Fujikawa: motorway services are a cultural bridge?

Where there are motorways/highways/freeways/autobahn, there are 'services'...

Japan's services appear to be a cross between a kombini and a street market (and a coach stop). There are a healthy collection vending machines too of course. On a better day this one has a great view of Fuji ... on a better day ...

Kyoto Roadtrip

Team Reynolds is off on a road trip, Kyoto bound. Six (6) hours away; the very reason why man worked out how to put a TV in a car surely.

Our ridiculously capacious 'car' made the normally vehicle stuffing load look rather underwhelming in the corner of the boot. Surely we have forgotten something. Probably many things. The car is brimmed (re-gyu-raa, mantan onegaishimasu) - yeah, we failed to tackle the self-service petrol station last night, quite a shocking failure of something quite ordinary. Still, full service petrol stations ARE brilliant we think :)

It's raining, I hear the rustle of snacks and I'm very excited to see snow monkeys this week. I suspect there will be the odd temple too ...

Thank you Japan, are you trying to tell us something?

I think it is safe to say that our introduction to Japan has been different than we could ever have expected. To say it has been more challenging than we thought would be a monumental understatement. Though like everything else about this experience in Japan, not for the reasons we were led to expect.

Post-quake, cakes still need eating, Ginza Cozy Corner, Yokohama

Coping with the March 11th earthquake - and the hundreds that followed in the weeks since - rapidly pushed our coping skills to the edge, possibly slightly beyond. I have had a number of experiences in my life that I thought I could say were truly unsettling. Standing over my youngest daughter at 1am while our apartment shakes from side to side, creaking and groaning debating whether I need to do anything other than remain frozen by un-objective fear has proven to be a pivotal point of reflection for me.

The course of the next few days following this couldn't have been predicted before March 11th and hopefully will never be repeated either. I have new scales by which to measure fear, anxiety, relief and regret. I learnt things about myself that will probably prove useful in the future and will certainly have a profound effect on the direction of my life. These are all good things I suspect.

Taxi in cold and rainy Shanghai

A weekend working away from Japan in Shanghai on the 19th and 20th gave me time for my inner ear to recover from the constant motion. A few days working in Nagoya after that, nice as they were, and it was time to get on the Shinkansen back to Yokohama before the weekend.

Pu-dong Airport, Shanghai

Taxis outside Marriott Associa, Nagoya

I'm looking forward to returning to Nagoya and exploring Kyoto, Osaka and Okinawa at some point but not without my family.

All that self imposed disruption to send the girls on an early holiday to Texas, and we were never really in any danger. Things fell, there are cracks in our apartment walls. The news scared us somewhat. The massive extraction of foreigners scared us more.

Even today with the lack of meaningful progress apparent at Fukushima Daiichi it's only caveman brain that has any objections to being here ... but gosh caveman brain is a powerful thing when you're shaken awake in the early hours.

Still beautiful, returning to bustling norm, Yamashita-koen, Yokohama

Still beautiful, international port, Yokohama

The only really scary thing left for me now is thinking how easy I have it and how just a few hundred kilometres away, thousands of people really have something to complain about - but it seems that in true Japanese style few are complaining. Those poor people who lost everything - lives, loved ones, entire families, friends, pets, homes, hometowns, futures - in many cases everything that we think of as important. Some face a unimaginable rebuilding effort. Some face an uncertain future with fears of never returning home safely. How do you start again when you lose everything - not just material posessions? The story of a elderly man losing his wife, children and grandchildren is too desperately sad to forget, certainly too difficult to fully comprehend.

Power saving? Yokohama

When I sat shaking inexplicably after feeling the distant results of another big earthquake near Miyagi on the 7th April, I'm reminded that I've almost never had it so good. It's psychologically difficult and nothing more. Yokohama is as wonderful and safe as ever. It is a testament to Japanese resilience that within days things were almost back to normal. The trains are still probably the best in the world. Take that Britain.

Late in the day, perfect weather, Chinatown, Yokohama

This weekend is perfect timing for seeing the sakura blossoming and if it wasn't pissing with rain there would presumably be at least a few hanami to observe too. Hoping for sun on Sunday, but on reflection it's not really too much of a problem to bear if I have to wait another year.

