JAMSTEC open day

Yesterday was the open day at JAMSTEC, and they were lucky enough to get the only hot and sunny day all week. Mona and I went there at 8:30 to help Takako-san set up her presentation. As she was just doing a small puppet play of her children's book, 5 people was a bit much to carry 5 bits of cardboard and styrofoam. But we then got the chance to wander around JAMSTEC a bit before the people started comming.

Takako, right, and her 2 assistants (the second is holding up the backdrop, and that's his only job)

The event officially opened at 9:30, and they had counted 2100 people by 11 o'clock. The exibits were all really great, with lots of stuff to see and do, and many animals our for show. We said hello to the PICASSO team, and several other groups of people we see on the bus every morning but didn't really know what they did.

Baby Nemopilema nomurai, the giant japanese jellyfish.

A japanese fellow and his possibly australian friend, that we have been seeing every morning lately, had told us they do "security". This was not much help, and as they always wear nice suits, we had assumed they had office jobs. Well yesterday, the japanese fellow was in a swimsuit and coastguard T-shirt, while his friend was the dummy in the pool in a yellow worksuit. We only spent a litte time in our team's exibit, as it was super crowded, but it seemed to be going well.

Mr. Brine Shrimp, and the stand where you could get your one brine shrimp to take home.

In the afternoon, Mai came to join us. She is a school nurse at Yokosuka, also living at Soleil-Oppama. So we got to do the tour again, but this time showing her only the most interesting bits. These included a wonderful cola-menthos volcano, with the final presentation going all the way to the 2nd story of the building. We also took the tour of the Karei which was fun, as Mai started fiddling with the ship controls and had to be shown out of the wheel house.

And at noon I ate what was possibly whale meat. I didn't know it at the time of course, but apparently that's what was in the burgers. It was very good, I must say, but if it was whale meat, you can save the whales by eating cow, because that's pretty much what it tastes like.

JAMSTEC open day finished at 4pm, and we stayed pretty much to the end. And now it had gone back to being rainy. It was a perfect day in all respects.

Tokyo

Mona is a german girl who just arrived in Japan on Wednesday and who will be working at JAMSTEC for 5 months on plastic-degrading bacteria in the same group as mine. As she's just as eager to visit stuff as I am, we decided to go to Tokyo, as it was a wonderful day, and that it's much more fun with 2.

So off we went. Her superviser had not bought her a train card, but we managed to get one from the automatic vendor really easily and never even had to ask for help. I then got the wonderful opportunity of showing her how the trains work here: we got on a local bound for Shinagawa. We got off at Kanazawa-bunko to change to a green express train, only to find that the train on the other track was (also) a black local to Shinagawa, but that the one we were on had turned green!

We decided on central Tokyo, where there's the emperor's palace, as well as high tech buildings and stuff.

First off, we visited the emperor's palace. We had actually planned to do it last, but kind of got going the wrong way in the train station. You can't visit the palace itself, but the outside and the park it's in are very nice. They also are very much on the "you are outside, we are inside" line, but done with style, and grace. If you need to have big basalt walls, then you can at least trim the pine trees so they look nice. Although probably not in the original design, the weeping willows and swans make it look a bit like a fairy castle, right in the heart of Tokyo.

Next, we saw the buildings of the japanese government. The main building is "bed brick building N°6" (next best in the "red brick warehouse" naming sheme). The photo is not of that building, however, as we only saw it from the other side of a crowded street, but of a museum.

Next, we immerged ourselves in Ginza, the fashion quartier of Tokyo. It was really quite empty, it being a holiday. There was obviously some sort of parade or something going on, as there were lots of groups of people dressed up in traditional costumes. We never did find it, though, as the groups didn't seem to be going in any specific direction, but just wandering around killing time before whatever they were doing.

From Ginza, you arrive almost dirrectly onto the fish market. Most of the stalls were closed, and it's really just as well. The place was packed full of people, with queues outside every little restaurant place, and tuna and salmon for sale everywhere. At 6am it must be quite a sight! We also visited one of the warehouse complexes, where they were slowly finishing off the day's fish deliveries.

