Shitamachi - Ueno to Komagome

Shitamachi - Ueno to Komagome, a set on Flickr.

An afternoon wander from Ueno north to Komagome, Tokyo

Noda - the first few weeks...

So the new boy wonder is in the hot-seat and what has he come up with to save Japan from fiscal, environmental and demographic catastrophe…?

Well, fuck all so far, it seems. The new kid has been keeping his head down and grafting, I know this because the media types have been bemoaning the fact the kid keeps his head down and doesn’t do interviews or press conferences. The old boys used to have at least 1 press conference a day, sometimes 2, with all that pressing going on you would think they didn’t have much time to do anything, and you’d be right (expect back-stabbing, mud-slinging and, in the case of (The Man Who) Kan, standing stock still in panic induced paralysis at the shit in front of him). But Noda has said “No, da won’t be many press conferences from now on” (apologies for the forced pun there), and those that he will do will be at ad hoc in locations the press will be told about with 2 minute’s notice (cue Keystone Cops-style charging about Kasumigaseki by the press corps whilst Noda chuckles to himself in Roppongi Hills/a rice field/Washington DC etc.)

But like most recent Japanese PMs, I can’t really think of much he’s done. I suppose he has overseen the indictment of the crook that is Ichiro Ozawa, who is still protecting his innocence, deriding the legality of the court and accusing the prosecutors of fraud, thereby acting like the supercilious, arrogant tosspot that he is; I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if he had shouted ‘don’t you know who I am!?’ several times already.

Sorry, back to Noda – er… There’s been a bit of talk about the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), a sort of free trade agreement with the US, but that will be wrapped up in the Futenma base shenanigans that are *still* going on. Then there are the proposed tax hikes, which will put my tax up in the not too distant future through a combination of increased income and sales taxes (yes, I can see they are needed but no, I don’t want them if all they will do is go towards more a) useless, anti-competition hand-outs for rice farmers/fishermen (for example) to keep them voting the right way b) ridiculous pork-barrel construction projects (there are enough real construction projects needed in Tohoku) c) bureaucrats d) semi-public institutions still bankrolled by govt. through my tax (JAL, Japan Tobacco et al) e) anything else that promotes waste and that I don’t agree with. Jesus, I sound like a Republican!).

I’m sure there is other stuff he’s done, but I can’t remember much about it. I’m sure he is doing great things to start the rebuild of northern Japan which will be, in the main, unsung, so maybe he needs to start blowing his trumpet a bit more.

Radiation news

The thing about having a nuclear power station going into meltdown 250kms away is that it makes everyone really paranoid about radiation. The first accusation is that the govt. and TEPCO aren’t telling anyone anywhere near enough about what’s going on at the plant. This was undoubtedly true at the time and though I suspect the flow of information is now much better, after the general panic has dissipated, I’m sure there is more they are not (or maybe not able) to tell us yet.

The second accusation is only possible after the general panic has dissipated and people can get back to living their normal lives, this is the paranoia that radiation is everywhere and the government aren’t telling us about it. The idea is that large amounts of radiation fell on Tokyo in very specific areas, creating radiation hotspots that will, for example, give your child incurable radiation sickness and/or cancer the second he/she goes near the aforementioned hotspot. There is no way the govt. can counter this unless it takes radiation readings from every street corner in Tokyo every 5 minutes for the next 10 years, and even then certain people, like some parents at the school I work at, will not believe the readings are real.

What makes matters worse are completely unrelated, random events that ratchet up the panic. For example a bunch of ‘concerned residents’ got hold of a radiation meter (another really, really bad idea as these are sensitive instruments with which it’s easy to pick up false readings unless you know what you’re doing) and started measuring bits of Setagaya-ku in west Tokyo. Somehow they managed to get an accurate reading and found a really quite large spike in radiation in one spot on a road outside a slightly rundown house. Cue local hysteria so the real boys were called in and, interestingly, found the same readings. Cue national hysteria and calls for the government to resign en masse for lying to the public (actually I made that bit up, but I’m pretty sure someone was saying it). Anyway, what the big boys found was that the radiation was coming from the house and, after getting permission to go in, found several bottles containing radium 226 (the stuff they use as luminous paint for watches) under the floor of the house. The woman who owned the house but no longer lived there said her (now dead husband, died if radiation poisoning…?) might have used the stuff but she really had no idea. So in the end it was all completely unrelated to Fukushima, but the paranoia goes on. Also, the level of radiation just above the bottles was 600 micro Sv/h, about the amount you would get from a stomach x-ray; so not exactly lethal though you wouldn’t want to stand there for too long, so outside the house on the street the level was around 3 micro Sv/h, so no one was going to get anything nasty just walking by the house every day, not that you’d think that listening to some of the comments that came out.

The Rugby World Cup

It’s almost over and I haven’t written anything about it. So, some musings…

- England were pretty rubbish on the field (looking good against Romania and Georgia does not count)

- Off the field England were not saints, but a large section of the media did seem to have it in for them from the moment they arrived in NZ (Mick Cleary and Mark Reason in the Telegraph spring to mind)

- I feel sorry for Wales but Sam Warburton should not have made that tackle as he did, whilst James Hook and Stephen Jones should have done better than 1 from 6

- I feel slightly sorry for South Africa, but they should have been a lot more savvy in realising that Bryce Lawrence had given carte blanche at the breakdown for anyone to do anything

- Japan played well, very well, at times but lacked composure when it really mattered

- No one put 100 points on any of the “minnows” – this was a great improvement and will only get better the more opportunities they are given to play the ‘big’ nations

- I now want France to win on Sunday, just because everyone is writing them off and saying they are the worst team ever to grace the final. Allez les Bleus!

