Big Japan Trip Take Two: I love Shibuya

Our day had a bit of a rocky start - somewhere in the course of our outing yesterday, after we remember last seeing it, my JR Pass went missing. So that's a bummer. Also means I'd end up spending hundreds on train tickets if I couldn't get a replacement. Fortunately, they introduced a trial sale of JR Passes at 3 or 4 train stations in Tokyo in March, to see if itr's worth their while - Yes, Japan, yes it is! Not everybody knows about them before hand and you only sell them through one vendor online. Also they get lost, apparently.
So that was sorted out quite quickly and as I told the lovely woman at the issuing office, that is what travel insurence is for.

This is the first time I've ever had to make a claim with my travel insurance so that's exciting. The annoying thing is that the company says, "Make the claim as soon as possible on this number" - like heck I'm ringing that number while in Japan. From a mobile. No, they're getting a solid, well-written, free sob story email. (Update: It was after midnight and cocktails that I wrote that. I have since remembered I have a bolt-on with O2 that allows me 120 minutes of chat for a flat £4.99 a day, rather than charging by the minute.)

Once that was all sorted out and Hubbo had stopped mentally hyperventilating, we went to a park in Shinjuku. It was bleeding massive and we spent a good 3 hours in there, though it was hot. 33 degrees by 11am and I am sure it surpassed the predicted 36 degrees, in places.

Why Japan is still Greener than England

From 52nd floor in Roppongi. Different park, same point.

Something I noticed the last time we came, and more so from high up on the 52nd floor of a giant building, is that Japan has loads of green spaces. Really green spaces, that are huge and full of trees. There was a forest in that park that was bigger than the woods around Papworth Everard. 

Compared London's parks, where there might be trees every 2-3 metres, Japan's parks have them every metre - metre and a half.  They also take great pride in producing lovely parks to walk through and sit in, be they curated Japanese gardens with ponds and bridges and gorgeous shrubbery, woodland walks or "French Flower Gardens".

This particular park separated the area of Shinjuku we were in the next district along the subway line, Shibuya.  It was large and circular and its paths crossed over a lot and wove through areas in a way that meant you took a while going through. It was also a specialised national park (Shinjuku Gyoen national park), so we paid a modest fee to get in. 

I do lament somewhat that I always hear interesting birds but never see them - today was no exception. The most exciting thing I saw was a house sparrow that hopped within a foot of me. (Not that he stayed for a photo, oh no.) Annoyingly, I left my lumix at the flat, so I couldn't take as good photos as I would like of the dragonflies I saw today - my new camera is great, but the lens I have can only zoom in a small way, making it better for gorgeous close ups that I can actually get close to - my lumix has a phenomenal zoom for its relatively low price.

In the park was a large greenhouse, too - it had plants from all over the world but also endangered Japanese plants. I took photos of the most interesting ones, rather than just Japanese ones, cause there was a LOT.

Slideshow from our day at the park:

It's Shonen Jump's 50th Anniversary!

We made our way to Roppongi, a business area by day and party central by night. It was quite nice - quieter than main Shinjuku and full of shiny shiny buildings - you know, the ones that are all polished glass windows, to trick those poor salerymen that they're getting natural light.

There is a tall tower building with an art gallery, special exhibits, an observatory and a sky view at the top, including a helipad that can be entered for a fee.  Unfortunately, because of "unusually high temperatures", the helipad wasn't open, so we decided to go to the Shonan Jump exhibit instead, which was nice. We were not allowed to take photos, except within the pink zones and only with mobile phones, not proper cameras. Presumably so we can't make our own prints at home hehehehe.

So some photos were taking by my mobile, if you notice a sudden drop in image quality somewhere. Or a jump.  I mean, the one I took of the poster outside was a bit rubbish but there we go.

The exhibit had some nice pieces - the One Piece artboard room was cool. It was a circular area with mirrored walls with a centre-piece column of sheets of paper - with One Piece art on - flying upwards and across the ceiling, while the walls had loads of pieces and large cut-outs of the main characters. Oh and the room changed colours, which affected how the artwork looked, it was very cool.

