Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Footsal

A couple of months ago, whilst drinking in my local bar, I met a guy from Indonesia who owns a nearby Indonesian restaurant called Makashi. As a fan of Indonesian food, a couple of weeks later Yuki, Clara and I all went to the restaurant for a lovely meal. I then went to the upstairs bar called Samasama for a few 'shandies'. It turned out that the owner of the restaurant has organised a Footsal tournament on the 26th April and I was invited to play for the restaurant team.

As I have never played Footsal before, I was a bit worried about the rules. However, the apprehension was unjustified and I was soon to discover that Footsal is essentially 5-a-side football. I was pretty excited to have the chance to play football again after a long hiatus, and was keen to show off my skills. However, things did not go as well as planned, I pulled a muscle after 20 seconds, was exhausted after 1 minute, and the limited footballing skills I thought I had were nowhere to be seen. To add insult to injury (my pulled muscle), all the other Japanese players were fit and displayed some great skills. Despite the fact that the actual football did not go as well as I had hoped, the after match party was a lot of fun and I met a lot of really nice people. Makashi is a great place to eat and drink and I am sure to be a regular visitor there in future. Good fun.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Tokyo Tower and Metropolitan Govt Building

We had a really nice day out yesterday (Saturday 11th April). Clara had requested to visit Tokyo Tower and climb up the steps. Up until yesterday, I had never been inside / up the tower so Yuki and I thought it was a great idea. It was also a beautiful day with blue skies and a nice cool breeze - spring is well and truly here and the summer heat is just around the corner.

The last time I visited Tokyo Tower was with Neil, a friend from Skye. We decided against climbing the tower because of the very long queue of people waiting to enter. There was also a long queue yesterday but as we were not taking the lift to the top, we could enter straight away and start our climb up the steps. Good exercise for us all and some nice views from the main observatory.

I was a bit peeved at the way the operators tried to squeeze every last ¥ (yen) out of us. I had thought that our initial entrance fee would allow us to climb to the very top, but it only got us to the main observatory. To climb to the secondary observatory would cost an additional ¥600 each. I really wanted to get to the highest possible point but really was not going to pay any extra.Still the views were still very interesting and I was reminded what a monster Tokyo is - urban sprawl stretching as far as the eye could see. Clara also had fun playing on some of the amusements at the base of the tower and beat me at a game of air hockey.

After Tokyo Tower, Clara and I went to a cafe while Yuki did some shopping. We then went for some dinner at an Italian restaurant which we all enjoyed. Clara was full of energy and spent a lot of time running around outside the restaurant after dinner. The restaurant is in a kind of amphitheater below a large office building so we could watch her running around like a lunatic and exploring. The exercise was really needed for her as she managed to eat a massive margherita pizza followed by a piece of chocolate cake.

Yuki then suggested that we visit the nearby Tokyo Metropolitan Govt Building, popular with tourists and locals alike for the views from the top. As it was nighttime by then, we were treated to all the colourful Tokyo lights. Tokyo is pretty by night and ugly by day.

All in all, we had a great day together and I will have some fond memories to keep me going through the week while I am away from home. Golden Week, a week with 3 or 4 national holidays beckons towards the end of April and the start of May. I will probably have to work most of it but will try and get a day off so that we can all go fishing together. I'll keep you posted.

Tokyo Tower

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Cherry Blossom Time (again)

It's cherry blossom time again - another sign of the relentless passing of the years in Japan. Cherry blossoms fill me with equal amounts of pleasure and sadness. Pleasure at the fantastic beauty of it all and sadness at how fleeting the appearance of the blossom is. A metaphor for life itself for many Japanese people (and the long term expat community).

I'm glad I have managed to sample a brief moment of the cherry blossom mania that grips Japan each year. Yesterday Yuki, Clara and I went to Koganei Park, a short journey from our house, to have our own little hanami (Japanese for cherry blossom viewing party). We bought some snacks and a couple of beers and lazed around in the park for an hour or so along with thousands of other people. Yuki told me that there are about 1,700 cherry in Koganei Park so it is obviously a good place to visit around cherry blossom time. There were various stalls selling food and games for the masses. A local pizza company even had the ingenuity to walk among the crowds taking orders - good idea but how on earth they would manage to deliver the correct pizzas to the right group has been vexing me for the past day. Must have been chaotic.After sitting on our mat, we took a stroll and then Clara and I played tennis for a bit. Sora (our little mutt) was very popular and got a lot of attention.

After we returned home, we had dinner together and then I went into Shibuya to meet an old colleague and some former students from the Japan Bank of International Development (JBIC). We had a good time chatting and had a few beers at TGI Fridays. After that we went to karaoke for an hour and then there was a mad rush to the station to catch the train home.  With work and family responsibilities, I rarely venture into town and am a bit of a hermit these days. Quite a change from my life back in Britain, and not a positive change in my opinion. I really should make an effort to socialise more......

Today there was the local Kumegawa cherry blossom carnival. We are really lucky that our balcony overlooks the street where the mini Rio-esque style parade takes place. Great to just stand there and watch the scantily clad ladies jiggle by. 

And now work beckons once more. Last week was really busy and I have a pile of work waiting on my desk for me to get stuck in to. 

Hope all is well with the readers, if indeed there are readers. Will post another blog soon.