Tokyo summer fun out of the sun

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the fun ways to keep cool with a toddler during summer at no out-of-pocket expense. This is about activities that will cost a little bit, but which are also fun for the adults. For those who have never experienced summer in Tokyo, the days can be uncomfortably warm (it was 38degC the other day), made unbearable with humidity. It's generally wise to stay indoors during the hot days, and the following were a few of the family outings we had over the past month while keeping out of the summer heat.


Noppon Land

We went to Noppon Land on the 4th floor of Tokyo Tower with my friend E, her husband and her two gorgeous girls. Noppon Land is targeted towards small children younger than 8 years old, and you pay for however long you use the facility (300yen for adults and 400yen for kids for the first 30 minutes, and additional 100yen for every 10 minutes thereafter). There are basically 3 areas: a large pool of colourful balls, a bouncy area, and a small area of large cushion stacking blocks for children too young to play in the other two areas. There is also Noppon's Magical Dungeon located adjacent to Noppon Land, which is aimed at children older than 4 years old (up to junior high school age).

Drowning in a sea of colourful balls! And the bouncy castle gave a surprisingly good workout!

The waffles and ice cream after that workout was totally optional, of course:

Tokyo Sea Life Park

We headed to this aquarium (Kasai Rinkai Suizokuen, aka Tokyo Sea Life Park) where Zak saw his first live tuna, sharks, penguins, turtle, puffins and countless other fish and marine creatures. Kids under 12 enter for free, so technically this is a 'free' activity for toddlers, but obviously they do need accompanying paying adults. The aquarium is also located within a large waterfront park complete with a ferris wheel, which would be great for exploring and hanging out in cooler weather.

Fixated at the aquarium window; and a huge blue groper which was larger than Zak!

At the penguin enclosure; and saying hello to Mr (or Mrs?) Turtle:

Getting Zak to do the touristy thing and pose next to the giant tuna statue, and then Honey wanted to join in on the fun too:

Tokyo Bay Fireworks

Okay, so I'm stretching it a little with this one because this was an evening event when the sun had already gone down, but we enjoyed viewing the fireworks from a friend's 48th floor apartment. We live a little closer to Tokyo Bay than my friend, and we could've watched the fireworks from our apartment, but the general view from S's place was amazing! Zak loved the pretty "flower fire" (as it's translated from the Japanese word for fireworks, hanabi) that lit up the skies, but he probably enjoyed more playing tea with S's daughter, who is only a few weeks younger than him. There are a lot of fireworks happening in and around Tokyo during the whole summer, but with more than 12,000 fireworks, the Tokyo Wan Hanabi Taikai (Tokyo Bay Firework Festival) is one of the biggest in Tokyo.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" is what little M would've said to Zak:

(You may notice that Zak is wearing the same jinbei (traditional Japanese summer outfit) in all the photos which were taken on different weekends several weeks apart, but it's purely coincidental. In fact, he doesn't really get much opportunity to wear it, and is quickly outgrowing it.)

Final two months in Noto..

Sorry, I don't mean to go AWOL. Rob leaves this Sunday for Tokyo, we're hosting a farewell dinner at our apartment tomorrow night and have been quite busy with preparations. I do have photos to blog about so will do them up soon..

In the meantime, I may as well do a little update sans photos. The weather right now has been gorgeously sunny and warm. It rained maybe 4 days out of 16 days since we returned from our trip to Perth, which is pretty good considering that Ishikawa is the most rainy prefecture in Japan. The scenery is quite green at the moment - while we were away on our Perth trip, all the pink cherry blossom trees shed their flowers replaced with brilliant green new leaves. The scenery is looking more like what welcomed us when we first arrived in Japan last August. I'm really not looking forward to the upcoming rainy (typhoon) season in June.

Rob begins his new job in Tokyo this coming Monday, and we will be apart for a couple of months. This will be our longest separation period, and I'm not looking forward to it. We will try to see each other every two weeks - not too difficult since I have the Noto Airport, and Rob will be located relatively close to Haneda Airport. It'll be strange to have no Rob to come home to and no Rob to cook for... On the other hand, I certainly need the next couple of months to do all the preparations that need to get done to wrap things up here and pave the way for my JET sucessor. I will find out on Monday who will replace my position!