In the other areas, there were original artboard submissions of various anime, with a mini synopsis of each one. Some anime had dynamic clips put together of panels from the manga, complete with whooshing sound effects and music of appropriate dramatical level.

The Death Note area was slightly interactive - there were cameras somewhere and you could see people on the screen. If they touched the Death Note, then Ryuk would show up on the screen too. Except we worked out that it was on a timer, not prompted by touching the book.... still it was fairly cool. Such a shame that the series sucks after L died. They don't mention that anywhere though... !

The merch was nice, but Hubbo is heartbroken - enough to make a plea on a forum he frequents! - that the gorgeous poster print for My Hero Academia was sold out. Yep. The one thing he wanted was gone. There was another print, but it cost more than my JR Pass so we decided that was probably a stupid idea. Also we don't carry that sort of cash around. Because that would also be stupid. 😛

Photos from Rippongi here:

Shibuya: Energy. Colour. Sound.

I'm going to take a moment to express how much I love Shibuya - it was my favourite spot last time we came and last night reminded me why.  It is very much the youth centre - at night its shops stay open late (at least until 7 or 8, some clothes stores), it has arcades but not in an overboard number as in say, Akihabara. It has music in the streets, various food and drink venues ranging from KFC, street ramen and pizza to snack and cocktail bars, all you can eat, rice bowls and steak houses. 

We aimed to find the nice bar we found last time, but failed miserably. (Though Hubbo kind of gave up after it wasn't where he thought it was. )

We went into a cocktail bar which was quite nice and had popcorn and a margarita pizza - home-made! I tried some new cocktails - each half the price of any at home. In fact, were I at home and it was, say, Las Iguanas, and the cocktails had been that cheap, I would have probably been quite drunk. 💙

Shibuya is just a fun place to be. It is bright and colourful and there's a great vibe about it. It doesn't have the underlying grubbiness and skeeviness of Shinjuku and even if you're dressed in clothes you wore all day, you didn't feel as though you were too shabby to be in the area. (Looking at you, Ginza, with your $20 coffees!) The music is loud and definitely breaks UK public space noise rules, but actually I love it. It's usually J-Pop and latest hits, and you can't tell if it's coming from a store with its doors open or from an advert or if one of the giant outdoor t.v. signs is playing a music channel... last time we came there was a big advertising campaign for a new Final Fantasy game, so at times there would just be FF orchestral music playing loudly while everybody stopped and listened outside McDonalds. It's just brilliant.

After we ate we made our way to an arcade and played Taiko drums - perhaps not as well as the day before, because alcohol and joie-de-vivre. Also Hubbo put on the Japanese cover of "How Far I'll Go" from Moana which made me insanely happy but my struggle to remember how it started meant I was concentrating on singing along badly instead of hitting the drum... Great times were had. I almost won a really cool Maleficent figure in one of those annoying claw machines. It is so rigged... though it turned out the tip sticker on the window was true. I swear, another 3 or 4 goes and I would have got it. But they were closing up... so we'll never know!

By the way:  Anybody else seeing Bruce Forsyth in these weird-chinned stuffed toys? If I had wanted to, tried and then won this lion, he would have been named Bruce.

We got back late - after midnight and I stayed up long enough to sort out the Shinjuku Gyoen pictures. I've written this last part the following morning - I would still be asleep probably, only my hayfever had kicked in BIG TIME.  I am sneezing and so gross. I think it has been exacerbated by the insect bites I got yesterday. How the heck did they get my index finger? When did that even happen? Sneaky things.  There's a pharmacy around the corner according to google, so I'll grab some magic Japan pills to make the sneeze and snot go away.

On that note, I log off!

Photos from Shibuya:

Big Japan Trip Take Two: How many ways to slice a fish?

OOOPS.

We found our building and by 2pm we were unpacked and had cooled off, after navigating Narita and the Ikebukuro-Seibu line with 3 cases and 32 degree heat. 

