5 September 2009

My Japanese lesson went quite well for once. I didn't feel that I did any worse than the other three students who turned up. I really am going to have to make time to study during the week though, if I want to do more than keep my head above water.

After lunch we all went to Hamarikyu. Entering the gardens, we found dozens of dragonflies flitting around among the blades of the iris plants. They were very striking and I felt moved to compose a haiku about them:

Gauze wings trap the sun

Copper and bronze shards of light
Dragonflies' bright lives

Emily had great fun chasing them with a stick. As usual, there were a lot of stray cats hanging around, and we had to stop her from chasing them too.

It was a glorious afternoon and lovely strolling around the lake, which contains seawater via channels out to the bay.

I made a serious error of judgement in only bringing one spare nappy out for the afternoon. Emily did a small poo, but after I had changed her, she did a much larger one. That meant that we had to curtail our visit before we had had a good look at the huge field of cosmos that had been the main reason for going. The flowers were a bit past their best but still amazing.

In the evening, Nick went out with Jill's husband, Jim, and their friends Yuji and Anna. Yuji runs some football bars, and they met at the one in Ebisu. He also met a couple of other Brits including someone nicknamed 'Sausage John', a master butcher who creates his own saussies. I must try to get hold of some as the Japanese efforts are very poor and the meat content very low.

4 September 2009

Another good day at Ui. Emily didn't cry at all, and ate and slept well again. Jo put Isy in for a few hours trial, and is going to have her attend on the same two days as Emily, so they should become firm friends in time.

I went to the sports centre to try out a 90 minute aerobics class. This one was twice as long and much more full-on than the ones I have been going to up until now. I liked the level of exertion, but the instructor incorporated some very complicated moves, and I was close to tears once or twice as I tried to stay with it and failed miserably. Good thing I was at the back where fewer people could see my ridiculous attempts. Still, I should get used to her methods in time. Despite the higher intensity of this class, there were still a lot of pensioners among the participants.

Emily often sings 'Twinkle Twinkle' as we go out and about and is also attempting the ABC song, which has the same tune. Today she counted to three for the first time.

2 September 2009

There has been a change in the weather. It really seems almost autumnal though no leaves are changing yet. The temperature is down to under 25C.

We had a change of venue for lunch with Nick, as we are a bit bored with Paul. It is a formula that works though, as Emily always eats a lot there. We switched to Organic House, where we piled our plates with tasty and relatively healthy fare. Unfortunately, as we were sitting outside, Emily was distracted by all the passers by and traffic. She didn't seem at all interested in eating and we had to coax her with every small morsel. Eventually she wandered off to the flowerbeds and started denuding the bushes. We'll try again though, and sit inside where she can be more focused.

After parting company, I walked to Hamamatsucho while Emily napped in the buggy. I was grateful that it was cool enough to do so (Emily was even wearing a cardy since she wasn't moving to keep warm). We spent 2 hours at the jidokan as it was my turn for a stint as TMG coordinator.

Emily can now identify pink and green, but the other colours seem to be eluding her for now.

1 September 2009

I hoped my nerves didn't show as I took Emily to nursery Ui for her first day involving eating and sleeping there. She did cry slightly as I dropped her off, but I hurried off to my exercise class and tried to put her out of my mind. In the end, she apparently had a great day and the staff said she did fantastically well, eating all of her lunch and then sleeping for an hour. Most of the children sleep on small futons but they do have a few cribs and she was in one of them. I had packed Goki to help her settle, and maybe that was what did the trick. She was clutching him when I arrived, and did not let go of him once for the rest of the day, even while at a playground on the way home. In her nursery record book there was a photo of her sitting on a wall at a nearby park with about 10 other children, all with matching pink hats on and sipping from their drink bottles. It was very heartwarming, while bringing home to me that she will have sets of memories in which I do not feature.

