Andy in Tokyo

Snow-kyo

Well, I was convinced that the snow we had earlier this month would be the first – and last – for Tokyo this year, but I woke up this morning to find yet another covering of the white stuff:

Snow Way

Last night’s snow was more robust than I had expected. The roof of almost every house between my home and office was covered with it this morning. The road-bound stuff didn’t fare so well, though:

Word of warning: leather-soled shoes + snow = certain death.

No more snow is forecast for the rest of the week. Chances are we won’t be seeing any more in Tokyo for the rest of the year, which is a shame. I was looking forward to seeing ‘proper’ snow, especially considering England has been having its whitest winter since 1980.

Snow hits Tokyo

The first snow of the season has arrived here in Tokyo. Unfortunately it’s not cold enough for it to lay, which means an unpleasant trudge through slush to the train station tomorrow.

What’s the weather like in Tokyo?

Spring (March, April and May)

The first half of spring is one of the rare times of year when the weather in Tokyo is comparable with London. The number of sunny days and average temperatures are about equal throughout March, though by the end of April Tokyo’s daytime highs are starting to reach into the high teens and low twenties.

Hanami usually hits Tokyo at the end of April and beginning of May (and thanks to global warming it’s getting earlier every year). The parks become packed with revellers even though it often rains buckets. Tokyo receives about three times as much rain as London during spring, but the high reliability of weather forecasts means that it’s easy to know when you’ll need a brolly.

Summer (June, July and August)

June through to July is the rainy season in Tokyo, though this is something of a misnomer as it can rain a lot more in September and October. Temperature-wise, June is usually very nice, the equivalent of a lovely summer’s day in London. July and August is when the humidity and heat can be intense: the middle two weeks of August usually sees highs in the mid thirties, so you’d be well advised to leg it to cooler climes.

Autumn (September, October and November)

September is often just as hot as August, though it can – and usually does – rain for days on end. Typhoons are especially common at this time of year but the chances of one hitting Tokyo full in the face are slim (ie, don’t worry about it). October and November are, on the whole, very pleasant. Expect lots of sunny, coat-free days, even up until the end of November.

Winter (December, January and February)

Tokyo’s minimum temperatures are lower than London’s during winter, and its highs are a couple of degrees higher. However, this doesn’t take into account sunshine and the wind-chill factor. Tokyo gets considerably more sunshine than London and doesn’t get battered by Siberian winds, so walking about during daytime is actually quite pleasant. The lack of cloud cover makes for nippy nights, though.

In terms of wet days per month London wins hands down. You can expect the majority of winter days in Tokyo to be rain-free. In addition, the air is very dry in the first two months of the year, which leads to an awful lot of static electricity.

The Umbrella Phenomenon

Now, you may think that people only use umbrellas when it’s raining. You would be wrong. In Tokyo it is now perfectly acceptable to use them at the merest whiff of the wet stuff. This has lead to the phenomenon of Mass Umbrellaism, where large groups of people open umbrellas before exiting train stations, supermarkets and shopping centres.

Scientists believe that many Tokyoites – sucked in to the alternate realities that mobile phones and Nintendo DSs provide – are so distrustful of their real-life surroundings that they cannot rely on their own senses: they may be drier than a Martini in the Gobi desert but if the weather forecast says it’s raining, then it must be raining.

Tokyo’s top three Mass Umbrella hotspots:

1. Shinjuku Station’s South Exit
2. Ichigaya Station, Chiyoda
3. Hankyu/Seibu department stores, Ginza

Spring in Tokyo

Nothing beats lounging outside in the park on a wonderful Spring day:

Thunderstorms lash Tokyo

We’ve been experiencing yet more enormous thunderstorms today. As the pace of climate change intensifies scientists predict that the frequency and destructive power of storms will increase. Compared with other major cities around the world Tokyo is perhaps better equipped than most for extreme weather conditions – after all, it receives almost twice as much rain each year as London (1,380mm compared to 750mm), and boasts an awe-inspiring storm drain system called G-Cans:

You can find more images of the G-Cans project here.

Invasion of the Masks

Japan’s hay fever (kafunsho) season is at its very worst this week, leaving chemists rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of thousands of red-eyed Tokoites buying-up face masks, anti-histamines and all kinds of herbal remedies to unclog those tubes. To be quite honest I had no idea hay fever struck so early in Japan – growing up, I thought it was strictly a summer thing that afflicted the weedy kids. Evidently I was wrong.Apparently it’s all down to cedar and cypress trees, of which Japan has millions. Most were planted in the aftermath of World War II to supply the nation with timber, and while the national timber industry had waned, the trees – and their pollen – gained strength.

For those hay fever suffers looking for a relief from the misery, the Japan Times has a handy article on how to deal with it the natural way, here.

Typhoon No. 9

Thursday night saw the arrival of Typhoon No. 9 in Tokyo, and it was a big ‘un: Winds reached speeds of 90 kph, at least two people died, and the city’s transportation network was thrown into chaos.

Meanwhile, I slept through the entire event, waking up at 8am to look out of the living room window to remark that it ‘looks a bit windy out’. Things seem to be back to normal now, at least in western Tokyo. The emergency services are well prepared for disasters – when you expect earthquakes to flatten everything at least once a century, dealing with typhoons must be more of a sort of training exercise for the Big Event, which will hopefully happen when I’m not here.

I came across an Engrish of staggering outrageousness today:

Continuing the phallic theme, I discovered this air freshener in an izakaya last week:

New York

Very much enjoyed New York, and forgot about the huge amounts of pot holes on every street between JFK airport and Manhattan. Pot holes held no fears for our shuttle bus driver, however, as we stormed through traffic at 80mph. Springy suspension is the daddy!