Spring is definitely in the air..

The birds are out to play. Frogs croaking. Cicadas chirping. And the annoying bugs are coming back (although not nearly as bad as summer)! Spring marks the new school and business year for Japan, and it is also the time much anticipated by the Japanese for Hanami ("flower viewing" - specifically cherry blossoms viewing).



We saw some gorgeous cherry blossoms whilst in Himeji and Kyoto last week with our parents. And a huge-arse bee-like insect (must've been the size of my pinky finger!).



Our parents certainly has had the opportunity to experience a lot of Japanese things: inaka (country) living, visiting huge bustling cities, saw some cherry blossoms, saw some geisha girls in Gion (Kyoto), ate lots of fresh sashimi (including ama-ebi [raw prawn], ika [squid] and sazae [snails]) as well as various other Japanese food (including kaiseki, Kobe beef, soba (buckwheat) and udon (thick flour) noodles, and all those mochi and yummy bakery goods). And let's not forget the terrifying earthquake experience. I think I can safely say that they've truly had a taste of Japan in the past two weeks.

Hello, Spring?

WHERE ARE YOU?!

Yesterday morning - Rob (wearing slippers!) scraping the snow off the car before I had to leave for work:


The weather so far has not failed to surprise me (or the Japanese people for that matter). As if to spite my praise of the glorious 20degC weather we had on the weekend, we had a cold snap. Literally. The next day, the temperature barely rose above 1degC and it even started snowing! Unbelievable, really. We'd even changed the snow tyres on our car to the ordinary tyres on Monday because we were unnecessarily wearing them out driving around with hardly any snow this winter.

It stopped snowing today, but there was more snow cover on the ground than yesterday. Just for fun and experience, I decided to ride to school today on my bicycle. I won't know until I try, and I can't always be afraid of the unknown, right? (The locals already see me as the 'crazy gaijin (foreigner), and it can't get worse than that, right?) Most of the snow had already melted so it wasn't really all that bad. Admittedly, I wouldn't do it if there was more snow because I don't have any snow tyres on my bike.

One of the teachers at school this morning asked how I liked the snowy scenery in spring. According to her, snow doesn't usually happen around this time. Even the insects are confused. After a few blissful months of not having to deal with bugs, Rob told me he'd caught (and released) a few bugs on the weekend. Not surprisingly, I don't see any around at the moment (where do they go?). Let's hope that is the last of the snow, and that we can enjoy Spring and hanami (flower-viewing) soon. Knowing our luck with weather, I'm sure I'll be posting under this tag quite regularly.


On another note, our location on this side of the Noto Peninsula allows us to sometimes enjoy breath-taking views of the mountains in the next prefecture Toyama across the Japan Sea. Why only sometimes? Well, I don't really know why. The locals often say that when you can see these mountains on a fine day, it WILL rain the next day. And that is true. The mountains are often visible on rainy days too. This shot was taken by Rob on Monday (at my request as I did not have my camera with me at school). Beautiful, isn't it? One of the teachers at school said that it was difficult to take a photo of these mountains, and that many tourists would come to this part of the Noto hoping to see the beautiful scene because it is a scene often printed in tour catalogs. I wish it was a view I could enjoy everyday, without the rainy forecast attached.

February - finally, some decent snow!

You may recall I wrote in a previous entry that we've been experiencing an unusually warm-ish winter and it hasn't really snowed where we are. I was told that there was some decent (albeit brief) snow fall here on the 28th of last December (during which time we were enjoying a lot more snow on our snowboarding trip in Nagano), but nothing since then. While the lack of snow meant a happy Jean and a disappointed Rob, some people were quite concerned that the nice Mediterranean-esque weather we've been having may bring on bad weather later on (eg worse typhoons, more snow next winter, etc). Who would have thought that the beginning of February would bring us some relatively decent snow fall?