Then Hubbo indicated he wanted a cuddle.  So I lay down next to him.

About 4 hours later we got up again, having slept. Whoopsie!

Well we got changed and sorted out what we were taking out with us and headed to Ikebukuro in search of good food and some evening entertainment.

Five Ways to Slice a Fish.

Random restaurant of the Evening was a fish restaurant with "private" rooms  - which equated to small eating booth/nooks for up to 4, with a square cloth that hung just in the right place so nobody could see your faces from the outside.  They had an English printed menu as well which was handy and allowed Hubbo to reassimilate himself speaking what Japanese he could.

We chose our fish - a fat, pink and white one that looked as though he might have been fairly cheerful when alive - and asked for it to be prepared as Sashimi, ordering a rice and green tea bowl on the side.

What we got was a nice long tray of various cuts of our unfortunate fish and a second tray arrived with a bowl of rice, a pot of green tea to pour over it and small dishes with sesame seed, spring onion and satay/peanut sauce. All that, mixed together, was yummy.

The fish cuts in particular were delicious - though there was some marital disagreement over whether the leaner or fattier cuts were better. As the author and owner of this blog, naturally, I win that argument - the leaner cuts were simply better. There was a tad more bite and they had more flavour in my opinion.

Then, when we were almost done, they brought out the rest of the fish - it had been baked in a delicious teriyaki marinade and you could see where they had taken the bulk of the meat we'd eaten from. That left us roughly two thirds of a fish to eat, which was amazing, particularly with our green tea and peanut rice. Yum yum.

Only thing that was mildly off-putting was the way it was giving me the hair eye the whole time. This photo came just after Hubbo had moved it, which was annoying, but it had been hanging there by a gross thread, peering at me!

Arcades and Anime

We walked off our feast by wandering through arcade buildings, playing on the Taiko drum and being badass at it. Then we wandered towards Sunshine City, which is perhaps the greatest shopping complex ever - it has a planetarium, which we will visit this time, and an aquarium - which visited 2 years ago - and all the things you could want in souvenir or clothes shopping.

Outside there is a series of steps and they've put together an homage to Attack on Titan, which is where giants attack villages and cities.

Apologies for some of the photo quality, I have not really used my camera at night very much.

Big Trip To Japan Take 2: The Flight there

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to The Big Japan Trip Take Two, with your hosts, Maus and Hubbo.  (I have decided to give Him Indoors a proper nickname now that he has 'put a ring on it'. He likes to talk about himself in 3rd person using this moniker, so I'll stick with it here.)

This is both our big get away and our honeymoon. I'll blog it the way I did before, particularly as we have some big trips planned this time round.

I shall begin with the drama of our flights and how itactually turned out to be...

THE BEST TRAVEL DECISION WE HAVE EVER MADE.

See, we booked our flights about 10 months in advance, because we knew when and where we wanted to go and it is much cheaper to do so.  THEN THE RUSSIANS THREATENED STUFF. So we thought, "yikes. If they cut into our bags last time, what will they do this time? better go through Poland."  Which even our parents and guardians believed to be a sensible line of thought.  After minimal use of google we discovered that LOT airlines have a pretty good Premium Economy, which means leg room for Hubbo and extra sleep for both of us. And fewer arguments when we get onto the ground at the other end. #winningalready

It cost us an extra £300 or so each but by this point we had saved that up alongside our wedding fund and pocketmoney fund, so we coughed up and tightened our belts. WORTH IT.
Picture this: clean seats, leg room, drinks in glass glasses and food that doesn't make you wish you were dead.

Love me a good cloud formation

Our flight to Poland was comfortable and we got priority embarkment, but after the 4.5 hours at Warsaw airport, we were resisting the temptation to upgrade to Business Class (the fact it was an extra 500 euros each was a big reason not to bother, though we have made a £200pp bid on business seats on the way back because if we can do that for minimal money, then why the heck not?!).  We got on.  We have just the two seats - so we're not next to randos in our row.  We have leg room, yes. We have foot rests, yes. Magical tint-glass windows - you press buttons and the glass will gradually get darker or lighter, depending on your preference. We got a decent cushion, plush blanket, a care packet containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks and eyemask, ear phones that work in regular audio jacks  - so I got some half-decent ones for free - and then we were given our first complimentary drink: a choice of orange juice, water, pink champagne or regular. Well I can tell you that I got hints of cherry and strawberry in my pink champagne and Hubbo will not be going dehydrated.