- Stop blaming the refs and start looking at you team’s shortcomings

- Roll on 2019 when it all comes to Japan


And Dan Wheldon, R.I.P.

Lastly some pictures of cars from La Fest Mille Miglia in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago

La Festa 2011, a set on Flickr.

Who was that Man...?

So The Man Who Kan is officially now the Man Who Couldn't. As I said before, he was dealt a shitty hand but seismic catastrophes are in the job description for a Japanese PM and I'm afraid to say that he didn't handle it particularly well. Yes, politics is riven by factions, especially within his own party, but at some point he had to stop, draw a line in the sand (after clearing away the wreckage and checking for radiation), grow a pair and, firstly, tell Ozawa to f*ck off and expel him from the party (and deal with the crook later) and then take charge of the country post-quake, show a bit of leadership, be strong, fight and all that. Sorry, but on both counts: FAIL.

So he finally did the decent thing, after the 3rd emergency budget was passed (or whichever one it was) and fell on his sword. After a bit of ministerial tooing and froing, the suits of the DPJ elected another of their own, Yoshihiko Noda, as the new #1. Of the candidates he was one of few who I didn't really want to get it, mostly as he looks like a toad (imagine a flesh-coloured Baron Silas von Greenback and you'll see what I mean), and he sounds a bit like one as well - and kudos to him if he ever starts burping really loudly in a cabinet meeting in a vain attempt to attract Renho for a ministerial debrief...

So Noda has also been dealt a pretty shitty hand by the fates, but at least he has the excuse that he saw it coming. Of course the main problem is the economy - at the moment government debt is running at about double the annual turnover of Japan Inc, meaning that we are well mired in the deepest of deep shit. That said, unlike the mountainous debt of Europe and the US, most of the people the J-govt are indebted to are the people of Japan, as pretty much all the IOUs are written to Japanese banks backed up by the savings of millions of households across the land. This is a good thing, and the only reason Japan Inc hasn't gone bust for the last 20 years, as the people of Japan are very unlikely to stop saving, take the cash from the bank and blow it all in Vegas (or, in the case of US/European debt, the Chinese suddenly saying, "hey, you know all those IOU's? Reckon we'll cash them in now...").

But with a shrinking popuation and no mass immigration any time soon, the tax base will decrease and govt income fall even before the rebuilding of Tohoku gets underway. So sales/consumption tax will probably have to go up, no defintely have to go up, from its current 5% - I can see that at 10% in the next few years and probably 15% in a decade. It's going to hurt but it's got to be done. The Tohoku clean up is, naturally, another bit blot on the landscape (quite literally) - of course things have begun and lots of work already done, I think pretty much all of the displaced people now have temporary housing, as opposed to living in gymnasiums and other evacuation centres - that's pretty damned good going, considering how many people lost their houses. But rebuilding lives, towns, communities, jobs and all the other myriad of things that go into a place to live, that's going to take some work.

And then there is Fukushima. The nuclear plant is still not safe, though the chances of it blowing up and spewing radioactive crap all over Japan have now, it appears, receded. Interesting that everyone is now happy to use the word 'meltdown' to describe 2 or 3 of the reactors - it seems that the partial meltdowns happened within days of the disaster, certainly when we were sitting at home in Tokyo wondering whether we should get the hell outta Dodge. If anyone had mentioned the 'M' word at that time we would have been on a plane without pausing for thought, as would about 12 million people around me. So in a way it is hardly surprising that no one used that word, panic would have ensued, but now the attitude is more 'we I lived through it and I'm not dead yet, so the cores melted, big deal, there's no mushroom cloud over Tokyo...'. Probably way too blase, that, but there you go.

Anyway, good luck with all that, Noda-san.

Oh, er, oops...

Sorry, keep doing this, not exactly a blog you can set your watch by, now are we?

So I can't really remember everything, nay, anything, really, that has gone on since the last time I posted back in April, though I am absolutely sure that some things have, indeed, gone on. Anyway, let's try the ol' stream of consciousness approach and see where we get to...

(The Man Who) Kan ('t do a f*cking thing)

OK, the guy has been dealt a fairly shitty hand, all told. No PM really wants a catastrophic earthquake on his or her watch, but in Japan it's one of the hazards of the job, as it were. Now as we discussed last post, the govt didn't really know what to do in the immediate aftermath, though things did swing into action. Of course once the initial shock has been sort the job of rebuilding begins – the idea of not bothering to rebuild Tohoku was, I admit, a bit of a non-starter, not just because ok, it had been devastated, but actually only a relatively small bit, up to about 10km inland, so that left an awful lot of Tohoku not devastated, so it would have been a mighty kick in the knackers (and a potential vote-loser) if the govt had said ‘ah, sorry, don’t have the cash to rebuild, best you move down to Kyushu and hope there isn’t a lethally big jolt down there in the next 20-30 years’.