After a quick lunch near the Hama detached palace garden (which is detached as in not being in the same place as the palace), we went off through Shidome. This is a sky-scraper complex with tons of glass. And aslo, for some reason, a bit metallic clock, which I find should be at least mentionned in my guide but isn't.

From there it's just a shortish walk to Tokyo tower. As we had kind of expected, it was packed full of people. So instead of going up it, we simply sat in the park and enjoyed the view of Tokyo tower through the maple leaves. Very enjoyable.

Having done most of central Tokyo, we took the train to Shibuya, to see the shopping district. Now if the rest of Tokyo had been reasonably empty, Shibuya was quite the opposite. It is big, shop-filled from the basement up to the roof, and absolutely packed full of shoppers, people distributing leaflets and stuff, and shop workers standing on chairs shouting into paper cups with the bottom cut out (they were!). But we had been warned of what to expect from the station, as this is the first glimpse you get of Shibuya....

Western Tokyo, once you get out of the relatively small Shibuya district is very nice, especially the Olympic stadium area, where there was a kind of fair going on. There is a nice park near the stadium, packed full of people also, but very quiet and relaxing. Lots of people were dancing or playing games and stuff, and we had a nice time seeing a young man being out break-danced by what must have been his 70 year old granpa. It was extremely amusing. Especially as the gandson had to keep pretending he had a phone call to make while the young sweeties were taking photos of his granpa.

Another dance which seems to be in is break-dancing, while inside a double jumping rope. There were 3 or 4 groups doing this, and some of the guys were great! I am totally impressed... Maybe I will start liking rap?

And of course, the train travel went absolutely flawlessly, with near-instant connecting trains. Mona said last night that she was now quite confident that she would be able to travel around without any problems. So I guess the moral of the story is "Dare, Pierre, dare". Or perhaps "Try it, you'll like it"?

Either way, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Sagami Bay

Golden week is in full swing now, and the weather has turned out incredibly hot and sunny (unknown phenomenon during most public holidays).

Today I had a wonderful walk, from Shinzushi along the coast to Kamakura (again).

Shinzushi is the end of the second branch of the Keikyu line, that splits off from Kanazawa-hakkei. It is what people here call a small village, which simply means it is not as big as say Yokosuka. The road from the train station to the beach is very obvious (and straight) when seen on google earth, so of course I never found it. However, I did find a small little path running along a carp-filled creak. The carp were a bit bigger than what I would expect for the 30cm of water in the stream, but I guess they don't mind. There were also lots of schools of tiny little fish.

As all streams run to the sea, even in Japan, I followed it along through a nice residential area to the beach. The beach was packed full of families come to have picnicks, and who had brought along tents, grills, games, kites... A bit further along the coast was a small area of very hard clay, uncovered by the low tide. There were of course the usual clam hunters, but what I found most amazing was the unbelievable number of hermit crabs. Every single tidal pool was packed full of hermit crabs.

At this point, the road went into a tunnel, and so I went up a small valley with a very nice path meandering through the forst along a tiny stream. At the top, the path came out in a small parc with a look-out point, and some peacocks, rabbits, geese and japanese macaques in cages. And from the look-out point you could see, to the south Shinzushi and it's nice residential area, and, to the north, the japanese equivalent of Monaco and Cap Ferrat squeezed into one.

But as this is still Japan, the villas did not have any great walls or gates around them, and the big Plaza hotel complex was hosting a flea market out front. Why not....

From there it was an easy walk along the Kamakura beach. And as this is the Sagami Bay, there is a lot more wind than in Tokyo Bay. and who says wind says pleasure sailing, and ... wind surfing. Intensive wind surfing. But this is Kamakura, which is always crowded, and it's Goldan Week to boot. And the only reason the wind surfers could make it to the water is that BBQing is forbidden of the beach at Kamakura.

Taura

Having not much time to visit things this last week-end, I decided to go on a small walk I had found near Taura station, or at least near one of the Taura stations.

It was a short walk, but very pleasant, in the sun, on a nice and toasty warm day. The walk starts from ths station and you have to go through 2 tunnels, to get to a small valley, and then the road winds up the valley for a short way (at one point the road actually makes a corkscrew and passed over itself) until you get to a nice bamboo forest.