Looking forward from here the summer is likely to be extremely challenging of course. Electricity restrictions and their inevitable impact on air conditioning means that we might just have to deal with the brutal heat and humidity a little more directly than we had expected. That's a pretty small inconvenience relatively speaking though. I hope not to forget that in July ...

Zoo, Driving and IKEA...

It's been a week since my last post and we have been quite busy since then. Our trip to the zoo was enjoyed by all, especially daughter 2 who's favourite animal was definitely the bear! The lions and chimpanzee seemed a little sad in their small enclosures but the highlight of the trip was most definitely the petting zoo, Japan style! Mice, guinea pigs and chicks are roaming around on small tables, the children take a mat, a brush and a small animal, sit down on the benches provided and pet... none of the animals tried to escape and no-one got hurt, bitten or scratched!

The rest of the week passed in a bit of a blur ending with a trip to the drivers licence office on Friday to obtain a Japanese drivers licence. After a very early drop off for daughter 1 with a school friend we braved the rush hour train through Yokohama station to Futamatagawa with daughter 2 in her pushchair! We were just very glad that the millions of people crammed in the train with their faces pressed against the window got out before we had to get on. The wait at the office was almost exactly what we were expecting 3.5 hours, and with much help from a lovely japanese lady we left with two japanese drivers licences :o)

Saturday then meant we HAD to go driving in our new car so feeling pretty brave we headed out to IKEA! Although we had a few hurdles on the way... firstly we had no petrol... found the petrol station, managed to convey what we wanted and now have a full tank! secondly we had to program the japanese satnav... good job Benn was paying attention to the lesson he had. We arrived at IKEA just after opening and had a surprisingly enjoyable trip and delicious meatballs for lunch returning with almost everything we went for!

Feeling pretty brave I headed out into chinatown and the day ended with o-mochi kaeri (take out) from our local chinese restaurant... YUMMY :o)

A nice week

A good week in Japan.

Daughter 1 enjoying school, daughter enjoying being pushed everywhere in the pushchair and mummy getting fit pushing the pushchair up the hill to school twice a day!

With the help of some lovely people I have managed to find the big supermarket, although daughter 2 wasn't so happy about that trip! had a lovely lunch with the ladies at the country club and we are now awaiting the arrival of our first official guests for a drink this evening.

Tomorrow we will be visiting the Nogeyama zoo, looking forward to seeing the petting zoo...

NEVER touch the taxi door.

Not much to say today... life currently consists of lots of walking back and forth to school although did get to see a kimono demonstration at the school ptsa meeting today which was very interesting.

I did remember another thing i had noticed in Japan - Never open or touch the taxi door, it opens and closes automatically.

Tomorrow playgroup :o)

Interesting observations...

We have had a pretty interesting and exciting 'first' week in Japan, yesterday we had a new year party with all our neighbours where we got to eat curry, drink beer and chat with all our new neighbours.

Friday probably best not mentioned i think, lets just say there was an incident with some 'beer' which turned out not to be beer at all but fermented soy beans... needless to say Benn was not pleased with my purchase and we have had to go on another beer hunt today :o(

Saturday saw the arrival of our air shipment, lots of summer clothes which probably aren't going to be very useful now and none of the kitchen implements that we would be very grateful of... lets hope the sea shipment isn't too far behind!

Sunday... best day of the week, another trip to our favourite shop! got myself a very nice hairdryer and the girls had fun playing with all the toys. We bravely ventured downstairs to the food court and tried out the noodle bar, after putting loads of money into a vending machine outside the restaurant you press the buttons showing the dish you want and out prints a ticket which you hand in to the waitress... excellent food, and we got what we were expecting so yey!!!

I also wanted to start writing down a list of the interesting things we have noticed that are different in Japan:

1. When you pay by credit card they always ask you how many instalments you want to pay in.

2. Everyone queues nicely on the left for the escalator but push madly to get in the lift, a few ankles have been run over by the pushchair today!

3. You have to shove your way off the train as people try to get on before you've gotten off.

4. If you can't use chopsticks you better learn the word for fork!!!

5. They don't use knives, even when offered a fork or spoon you rarely get a knife.

6. Zebra crossings have lights, NEVER cross unless the man is green!

7. Cars can turn when the green man is on but have to wait for people to cross.

8. Despite their normal reserve many Japanese people stare and laugh at westerners.

9. Many supermarkets don't take credit card

10. The Japanese love children, always wave and smile, and even have plastic bowls and cutlery in the most unlikely of restaurants

11. Ticket Machines at the train station can be converted to English but the map is only in Japanese.

life in the real world?