Now, the quake has been a big opportunity for the people of Tohoku, and everywhere else as a show of support, to pull together, cooperate, work in harmony to get things done. Everywhere except, of course, Kasumigaseki, where the politicians all live. For them this has been an unparalleled opportunity to stab each other in the back, criticise, divide and generally act like, well, a bunch of politicians. In the beginning the tone was unduly harsh on The Man Who, as I said he had been dealt a shitty hand by nature and TEPCO but seemed to be doing the best he could. There were plenty of ‘we don’t think he’s handled it very well’ calls from other politicos who were safe in the knowledge that they would never be in that position so could snipe all they liked.

But then it really did begin to look like didn’t know what to do, what to start or even how to look like he was doing something even if it was just buying time (surely a pre-requisite for a politician?). It ended a few months back with a no confidence vote in the guy, which he survived reasonably comfortably. This should have been the green light for Kan to say ‘right, fuck off you lot, I’m The Man (Who), I got the vote, people have confidence, cut the crap and let me get on with sorting out this shit’.

But what he actually said was (something along the lines of) ‘er, what, I survived? Er, well, I guess that means that some people still don’t like me, so tell you what, I’ll resign when we have reached some point of stabilisation in the current recovery situation’.

So, the worst of all worlds; he didn’t flip the bird (like he should have done), he didn’t resign, he didn’t give a timetable for a possible resignation and didn’t clarify what that ‘point of stabilisation’ might be. It would have been better if he had just stood up and said ‘I do not have the first effing clue what I am doing, end of.’

So now Japan, from a leadership viewpoint, which should be steaming full-ahead on the recovery is still sitting in the ferry terminal arguing who is going to board first. I had some sympathy for Kan when the rest of the politicos wouldn’t let him do his job, but now I realise that he was not up to doing the job in the first place. What Japan needed, no needs, is someone to drain the poison out of the political system, remind politicians that they are there to serve the people and then, well, I don’t care if that person a) kicks as many butts as necessary, scruff of the neck, bull by the horns and other ‘strong-man’ clichés or b) builds a genuine consensus, one of mutual aid and common sense, either/or but which finally starts governing this country… I was going to write ‘governing this country properly’, but the way it is now no-one is running the show, so there isn’t even a ‘properly’ to live up to.

Nuclear Armageddon update

Apparently, according the newspaper this morning, we’re over the worst of it now, as you can see from this lovely graphic:

Now I’m not entirely how much of this I believe, especially now as beef contaminated by caesium has recently been sold in Tokyo, but still, it’s a start. One thing that (The Man Who) Kan has decided, or been told to decide, is that Japan, like Germany, is going to phase out nuclear power even though he, nor anyone else it would seem, has any really clear idea of what to replace it with. This is also after he stated, quite publicly, that Japan would not do anything to derail Japan’s long standing nuclear power policy – so clear and decisive leadership, then.

Update from yesterday [writing a few days after I started the rant] – apparently Kan’s u-turn on nuclear power, (the phase-out phase) is not government policy after all, merely the audible ramblings of a confused mind. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up…

Oh Ambassador, you’re spoiling us…

Not one but two invitations to be wined and dined at the Ambassador’s residence at the Embassy, that’s how important a member of the British expat community I am these days, that or a absolutely reliable (as in, will turn up if asked), probably won’t embarrass us, almost certainly British (no matter what Ichikawa ward office thought) person to make the room look full.

The reason it was 2 invites was because of Jeremy Browne MP. He is the Minister of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which I think means he’s like a deputy foreign minister, and he was meant to come in May but, in true British fashion, he was waiting for his flight in the US and his plane broke down. As this was at the last minute, as it were, the Ambassador, Dave, decided to go ahead with his soiree anyway and the caterers had been booked and he would have given less than 72 hours’ notice for a cancellation. So off we scooted to Hanzoumon, where we Brits have our embassy, and food and drink was laid on. Now free food and drink is always, in my book, worth getting out of bed for (hence the absolutely reliable above), but even more so when the British taxpayer is paying for it. I can tell you, all those of you who pay taxes on your hard earned cash in the UK, the Ambassador keeps a pretty good table and cellar – I’ll admit that we were not treated to his 1999 Chateau Lafite but a decent bit of plonk was provided, along with canapés and some other, more substantial foodstuffs. This time we were also treated to a few glasses of Pimms by way of greeting, which in Japan is a little hard to come by so that was nice.

But on neither occasion were we, I am very sad to report, offered any Ferrero Roche chocolates! When I grew up it was touted as the height of sophistication to offer them around, indeed the subtitle to this very piece was the tagline of the commercials, shot at some dodgy studio dressed up to look like some ‘swish embassy in a former communist republic but now very cosmopolitan place’ like Prague (think the embassy scene from mission impossible 1).

Anyway, dashed expectations are generally the forerunner to national insurrection so I am now fermenting revolution here in Tokyo at the hopeless decline of Her Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Service provision of chocolates at free nosh-ups. I mean, not even an After-Eight or a tray of Matchmakers! Pitiful! What will johnny-foreigner think? We’ll be a laughing stock. I believe the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands was predicated on a bowl of Quality Street being proffered at a cocktail reception at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1981; “If zis is ze only chocolate zey can afford…” General Galtieri is alleged to have said, ‘…zen we are in viz a chance, boys!”. At least they were offered…

So come on, buck your ideas up, Tokyo!

Finally in sports news…

 Well done to the Japanese ladies footy team, who won the World Cup

And the gents rugby team who won the Pacific Nations Cup

Well played all

What's going on...? (as a famous man once sang)

So it's been an interesting month or so, to say the least.