There is never only bamboo in the forest though, and the deciduous trees were inhabitted by the grey squirrels they have here. I spent 5 enjoyable minutes watching this pair run around and mumble to itself. They are the cutest things that can be when they're quiet, but they also have a tendancy to scream loudly every time anything upsets them, which can quickly become irritating if there are more than 3 or 4 squirrels.

At the top of the forest is a small park set up with some small garden patches, a children's playground and a look-out tower. From there you can see the coast from Tokyo (a smear on the horizon), Yokohama (the tall buildings of Minato 21 are quite recognisable), the industrial zone with JAMSTEC, and finally Yokosuka with it's war ships, and the city itself which kind of extends off down the coast.

With the start of Golden Week, and a bit less work to do, I hope to go to Tokyo and see some neat stuff there.

Kazusakameyama

Sunday's trip was to Kazusakameyama, a small village lost in the middle of rice paddies and bamboo forests, at the end of a little old narrow-gauge railroad line. And I have become a total fan of that place. This is why....

The biggest negative point is that it's a bit in the boonies. It takes about 4H from Oppama station, 5 if you happen to miss the little train that runs only once an hour. And it only runs once an hour because most of the way there is only 1 track and so the trains can only pass at 2 stations.

There are however sooooo many positive points that the travel time just dwindles into nothing. It's like griping about the time it takes to get to paradise.

According to wikipedia Chiba prefecture is the peanut heart of Japan. Well I would just like to say that I did not see anything that might even closely resemble a field of peanut bushes.

What I did see was real japanese countryside: small wooden houses in clumps amongst the rice paddies, wading birds galore (some wonderful white herons and small ginger pheasants), all the little connecting roads and paths between the paddies, and the rounded hills surrounding the valley with lush bamboo forests, agremented with cherry trees in blossom and japanese ceders, with now and then a steep canyon carved by a river, with the bamboo forests kind of waterfalling down into them. And down the middle of the valley goes clickety-clacking the little 2 car narrow-gauge diesel train.

When I arrived at the station where I was to catch this adorable little train I found that I had nearly an hour's wait before the next train. Well that was no problem, except that I was stuck in a, frankly, quite ugly port town on Tokyo bay. There is absolutely nothing positive to say about that town, which will remain unnamed for it's own good.

So an hour later I arrived back at the train station, a bit discouraged, and there! THE TRAIN! I knew right then and there that I was into something good. There was the little train puffing to itself, and there was a whole throng of japanese folk taking photos of it. And the whole way along the track there were folks with tripods set up along the roads and bridges, waiting for the train to go by so they could get photos. Now it's a cute little train, but not really spectacular. It's not really that old-fashionned, although the "air-conditionning" system is a bit rustique. But the japanese really have a train-freak side. On week-end TV they have train-spotting info, on which places are best every week, depending on what flowers are in bloom etc...

The train trip lasts an hour but it seems like 15 minutes.

At the end of the line is Kazusakameyama, and as I got off the train I was greated by the near deffening sound of frogs. It's a small village, with only about 100 houses, suoounded on one side by rice paddies, on one side by a dammed up lake, and on one side by forested hills. The perfect paradise.

The frogs it turns out inhabit the rice paddies. It seems dumb, but I had never thought of frogs in rice paddies. I have never actually thought much about rice paddies anyway, but what thoughts I did have did not include frogs. From now on they will, although, and this is very vexing, I did not once set eyes on any frog. I was so close to one that the sound hurt my ears but I could not see him! When I go back to that wonderful valley I will go prepared for a frog hunt!

One you have seen the rice paddies and been deafened by the frogs you realise there isn't much more to do with rice paddies. So off to the lake I went. One thing you don't realise from looking at pictures on goole maps is that the lake is about 200m below the rice paddy level. 200m straight down. Which makes picnicking on the side of the lake a bit difficult. I did finally find a small bamboo outcrop a bit flatter than the rest and had a nice lunch looking at all people fishing. The lake seems to be THE place to go fishing on a sunny Sunday, and frankly I can see why (I actually COULD see why as the fish were quite visible from up on the bridge). And these were not sport fishermen with style or anything. These were folks out for an afternoon in the fresh air, and were happy just to get the lure in the water. As you can see from the next photo and with a close-up of the overhead wires (just above the clump of darker trees, slightly left of center), we have enthusiasm=100%, actual technique = close to 0%. But it's the fun that matters, and there was a lot of that.