It snowed most of yesterday and overnight, and I must admit that it was nice to enjoy a white-dappled scenery this morning while eating my breakfast. Of course snow meant I would have to drive to school instead of cycling, but I wasn't too disappointed since my muscles are kinda sore from last night's judo lesson. It wasn't too scary driving on snow, but then there wasn't much snow cover on the road. The snow is not gonna last long. As I'm typing this, the sun is shining and the snow is melting away. And no snow is forecasted for the following week.

View from our kitchen sliding door; and our car before scraping off most of the snow to drive to school:


My sympathy to all in Perth who has to endure 40+ degreeC heat!

Update on everyday living

Lots of posts about the places we've travelled and food we've eaten - but how is everyday winter life in Japan for us? (Does anyone care? Hello?? *echo*) It's been almost a month since my last non-travel and non-food-related update, and I thought it's about time for another one, so here goes..

-It's already middle of winter, but much to my delight, it has been a warm-ish one so far. In fact, the weather right now is much like Perth's winter (blue skies with some cloud), except the daytime temperature remains below 10degC. Mind you, that's not to say that the winter here is generally like Perth's gorgeous winter - it was cold and drizzly most of last week. Not much snow around at the moment because any snow melts as soon as it touches the ground. Some mornings I'd see snow on the roofs and cars, but the snow soon melts away. So far, I haven't had to confront my fear of driving in the snow - yet. I'm hoping that I won't have to at all this winter.

-Are we still riding our bicycles? Yes, we are happily embracing our 'crazy gaijin' status and keeping our bicycles in use in the cold winter months. I think it's quite safe as long as there are no snow or ice cover on the road. We rode the 10km to town on Saturday for the first time in three weeks and it was pretty good. A bit chilly, but it's nothing new because I remember riding to work in 1degC in the mornings in Perth.

-We're always subject to the hospitality and kindness of Japanese people. Last month, one of the older teachers at my school gave me a huge bag of new rice (i.e. newly harvested), a jar of umeboshi (preserved sour plums), some persimmons and apples - I think they were all from his family's farm. And just last week, we had a total stranger (one of our neighbours) offering to lend us his spare heater when we brought the only kerosene heater in our possession to the nearest service station down the road for repair (we found out that the stinky-ness is not normal) and he overheard that we did not have an extra one to use in the meantime. These are just two examples. I find that I am often baking something to give someone who has shown kindness to us.

-We've been going to judo classes with Kim and Richie every Thursday nights since the end of November last year. Most of the class consist of elementary-aged kids, who are very skilled! Thankfully the main judo sensei is an English teacher so communication is not so much of a problem. Alex and John will also begin attending classes this year, so it looks like judo on Thursdays will be gaijin central. The sensei and his assistants have been very kind to accommodate having us as part of their Thursday class.

Oh, and remember how I said that one of my photos was chosen for the JET Program calendar? We've received copies of the calendar and it looks like I'm the only 1st year JET whose photo made it into the 2007 calendar. Yay!

Crazy weather and cancelled trains (again)

We're back home from our Nara/Hiroshima/Osaka trip, but we almost could not return back home yesterday due to bad weather (again!). We were blessed with wonderful weather all throughout the five days of our trip, until the day we were scheduled to come home. Bad winds and snow yesterday on our train's route back home from Osaka meant that all morning and early arvo services were cancelled, and once again we had to deal with the headache of changing our tickets and booking accommodation for an extra night. Rob's first reaction was laughter. Mine wasn't.

So we hung around the Kita (north) district of Osaka city (the 'business' part) carrying our heavy backpacks for about two hours before we decided to head back into the Minami (south) area (the 'commercial/fashion/hip-young-people's' part of Osaka city a few kms south of Kita) where we were staying. Before buying our train fare for Shinsaibashi I thought we ought to check whether train services to home had resumed, and thankfully they had! Yay! So then we had to deal with the headache of changing our tickets again, cancelling our hotel's reservation and figuring out how we were going to get to our apartment from the train station. We finally got home late last night.

It seems like we really don't have much luck with weather whenever we go on trips around Japan! At least not on the last day anyway. Rob mentioned that we didn't have weather trouble last week in Nagano, but I pointed that Kim and Richie were travelling with us. In hindsight, aside from having to deal with the stress of not having much cash in our pockets (most ATMs are shut on weekends in Japan, and the ones that are open charge a fee) and the problem of the language barrier, it wasn't really that bad.