First the earthquake, then a lot more earthquakes, then (not really) nuclear armageddon in Fukushima, then a gaijin-only broohaha (about flyjins or denyjins or cryjins or whatever the label de jour-jins was), then (not really) social and infrastructural breakdown in a large city an awfully long way from the earthquake and (not really) nuclear armageddon zones and a whole load more stuff as well. Phew, it's been a ride!

But for us good folk of Arakawa Riverview (in the large city an awfully long way from the earthquake and (not really) nuclear armageddon zones), life has been reasonably normal, to tell the truth. In the week after the quake there were indeed shortages of foods like milk, bread and dried and canned stuff, but since then things are back on the shelves. There was a subsequent yoghurt scarcity, but that's pretty much OK now, and then a very real scare as breweries suddenly realised that beer producing and shipping capacity was way down and Tokyo running dry suddenly became a very real possibility. So far so good on that one, but we are monitoring the situation carefully (and stocking up on red wine and gin (I will re-label myself a gin-jin)).

Also in the week after the quake the British Embassy (to whom I will doff my cap to a job reasonably well done in the face of enormous stress) changed their travel advice from 'everything is pretty much OK' to 'British nationals should consider leaving Tokyo'. This freaked me, along with the Guru, out and we made plans to move south to a branch of the family down in Kyushu. But after a little reflection and a realisation that the travel advice was more to stop people coming to Tokyo, thereby giving the embassy more responsibilities if things did go bad, rather than a cry to run to the hills (and not Roppongi Hills), we decided to stay put. Others didn't, some went to Osaka or Kyushu, some went to Singapore or Hong Kong, others further afield to Australia or the UK. Fine, I have no problem with that, people make the decisions best suited for themselves and their families. What I find most poisonous is the subsequent name-calling and label-making mentioned above - people that left became flyjins, branded cowards by some who stayed; people who left called the stayers naïve, delusional and crazy to put themselves in harm's way. Basically everyone trying to justify their actions, as if a) it matters or b) it has anything to do with anyone else. So, anyway, get over it people as we’re all people and we don’t have to justify our decisions to others.

Now because of the goings on in Fukushima TEPCO (that’s Tokyo Electric Power Company, for those who have been living in the north pole for the last month) and the Japanese Government have come in for some pretty stinging (by Japanese standards) criticism in the last month. The main foci have been:

1) Tepco don’t know what they are doing

2) The govt don’t know what they are doing

3) The govt don’t know what Tepco is doing

4) Everyone is covering up the scale of the nuclear related problems

The first 2 are undoubtedly true as neither Tepco nor the govt have a clue what to do about the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant or, if they did know what to do, they have no idea how to do it. The 3rd point is probably true – Tepco are definitely the bad guys here (except the valiant Fukushima 50 (and probably more) who are trying to cool the reactors and sort out the problems – these heroes are distinct from the homogenous Tepco mass as I think they do have a clue what they are doing and probably a clue how to do it (and are trying to do it the face of seemingly insurmountable incompetence by their “superiors”)). Er, yes, Tepco, definitely the bad guys, or more likely lethally negligent guys…lost my train of thought. Ah yes, so, not only does it look like Tepco have been pulling the wool over the eyes of their staff and the people of Fukushima, it seems that they haven’t really told the whole story to the govt, or the IAEA, or anyone else. This does not, as you may well imagine, fill one with confidence about what is happening there right now, but it will, hopefully, mean that those (ir)responsible will be brought to book when the (radioactive) dust finally settles. One thought – some argue that Tepco should be nationalised, as should all nuclear power production, but I wonder. Private firms will cut corners to save costs, thereby endangering lives like now; however state industries can be woefully inefficient and ‘jobs for life on the state sector’ can very easily lead to similar sloppy work procedures. So what to do…?

Point 4 above, that everyone is covering up, does, I think, have some merit as an argument. The reason, I think, is that the govt need a diversion to take everyone’s mind, and view, off what has happened to Iwate and Miyagi prefectures in the aftermath of the quake and tsunami. The devastation up there, the sheer scale of the rebuild that will need to take place is, I think, on a level that people cannot comprehend, and when they do start to think about it the excrement will hit the slowly rotating cooling device. So, better to keep the focus of the people and the world on Fukushima, which so far has killed 2 people (I think) rather than on the destruction wrought upon Tohoku area on 11th March, after which some 30,000 are dead or missing. So when, again, the radioactive dust finally settles, (the man who) Kan can quickly whip a satin sheet off Tohoku, say ‘ta-daa’ and show everyone that the clean-up is underway, reconstruction has already started and things aren’t as bad as you thought they were, so keep calm and carry on. Mark my words, you read it here first.