Our hotel wasn’t bad at all, though some strange latex cover had been put over the bathroom ceiling to prevent ancient bits of plaster falling off and killing customers (I put my hand to it to check, and felt a wedge of plaster resting on it that could have felled an ox). Luckily, the room had a big telly and a huge bed: that’s all I need!

Speaking of TV, it always astonishes me how many bizarre religious commercials crop up on US networks. One of the best was for a “Green Prosperity Prayer Cloth”, which went something like this:

The Reverend X wants to place in your hands the “Green Prosperity Prayer Cloth”, which he has personally blessed and anointed. Thousands of people around the world have used this Biblical point of contact prayer cloth to receive abundant blessings of financial prosperity.

Now I don’t know about you, but I have a feeling that the Big Man upstairs (if he is upstairs; he might be in the garage for all we know) would probably not have approved of this one.

Living in a country where customer service has reached an insane level of politeness, the care-free attitude of most sales assistants was absolutely fantastic. Don’t get me wrong, being polite is all very well and good, but to be quite honest it drives me nuts – in Tokyo, I can’t look at a item of clothing in a department store for more than two seconds without someone drifting to my side, then providing me with a detailed explanation of the item in question: Aaargh!

Obviously, some people don’t care for the care-free attitude: I witnessed a woman go absolutely ape shit in CVS (Boot’s the chemist’s US equivalent). I guess she wasn’t too happy about their photo developing service, and went off on a particularly gormless-looking girl behind the service desk. The other staff found this highly amusing.

A similar situation occurred in a subway station: Some woman was unleashing every last drop of verbal venom in her guts at an old man. Some of the things she said were unbelievable.

Visited Ground Zero. Now that is a big hole. I vaguely remember going there seven years ago: it was a Sunday and some lads were playing football on the street, right outside the World Trade Center buildings. Anyway, we didn’t linger there long; someone was trying to sell maps and memorabilia shouting: “This is history! Right here!” He could do with working on his sales pitch, as he scared away almost everyone within a hundred metre radius.

Made it to MoMA. (I wanted to go the last time I visited New York, but it was being renovated at the time.) It was heaving, and there was so much to look at that it was all quite overwhelming. There was a particularly good exhibition on Soviet Modernist architecture – the New York Times has very good article about it here – and very nice ice cream in the cafe… err, I really should have been paying more attention, shouldn’t I?

Everyone seemed to SHOUT down their mobile phones at any given opportunity, no matter how inappropriate the location, or the conversation. I couldn’t help but overhear one old gadgie make an appointment with his doctor to check haemorrhoids. You’d think if you were discussing something like this, you wouldn’t put your phone on speaker mode, in the middle of a cafe, at lunch time.

Took the Staten Island Ferry. Did you know that it’s free? Well, it is, and is definitely worth doing, although there’s nothing at all to do on the Staten Island side – 99% of passengers on board our ferry went straight back to Manhattan.

For the rest of our time, we didn’t do anything overtly touristy – a bit of shopping, which for me was mostly for books (so so so many book shops – you people living in English-speaking countries don’t know how lucky you are!), and for Ayako mostly – you guessed it – clothes and bags. I’ve never understood why women don’t just want, but need so many bags. What’s all that about?

Anyway, we’re back in Japan, where it’s currently 35ºC and the humidity is disgusting. Back at work, which is the same as usual (I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever finish the project we started eight months ago), and… well… yeah, that’s about it really.

Hope you’ve all been enjoying your summer, wherever you are! I’ll be back with more stuff soon.

Moving On

Yes indeed, after eighteen months of teaching at A Big university I will finally be moving on to pastures new come the end of December. Learning some Japanese seems to have paid off and I’ve managed to secure a job in central Tokyo doing interesting stuff (well, interesting for me, at least). My new company wants to employ me for at least the next five years, so it looks like I’ll be in Tokyo for quite a while yet. But… it’s very possible I’ll be making business trips between Japan and the UK (as well as Australia, South Africa and Singapore – cool!) over the next few years, so I’m sure I’ll get a chance to see at least some friends and family sooner rather than later!

In other news:

• Bought a new sofa last week, which arrived this morning and is sweeeeeet. Lying on it feels like being back in the womb.
• The weather has turned: It’s now most definitely cold. The upside is that almost every day is incredibly clear and bright; I can see Mt. Fuji from my office again!
• Christmas has arrived. It’s impossible to go shopping without being bombarded by Xmas songs, tinsel, horrendous plastic reindeer and lights, so so many lights. But – what with Japan being not being a Christian country and all that – Xmas Day is in fact a normal working day. So what’s the effing point? Ey?
• Have a Japanese exam next Sunday and have come to the conclusion that I haven’t studied anywhere near hard enough recently. Oh well…

Today we decided to have dinner at home for once (we usually eat out on Saturdays). This is what we bought:

Now that’s what I call fresh! Cooking them proved a bit of a heart-wrenching experience (word of advice: never grill shrimp unless you are 100% sure they are dead first), but as you can see, the end result looked pretty good, and the taste wasn’t bad either. Recently I’ve been trying to at least put some effort into cooking. I think everyone has the impression that everything in Tokyo is ridiculously expensive (melons more expensive than human kidneys and so on…), but to be honest I would say the UK is probably even more expensive these days, especially when it comes to restaurants… But anyway, it’s late and I’m in dire need of sleep. Ciao for now.