Well this week is whizzing past, i can't believe its Thursday already...

After the weekend of sickness Tuesday was a good day, we headed out on the hunt for a pair of work shoes for Benn, as I (oops) threw his old ones away and the new ones are not due to be delivered until Saturday with our air shipment... after finding some nice and relatively reasonably priced shoes we visited Yodobashi Camera again (i think this might be Benn's favourite shop!) had a really nice lunch out and took a wander through the Nissan headquarters to see all the cars. We even managed to find the 100 yen shop we had been looking for last week in minato-mirai.

Wednesday real life started, getting up early so Benn could go to work and daughter 1 could meet everyone at school. School is a 30 minute walk up the hill which was lovely in the sunshine. daughter 1 loved school so left her there painting for an hour whilst i took daughter 2 to the park to play and when I returned she didnt want to leave! luckily they said she could start Thursday so not long to wait. A stroll back down the hill after school we found Don Quijote, an amazing store full of all sorts of household bits and pieces, and even managed to pick up a pair of crocks, as indoor shoes for school, in Motomachi for 300yen (£2.30!)

The afternoon saw another trip to the ward office to collect the paperwork the relo guy forgot to tell us we needed and another trip to the most expensive supermarket in the world, maybe!

Thursday... another walk up the hill to school, today in time for the start of school at 8.25!!! OMG I am never going to be on time.... and from Aug she'll start at 8am, ouch :oS

The Mums at school were all really friendly and invited me to join them at starbucks for a coffee. Later a trip to the country club with one of the other Mum's (although getting daughter 2 and the car seats down in the lift is not an experience I want to repeat!) and a relaxing afternoon with the girls eating popcorn... time to make dinner I think...

Monday - house of sick

So today half the house is sick and half not... boo hoo.

After a very early night for all last night, mummy falling asleep whilst reading the bedtime story, daddy in bed asleep after being sick all day, we were quite upset to be woken in the middle of the night with a poorly daughter no.1... and lots more sick to come.

Monday mostly consisted of trying to keep daughter no.2 away from sick daughter no.1 so as not to pass on the sickness bug.

I did make my first outing alone (well almost, with a small child in tow) to the Union in Motomachi to buy supplies, comfort food in the form of roast dinner, not too hard you might think. I found all the 'right' ingredients with a little help from my guide book to make sure that the things that looked like potatoes and flour actually were! I also met a nice japanese lady who delighted in telling me about how my daughter had 'happy ears' and even managed to open a point card for the store, with quite a lot of help from the lady behind the till.

Roast dinner successfully made, daddy and daughter 1 no longer being sick, and an english guide for the sky tv found... harmony in restored in the reynolds home :o)

Sunday, that means extreme nausea, right?

Uggggh, not feeling very well today at all. I suspect it was something I ate. It's quite difficult to put my finger on what specifically it was but suffice it to say that I shall not be returning to "Premium Buffet" again any time soon. Everyone else enjoyed it though.

Yesterday was quite productive and felt a little easier - probably because we returned to Minato Mirai which is both familiar and very friendly. We walked to, yes, yet more shops - JackMall. The way there from Queens Square / Landmark Plaza is beautiful, at least it is in the dark, with glowing lights in the paving and a very long reflection pool. The walk leads down to the new Nissan building - something I want to visit at some point.

We trawled ToysRUs for toddler essentials. It seems that the Japanese have a very strong fondness for shrimp, lets hope our children feel the same. Then we returned back home on the train, finishing with a walk through Chinatown from the Motomachi Chukagi Chinatown exit.

We are now just about 2-3 hours out of our normal time - so late bedtime for the children, but quite a normal wakeup. Hopefully today and tomorrow let us get the timing closer to 'normal' and everyone starts feeling a little more human. If I can avoid being sick all day, that is :(

Saturday, that means a lie in, right?

Oh, yes it does!
Incredibly we didn't wake up until nearly 11am. Incredible because with the children this almost never seems possible, indeed they normally seem to actively conspire against us.