But here’s a seditious thought – why bother rebuilding Tohoku? It was full of old people, most of whom were unfortunately swept away by the tsunami. Rural depopulation is such that the areas affected were dying anyway, there was little inward investment above the govt building useless roads to nowhere and empty concert halls in vainglorious but futile pork barrel projects. Schools were closing and classes amalgamating in towns all over the area as fewer and fewer children were born because the kids that were born moved to Tokyo as soon as they were old enough, never to return. So why bother? Rebuild the ports and the fishing fleets as they were useful; and then put all the rice fields together in one big lump and either nationalise rice growing in that area or sell the land as one or two blocks to a major agricultural business and let them grow rice on an industrial basis as opposed to the millions of mom & pop farms that again are slowly dying as the kids realise rice farming is hard work. With the hundreds of thousands of displaced people, ship them to Tokyo or other areas of rural depopulation (which is most of Japan outside the major cities) and start filling up the gaps in those communities – Tohoku is lost, don’t bother trying to find it again. Japan needs a radical rethink towards the countryside, maybe this is the time to do it…

Of course the counter argument to that (apart from the humanitarian one), is that Japan should be trying to de-centralise, especially Tokyo, as there is too much important stuff here so if/when the big one hits us (as it surely will) too much infrastructure will be destroyed. What Japan should be doing is rebuilding Tohoku and encouraging (forcing?) govt departments, businesses and the like to move to these areas to disperse the potential damage when another quake hits (I don’t mean when another quake hits that area – Tohoku could be the place to go as it has now been ‘disastered’ so the chances of another catastrophic event are, compared to Tokyo which hasn’t had a major quake since 1923, hopefully reduced). I don’t know, I don’t think there is a right answer, just options that all seem a tad bleak.

Let’s leave those happy thoughts for a while and talk about fashion.

I don’t, and won’t, claim to know a lot about fashion, especially where young ladies are concerned, but a recent trend has got me confused. As a rule I don’t criticise what people wear – if they want to look foolish then that’s their lookout, also I don’t want to sound like an old fart, which is getting harder as the years go by.

Anyway the recent trend is for women to wear glasses. Nothing strange there, I know, but the fashion is to wear what look like oversized, plastic framed glasses but only the frames, no lenses. Now wearing glasses is a pain in the, well, often the nose and behind the ears, but generally it’s more just annoying having something stuck to your face, so why go to that trouble if you don’t need to?

A pictorial reference to the fashion would look something like this

OK, yes, she’s fit, but she would be without the frames.

The Guru says these women are wearing the big glasses to make their faces look smaller and therefore more cute. If this is true it seems odd, as to me it looks like they have big glasses on, not a smaller face. Another explanation is that they actually need the glasses and lenses, but can’t wear them with the lenses in as they get in the way of the artificially long eyelashes – this, I think, holds more water as a theory.

So I don’t know, but it seems to me that this fashion cocks a snook at people who really do have to wear glasses. ‘Ha haa’ they seem to be saying, ‘I can take my glasses-frames off and suffer no degrading of my sight, whereas you, have-to-wear-glasses-person, you will stumble around bumping into things if you tried to do the same’. This seems a little rude to me, but there you go. If I fine out the real reason I’ll let you know.

Friday night and Saturday morning

So at about 7pm most of the parents had collected their offspring so we had to thing about getting home. We have to take a train home, it's too far to walk or bike (especially as we're either bringing or taking Marcus with us). At this point the trains were not running but we were hopeful that they might start again that evening, but at maybe 7.30 or 8.00pm an announcement was made by JR that train services would stop for the night.

OK, what do we do? Well, we could try looking for a hotel, you never know... (at this point I should mention that the Guru had, at about 3pm, suggested that she should go and get a hotel room as things looked dicey about getting home - I naturally poo-pooed this, having far too much faith in JR getting their trains running again; silly me). So we loaded up and with the IT Manager Rey, his wife and kid (who live about 2 minutes from us in north Tokyo) set about trying to find some food and a bed for the night. We were lucky in that we knew, if we couldn't find anywhere, we could just stay in the school, many others didn't have that luxury. We wandered up to Children's castle on Aoyama-dori as we knew they had rooms, but naturally all was full when we got there. Also, judging by the number of people on the streets, we figured pretty quickly that every room in Tokyo would probably be taken by now. So, after a brief stop for contact lens solution  (which I subsequently found I had already bought and put in my office earthquake emergency pack for this very situation - I'm organised without remembering it) we headed off.

Thinking about food, we walked down towards central Shibuya but, as you can imagine, most eateries were either closed or packed, whilst all convenience stores and coffee shops were empty of easily eatable food. On the way passed we checked the Tokyu Hotel on Meiji-dori but the scrum in the foyer put us off, so then we headed to TGI Fridays - again I poo-pooed this suggestion, thinking we should stick to less crowded areas, but when we got there not only did they have space but they could do us a table for 6 in the non-smoking section! So with minimal wait we sat down to burgers and well deserved beers. It was busy there, but probably no more so than a nornmal Friday evening, and the staff were surprisingly positive, helpful and unstressed. So hats off to them, they shall now be known as TFI (Thank Fuck It's Open on) Fridays :)

After refuelling we headed back to school. The business centre/office was one option, but I realised that the teacher's staff room would be a better place as they had sofas and cushions. We thought that a few people might already be there, but all was in darkness when we arrived. The cleaning crew were still in school and a few others from the business group who couldn't get home, so some went to the library to sleep, others in the office and we in the staff room. All this time the youngster and Rey's little boy (the year above but he and Marcus are friends) were having a great time, completely hyperactive, excited and enjoying themselves thoroughly. By 11pm they should have been spark out but it was a struggle to get them to sleep.

A check of facebook, a few more emails and text messages and a phonecall with the folks later and that was it for me; off to sleep. Unfortunately the staffroom is on the 6th floor of the school so every little aftershock made the building sway, so sleep was hard to come by, for the adults at least - Marcus slept soundly all the way through but I reckon I got about 2 hours, on-and-off, through the night.