As we approached our apartment building I let her out of the buggy, as usual. She wanted to go and explore in the bushes outside, and gave me a cheeky little smile then said 'bye bye, take care'. I have no idea where she got that from as I don't think I say it.

31 August 2009

Emily had me up at 6.30, to another misty morning. She was not very good at breakfast and even refused toast with jam, which I was relying on if all else failed.

As we packed, we watched the Diet Lower House (Japanese equivalent to the House of Commons) election result. As polls had suggested, the opposition DPJ won by a significant margin, ousting the LDP who had been in power for the vast majority of the last 50 years. I must admit I was a bit surprised, as I had thought that voters would waiver at the last moment and lose the courage to make such a drastic change. Whether there will be any real change remains to be seen. Their politicians are cut from the same cloth as those of the LDP (indeed, one of their most influential leaders, Ozawa, used to be in the LDP, and was recently implicated in a bribery scandal that led him to give up his leadership of the DPJ).

We were not sure what to do until our train left at two, as a typhoon off south-east Honshu was expected to generate a lot of rain. We decided to drive up to Matsumoto and look at the famous castle there. We knew it would be a rush as we would only have three hours to get 30 miles each way and look at the castle too. However, it did prove to be worthwhile, and we had fine weather to boot. The 'black crow' castle as it is known (due to its sweeping 'wings'), is very picturesque, with an attractive red bridge across the moat, willows and pines in the grounds, and mountains as a backdrop.

It is one of very few castles in Japan in its original condition (many have been restored or are replicas).

There are about six levels to the castle joined by very steep wooden stairs, like going up into an attic, so Nick had to carry Emily, watching his head on the extremely low beams as he did so. There are displays of artefacts but no furnishings inside, so the shell seemed rather devoid of character. However, the thick beams and floors felt quite warm compared to the cold stone castles we have at home.

Emily slept on the drive back to Chino, but only for half an hour, waking just as we pulled in to the car hire centre. We ate in a cheap restaurant by the station; the noodles and beef lunch seemed to satisfy Emily, though my small bowl of mountain vegetables in a thin broth with noodles didn't keep me going for long. We topped up with icecream from the gelateria before hotfooting it to the station for our train.

It was so hard to amuse Emily for two hours, but it went fairly well and there was no major upset. As we travelled through the valleys between mountains the clouds looked amazing, long wisps of white boiling up out of deep valleys between soaring dark peaks. On arrival in Tokyo it was chucking it down, so the typhoon had hit after all. It was all over by 7pm though, as the storm veered away from Japan at the last minute. We got drenched just walking from Tamachi station to the apartment. With a large pack on my back and a smaller one on my front, covered with my big black rain cape, I must have looked really odd to the rush hour salarymen. Emily was dry as a bone in her covered kid carrier on Nick's back.

30 August 2009

Emily woke several times during the night, and thanks to the thin curtains she was wide awake before 6am. I managed to occupy her until breakfast at eight, while Nick lay in bed, still very tired, as she nattered ceaselessly and played.

Outside, mist was hanging in the trees and the cobwebs were beaded with droplets.

At breakfast we got some fruit and pieces of sausage down her. It's ironic that in the week experts have publicised the danger of processed meat for children, Emily has had ham plus her first taste of bacon and sausages! As always, her restlessness meant that we couldn't take our time and enjoy the big spread.

Though it was still cloudy, we set off for our pre-planned day out. Although it's not that long since I drove in the UK, I had been feeling strangely nervous about taking the wheel, but soon relaxed into it, and the roads were really quiet.

Most of the time, though in the countryside, the speed limit was 50kph, but I found it impossible to keep it any lower than 60kph, and was overtaken a few times even then. It took about half an hour to get to Lake Shirakabako (white birch lake), which is at about 14oom elevation, and looked very mysterious in the mist. There were the inevitable ugly concrete hotels but it didn't seem too developed.

We pulled over so that Emily could have a walk, and our steps took us to the lakeside, right by a host of swan pedalos and a big swan pleasure boat.