Along one bank of the lake runs a small road no trafic on it. The sides of the road are full of wonderful irisis, picher plants and ferns, and of course bamboo. And also along the side of the road are monkeys! I saw a couple in the forest, and then the male went out onto the bridge to cross the the other side. It was really great to see them just wandering around in the forest, free. That made an already wonderful trip simply fantastic. After staring for 10 minutes at the male monkey sunbathing on a tree branch I managed to tear myself away. I still had the forest side to investigate before I went home.

The forest path was somewhat muddy, but thanks to that I now know there is a quite large deer family inhabiting the forest. Of course due to the mud the forest was filled with the sounds of thousands of totally invisible frogs, accompnied by a few invisible bird melodies. As a consolation prize, I did see some nice big gurking toads, and some turtles (thankfully silent). All too early I had to leave the forest to head back to the train station. With only one train an hour, you can quickly arrive home very late if you miss it...

So regretfully I left this wonderfully forgotten corner of paradise. But I promised to go back, and I surely will.

Brassica

Today's outing was through the brassica fields of Japan. It was a very pretty walk, from the last station on the Keikyu line through the cabbage and turnup fields and down to the beach. It was also a much shorter walk than it seemed on the map, being only about 1km to the beach. However 1 km is more than enough to fully appreciate the smell of cabbage, and I was glad to see the beach.

This beach did not really have anything striking to it. There was a kind of dark, almost black sand, some nice rocks at one end, and some cliffs with WWII tunnels dug in them. This seems neat at first, untill you realize that absolutely ALL the hills have WWII tunnels in them. When I did the walk from Kanazawa-bunko to Oppama they had a photo expo in one. As far as I can gather they used them as plane hangars and warehouses. Best camouflage you can have, I guess.

As it was a very rural area and the few summer houses were still empty, the beachgoers were only interested in picking up seaweed. So just in an hour I got myself a nice seashell collection. And I was really lucky, as just as I was wondering what I could do with my shells I happened to look in the 'burnable' trash bin, and voilà! A wonderful wooden box, of perfect size, with 2 little ribbons on the side. What could be better? Now I have myself a shell collection, to show all the people who aren't really enthousiastic about seeing my jellyfish collection!

Ueno zoo

I have been in Japan 2 months now, and it is totally inacceptable that I have not yet been to Tokyo! So today I decided to visit Ueno park, as it is easily accessible and has bunches of things to see all right there. However I kind of misjuged the size of the park. So my first visit of Tokyo.... turned into the visit of only Ueno zoo.

Well that's not completely true... I had promissed myself not to leave Japan without seeing a Shinkansen. Today I saw 6 in 15 minutes, so guess that's a success. They are not only bullet trains but they go every 3 minutes!

And I also got to experience a tokyoite sakura fever, which is a bit more exuberant than the countryside ones. Here is the main alley of Ueno park at 9am ....

.... and at 3pm (note the sakura-fan on the step ladder, and the red power-ranger in the distance who turned around too late for the photo so you can't see where he had the little golden bells attached ...)(He did, yes. This is what the japanese do when they're not being extremely quite and well behaved.)

This zoo was quite different from the Kanazawa one. The cages themselves aren't landscaped, but they have enough space in this one that they can have their own lotus lake (not growing yet), with a monorail going around the parc and everything.

They have all sorts of animals, from lions and tigers to gorillas, and bunches of different birds. They're very into establishing breeding colonies of endangered species, so it was like walking through a Gerald Durrell book. They even had the flat toads that he gets in Argentina! They really are flat, and do look squished a bit. And of course they had all the japanese endemic species, including the giant salamander, and the cranes, and the monkeys.

As well as the animals there is also a 5 story pagoda in the zoo, which is the 'home' of some cranes, ducks, geese and swans, as well as the ever present crows. I am getting into the sakura habit, so here is the pagoda with and without blossoms. The cherry trees are just getting into swing. In a couple of weeks you won't be able to move in that park it'll be so packed full of people.