We were given a menu - yes, a proper card menu.  I suspected, but wasn't sure until I checked later (though the curtain being drawn was a big give away if you ask me - Hubbo was more naive about it) that the rest of the economy passengers were not getting the same food as us.
We chose the Japanese menu, though the western one looked fairly nice too.

For dinner we got: Crab spring rolls served with GORGEOUS beef tenderloin, wakame, carrot and watercress sprouts; seasonal salad with avocado; Baked salmon in teriyaki sauce served with blanched spinach and baked cocktail tomato; a bowl of rice; and a Matcha tea cake.
The only thing that did not taste fresh out of the oven / stove was the blanched spinach, which clearly came from a tin, but it was a high-end brand of tinned spinach. Honestly, I have never had such a good meal before on a plane - Hubbo CLEANED HIS PLATES. And he had some of mine. Thank goodness, maybe his stomach will be less jippy this time when we land! (Update: He has been 100% this time! :) )

For breakfast before landing we are getting Miso Soup, baked turbot appetizer, a spinach omelette and chicken fricasee with vegetables (served hot), rice and a Japanese style salad.

The film selection is pretty good two, with a variety of blockbusters, both recent and "classic". I saw someone watching Toy Story 3 earlier while I queued for the toilet. So far the only slight negative about our pay-for-better experience is that we still have to use the economy toilets, and they're ages away, especially when you have to wait for the rest of the plane to get coffee and tea served and their trays put away and stuff. I just spent ages queuing. I was tempted to go to the back of the plane, cause the people in the last third don't seem to realise there are loos right behind them.... but I would have got stuck behind the trolley again! I am watching Love Simon, since I missed that at the cinema and I know it's excellent. (Update: I have now watched it, as has the Japanese gent  behind me. We both cried a little at the end. It was beautiful.)

I will let you know, when we get to our room in Tokyo, whether or not the drama surrounding our AirBnB has worked out well...!

*****

Just as an aside:  I have just finished rereading the utter delight that is Jonas Jonasson's "The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared" on my kindle.  I got a few recommendations from Domestic Sluttery for summer novels to read. Not that they're summery in nature, just short and easy I guess.

The first I'm going to read was one I'd heard about and was interested in and then persuaded by the staff at DS:  "Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata - a topical book if ever there was one.  Already the first pages have given me mental flashbacks to the 7-Eleven stores and Convenie stores in and around Tokyo, and it's written in that gorgeous clear, simplistic style that authors from that region of the world tend to use. I guess it's how it's translated.

I also bought "After the Party" by Cressida Connolly, which is about how fascism was just evident and on the rise in Britain as anywhere else during the 1930s-40s, as much as people like to pretend/forget that was the case.

I was also interested in "Death in Spring" by Merce Rodoreda and is listed in the Penguin European Writers section of things. This one is a short coming of age story, from what I gather.

I also had a bit of a splurge on books by Mhairi McFarlane. I enjoyed "It's not me, it's you" enough to have a look at the blurbs of her other books and while they're thematically all similar, I can tell I'll probably enjoy them as well.  Everybody loves a formulaic rom-com every now and then.
I also grabbed the second Rivers of London book, to see if the series is worth persuing.

The iPad failed to capture the redness of the sun peeking up to the East

The Incredibles 2 - When a Sequel Does It Right

I enjoyed The Incredibles, though I only first saw it in 2015 after my husband bought me a Pixar blu-ray box set. I did like it, but I didn't feel like it sparkled all that much or was particularly stand out.

