls… it was horrific, but not as bad as the second occurrence: a homeless guy walked down the street and the stench was stomach-turning. All of Tokyo’s parks, and those of the other cities, have camps of homeless people. I never believed that anyone could smell so bad, even at such a distance. The weather, for its part, was good, bursts of sunshine broke through the parky cloudy day, even while the skies threatened to rain all day. Interruptions aside, we made a nice day of it, which was important given how our morning had started.

You see, spring is also a tea for madness, I know because I felt it gaining on me. Having spent Wednesday night filling in forms until 2 am, we woke up at 8 am to put the finishing touches to my spouse visa application. Keiko had taken Thursday off especially for this purpose, but unfortunately never asked her father about getting a new copy of her family register (koseki). She planned on getting it from the local government office in the morning, but koseki are only stored in the local government offices at which you register your marriage. Despite the huge draining anticlimax, we had a couple of questions and a lot of time, so we dropped by the Immigration Office in Shinyurigaoka just as we had originally planned.

It was bedlam inside. There were some 22 people ahead of us in the ticketed queue, and a notice informed us that the office would close from 12:00 until 13:00 for lunch… it was 11:00 when we arrived. There were all sorts: Brazilians, Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese to name only the obvious ones, mail-order bride sorts, parents, grandparents and kids. Behind the desk, despite the substance of my previous rant, there were only two officials and none of them were fluent in one of the languages of those around me, which was fine as they were all embarrassing fluent Japanese speakers. I left Keiko to ask our questions as the guy wondered why we didn’t just phone in (answer: we have done previously and were frequently hung up on). We got out at 12:00 on the dot. Lucky! Still, the whole incident was particularly and at times unnecessarily complicated… and I’ve got to go back to finish the job next Thursday. Oh joy…

Winter Blues

We’re moving out of the throes of that most despicable of seasons: winter. Times have been pretty rough in the Simpson household. We’ve both been ill multiple times (last week I had a fever that gave me extreme shivers… scary stuff). It’s been raining plenty, and is on and off hot and cold: hardly conducive to good health. It’s been a hit on us financially (I lose money when I don’t work), and physically (I’ve not been to the gym since this non-stop illness hit some three weeks). The air is dry leaving us sore and lethargic. It’s all pretty miserable.

Today, however, has been a silver lining: snow! Now, you guys had snow back home, and a lot of it too, as did I over the New Year break, but I am very happy to see it in Kanto (even if the roads are really slippy now).  I can only hope that it’ll be there tomorrow.