Yes, it wasn't the most comfortable place to spend the night, but we were dry, warm, together, fed, alive, relatively safe and had a roof over our heads, things that people in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima did not have. I counted my blessings several times over.

Next morning we woke early as the blinds aren't too effective in the staffroom. The tv news said trains would start running around 7 or 8am, so after a bit of breakfast (Rey had sensibly bought food before everything went from the convenience store the afternoon before) we headed to the station. As we left we walked past our next door (Japanese) high school we saw what looked like all their students leaving the building. I think that they kept all the students in over night to make sure they were safe - goodness knows what they did for food and blankets.

At Shibuya station it wasn't the chaos I had half expected. It seems the Japanese don't do chaos (or rioting, looting or any of the other things you might expect to happen - it seems more akin to British blitz-style stoicism). We got to the platform and there was a Yamanote line train waiting to approach the platform, whilst our Saikyo train was about to leave Ebisu. About an hour or so later neither train had moved.

On the way we had seen a Ginza subway line train moving so we decided on a subway strategy that would get us almost all the way home. So, hot-foot to the ginza line, check the Namboku is also working and then onto the platform. We just missed the departing train but were first in line for the next, but just then there was an announcement that due to overcroding at Ueno the ginza line was suspended... Loud groans but what can you do, JR wasn't running either. So we waited and after only about 10 minutes they decided to start running agin. From there it was plain sailing - ginza line to Tameiki-Sanno, change to the namboku and it took us all the way to Akabane, which is only 2 stops from where we live (but the last bit is JR only, hence trying to take the train before).

We decided to get a cab home for the last little bit, well, 2 cabs, one for each family. As we were walking down the road to the taxi rank Rey was lucky enough to hail one and got off straight away. We weren't so lucky and so had to join the queue at the rank for what proved to be the longest wait of the journey home. Over an hour we waited but finally we picked up a cab.

At 11am we finally got home and I'm glad to say our apartment was entirely undamaged and the tv, which I was sure would be on the floor in a million pieces was standing proud and upright.

"Holy fuck that was a big one"

Words of wisdom, those, posted on Facebook at about 2.49pm yesterday, Friday 11th March, after the first big shake of the earthquake.

I was working in the office in Shibuya, over the road from the school (where, incidentally, the little fella attends). I was just sending a last few emails before heading over to our other campus down in Sangenjaya when the shaking started. As earthquakes go it started off fairly innocuously, a bit of shaking, yes, perhaps a bit more than 'normal', but nothing to get too excited about. Then after about 5 or 6 seconds it got a bit stronger.

"This is quite a big one..." said one of my colleagues

"Ha, this? If you think this is big then you've never been in a big earth..." started our boss but was cut short by the increase in violent shaking that then began.

Earthquakes are a fact of life here. I won't say you get used to them, they are too intense for that, but you do get, well, accustomed to the fact that there will, about once a month, be a bit of a shake. It will keep you on your toes so you don't get too complacent, but they don't tend to scare the bejayzus out of you. This one started as a regular, keep-you-on-your-toes kind of one,but this one kept going and kept getting stronger. Having read a few things about the Kobe/Hanshin quake my basic philosophy was 'if you have time to think you're in an earthquake then the chances are it's not going to kill you', as Kobe, apparently, went from nothing to unimaginable violence in a split second, meaning many people didn't have time to wake up before they died.And I suppose, on reflection, that is still true as yesterday I had the time to think, "I'm in an earthquake" and I'm still alive, but this time was more of a close run thing.

As this one got stronger reflex took over, to an extent. I had been waiting by my desk, as others were in the office. As the shaking got stronger I grabbed my hard hat from the cupboard behind me and put it on. Now it was strong but at a level i'd experienced before. Then, it got worse and for the first time in my life in Japan I got down under my desk (well, almost under my desk) as one is meant to do.

Hindsight is a weird thing. The brain, I am sure, is very good at blocking out unpleasant memories, as now, barely 24 hours later, it is hard to remember exactly what was going on. The things I can recall are:
Grabbing my mobile phones and disconnecting one of them from its cable
Thinking 'this might well be it...'
My computer monitors moving across my desk
Hoping that it would stop soon


That's about it. I'm glad I thought about the phones as if the building were to collapse around me better to have something like a phone available to contact the outside world. But I'm a bit disappointed that my life didn't flash before me or that I didn't think of the Guru or the little fella. Then again at that moment, when you can't move and the world is almost crashing around your ears, perhaps all you can do is hope you aren't about to die.

But die I did not, obviously. Then, first priority, post the above words on facebook - don't know why, but it was. Actually I tried to post 'Holly fuck...' due to shaking fingers and adrenaline OD, but managed to correct myself. The second thing I did was fire off a quick email to family to say I was alive as I knew they'd be worried. Then, hat on head, I'm glad to say I headed straight over to the school whilst most to the other staff stood around saying 'my wasn't that a strong quake!'. I quickly looked over the outside of the building and saw that no windows were broken so went inside and upstairs to the 2nd floor. Two teachers were waiting by their classroom doors, ready to evacuate, the kids were silent as church mice, waiting under their desks (good 'duck and cover' awareness). I told the teachers that I didn't think we'd need to evacuate but to be ready just in case. Then I walked towards the 'bridge' that joins our 2 buildings and, on the other side of the emergency door, met a senior staff member picking up posters that had fallen to the floor. Afterwards I remember thinking that it was perhaps not the most pressing need at that time, but at that moment I was just glad to see her as I knew she needed to make an announcement about staying or evacuating.