I wasn't blown away by the trailer for the sequel either, and I heard nothing in particular about it, so I assumed it was going to be neither a flop nor a success. Still, we have our Unlimited Cards and it was flipping sweltering in our flat this week so we decided to hide in an air conditioned cinema for an hour or two. 

It. Was. Hilarious.  

I loved it. We weren't bored, we were laughing out loud, we were genuinely entertained. Both of us came out bubbling away at how funny it was and how much better than the original it was.  

Plot: It starts with the end of the first film. There is no time jump - it literally picks up where the last film left off.

Then it peels away, leaving the Incredible family staying in a motel because their house was destroyed, along with their reputations as Supers.  I was amusing myself by whispering Marvel's Civil War parallels at my husband at times, cause it was a similar line of attack.

The character development was brilliant.  Dash is the only character that did not get a lot of growth or definition, but that's because actually, he didn't really need it - it was there as a foil to the family and as a child who is at the age where he's confident and comfortable with himself - "It's part of who I am!" - he was not in any need of a character arc.  

Helen gets ample, and it's really great to see the mother figure going out there and doing the super hero stuff while Dad stays at home to be the care giver. What was REALLY refreshing, despite Brad Bird's general views on feminists and stuff, is that there was no resentment towards Helen for being out there and him thinking her JOB was to be at home. No no, he was just resentful that he wasn't particularly good at it and he didn't like the implication that the thing he IS good at (saving people with brute strength) was done in a more sloppy manner than his wife, whose skill set is more adept at keeping collateral damage to a minimum.  We get to see Helen and how she operates, and how she gets to do the things that she has wanted to do but hasn't, because she's naturally the better care-giver at home - and partly out of societal expectation, too.

 What is great - and as a teacher with the inability not to relate things to what she is trying to teach her kids - is that we see Bob not giving up or half-arsing his parental role because he finds it difficult or it didn't come naturally, we see him putting more effort in and trying his best to GET BETTER - he sees that just because he's not good at something doesn't mean he can't get good at something.  Ok, so he is more comfortable being Mr Incredible and he misses doing things he was good at naturally, but he never complains about being at home, in fact he gets proper stubborn about it when people offer to help - he doesn't want to fail at being a stay-at-home dad. It makes him persevere and work harder at it. THAT is the sort of male role model we want to see on t.v. and film.  Also Craig T Nelson's voice acting is hilarious and brilliant and I love him.

Jack Jack gets a lot of the arcs, because being a baby, he is higher maintenance, and of course being the child of Supers, it's even funnier if he's a high maintenance baby with RIDONKULOUS powers.

Violet gets a pretty solid arc too - for her, there's a level of coming of age. She is a teenager and trying to get through high school life, while developing her place in the superhero family. She has her powers but also experiences for herself the negative impact it can have on her social life - going as far as to renounce her powers (another funny scene involving her costume). By the end of it, she matures enough, in the same way that Bob does, to see that her skill set means that she is best equipped for particular jobs - that is how teams work. It's not about glory or being the best at everything, it's about playing a part to get the task done in the best way possible, and if that means taking a "back seat" during something - be it allowing someone else spearhead a PR campaign to get Supers legalised again or allowing Dash to run around while you create a shield to protect everybody else - then that does not mean you're less important or worthy.  There were lots of great take-aways from the film that I fully intend to use but will probably forget by the time term begins again in September.

The only downside or mild negative, though potentially interesting, is the strange almost feminist coding of the villain.  I mean, it was pretty obvious who it was going to be from the get-go, but the way it's done is rather similar to the way villains tend to be queer-coded, only with a feminist bent? I don't know if that makes sense, I'm typing at 3am because I can't sleep.  It fits with Bird's general outlook, let's just put it that way.

Still, it is a solid film, I give it a 4 or 5 out of 5. Honestly, go and see if it you haven't already!

Blind Date with a Books #3, 4 and 5!

My, my I HAVE been rubbish at keeping up with this. In my defense though, there was a kindle sale and a Waterstones sale at the same time!

My second blind date turned out to be "The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde.

"Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, Fear or boyfriend.  This is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's Mr Big.
Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. 

Perhaps today itsn't going to be Thursday's day. Join her in a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again..."

My bestie remembers reading this and promises me it's as weird and fun as the blurb claims it is. And I believe her - I get the vibe that while it might start off a bit slow and clunky, it will evolve into a book packed with loads of literary in-jokes that I will both get and appreciate.

But I just haven't been in the mood.  I know I'll enjoy it, but it's one of those books where, at the period of the academic year that it arrived, I just didn't have the headspace for.  So I confess I ended up reading quick reads - books I've read once in the past but not repeatedly.

So watch this space - I'll probably read it on the plane to Japan, or, if there's no room in my hand luggage, when I get back and SHOULD be reading my SENCo course materials...!


Book number 3 was "It's Not Me, It's You" by Mhairi McFarlane

"How do you start again when everything falls apart?
When Delia's life is turned inside out - from a disasterous proposal to resignation-worthy team-building exercises - moving to a new city looks like the answer. But this has its own measure of problems, and Delia finds herself in a distinctly shady job where telling the truth seems to be entirely optional. As an investigative journalist starts digging, Delia must ask herself where her loyalties lie - and if this life is truly better than the one she left behind.

A moving, hilarious and insightful tale that questions what you do when your life is broken: do you try to put the pieces back where they were or  build something new?"

This was EXACTLY the sort of book I had headspace for - I read it really quickly. It made me laugh, giggle, snort-cackle (that's a think, honestly) and cry. I was crying over my dinner while reading it and my husband looked over at me and (hypocritically, if we're being 100% truthful, which we are) half-mocked me for it. Dammit, the bleep was bleeping and it was really sad! (See how I remain spoiler free?)

It is a relatable protagonist, and I can see how easily it can go wrong. I too have been in an almost similar situation, only events happened in different orders and I was at uni, not with a job. And while my ending was different, it was weird to see how things would have been different if the people involved had been just a bit more childish or more broken or whatever. I dunno. Probably read more into it than there is.  I got angry for her and I willed her to just quit her job and do the right thing, at the same time understanding why she wasn't doing what I was telling her to. (And not just because she is a bunch of words on a page, nyeh nyeh.)

It's a fun caper and while I think the publicist job she got in London is a bit exaggerated, I can 100% see it happening on a smaller scale!

Tropes wise, it's pretty formulaic - it's pretty obvious at the start who the new love interest will be and how utterly Pride and Prejudiced it is. There was one point in the book, though, where I did wonder if the author would go against the mold! As a hopeless romantic I'm glad she didn't, but in other ways it would have been interesting if she had. That said, with the characters as she developed them, I would not have been sold on the other ending.

Do I recommend this book? Yes.  Especially if you're going on holiday this summer and want something easy to read. It's thick but it's pretty easy to digest. I enjoyed it and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm tempted to read more work by the author - I hear her other books are pretty well rated.


Blind Date Book number 4:  "Still Life with Woodpecker" by Tom Robbins.

"Still Life With Woodpecker is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problems of redheads."

Yeah.... Nope. The blurb makes it sound more whimsical and fun but I could not get past the first 3 or 4 pages, which is about 7 chapters or parts. 

I'll not write it off yet, it's probably a headspace thing... cause the blurb is intriguing enough but it's one of those where I need to get into the zone. It feels quite stream of consciousness-y and not all the of the streams are linked or about the same thing. Each section or chapter or part of Phase 1 so far seems to be jumping between subjects, which isn't a bad thing, but the style in which its written is so experimental that I wasn't having any of it when I unwrapped the book.  As I flick through the book and read random pages, it seems like bits of narrative that I can get behind, but the way it's written means I'd have to work at it to get there - something I'm not particularly in the mood to do! #lazyendoftermteacher

So that's my update.

So far my dalliance with Blind Date with a Book has been a 50/50 success rate! (I'm not counting the Princess Bride, as I bought that separate to the subscription)
I should be receiving August's offering very soon!