I have loads to show 'n tell about our trip, so keep your eyes on this journal!

Snow!

It was a cold day today. No, it hasn't snowed in our town yet (we're too close to the coast I think), but I saw my first snow whilst on the 2-hr bus ride travelling to Kanazawa through the mountains. When the bus stopped for toilet break, I just had to check it out. It looked like... crushed ice. A fellow JET said that the snow here is quite wet and not soft and fluffy. I was on a 'business' trip so I didn't bring my camera (the thought of bringing it did cross my mind) and while I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't show Rob anything to make him green with envy that I've experienced snow before him, I remembered my phone camera. Not the best quality, but it was sufficient.

I tried to get a good shot from inside a moving bus and this was the best I could get:


This 'business' trip to the city was to help judge at a Science fair at a fellow ALT's school. This school is the best academic school in the whole of Ishikawa prefecture, and am I impressed. Students had to present their science projects in English! It was amazing - the projects were at a level far higher than high school (wastewater treatment? I didn't study that until I was in 3rd year uni!) and I can't even imagine how hard they would have had to work to present everything in English.

Other updates:
- yep I'm still riding my bicycle to work, although I have a feeling it'll start snowing this week and I'd have to stop unless we get snow tyres for our bikes.
- we joined a Judo class with Kim and Richie a few weeks ago and even have our own Judo gi (uniforms). It is difficult, and I am always sore the following day. I'm glad the instructor is an English teacher.
- whilst everyone is taking the opportunity to go home or travel overseas this winter vacation, we're taking the opportunity to go on a ski trip to Nagano, the town that hosted the '98 Winter Olympics. We'll get to see soft fluffy snow there.

With all this talk about snow, you'd think I have never seen snow before. Oh wait, I haven't!

Yep, it's here..

The very thing I've been dreading since coming to Japan has arrived. It's officially winter here in the Noto, and it is pretty darn cold. Today's temperature did not go above 5 degC, and it even snowed early yesterday morning. I was quite puzzled because I thought I saw tiny snow falling when I woke up yesterday, but there was no white on the ground. However, many people have verified that it did snow, so I definitely wasn't imagining it. The rainwater on the ground must've melted the snow the moment it touched the ground. It won't start snowing heavily for another week or so, and I'm hoping that this inevitable event will be delayed as long as possible. A few hours ago, Rob got some kerosene for the heater, and he got the kero heater working. So yep, we've finally dragged out the heater and it is pretty stinky - apparently kero heaters smell on its first use when you haven't used it for a long time. And guess what? We found an electric heater too!

This will be our second winter this year, and the amazing thing is that I have yet to fall sick (thank God!). Usually I would fall ill two or three times every winter, but I have managed to avoid falling sick during Perth's winter this year, and I'm hoping I will not get sick at all over the next few months. I think that our cycling habits have somehow helped build my immune system. And, of course, a good healthy diet with lots of fruits and veges. Yay!

I'm pretty busy writing and marking exams at the moment, but at least the teachers' room is warm (sometimes stuffy). Needless to say, I dread the cold walk to the bathroom and the numbingly cold water. Christmas and winter vacation is coming up soon and it will be our first white Christmas - that is my only consolation for this winter..

Freaky weather

Hm, the weather seem to go all weird whenever we go on trips, but never directly affecting where we are at the time. Two months ago on our trip to Kobe, a typhoon hit the southern island of Kyushu which caused a tornado that killed 3 people. My mum was really worried about us but although it was really windy and somewhat rainy for us in Kobe it was not too bad. On Tuesday when we were still in Kyoto, a freak tornado wiped out a town and killed 9 people in the northern island of Hokkaido - it was really windy and very cold in Kyoto and we were scheduled to return home that day but the trains back to our prefecture were cancelled and we were forced to stay back in Kyoto another day.

According to this article, tornadoes are quite rare in Japan, and Tuesday's weather 'accident' (as Kami-sensei described it) was the worst on record. The second worst tornado to hit Japan on record was the one that hit Kyushu in September. The freaky thing is that both happened while we were on holiday!