Emily liked the ducks there, and then we saw that the water was heaving with huge black carp. The reason they congregate there was soon obvious as a large party arrived, their kids armed with a packet of biscuits, which they started chucking to the ducks and fish. A girl offered Emily a biscuit and she loved throwing pieces into the gaping maws of the carp. We coaxed her back into the car and completed the circuit of the small lake, passing a massive family amusement complex at the other end, before stopping again at another boat hire outlet. Having Emily means that I can do things like go in a pedalo without feeling totally embarrassed! We paddled around for half an hour, letting her take the wheel when there was no threat of collison with one of the many other pleasure craft on the lake.

On one island there was a stand of the eponimous white birch trees sheltering a little shrine, with a red torii standing in the water before it.

Emily was showing obvious signs of flagging by now, so we decided to switch her lunch and nap around and continue on to the ropeway (cable car) next on our route. Within 2 minutes she was asleep, as we climbed up into thick cloud on the 'Venus Line' road. Sadly, we couldn't see the views, but we soon turned off and carried on upwards to the ropeway station, emerging into sunshine as we did so. We sat in the car park until Emily woke up, after just 35 minutes. She was quite grumpy and prone to tears, and at first refused to eat. Nick and I had noodle dishes in the restaurant attached to the terminal, and he did well to persevere and coax her into eating quite a bit, including the pouch of gloop I'd brought speculatively but with little hope.

We got on the next departure of the large cable car, which whisked us up to 2250m over attractive pines and swathes of dwarf bamboo covering the winter ski runs.

At the 'summit' station we found that we were in a cradle formed by some of the Yatsugatake ('eight peaks') range, their forested, rocky flanks soaring up into cloud. The immediate area was a jumble of rocks and low vegetation, with alpine flowers in the crevices. Being that much higher the air was refreshingly cool, though it was still just about T-shirt weather. There was a 15 minute loop path marked out among the rocks and we set off around it. After a few minutes we saw a post indicating that we could get to one of the peaks in an hour. We were both tempted by the thought that we could bag a mountain, so we struck off along the trail, and were soon navigating a path made of rocks with the odd wooden step thrown in.

First, we dropped into a damp, cool vale, then began a tough climb. I really pushed myself, my quads complaining a little as we had paddled the pedalo quite hard once or twice. The path seemed to go on and on, and as we were in trees we couldn't gauge our progress. Finally, after nearly half an hour's slog, we came to a refuge house, placed for the overnight use of hikers on the long path that takes in most of the 2,000m+ peaks in the range. At that point I said that we ought to return, though the man at the refuge said that it was only another 15 minutes to the top. I am usually an all-or-nothing person, but Emily would not have been happy to remain in the carrier all that time and she already seemed very subdued. My resolve was strengthened by the onset of light rain, and we turned tail after a quick go in a wooden swing chair (at first I sat on it with Emily, but she very imperiously insisted 'Daddy sit here' and pointed to the vacant end).

The descent was rife with opportunities to turn an ankle and took almost as long as the climb. The peak disappeared in thick cloud, so it would have been a waste of effort, though elsewhere blue sky periodically showed through the wind-rent cloud. Just as we got to the cable station a brief but heavy shower rolled in, so we were more than happy to get aboard and return below.

We arrived back at Zigzag with half an hour to dinner. Yet again the meal was a struggle; Emily didn't seem comfortable in her chair and refused most food. We let her get down but she continued to say 'don't like it'. Then I caught an unmistakable whiff and realised why she was upset. After cleaning her up she and I returned to the meal, and though she wouldn't settle at the table we managed to get just about enough morsels down her as she roamed around. Goki is an invaluable ally in getting her to accept proffered tidbits. Back in the room, we decided to try the bath, after topping it up with cold water. As the deep vessle was completely full, she was literally up to her neck in hot water. She liked the jet of bubbles in the aged jacuzzi and was happy playing with a couple of bath toys from home.