She also realised this so I figured it was better to check the lower parts of the building to see if there was any significant damage. I did and there was none that I saw, so I went back and told her so we stayed put, or rather, as it was that time of the day, we proceeded with the kids dismissal as normal. As She made the announcement I went back over the road to the office, part of me thinking 'well that's all right then' - I went back to my computer to see if there was any info, that's when the first reports started coming in about the size and location - off the Miyagi coast and a 7 on the Japanese scale (that goes up to 7). Whoa!

(Just thought about those last 2 paragraphs and if they make it sound like I had a plan then it shouldn't, I think i was on instinct and trying not to panic (as panicking is a very bad thing, as I always tell the youngster)).

Then it was back into the school as I realised I should probably make a more thorough check of the buildings. At this time parents were turning up to collect their kids and I'm happy to say the guru arrived to pick up the little fella. She was fine, had been in a train that had automatically stopped at Harajuku, the stop before Shibuya, and she has run from there to the school. The buildings seemed fine, a cracked pane of glass here or a crack in the plasterboard join there, but nothing looking too severe. Then it was back to the office for more info.

We were very lucky in that though the phone network went into meltdown, email and the internet were still working. This was great so we could see what was happening, the 7 in Miyagi was a 5+ in Tokyo (on the j-scale) which later transpired to be at magnitude 8.9, possibly the biggest quake to hit Japan. Facebook became the school communication saviour as it was one of the few things that was updating constantly, so our Communications Manager was able to get the message out to parents that they needed to be here, or to teachers that parents were on their way. The manager in question did an amazing job, hats very much off to her.

At this point, though the trains were stopped we were hopeful that they might start again. So we went into pretend-work but really what's-going-on mode. Then the first images of Miyagi and the tsunami started to come through. This really was a 'holy fuck...' moment...it was devastation, no other word for it, like Hiroshima after they dropped the bomb. Some of the images were unbelievable, they still are.

Anyway, enough for now, more tomorrow abut that night and how we got home

Christmas

OK, it's a bit late, but there you go. So the first part of our story is 'us as tourists' - by us I mean, me, the Guru and the youngster and by tourists I mean just that, tourists, as the first week of our christmas holiday was spent in London doing all the touristy things one would expect.

The trip almost got off to a disastrous start for two reasons, work and the weather, but both bothersome banes were skillfully avoided by, well, being avoided. We were to fly on the last Friday of term but I, as HR personage, had a particularly difficult situation to deal with concerning a departing member of staff who had not, it must be said, personally chosen to leave. Our plan was that as soon as I got home we were to go to the in-laws in Chiba who live close to the airport, this was to make the Friday less stressful and to repack as we were borrowing a suitcase. But the surly staffer was proving annoyingly reticent to meet me on Thursday afternoon - I had to see her to explain stuff and collect paperwork from her - and as the clock ticked closer to my leaving time I still hadn't met her. So in the end, finally getting her on the phone, gave her the cunning option of popping into the office on Friday to meet one of my staff. Being lazy and useless (also the main reasons for her departure) she took this and I was off the hook. Right, home we go.

So, home, final preparations, set the alarm (the Guru had been trying to work it out for weeks) and we're off - "oh, by the way, you did the online check-in at work today, like you said you would, right...?" Er, shit, wait - 15 mins of fully justified stern looks later... "yes dear, of course I have, how could you ever doubt me?"

Station, trains, taxi, parents-in-law. Hello, quick beer, repack and it's now 10pm. Right, arrange taxi to station for tomorrow morning and then bed. Next morning, breakfast, taxi, train and Narita. I love Narita airport - lots of people hate it because, they say, it's so far out of town, but with a train that takes 36minutes to get to the centre of Tokyo, I say they're talking crap. It's big, wide, open, uncrowded, clean, cheap, well designed, helpful, friendly, works when it's snowing and, essentially, everything that Heathrow isn't.

Everything navigated nice and easily and onto the plane - this was the youngster's first real flight, he'd been to the UK before but only when he was 8 months old so obviously he couldn't remember. We were worried that he would get bored and/or hyperactive, but actually it was all one big adventure. He watched a couple of movies, read some books, did some sticking of stickers and then slept. He even ate all the food. For us more seasoned travellers it was much the same, I am glad to report, though without the stickers.

Whilst we had been flying, however, mother nature had been dropping a prodigious (for the UK) amount of snow on the south, so much so that traffic was at a standstill and the arrival committee were in serious danger of not getting to the airport on time to carry out their duties. Luckily good old Heathrow came to their aid as, even thought we landed on time, the baggage reclaim was in meltdown (or rather freeze-up) so that all but first-class luggage was delayed coming off the plane by an hour (amazing how they could only open the doors to the rich person's compartments...) Anyway this bought enough time for the family to arrive so as we wandered through the exit the welcomers walked into the arrivals hall. Cue much back-slappage and 'welcome home's. The snow flurry almost but didn't quite derail the air transport system, however the following day the snow shut everything down for about 5 days, so our leave-on-Friday plan was perfect, not only cheaper but we actually arrived on time :)

So for the next week, from Saturday to Friday (Christmas eve) we stayed in a London apartment hotel (Castletown House in West Kensington - thoroughly recommended) and went to see stuff...