Last night was a bit woeful, this morning we ate up all the food that we have left in the house for breakfast (brioche and toast then). This means that someone MUST go out and get some food, and today this means not only sourcing breakfast items for more than one day, but also some ingredients suitable for making dinner and lunch for a few days too. This is quite a lot more scary than either of us thought after seeing that we don't recognise a lot of things for sale and worse still can't ask for basic things (like slicing the bacon, for example). We will most likely, through a combination of having a profound language barrier and mutual embarrassment, end up with some pretty odd things for a while. It would be much funnier if it wasn't so alarmingly expensive ...


So by the end of today we should know what horrors we have secured from the supermarket. We should also hopefully have successfully caught the train to Minato Mirai and perhaps located another 100円 shop to get some more hangers and maybe some 4-way power strips (oh, we are so rock and roll) - OK perhaps not power strips from the 100円 shop. I'm actually hoping we don't find power strips and are forced to return to Yodobashi ... 


We shall see, shan't we?

A lost day?

Ooooh look we lost a day.
A busy day yesterday, productive in many ways and utterly frustrating in others.


We managed to go out with "only" 5000円 - about £40 / $60 at the current exchange rate. It was an accident, and a mistake. In the harshest lesson in how cash oriented the Japanese economy still is it was nearly all gone after lunch.


2000 buying a Suica payment card for the trains.
300 for a couple of train tickets (because we didn't have enough money to buy the two Suica cards we actually need AND lunch).
450 on an egg sandwich and water for the kids to share.
840 on some hangers in the 100円 store (actually, its a 100円 store, but who's counting?).
1000 on something for us to eat.
It goes fast!


We made it to the bank to set up our (my) account. Today this is looking like a smart thing to do first! We didn't make it to the ward office to complete the things that the relo agent should have told us we needed to do whilst there on Thursday. We did make it to Yodobashi Camera - YAY - to buy an iron (that Tokyo Lease forgot to supply) - BOO - and an Apple TV to make more sense of TV than we can with the Japanese satellite service.


We also went to Softbank and after some procrastination arranged a mobile phone in quite an efficient process. Japan, true to form, is exceptionally expensive for mobile phones too (to us at least). On the up side, we picked up some free gifts in the process.


We popped into the supermarket at Ishikawacho station on the way back thinking that it might just take card like the Union in Motomachi. 
Nope. 


So with the few remaining coins we had left we bought the only orange juice (and chocolate milk) we could afford and left.


The evening is probably best left undocumented. We live outrageously close to Chinatown. Should be easy to score some food quickly right? Lets just say that we need lessons in survival Japanese ASAP. Toast for dinner :(

The end of a moving day

We are in, we are in.

In a most efficient series of events we are in even managing to move our stupid number of suitcases across Yokohama without drama.
The excruciatingly extensive property inspection is complete. The temporary lease furniture delivered, beds made and

THE INTERNET IS CONNECTED.

Also, we are official, card carrying aliens.

On the down side, assembling a simple collection of necessary groceries - only sufficient to create one complete meal and a modest breakfast - proved troublingly expensive. I truly hope that we accidentally stumbled upon Yokohama's most expensive supermarket because otherwise ... well, otherwise I won't need to run to burn off calories :)

Perhaps it's so expensive because of the astoundingly fast packing they did for us (two people to a till), or because of the astoundingly intricate, but wasteful, packaging the products seem to come in.

Tomorrow? To the bank, to take account of things ...
Maybe a sneaky trip to Yodobashi ... maybe ... for essential supplies like power strips you see ...

Moving Day

Not at all jet lagged, children in fantastic mood.

Lies.

It is moving day though!

We are saying goodbye to the Pan Pacific (and it's extensive breakfast) and moving to our new apartment in Yamashita. The Pan Pacific was where we stayed when we first came to Japan to look round, and it is very weird being here with the children now. Somewhat less serene is possibly understating the feeling.

I suspect that neither the food nor the views will be as good from our new apartment, but it will be nice to have somewhere that is 'home' after over a month of having no such thing.

Little nervous about how the day will go, but fortunately the biggest bumps (aside from the children) should be smoothed by our relocation assistant.

The Japanese lesson for today was "Hello" and "Thank you" - daughter number one quite reluctant to speak Japanese for the same reason that Japanese people are reluctant to speak English. The irony is that she should not only fit in very well here as a result, but stands the greatest chance of all of us of becoming fluent ...