Once Emily was safely asleep Nick and I shared a bottle of wine and chatted upstairs in the lounge. For the first time, I found out that one of the names the Japanese have for Blighty is 'Eikoku', which apparently means 'splendid country'!

29 August 2009

With just a little last minute flapping on my part, we managed to get away on time for our return to Haramura in Nagano prefecture.Emily was not very happy with being confined in the baby carrier all the way to Shunjuku, frequently saying 'I get out'. The two hour journey from Shinjuku on a limited express wasn't much fun. She didn't show much interest in walking along the carriages, which was just as well as they were rocking considerably and even I had trouble staying on my feet. Frequent sightings of diggers, and the odd plunge into a tunnel, stayed the upset for a while; even an early lunch failed to calm her down. I think she may have been slightly motion sick, because she looked a bit pale and became drowsy, eventually dropping off half an hour from Chino. As we got off the train she woke and said 'bye bye densha (train)', so that was the end of her nap.

We had an hour to kill before we could pick up our hire car, so we dropped in at a gelateria, where Emily enjoyed my chocmint icecream and I had to settle for the raspberry frozen yogurt I'd chosen for her. The car collection from Toyota Rentals was smooth and quick (we both recalled the horror of Heathrow Budget-Rent-A Car) and it was a 20 minute drive on very quiet roads to Pension Zigzag in Haramura, up at the base of the Yatsugatake mountain range, which was visible but purple with cloud shadow. The bright yellow pension had changed somewhat since March, as it was now a riot of plants and flowers.

It is totally rampant but very charming. I liked the flowering thyme growing all over the wooden steps at the front, and I noticed a bee hive in one corner, which must do well given the plentiful supply of nectar in theirs and surrounding gardens.

It was only 2pm, so we set out on foot straight away, to the nearby mountain centre and farm. Emily was very excited by the big slide and had lots of goes on it before we carried on down to the large open grassed area, where we kicked a beach ball around for a while.

Cloud was gathering, so we thought we had better carry on to the farm, which is half a mile away through birch woods. There was a veritable thicket of wild rudbeckia near a stream; a favourite autumn flower of mine. Emily really liked the handful of goats and sheep and wanted to feed them handfuls of grass, like the bigger kids, but chickened out and dropped it short of the fence most times.

Nick took her to feed the two ponies too, but one sneezed violently and scared her (and sprayed her with muddy phlegm).

After a quick visit to the produce shop to get Emily some fresh milk direct from the farm, we beat a retreat to the pension as raindrops were falling.

It didn't come to anything, but Nick appreciated an hour chilling out in our room (aka snoozing) before dinner. Emily and I watched a little kids TV then walked around the garden. There was a party going on down the road, and there were frequent cheers and claps, which she copied gleefully. Dinner was at six, and though Emily was dog-tired due to such a short, early nap and busy afternoon, I really hoped she would eat well as we were paying a lot for food for her. She did pick at the Italian-style spaghetti with mushroom, bacon and courgette, and managed a little crab salad, but soon she was showing signs of restlessness. The food kept coming and I was stuffed, so I volunteered to take her back to the room and initiate the bedtime routine. Unfortunately the bath was Japanese, in that it is kept perpetually full (literally to the brim) of hot water. It was too hot for her to go in, so I just hosed her down with the shower head. Once she had her milk I settled her in the cot tent, expecting her to flake out. But as usual, she rolled around and recited her vocabulary for half an hour before giving in to the sandman.

Nick and I spent a couple of hours in the comfy lounge, to the therapeutic accompaniment of heavy rain drumming on the conservatory roof overhead. I made a huge mistake in knocking back a mug of coffee, with the predictable consequence that I lay awake for hours. We crept back into the pitch black room at 10, but I was still awake at midnight. Despite the coffee, Nick seemed flat out, so his deeper weariness was unaffected by the stimulant. He must have been very tired because the other guests, who were students, came in and thundered around in the hall and slammed doors until past 11.30.