Saturday - Natural History Museum - mainly for the dinosaurs but also for everything else. Excellent basement area where staff were on hand to amaze small children with experiments, microscopes and stuff like that. Well done to Marcus for stumping one of the assistants; 'what animal do you like that you want to know more about?' 'Er, maybe the Pronghorn'. 'Hmm, what's that...?' Of course it's a type of African antelope sort of thing, as everyone knows, but not, sadly the assistant that Marcus spoke to. Anyway the NHM is great, interesting and really quite cold.

Sunday - not really touristy but went to have lunch with friends south of the river. Again crappy weather but a warm welcome from very hungover hosts.

Monday - was meant to be a family get together for some photo portraitage, but the weather stumped us all so getting down to Hampshire would have been akin to a polar expedition (so we were told). So instead we went to the Tower of London. This was great but get this, the price, in big letters on the ticket office wall, was something like 17.50 per adult. This, I felt, was quite a lot, but then, in very small print underneath it said 'This includes a voluntary donation of 2 quid.' Well excuse me, but I do feel a voluntary donation is, in essence, me offering, not the ToL automatically deducting! So naturally I refused to pay, I mean really. I was happy, though, as even though the youngster was 5 and the price list said '5 and over: 12 quid' (a blummen rip off as well), the nice lady let him in for free. The Tower was great, lots to see, hardly anyone there due to christmas and bad weather, Henry VIII's suit of armour with enormous cod-piece, crown jewels and loads of stuff. Great but very expensive.

After that we walked across Tower Bridge and went to HMS Belfast. Marcus was really excited about this but, whilst going around, he became unnerved by the mannequins set up to show what life was like on-board ship. So much so that he had to be carried out in something of a state.

Tuesday - British Museum and the National Gallery with Uncle Julian and Cousin Charlie. So, you send someone a message saying, 'we're in Covent Garden, in a coffee shop near the Crusting Pipe, come and meet us here'. Now a normal person, on arriving at Covent Garden, would then look inside the various coffee shops near the Crusting Pipe until he had located said person to meet. Not my brother, oh no, he walks close to the Crusting Pipe and then, not seeing anyone, sits down and has a doughnut. Only when I go out to look for them as they should have arrived by now, do I find him sitting behind a coffee stall not 10m from where we were. And for some reason I get the blame for this!

Anyway the British Museum is ace, lots to do, especially the trails for the kids to follow. Marcus and Charlie had a great time together finding stuff out, though Charlie had done the trails before so helped Marcus instead. Lunch at Wagamama's (they say it's Japanese...) and then a wander to the National Gallery to look at pictures. Great day and big thanks to Uncle Julian for showing us all around.

Wednesday - Westminster Abbey (and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben). Never been to Westminster Abbey and I must say that it was fascinating. Again expensive, about 15 quid a head to get in, but Marcus got a trail to follow and we got the audio-guide things and it was, well, really interesting. I know it's obvious but blimey it's old, there is an awful lot of history in those stones - I don't know why but it felt much, much older than the Tower of London, though they are contemporaries. Again loads to see, lots of tombs and graves and again not too full of the tourist hordes. After that a fine pub lunch we took a double-decker to Oxford Street, mainly so we could ride on the top deck and also to see the christmas lights. OK, the bus ride was fun but boy did we find where all the tourists had been hiding. Oxford St was heaving, more than heaving and basically not very nice. Night was falling so we headed home.

Thursday - Science Museum. For our last full day we headed to the Science Museum, just up the road near the NHM. Again it was excellent, interesting and informative and, most importantly, free. Also they had on workshops for kids, one about space and another about bubbles, both of which the youngster very much enjoyed. I think museums have come a long way since I was a kid and the people that run them realise now that kids are important so they have to do something to make it a worthwhile experience for them. Jolly good, I say.

Friday - we were heading to Gosport for Christmas and, after various rearrangements, we were travelling down by National Express coach from Victoria to Portsmouth. This necessitated going to Victoria, of course, and as the coach wasn't until 2pm and we had to be out at 10am, we had a bit of time to kill. Marcus was quite happy, he said, to sit in Victoria Coach Station for 4 hours, but we weren't and, as Buckingham Palace was only a shortish walk away, off we went (much to the unhappiness of small child). The guidebook said that the changing of the guard would not happen on that day as it was an odd-numbered day in December and was cold, but lo-and-behold, when we arrived they were just starting up. Now I think it's probably quite interesting to watch, certainly plenty of the Oxford St tourists had turned up, but with a whiny kid and a cold, biting wind, spirits soon sank。So we watched a bit and then departed back to the safety and warmth of a shopping centre. A spot of lunch (our one and only trip to a UK McDonald's) and then the usual scramble and confusion trying to find the right coach going to the right place, made more confusing by the fact that so many people wanted to go to Portsmouth that they laid on an extra coach which said Southampton on it. Also Guru most surprised that, though we had tickets, seats were a free-for-all as there was not seat numbering allocation ('very third world' I'm sure she muttered - I know I did).

So the journey down was slow but uneventful - the coach's purported wifi cut out about 50m from the station so our slow progress and delay could not be forwarded to family members waiting in the freezing evening at Portsmouth Hard. But arrive we eventually did, and then it was Christmas...