IKEA in Japan

There's an IKEA about 20-30 mins by train from my apartment, but all this time I've never gone. All the talk from folks at home about the new store has made me pretty curious, though. So today I went for the first time. Actually, it was my first visit to an IKEA store anywhere. Pretty cool place:


Photos:

• Left: Entrance to the Kohoku IKEA in Yokohama.
• Right: my purchase. I thought the blue pot was too cheery to pass up. I've named him "Dennis" because it seems like a good name for something green, whatever that means...

P.S. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what kind of plant Dennis is. I have no idea.

Hakone

This week I took yet another day trip. This time I went to Hakone, a popular hot springs area close to Mt Fuji and about 2 hours by local train from my apartment. After arriving in the town, I took another train even farther up the mountain and went to the Hakone Open Air Museum, which I think is possibly the best museum I've ever visited. If you ever make it to Hakone, you must go. Later, when I stopped at the Tourist Information office after leaving the museum to ask which bus to take to Lake Ashi, they told me that there would also be a fireworks display on the lake that same night. How lucky am I? Here are a few photos from my day:






Photos:

• 1st row, left: group of sculptures on the "Green Plaza" at the museum
  
• 1st row, right: inside the "Symphonic Sculpture" at the museum; all the walls are made of stained glass.
  
• 2nd row, left: close to the entrance to the museum, the "seats" are designed like eggs. They're even cushioned so you can take off your shoes and walk on them.
  
• 2nd row, right: another sculpture at the museum
  
• 3rd row, left: traditional Japanese drumming at the "Hanabi" (fireworks) festival at Ashinoko.
  
• 3rd row, right: my very first glimpse of Mt Fuji. It's beautiful, isn't it?
  
• 4th row, left: some lucky kids are getting new pet goldfish at one of the summer festival tents near the lake. It took a serious amount of will-power for me to NOT come home with a new fish myself...
  
• 4th row, right: fireworks over the lake. You can also see the hundreds of paper lanterns that they floated on the water, if you look across the bottom of the photo.

A Fish Market and a Ferry Ride

Today I decided to be a little adventurous and head over to the Tsukiji Fish Market. Didn't end up actually spending a whole lot of time there, but I managed to find a few other things of interest:





Photos:

• Top left: a menu for one of the MANY fish/sushi/sashimi restaurants surrounding the Tsukiji market. It all looks identical to me.
• Top right: after you buy your fresh fish, you can cross the street and buy the knife to cut it with.
• Middle left: after the market, I went to the nearby Hama Rikyu Garden.
• Middle right: a view of the tea house in the garden. The ponds in the garden are all filled by the adjoining bay, so their level always changes according to the tide.
• Bottom left: after the garden, I took the Sumida River Ferry tour to Asakusa. Take a close look at the spelling they used on the sign.
• Bottom right: a view of one of the Chuo-ohashi bridge from the ferry boat.

July, thus far

I realize how long it's been since the last time I posted something, and that definitely makes it even sadder that I have very little of interest to show of how I have passed the last couple weeks...

My students often come in for lessons and when I ask them how their weekend was, they answer with one, typical, irritating response: "Nothing special." Then, if I'm having a particularly unsuccessful day, I plead with them to tell me something interesting--even if they have to make it up. (Some of my students have fantastic imaginations!) Just now I am experiencing the very same emotion as my students; indeed, my most recent activities hold very little entertainment value. The following photos are, for your sake, a last ditch effort to show you something mildly interesting from my life in Japan. The best part? I didn't have to resort to my imagination--it's all real. :)

Mother Nature has certainly been doing her part to keep us all on our toes, though. Plans for the typical beach trips and fireworks of the three-day weekend--July 16th is "Sea Day" in Japan--were thwarted (I've always wanted to use that word!) by the massive typhoon that worked it's way over the islands and up to Tokyo on Saturday and Sunday, and as if that weren't enough, the whole ordeal was topped off by a major earthquake this morning in Niigata and Nagano. I felt the earthquake this morning from 160 miles away in Tokyo--quite the experience! It felt like our entire building was floating on the ocean for about 30 seconds. The first quake was at 10.13 this morning and the last I checked, there were still aftershocks at 9.00 tonight. (Track earthquakes at this website.)




Photos:

• Top left: this is a page from my kanji practice book. I have so much respect now for Japanese schoolchildren who have to write each character over and over and over...it's uber time-consuming. I think these two pages took me nearly an hour and a half to complete. Here's a quick translation of the kanji in the photo, in order l-r according to the columns (both pages in the book are identical): "clam", "dog", "bug", "grass", "flower".
• Top right: this is quite possibly one of the greatest popsicles ever invented. It totally tastes like watermelon. And the little "seeds"? They're chocolate!
• Bottom: the school where I work has sets of really old flashcards they used to use for teaching vocabulary. This one is my absolute personal favorite, so it has now become my own "souvenir". :) It was used to illustrate the verb "Sit." Just look how happy that man is that he can successfully sit down! I only wish I had as much enthusiasm as he does...
  

It's rainy season in Tokyo...

...and this year it's been so dry I've not even had a good reason to wear my new rain boots yet. I've heard that we're now into the second week of rainy season, but we've only had two days of rain. Students tell me that during the usual rainy season it rains every day for two or three weeks, but this June there has been unseasonably warm and dry weather. We've got all of the humidity and none of the rain; during the day, humidity hovers at about 70-80% and temperatures about 85°F. Pretty nice blue skies though. I took the picture just this morning from my balcony. (Also note-worthy: my neighbor's new pink paint job...)

Fuji-san ni ikimashita

Yesterday I went on my long-awaited trip to Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately, the weather forecast wasn't as accurate as I'd hoped. It turned out that the mountain--which is so large it can sometimes be seen 60 miles away in Tokyo--was so completely covered in clouds that you couldn't see it from the city at its base. I had a walk around the town for a few hours and got to see one of the nearby lakes, so it wasn't altogether a disappointment. Here are a couple of pictures:



Photos:

• Left: a view of the mountains across Kawaguchi-ko (Lake Kawaguchi)
• Right: somewhere behind those clouds is the biggest mountain in Japan. If you look very closely on the right side of the photo, just between the train cables and the rooftops, you can see a little bit of snow on the side of the mountain. The darker color that runs across the entire photo, immediately above the houses, is the base of the mountain. That's about as much as I saw all afternoon.

Family Visit, part 3

Here are a few more pics from my family's visit a couple weeks ago:





Photos:

• Top left: though the Imperial Palace in Tokyo is only open to the public on two days each year, we could still see a little bit from across the moat.
• Top right: the next day, my sister and I went to Nikko (my first trip out of the city!). This is a picture of rice fields as viewed from the train on the way there.
• Middle left: this is a picture you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere. I took it in the "No photos" area of a temple when we we the only people around...I just couldn't resist. But I also forgot to turn off the flash on my camera, so when the flash reflected off all that gold, let's just say we made a quick exit.
• Middle right: at the entrance to Nikko's Toshogu Shrine. If you want to see more of Nikko, use this link--they've published the whole guidebook online.
• Bottom left: the world famous "Hear no evil, Speak no evil, See no evil" monkeys actually come from this carving on the Imperial Stable at Toshogu Shrine.
• Bottom right: the sunset over the mountains, as seen from the train on the way home.